Boys Games

Proud of his Southern heritage, John McCrady relocated to New Orleans after studying with Thomas Hart Benton at the Arts Students League in New York City. Channeling his former instructor’s Regionalist aesthetic, McCrady painted local Southern scenes that merged dreamscape with reality. Initially, Boys Games appears to be a raucous showing of American youth playing football, but the background adds an ominous tone to the boisterous foreground. A blistering red setting sun illuminates a brawl, while men on stilts and from a window sill watch from afar. To the right, behind the cheering spectators, a dark, barren tree takes on the appearance of a frightening human figure. The violence of boys games, then, does not end on the field.