The Drunk

Discussion

FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

George Bellows made this lithograph as an illustration for an article in support of Prohibition published in Good Housekeeping by American suffragist Mabel Potter Daggett. Supporters of Prohibition, which had gone into effect in 1920, believed that alcohol was responsible for many societal problems, including physical violence. In this distressing image, a drunken father confronts his wife with a fist, while a daughter steps in to help and children cower in the corner. Bellows’s strong triangular composition reveals his fascination with an artistic theory called “dynamic symmetry,” in which geometry is used to promote continuity, flow, and balance.

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