Documenting Our Experience

George Bellows,
American
The Lone Tenement,
1909
oil on canvas
91.8 x 122.3 cm (36
1/8 x 48 1/8 in.)
What do you see?

Fire crackling, Ship Engine, Tree Rustling, Ball

Game, Vehicles on highway above

Scene of desolation

Rosy sunlight against the walls of buildings

Crisp wintery day, people around fire, overhead

bridge with building nearby - strange placement.

People huddled around a fire on a cold day

Cool grays, warm oranges

A city before overdevelopment

Golden hour, sun glowing on buildings

What do you feel? What emotion
words come to mind as you look at
this artwork?

Nostalgia, peace, purpose

Cold; poor; marginalized

Calm and indifferent

Community - albeit informal. A buffer against the

deprivation of poverty.

People huddled around a fire on a cold day

Lonely held-in emotion

Feeling of collaboration and working together

Hope on the horizon

George Bellows,
American
New York, 1911
Oil on Canvas
106.7 x 152.4 cm
(42 x 60 in.)
What do you notice about the sights
and sounds?

Bustling, loud, thriving, colorful

Highly populated cheerful lots of different

activities brightness

Oppression, almost no sky

The green pops out from foreground to background;

giving a sense of growing like a plant

Suppressed panic

Loud and dirty

Anonymity within a crowd

Faceless people
Connect...
How do these two artworks connect?
How are they similar? How are they different?

River of water, river of people

Buildings draw the eye

Rapid change in urban environments of the era

Similar diagonals of composition

Small gatherings vs. packed crowds

Emphasis of the white steam and snow and dark very small people
relative to the architecture

People are only part of the scene—the city is the subject

Distant point of view from the painter

One is calm and the other bustling

Single tenement, many buildings

1.From your See/Feel/Connect word bank, choose
12 or more words or phrases that you would like to
use in your poem.

2.Write each chosen word or phrase on a separate

sticky note or small piece of paper.

3.Play with various word combinations and arrange

the words into a few poetic lines. You can write
new words, if you feel like something’s missing. Hint:
If you are doing this with another person, you might
combine your words together to make a
collaborative Word Pile Poem.​

4.Read your poem aloud to see if you like the sound

and feeling of it. Make any final changes.
Restlessness city, busy and alive, turning in seconds the future of
people walking by.

Cold. Amazing cold city. With beautiful, dirty and noisy streets. Too much
to see, too much to learn. Too much beauty on the street.

Steam , smoke in the sunshine and shadows. Men crowded around a

bonfire with hope for warmth, light in the drabness of their industrial
lives. And, only streets away the hustle and bustle of the faceless crowds.
But lonely...

Faceless people huddle around a crackling fire feeling desperate

abandonment while energized chaos rises with the billowing smoke.

Far from the bustling crowd downtown, the dispossessed share a drink
and a flicker of warmth. The sun across the river mocks them; the bridge
passes over and by. Commiseration, warm wishes, and shared hopes.

Bright colors amongst the hustle and bustle of faceless strangers and
crowded streets surrounded by the patches of light gleaming through the
tall stark buildings and bare trees on a cold and gloomy weekday.