“Men of the docks” is a vibrant celebration of Manhattan’s anonymous heroes. George Bellows, originally a newspaper illustrator, is one of America’s first modern artists, a chronicler of the city with a sharp eye. He captured the raw reality of immigrant day laborers at the foot of the skyscrapers of a mythical city, a living fantasy of capitalism.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the island of Manhattan was the beating heart of the New York metropolis, the world’s second-largest urban agglomeration after London. The symbols of the American way of life were born here. Everything accelerates and expands, brightens up, in a frantic quest for modern happiness.
Georges Bellows was barely thirty when he painted “Men of the docks”, a realistic scene of a group of day laborers on the Brooklyn docks on a bitterly cold day. Like thousands of European immigrants, they are hoping for an unlikely job. Behind them, the infinite vertical horizon of the first skyscrapers seems inaccessible.
For Bellows, Manhattan is already a city fantasy, the collective unconscious of the modern world.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the island of Manhattan was the beating heart of the New York metropolis, the world’s second-largest urban agglomeration after London. The symbols of the American way of life were born here. Everything accelerates and expands, brightens up, in a frantic quest for modern happiness.
Georges Bellows was barely thirty when he painted “Men of the docks”, a realistic scene of a group of day laborers on the Brooklyn docks on a bitterly cold day. Like thousands of European immigrants, they are hoping for an unlikely job. Behind them, the infinite vertical horizon of the first skyscrapers seems inaccessible.
For Bellows, Manhattan is already a city fantasy, the collective unconscious of the modern world.
| Director | Carlos Franklin |
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Production
Carlos Franklin
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