Dempsey and Firpo

At the climax of a famous heavyweight bout, the boxer Luis Firpo knocks Jack Dempsey clean through the ropes and out of the ring, the champion tumbling backward into the laps of the ringside crowd. George Bellows, the great chronicler of American boxing, freezes the explosive instant with raw energy and stark light. Now in the Whitney Museum, Dempsey and Firpo is the most famous of his fight scenes - the violence and spectacle of the sport seized at its most dramatic, the falling fighter and the roaring crowd caught in a single charged, kinetic moment.