I

EDITED BY HEATHER FRYER

MCMULLEN MUSEUM OF ART

BOSTON COLLEGE

'
COWBOYS, INDIANS. AND THE BIG PICTURE

EDITED BY HEATHER FRYER

MCMULLEN MUSEUM OF ART

BOSTON COLLEGE
DISTRIBUTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
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 This publication is issued in conjunction with the exhibition
Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture,
organized by the
Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art,
Boston College.
Principal curator: Heather Fryer; co-curators: Eva Garroutte, and Marilynn Johnson.

October 6 to December 8, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by the Charles S. and Isabella V. McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.

Library of Congress Control Number 2002 105537

ISBN 1-892850-04-4

Distributed by the University of Chicago Press

Exhibition and Publication Coordination by Naomi Blumberg and Thea Keith-Lucas
Copyediting by Naomi Blumberg and Thea Keith-Lucas
Designer: Keith Ake, Art director: Andrew Capitos, Office of Marketing and Communications, Boston College
OMC# 2093
Printed by Reynolds-DeWalt Printing, Inc.

Title page: William Robinson Leigh (1866-1955)

The Gambler: End of the Play, 1892 (detail)

Oil on Canvas, 38 x 50 in.

Collection ofJohn J. McMullen

Support for this exhibition and catalogue was provided by Boston College
and the Patrons of the McMullen Museum of Art.

THIS PROJECT IS FUNDED IN PART BY

For John andjacquie
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Director’s Preface
Nancy Netzer

11

Introduction: Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture

Heather Fryer

21
Forward and Back Again: Artistic Pioneers of the American West
Kate Bonansinga

33
Enduring Icons, Changing Realities: The Westward Trail of the Cowboy in American Art
Marilynn S. Johnson

45
Art and Authenticity: American Indian Creativity and Identity
Eva M. Garroutte

51
Contributors to the Catalogue

53
Plates and Entries ofWorks in the Exhibition

55
Western Realism

73
Contemporary Landscapes

85
Contemporary Cowboys

101
Contemporary Native Americans
 director’s preface

FEW YEARS AFTER I became director of what was Houston Astros baseball team, was eager to share the genre, so

then the Boston College Museum of Art, the President of little known locally with a New England audience, and especially
the University, J. Donald Monan, S.J., arranged for me to with university students. Following his lead, we gathered a group
meet one of his most valued friends, a trustee associate of of professors from the faculty who specialize in the art, history,

the University, former commander in the U.S. Navy with a culture, and sociology of the West to generate new questions
Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, celebrated businessman, owner such an exhibition might pose. The ideas embodied in this exhi-

of professional sports teams, and a dedicated collector of works of bition and catalogue developed from the dialogue among these
art. It was the last of these designations that had inspired Father Boston College faculty members; they became the co-curators of
Monan to bringjohn McMullen and me together that day. The the exhibition, with Heather Fryer playing the principal role
engaging conversation about the role of the visual arts within the among them in selecting the works of art and editing the cata-
academy that began that afternoon became the inspiration not logue. The result, the present exhibition, is the first of its kind to
only of this exhibition, but also of the Museum’s unique contribu- explore the interrelationships among a multitude of Wests, as
tion to the life of the University. The exchange of ideas also moved envisioned by various groups, including women, Latinos, Asians,

John in 1996 to Museum in honor of his parents, Charles

name the and Native Americans. Here, Western Realism and Western
S. and Isabella V. McMullen. The Museum thereby became an Modernism unite, forging an alternative to the ongoing debate
expression of gratitude to those closest to him in his past as well among artists about which images and styles portray the West as
as a means of communicating some of his own enriching interests it was and is.

to new generations of students. John’s creative mind, boundless This complex undertaking could not have been achieved
energy, and passionate support for innovation in exhibitions, without the tireless work of the curators and contributors to the

acquisitions, and gallery renovations continue to inform all the catalogue. Professor Heather Fryer of the history department

Museum’s successes. bore the primary burden of organizing this project. She con-
From our first encounter, John, who began collecting the art ceived its “big picture,” i.e., to define the underlying commonal-
of the American West in 1982 soon after he purchased the ity among a diverse group of visual images of the American West

9
that span the last one hundred years. Co-curators Professors Watson (Cowboy Artists of America); Kay Richards (Ikon
Marih nn Johnson, ot the history department, and Eva Garroutte, Gallery); Curt Klebaum (Peter Alexander’s Studio); Cherese
of the sociology department, brought cowboys and Indians into Crockett (PPOW Gallery); Laura Russo and Katrina Gilkey
the “big picture.” I hev raise questions in their respective essays (Laura Russo Gallery); Darlene Dueck (Anschutz Collection);

about the significance ot the iconic cowboy in American culture Ann Sinfield (University of Michigan Museum of Art); Monica
and about what it means to produce and evaluate the work of Petraglia (The Newberry Library); Motrja Fedorko (Jack S.

Nath e American artists. In her essay, Kate Bonansinga, Director Blanton Museum of Art); Courtney DeAngelis (Amon Carter
of the University Galleries at the University of Texas at El Paso, Museum); Kathleen P. O’Malley (I loot! Museum ot Art); Marlene
situates the curators' “big picture” within the larger context of art R. Miller (Arlington Gallery); Ron Aday (Cowboy Artists of
historical movements in America, Europe, and Asia. America Museum); Walt Amacker (Keep America Beautiful);
The start of the McMullen Museum and others from across Ann Marie Donoghue (Buffalo Bill I Iistorical Center); Malcolm
the University have contributed to this project at various stages. Rogers, Eliot Bostwick Davis, Patricia Loiko, Kim Pashko, and
In particular, our curator Alston Conley designed the installation Lizabeth Dion (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

to c\ oke the spirit of the various Wests. Our exhibition coordina- Sincere gratitude is extended to the administration of
tors Naomi Blumbcrg, and before her, Thea Keith-Lucas, played Boston College. We especially thank President William P. Leahy,

invaluable roles in the editing and production of the catalogue S.J., Chancellor J. Donald Monan, S.J., Senior Vice President

and in the exhibition’s overall organization, and assistants John James Me I ntvre. Academic Vice-President John J. Neuhauser,
McCoy and I Iclen Swartz, provided assistance with numerous Associate Dean of Faculties Patricia DeLeeuw, and Dean of Arts
details. Ml were aided ably by student interns Kelly Bloom, and Sciences Joseph Quinn. Support from the Massachusetts
Kathrvn Chambers, Erin McCutcheon, Anne I lanrahan, Kathryn Cultural Council and the Patrons of the McMullen Museum,
Park. Luchelelv Penka, and Matilda West. We are grateful, as well, chaired by C. Michael Daley, has made this catalogue possible.

to Steven Vedder and Garv Gilbert for photography, to Rosanne Finally, we wish to thank John and Jacqueline McMullen, to

Pellegrini for publicity; and to the members of our Development whom we dedicate the book. Their generosity, encouragement,
Ortice, especially Marianne Lord, Mary Lou Crane, and Gemma and unfailing optimism inspired this original, composite picture
Dorsey, who aided our funding efforts. In designing the catalogue, ot the American West and the “big picture” for this Museum.
Keith Ake, under the supervision of Andrew Capitos of the Office What we owe to them we can never adequately express.
of Marketing Communications, has captured the “big picture” of
the American West that emerges from the accompanying text. Nancy Netzer
The circle of those involved in the exhibition has extended Director unci Professor of/lrt History

in numerous directions and drawn on the expertise and generos-

ity of many beyond our campus. Special thanks are due collectors,
artists, and colleagues at other institutions: Peter Mexander,
Elissa Arons, Dotty Attie, Michael Brophy, Sidonie Caron, Alec
Petro, Karen Rice, Joe Cantrell, Toni Matlock, Liz Lerma, Harry
Fonseca, Peter Jemison, Robert Buitron, Greg Brown, Roy
Thompson, Amy Bogran, Linda Burrows, Kimi Kodani Hill,

Eugene and Yuri Kodani;Jane Ivy, Linda Mendez, Patricia

Caliguire, and Ronald Miller (McMullen Collection); Patterson
Sims Iwigjohnson, Renee Powley, and Toni Liquori (Montclair
Art Museum); Charles Froelick, Sarah Taylor, and Sarah
I lorowitz (Froelick Gallery); Brian Gross (Brian Gross Fine Art);

Margo Leavin anti Ariana Johnson (Margo Leavin Gallery); Ann

Silverman 'National Museum of the American Indian);Tom

i<>
 COWBOYS. INDIANS. ANB THE EIO PICTURE

Heather Fryer

HY IS William Leigh’s End ofthe Play (no. 7) a quintes- A similar dynamic drives the history of western art.
sential image of the American West? Western art is Questions of what the region really looks like, who is fit to render

W distinctive for

golden light.
its majestic landscapes; lush prairie

greens lead to pink and yellow cliffs washed

Leigh, however, paints a dark interior

scene. Instead of nostalgic figures of cowboys, buffalo,

plumed and painted Indians,

in rich,

and
we see a well-dressed man picking
its image, and who counts as a bona-fide westerner perpetuate
heated ideological and aesthetic showdowns. Over the
twenty years, exhibitions of western
contestants in this struggle.
realist
art

Some curators
have favored specific
last

focus exclusively on

works, either glorifying the nineteenth-century version of

himself up from a litter of splintered chairs, shattered bottles, western history or illuminating the tensions between myth and
and strewn cards. He has just shot an opponent at the gambling reality by placing traditional Old-Western imagery in the context

table, putting a tense issue to rest. Although Leigh presents a of America’s heritage, or as part of its legacy of conquest.
gambler in the aftermath of a successful gunfight, the viewer Exhibitions ofWestern Modernists tend to place their work in
instantly re-stages the preceding moments. In our imaginations, the narrow context of abstract and conceptual art movements,

the contestants take their aim, knowing that once the smoke ignoring the artists’ regional ties. Many curators highlight the

clears, only one man will prevail. kitschy political commentary of California artists, or showcase

The showdown has become a symbol of the mythic western the work of Chicano and Native American Postmodernists.
past. Before institutional law enforcement came to the frontier, These postmodern exhibitions often treat the artists’ connec-
individuals resorted to violent confrontations to resolve their tions to the West as incidental or even irrelevant. 1

differences quickly and permanently. Western history is full of The thirty-eight works in Cowboys , Indians, and the Big
showdowns, from individual gunfights to larger political conflicts Picture bring competing western images together to explore the
between the United States, Mexico, and Native nations over who breadth of contemporary western visual culture. They range from
owns the West. More recently, the states and the federal govern- Frederic Remington’s historic The Bronco Buster (no. 6) to recent

ment have battled over who controls public lands, while long-time work from Cherokee artist Joe Cantrell, who literally shoots
settlers and new arrivals skirmish over who really belongs there. holes in popular conceptions of western history (no. 37) In bring-
 dentials. Out of these struggles comes a vibrant visual heritage,

in which this volume’s essayist Kate Bonansinga finds synergistic

relationships between western art and Premodern, Modern,
and Postmodern movements in Europe and New York. She finds
that while western artists are clearly influenced by Romanticism,

Figurative Realism, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptualism,

and Pop Art, they have pioneered “new twists on old masters” that
are as politically charged as they are visually vital. Western art

not only explores what it means to be western, but makes strong

assertions about what it means to be American. The ensuing
showdowns between trained and untrained artists in the nine-

teenth century, the confrontations between Realists and

Fig. 1 Charles Wimar (1828-1862), The Attack on an Emigrant Train, 1856.
Oil on canvas. 5^ x -9 in. I niversitx ot Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Modernists at mid-century, and current stand-offs between
Arbor, Michigan. Bequest of Henry C. Lewis. 1895.80
Anglo traditionalists and multi-ethnic Postmodernists give west-
ern art its challenging content and enduring spiritedness that

mg old and new cowboy and Indian images together, a bigger, resonates in westerners and non-westerners alike.

more complex picture ot the West emerges. Cowboys of all

hinds — symbolic and earthly, multi-ethnic and masculine— do
everything from branding cattle to selling cigarettes to putting The First Showdown: The Trained and The Earnest
the patriarchy on the run. Indians wear everything from From the early days of the frontier, the West has been America’s
moccasins to high-tops and appear in a variety of guises, from palimpsest. Nineteenth-century artists such as Albert Bierstadt,

ethnographic curiosities to tempestuous existentialists to rough- Karl Bodmer, and Frederic Remington were among the first

and-readv cowboys. Together, they represent the rich diversity to inscribe images upon it. Western artists sought to make
and spirited debate one experiences while browsing galleries west accurate visual records of the new territory, but for many, the
of the Mississippi. enterprise involved more than making photographically precise

All of the images in Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture canyons, war bonnets, and broncos. Their earnest desire for
address America’s uncertainty about the meaning of the West to Americans to experience the West inspired interpretive flour-

the nation as a whole. Since the early days of the frontier, images ishes like higher mountains, fiercer Indians, and horsemen
of "A merica’s Eden” have been Integral to the processes of acquir who defied gravity Most Americans first saw the West through
ing western land and incorporating the new territory into the the artists’ lens of enhanced, romanticized landscapes, exoti-
Euro-American East. In the nineteenth century, members of the cized Indian life, and the adrenaline-fueled drama of breaking
2
viewing public wrangled over which artists could best depict the horses and running cattle .

terrain that embodied America’s future, while in the twentieth The American public clamored for thrilling western scenes.
century they wrangled over who most faithfully represented its At the same time, the government and press called on artists to

past. Artists and critics continue to argue over the best way to provide accurate depictions of the West. As artists became
depict the relationship between the western past and the present known specialists in certain western subjects, they had to choose
circumstances of its diverse population. For traditionalists the between these competing demands for drama and authenticity 3 .

W est never changes, while for Modernists and Postmodernists it Dueling pairs emerged: the formally trained versus the impas-
is always changing. sioned self-taught artist, the photographic Realist versus the

While every regional genre has its own style and subjects, the Romantic, and the Easterner who observed the West versus the
western art world particularly insists on establishing which cowboy who lived it. Each artist struggled for recognition as the

ipproach is more correct. Artists, collectors, and critics fight over most authoritative painter of western landscapes, Native
erything from subject to style to content to practitioners’ cre- Americans, or cowboys.
 Landscape painters Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and
Thomas Moran (1837-1926) are among the rare nineteenth-

century western artists who enjoyed fame and fortune in their life-

times. The two painters’ admirers did not battle over what the

West should look like, but dueled over who could render it more
authentically. German-born Bierstadt grew up in New Bedford,
Massachusetts and returned to Germany in 1834 to study painting

at the Diisseldorf Academy The young artist fell into a circle of

illustrious contemporary German painters acclaimed for their

heroic landscape compositions including Emanuel Leutze
(1816-1868), Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910), and Charles
Wimar (1828-1862), who would also make his name as an artist of
the American West (fig. 1). Bierstadt, however, became the fore- Fig. 2 George Catlin (1796-1872), Gatlin Painting the Portrait ofMah-to-
4 toh-pa Mandan 1861-69. Oil on cardboard, 18.5 x 24 in. National
most practitioner of the Diisseldorf style in American painting.
, ,

Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Paul Mellon Collection. 1965.16.184

Bierstadt began his travels to the West when he joined an
overland expedition led by Colonel Frederick W. Lander in the tion, Bierstadt ventured to Yellowstone himself in an effort to
spring of 1859. Captivated by the vast mountains, canyons, and outpaint Moran. Their rivalry was intense; it was difficult for

prairies, Bierstadt made countless sketches that he used for critics to decide whether Bierstadt’s more-romantic-than-real
panoramic western landscapes (nos. 1 & 2). He returned to his New works in oil were technically superior to Moran’s partially-

York studio to paint grand-scale, light-bathed oil paintings that invented vistas in dazzling watercolors. In the end, however,
found buyers from the White House to the royal houses of Russia. Bierstadt’s credentials as a European-trained artist and his wider
Drawn to the consistently dramatic quality of the works, collec- variety of subjects made him the premier painter of the
tors paid handsomely for a view of the mysterious West. 5 His new American West. Moran received widspread acclaim but second
9
works sold quickly at astonishingly high prices, with The Rocky billing throughout his career.
6
Mountains breaking all records when it sold for $20,000 in 1864. Karl Bodmer (1809-1893, nos. 3 & 4) became the premier
When a visit to Puget Sound in 1870 was rerouted southward, painter of ethnographic portraits of Indians. Like Bierstadt,

Bierstadt painted an energetic view of waves crashing against the Bodmer enjoyed royal patronage. Prince Maximilian ofWied-
unseen land. His image is more luminous and enclosed than the Neuwied summoned the highly reputed draftsman to make an
real sound, but bears some resemblance to the Mediterranean illustrated record of his second expedition to study indigenous
locales Bierstadt visited as a young painter. To Bierstadt, the west- American peoples. The expedition departed from Boston in 1832
7
ern landscapes were evocative rather than documentary and traveled as far as Montana, with extended stays in Indian vil-

The son of immigrant workers, Thomas Moran could not lages along the way. Maximilian produced a lavishly expensive

afford formal training in art. The spirit of Romanticism that folio that included his notes and reproductions of Bodmer’s
drove Moran to defy reason and make his living as a painter is eighty-one paintings. Due to its exorbitant price, it sold few

evident in his picturesque western landscapes. Although he did copies, but Bodmer’s detailed renderings and the Prince’s meticu-
not share Bierstadt’s commercial success, Moran was commis- lous field notes garnered admiration in scholarly circles. 10

sioned by the United States Geological Survey in 1871 to paint Bodmer may have earned the most recognition from the
Yellowstone. The government hoped his work would entice academic elite, but he was not the first painter to make an exten-
tourists westward, which would, in turn, support plans by the sive visual study of Native American life. Two years prior to
Northern Pacific Railroad to build a line through the area. Maximilian’s party, George Catlin (1796-1872, fig. 2) set out to

Moran’s eight-by-fourteen-foot canvas, Grand Canyon ofthe capture the images of “a dying nation, who have no historians and
Yellowstone persuaded President
,
Grant to designate the area a biographers of their own. ..thus snatching from approaching
national park. 8 Competing for patronage and public recogni- oblivion what could be saved for the benefit of posterity” 11

13
Catlin spent eight wars observing approximately fifty Indian mines of Montana at age sixteen. Coming of age in the region,

tribe-, sometimes participating in Indian ceremonies, games, and Russell lacked both Remington’s effete manners and his Ivy

the daily routines of the tribe. 1 lis 320 oil paintings were lauded League credentials. I lis study of Indians and cavalrymen came
for their roughness and energy, but dismissed by curators and col- from gambling, drinking, and hunting with them. I le did not

lectors who preferred polished, dispassionate works. Catlin’s learn about the work of ranch hands and trail drivers from obser-
touring exhibition, w hich he called his “Indian Gallery,” was pop- vation, but from his long experience as a cowhand. Interestingly,

ular among European view ers but aroused very little interest the question of authenticity plagued Russell as it did Catlin,

in the United States, w here even Congress refused to purchase and as a self-taught artist he was fated to work in Remington’s
his record of Indian life. 12 shadow. Russell did have a faithful following in his lifetime,

Bodmer contributed to Catlin’s difficulties by penning an but not among Remington’s moneyed, eastern admirers. Instead,

article blasting the self-taught painter for weaving fantasies Russell’s fans hailed from the West’s rising aristocracy of self-

rather than gathering solid data. The adversarial relationship made oilmen and Iollywood celebrities
I like William S. I lart,

betw een the two artists highlights the tension between delivering Douglas Fairbanks, and Will Rogers. While the American
an evocative, mvtluc West and providing an unimpeachably accu- art establishment lauded Remington’s technical virtuosity and
rate West that remains at the heart of the controversy over what his skill as a documentarian, Russell’s fans held that Remington
13
constitutes authentic western art. was too remote from the land and people of the West. Although
Conflict and controversy arose again in the late nineteenth the two never met, the newspapers made frequent mention
16
centurv as cowbov artists Frederic Remington (1861-1909) of a rivalry between the two cowboy artists.

and Charles Russell (1864-1926) grappled with the authenticity The images that Bierstadt, Bodmer, Remington, and their

question. Remington began his legendary career as a restless counterparts created were often didactic, romantic, propagandis-
Yale student who headed west to live among cowboys, Indians, ts, or strongly nationalist. They increasingly appeared in govern-
homesteaders, saloonkeepers, and the star of the Wild West ment studies and tourist industry ads, and they were caricatured

shows, Buffalo Bill Codv. Fascinated by the vigor of western life, on tobacco labels and boxes of cornstarch. Nevertheless, the
Remington used his inheritance to purchase a ranch in Kansas. work inspired younger painters to venture west themselves.

It was a sheep ranch and Remington departed after only a year, Artists continued to depict the Old West despite the region’s
yet he considered himself a westerner. Popular magazines, increasing urbanization and industrialization. Even when the

like Harper's Weekly and Collier’s , regularly printed Remington’s frontier reached its ultimate endpoint, Americans held fast to old

renderings of cowpunchers and Indian fighters, which were Western Realist imagery, because it fused the best of European

most often drawn from imagination instead of observation. 14 high culture with the promises for America’s future embodied in
Remington developed increasingly detailed renderings of his the untamed landscape.
western subjects in order to document the fast action of roping,
riding, and conquering the great western frontier. This turn
toward precision drew' Remington toward sculpture. The Bronco The Second Showdown:
Buster (no. 6) was his earliest and most popular bronze. In spite The Realists and The Modernists
of its gravity defying composition, the piece reveals Remington’s The passing of Bierstadt, Bodmer, Remington, and their follow-

heightened concern with the intricacies of the horse’s muscula- ers heralded an uncertain future for western art. Bierstadt was

ture. and the details of the cowboy’s saddle, spurs, hat, boots, and dismayed in his last years to see American tastes turning toward
facial expression. Remington’s imaginativeness and painstaking French Modernism. Leigh railed against the prevalence of
precision won over curators and collectors, and his ability to frivolous foreign work, a practice for which he was ultimately
suspend dramatic action in time and space made Remington’s branded a provincial. The New Mexico desert drew leading
15
cowboy sculpture iconic in American visual culture. Modernist painters like Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Marsden
Charles Russell, by contrast, was a product of the American I lartley (1877— 1943), and Agnes Martin (b. 1912, no. 13) who made
West ffigs. 8, i'j & 12). The St. Louis native migrated to the gold stunning visual explorations of the light, colors, shapes, and

M
exotic features of their new surroundings. Their interest, how- a revival in the 1960s. A group of Western Realists, representing

ever, was not in the region and its past. American Modernists the most accomplished among their peers, gathered in Sedona,
worked in the context of their own heated showdown with Arizona in 1965 to discuss the future of the genre. The five princi-

Parisian Modernists who claimed Americans incapable of origi- pal founders declared their mission to “perpetuate the memory
nality or significant invention. The Taos Modernists used the of the Old West, as typified by Frederic Remington, Charles
distinctive surroundings to give their experiments with abstrac- Russell, and others.” 19 They formed the Cowboy Artists of
tion the advantage of an inherent uniqueness of subject matter. America (CAA), whose governing body holds members to high

Concerned with individualism, the Taos artists also developed technical standards in a style they call Western f igurative

highly personalized, idiosyncratic images of the West. Rejecting Realism (see nos. 9-12). 20 To be inducted into the society, artists

the Romanticism and storytelling of the Western Realists, must consistently produce “authentic representations of life in
21
O’Keeffe’s symbolist west was white skulls and desert blooms, the West, as it was and is.”

while Hartley’s was cubist mesas and Cezanne-influenced adobe The CAA compares its practice to that of the recent phe-

churches, and Martin’s was minimal, evoking a sense of place nomenon of historical reenactment. These artists “travel” to the
17
from meticulously pencilled bands of subtle color. past by conducting extensive archival research and learn about

As the Taos artists and other Modernists in the emerging western life as Charles Russell did — through trailriding, stock
Los Angeles and Northwest schools garnered the attention of raising, and spending time in Indian communities. Artists who
New York curators and collectors, Western Realist work fell into put cowboys on anachronistic saddles, adorn warriors with eagle
the shadows. Increasingly, the West looked as much like an feathers when they really wear turkey plumes, or locate a famous
O’Keeffe as a Remington in America’s imagination. The threat trapper in a place he never visited are not considered Western

posed by eastern interlopers to the western visual tradition Figurative Realists. Although CAA members, artists, and judges
intensified as New Mexico became America’s second art center. name Remington and Russell as their artistic standard bearers,

Devotees of western genre painting saw the American art world’s they revere Bodmer’s precision and Catlin’s passion in rendering
scorn for heroic western imagery as a threat not only to their Native Americans, as well as the grandeur of Bierstadt and
artistic sensibilities, but also to American patriotism. 18 A new Moran’s western landscapes. Drawing on these nineteenth-cen-
showdown began over whether Modernists— with their foreign tury traditions, CAA artists attempt to preserve a particular view
sensibilities— could really be western. of history and elevate the stature of the genre. 22
As the region modernized, the West took on a new role in the John Clymer (1907-1989, nos. 9-10), Frank McCarthy
American imagination. Instead of being the wide-open terrain of (b. 1924, no. 1 1), and Howard Terpning(b. 1927, no. 12) are the
the future, it became the font of sacred historical memory. Just as three CAA artists who have enjoyed the greatest critical
western paintings shaped America’s view of the future in the fron- and commercial success. Unlike their nineteenth-century
tier era, new images of the region’s past helped the nation form its Western Realist predecessors, each of the three has benefited

identity in the industrial age. In her essay in this volume on the from both formal art training and the rough-and-tumble adven-
iconic cowboy, Marilynn Johnson shows how traditional western ture of western outdoor life. Interestingly, these artists began
imagery asserted traditional American values during the turbulent their careers as illustrators, rather than painters. Their interest

decades of the twentieth century, including the revolutionary six- in western subjects evolved from drawing action scenes for west-
ties. As the definition of American values became more flexible in ern pulp novels, magazine illustrations and, in the case of
the late twentieth century, cowboys appeared everywhere from Terpning, Hollywood movie posters {Lawrence ofArabia and
Hollywood Westerns to the Reagan White House, invoking patri- the re-release of Gone With the Wind being perhaps his best

otic unity through images of rugged individualism. known). The leading lights of the CAA fuse all of the contested
Although Western Realism retained its popularity through- elements of early Western Realism in their artistic practice.

out the twentieth century, the preeminence of abstraction and They are both the trained and the earnest, bringing the drama of
conceptual art threatened to relegate it to a second-class regional Hollywood’s Technicolor palette and the intensity of an action
style. Refusing to ride off into the sunset, Western Realists staged film storyboard to carefully wrought renderings of the historical

5
West Although rhey eschew change, C A A artists have their feet according to their individual visions and concerns. After all,

in mam cultural camps. ;md combine techniques from mass I lowe convincingly argued, non Indian artists received praise

media and tine art traditions to heighten the sensation of their every day for challenging their traditional ideal of art with their
premodem imagery. Abstract Expressionist works. 25
The C A. Vs institutional supervision of artmaking was not I lowe’s letter became the manifesto for the Native

entirely new in the region. Native artists have negotiated the American Fine Arts movement. I Iis protest paved the way for

restrictions of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act since the 1930s. the founding of the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Ee

Part of New Deal legislation, the Act was designed to help Native in 1962, which trains Native American students in traditional
26
people retain their corner on the Indian art market by allowing Native and contemporary European styles. John Nieto (b. 1936)
onlv certified Indian artists to sell objects in indigenous styles. and Rick Bartow (b. 1946) are inheritors of Howe’s merger of
Until 1003. the law gave the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) European forms and Indian subject matter. Nieto’s Fauvist Snake
the sole authorin' to determine who was a legitimate Indian Dance (no. 32) renders a distinctively tribal figure in a recognizable

artist Artists w ere required to establish membership in a feder- European idiom to reflect on the possibilities of pan- Indian iden-
ally recognized Indian tribe and prove a certified degree of tity, while Bartow’s self-portrait Die Altersschwache (no. 34) draws
23
Indian blood. Joe Cantrell (b. 1945) satirizes this system in his on Expressionist language to convey the inner state of an individ-

work. Authentic Indian ID Card (no. 36). In this Postmodernist’s ual who happens to be Native.

call for self-determination, Cantrell creates his own wall-sized Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Cowboy
identification card using a staged self-portrait in the style of Artists of America had different reasons for requiring artists to

photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952). By certifying him- adhere to nineteenth-century traditions, both were engaged in a

self. Cantrell wrests the power to determine his legitimacy showdown against Modernism’s encroachment on western forms
as an Indian artist away from the federal government. Today, and subject matter. For the BIA, the opponent was inauthentic
the Act has been amended to allow tribal authorities to certify Indians, and for the CAA, it was inauthentic representations of
Indian artists, but as Eva Garroutte illustrates in her essay in western images. Because traditionalists identified the region by
this volume on the relationship between Indian art and identity, the greatness of its past, rather than its possibilities for the

the puzzles surrounding definitions of Native authenticity are future, they resisted any expansion of the f rontiers of Indian art
nowhere close to being solved. 24 and Euro-American visual language.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Act enshrined the idea that

Native artists would produce traditional images in the manner of

their ancestors. The Indian art market had little place for the Showdown Number Three:
innovations of an emerging generation of Indian Modernists. Nostalgic Visions and Emerging Voices
One of the great showdowns over ethnic Modernism took place, If William Leigh’s gunfighting gambler is unquestionably western,
most appropriately, between an Anglo institution and an Indian why would viewers debate whether Frank Romero’s (b. 1941)

artist in 1958, when the Philbrook Art Center disqualified Oscar Freeway Wars (no. 30) is a western image? The outdoor setting is
1 lowe (1915-1983) from its annual exhibition of American Indian clearly Los Angeles on the west coast. The showdown is also
painting. Howe encountered Cubism, Expressionism, and in keeping with western motifs. However, the image is modern
Conceptualism during his military service in Europe during and urban; the trails are curved, the shooters wear baseball caps,

World War 1 . When he returned to the United States, he and the horses have four wheels. The combatants arc not Anglo
adopted these forms to more fully explore traditional Native life American cowboys, but Latino youth. The incident could be road
in its modern context. In one of the few instances in which rage, or a shootout between rival gang members. In both cases,

Indians were discouraged from cultural assimilation, the curator the summary justice of the street has replaced the frontier show-
of the Philbrook Art Center rejected I lowe’s work as inauthen- downs in a West where car culture has replaced cattle culture.
tu l~hc artist wrote a powerful letter in reply, calling on the insti- The conflict over whether Romero’s work is truly western

tution to recognize Indian artists’ right to express their creativity mirrors the nineteenth-century wars over possession of the West.
As the victors of that struggle, Anglo Americans assert their Red Power movement occupied Alcatraz Island in 1969 to draw
cultural hegemony by declaring that Romero’s vision of the West attention to the federal government’s refusal to honor treaty pro-

is “Latino” and thus separate from the larger tradition of western visions that would turn over unused federal land to the tribes.

American art. In contrast, Postmodernists claim that Latino In naming their community “Indians of All Tribes,” they were
artists can ignore the expectations of the white mainstream cul creating a space “not just for dancing but for building an Indian

ture and create their own definitions of western art. The show- future.” From this point in the Pacific Ocean, their movement
down between Western Figurative Realists and Postmodernists swept eastward. 27
is an ongoing contest over who belongs in the picture. While Native artists blend traditional imagery and modern forms
the Realists attempt to shore up the nineteenth-century ideal ot to create powerful images ol their struggle for civil rights. While
Anglo Americans taming the frontier, the Postmodernists try these works may fall short of outsiders’ standards for authentic

to deconstruct it entirely. Indian art, they are impassioned expressions of Indians’ present

The CAA’s vigilance in preserving a specific, Old-Western concerns and desires for the future. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
past is a strong indicator of how much the region has changed in (b. 1940) documents the everyday battles of Indians of all tribes
the postwar era. Collectors of Western Figurative Realism tend in War Shirt (no. 38). Like traditional ornamentation and body

to be men like Bierstadt, Bodmer, and Remington. They are edu- art, Smith’s shirt tells the history of the warrior who wears it. In

cated and cultivated, with an appreciation for European and this case, the absence of a human form suggests that the shirt is

American masters and an impassioned pride in the success of the worn by every Indian. The product labels, cartoonish stereo-
American experiment, which come together in the genre’s high- types, newspaper shreds, and f ragment of an American flag that

est-caliber works. As the dominant culture in the region, Anglo adorn the shirt reveal the cultural and political battles that

Americans’ view of the West went unchallenged for decades. In Indians confront every day.

the face of rising interest in western-themed Modernism in the Native Americans were not the only westerners battling for
early twentieth century, the Western Realists defended the rele- political and cultural equality. In 1969, Asian students joined with
vance of frontier history to western art. Western Postmodernism Indian, Latino, and African American students in “seizing the

presented a new challenge by attacking the fundamental prem- time” and demanding that San Francisco State LIniversity imple-
ises that underpinned Anglo understandings of the western past. ment an ethnic studies program. For Asian American students,
Westerners ot color shed new light on the Anglo American participation in the successful strike was not only an assertion ot

conquest of the West by claiming their own place in the region’s their presence in a multicultural society, but also the starting

history. Traditional histories of the West ignored the vaqueros or ,

point in the process of shedding the silence surrounding the
Hispanic cattlehands (see no. 29), who retained their Mexican history of Asians in America. They began to investigate the

identity a century after the United States annexed their home- exploitation of Chinese railroad workers in the nineteenth cen-

land in the Mexican War (1846-48). Despite numerous attempts tury and the all-but-forgotten internment ofjapanese Americans

to eradicate them, Indians continued to populate the West’s during World War II. The artists among them rediscovered eld-
numerous reservations. Similarly, Chinatowns and Nihonmachi ers like Chiura Obata (1885-1975, nos. 14 and 15), who painted
(Japanese urban enclaves) infused Asian influences into western throughout his internment and opened a makeshift art school in

cultural life, despite the legal and social barriers that kept Asians the camp to raise the spirits of his fellow internees. Believing

from becoming American citizens. that an artist’s purpose was to find beauty in the world, he kept

Westerners’ histories took on a new importance during the his eye on the landscape beyond the barbed wire. The scenes
political and social upheavals of the 1960s, when ethnic commu- he painted testify to the strength of his spirit as much as to the
nities looked to the past to stake claims to America’s future. subtle shapes and hues of the landscape. Obata was no rabble-

While rooted in southerners’ struggle against segregation, the rouser, but his artistic practice was a powerful form of activism
Civil Rights movement also had centers in western cities. The in the face of absolute racial oppression. 28
Bay Area was home to the Black Panther Party, the Free Speech Further south, outside the barrios of Los Angeles, Chicano
Movement, and the American counterculture. Activists from the artists also used images of the western past to redress current

17
social injustices. M.inv joined Cesar Chavez’s campaign to organ- founded by Frank Romero and three collaborators, making them
ize Mexican field laborers. As the Chicano movement grew, it the first Chicano artists exhibited by a major museum. 29 By
extended its agenda ront f fair wages and safe conditions for grape revealing the hidden histories of their communities on the

pickers to asserting pride in their Mexican heritage. Chicano grand scale of a Bierstadt and the energy of a Remington, ethnic
artists celebrated their cultural roots anti exposed the injustices Postmodernists brought new voices into the story of the West.
the\ endured while working the western lands. Like the Indian Now, westerners from all backgrounds, not just Anglo
activists at Alcatraz. Chicanos claimed their place in the West, Americans, could see themselves in western art.

demanding recognition both as full citizens and as members of a In the period when the Cowboy Artists of America was born
distinct culture with its own history and artistic traditions. and civil rights movements emerged in the West, America was

awash in cowboys and Indians. Ageneration of young westerners

took in a constant stream of western images from television

shows like The Lone Ranger and Gunsmoke. They watched adver-
tisements for Marlboro cigarettes and admonitions from a tearful
Indian to “Keep America Beautiful” (fig. 3). They vacationed at
the Grand Canyon and Disneyland, passing lariat-wielding plas-
ter cowboys and cigar-store Indians all along the way. CAA artists
appeared in western museums and homes across the West, while
civil rights activists and environmentalists appeared in the streets

and on the news. All of these cowboys and Indians formed a

heroic pantheon for boys and girls alike, whether they were
white, black, Latino, Indian, or Asian. Much as they have reinter-
preted the nineteenth-century tradition of western art, postmod-
ern artists have grappled with these ubiquitous characters in

American culture.

Peter Jemison (b. 1943) and Robert Buitron (b. 1953) watched
westerns faithfully when they were growing up. But both Jemison
and Buitron noticed a problem: the Lone Ranger’s Tonto and the
fig. 3 'Pollution, it's a c) ing shame “Vtom the campaign, “People start pollu- Cisco Kid’s Pancho were not real cowboys, and they certainly
tion People can stop it ” Photo appears courtesy of Keep America
were not real Indian or Mexican people. In Missing Legends ofthe
Beautiful, Inc.
A merican West (no. 27), Buitron stages a photo of Pancho and
Although Anglos see them as an immigrant group, Tonto writing Mexicans back into history by designing a postage
Chicanos have lived in the Southwest for centuries. Chicano stamp of Joaquin Murrieta, who fought against Anglo miners when
activists laid claim to the land, arguing that Mexicans had prior they forced Mexicans off their land. Jemison’s Black Cowboy (no. 26)
claim to the lands we call the American Southwest. They also and Buitron’s Leccitin 34 (no. 28) also confront media stereotyping

declared the creation of Atzlan, or the diasporic Chicano home- by creating new images of black, Indian, and Mexican cowboys.
land, where Mexican people were unified by a shared identity Kate Bonansinga’s discussion of Cinderella Story (no. 23) by Alexis
that transcended systems of oppression, national borders, and Smith (1). 1949) illustrates how a cinematic cowgirl complicates
personal differences. Chicano artists used murals as a public the picture by drawing gender into the topsy-turvy world of post-

forum for Atzlan, allowing their images to speak to the broader modern cowboys. Although the artists use different media and
community. By 1968, murals became integral to Mexican approaches in creating their western heroes, Black Cowboy Leccion ,

American politics and culture, as well as to the Los Angeles art 14, and Cinderella Story make protagonists of westerners who have
scene In 19-4, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhib- been cast as sidekicks and colorful extras in both fictional and his-

ited installations by Los Four, the 1 lispanic arts collective torical renditions of the western past.
 In addition to artists’ responses to social inequality in the cowboys — or cowgirls? If Indians only existed as nineteenth-

region, western art has been shaped by artists’ concern with century ethnographic subjects, how can young Native Americans
the numerous threats to the region’s natural environment. The account for their lives in the contemporary world? If we see

western landscape has changed dramatically since the Second America’s quest for its Manifest Destiny as tragic, rather than
World War, when the bombing ot Pearl Harbor revealed the heroic, what will this legacy mean for the descendants of
vulnerability of one of America’s westernmost points. New mili- America’s trailblazers? If the West is defined by its abundant,
tary bases sprung up to fortify the Pacific Coast against the unspoiled land, why do so many western families live in cramped,
Japanese, while scientists hid in the desert to secretly develop the polluted neighborhoods?

first atomic bomb. The burgeoning war industries attracted At the beginning of the twenty-first century there are many
waves of new pioneers. Anglo Americans’ false belief that western Wests, each existing separately in the minds and hearts of young

land is infinitely available and inexhaustible had disastrous westerners. The artists among them create images that trace their

effects on some segments of the West. Rapid urbanization and unending search for this personal idea of the West. The thirty-

suburbanization stretched the limits of the region’s natural eight works in this exhibition have been selected to form a big
resources. In his tableau of amputated tree stumps. Goodnight picture that unites artists from disparate places, perspectives, and

Irene (no. 16), Michael Brophy (b. i960) portrays the exploitation eras. Despite the conflicts among them, these works coexist in

of the land with equal parts beauty and horror. 30 western museums, galleries, and private collections because
The proliferation of nuclear test sites throughout the West together they represent most westerners’ experience of the
also wrought tremendous environmental damage. Karen Rice’s region. Western Realism and western-themed Modernism and
Burning Sage (no. 18) exposes the ways that the nuclear industry Postmodernism use different strategies to examine the meaning
separates people from the dying land. In Rice’s view of the of the American West, and they come to very different conclu-
atomic West, the lines between the natural and the unnatural are sions. Like the West itself, this Big Picture of western art is grand
blurred, while the lines between free and forbidden land have in scale, energetic, contentious and ever evolving, and rich with
become increasingly rigid. According to Rice (b. 1968), a traveler unanswered questions. As this exhibition shows, the more images
to the West is as likely to be stopped by a Department of Energy one brings together, the more authentic the picture gets.
barricade as welcomed by a ranger from the National Park
Service. In the decades following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
western terrain has come to embody unending conflict instead
of endless promise. 31
1
Patricia Nelson Limerick, Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the
American West (New York: Norton, 1987).
These more recent works reflect two competing impulses
2
Brian W. Dippie, “The Visual West” in Clyde Milner, et al., editors, The
that have taken hold of the western art world over the last forty
Oxford History of the American West (New York and Oxford: Oxford
years: the Western Realists’ careful preservation of a particular University Press, 1994), 676 & 680.
3
western past, and the Postmodernists’ fervor to crack that his- Dippie, “The Visual West,” 680-82.
4
torical narrative open, reconfigure it, and explore new interpre- Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1974), 64-80; Matthew Baigell, Albert
tations. In the realm of western art, critics never judge the
Bierstadt (New York: Watson-Guptik Publishers, 1981), 8-9.
canvas or the bronze alone. Behind every appraisal lies a judge- 5
Hendricks, 25.

ment about whether the artist’s vision of the West— “as it was 6
Hendricks, 179.
and is” — should prevail. 7
Jonathan Raban, “Introduction” in Kitty Harmon, editor, The Pacific
Northwest Landscape: A Painted History (Seattle: Sasquatch Books,
2001), 12-13.
Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture
8
Robert Hughes, American Visions: the Epic History ofArt in America (New
Being western in the post-frontier age is a complicated matter.
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997); Joni Louise Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the
If the Old West was nothing but the fantasy of ideologues, why is Surveying of the American West (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1992), 125-37.
it still so compelling to make images of it? If all westerners were
free-spirited cowboys, why were there no Indian and Mexican

19
9 \ 25
Hippie. " l'he “isu.il West," 6 SS 090. Bierstadt originally reeeived a Rennard Strickland and Margaret Archuleta, “The Way People Were
Congressional commission, which he dearh wanted, but at a high price. Meant to Live: The Shared Visions of Twentieth Century Native
During an ei onomie downturn. Moran received his Yellowstone American Painters and Sculptors,” in Margaret Archuleta and Rennard
Commission See' Thurman Wilkins. Thomas Moran: rtist of the Mountains . I Strickland, editors, Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in
Norman: Tniversitv of Oklahoma Press. 1998), 159-60. the Twentieth Century (Phoenix: The I Icard Museum, 1991), 5-11
10
William Goct/mann, '‘Introduction," in Karl Bodmers America (Lincoln: Janet C. Berio and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art (New York:
Tniversitv of Nebraska Press. 1084). 6-“. Oxford Press, 1998), 220-25; Margaret Archuleta, “The Native American
11 Fine Art Movement" www.heard.org/education/resource/indcx.html.
Biographv of George Catlin, wevw.askart.com/biography.asp.
27
Terry Anderson, The Sixties(New York: Longman, 1999), 159-67; Paul
'‘William II Iruettner. The Natural Man Observed. Study of Cattin’s Indian 1

Chaat Smith and Robert Warrior, Like a Hurricaine: The American Indian
tCf/cn (Washington, DC The Smithsonian lnsitution, 1079), 11-35.
Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New' Press, 1996),
3
Barbara Groseclose. Nineteenth Century American Art (New' York: Oxford 25-26.
Tniversitv Press. 2000) 152-54; William J. Orr, “Karl Bodmer: the Artist’s 28
Karen Umemoto, “On Strike! The San Francisco State College Strike
Life." injoslvn Art Museum. Karl Bodmer's America, 362.
1968-69: the Role of Asian-Americans" in Min Zhou and James V.
14
Brian W Dippie. Remington and Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection Gatewood, editors, Contemporary Asian-America: A Multidisciplinary Reader
(Austin: Tniversitv ot Texas Press. 1994). 2-3. (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 80-83; Ron Chew, They
1
1 mils Ballew Ned. Frederic Remington: The Hogg Brothers Collection at the Painted From their Hearts: Pioneer Asian American Artists (Seattle: Wing Luke
Museum ft Art Museum, 1995), 4; Timothy Anglin Burgard, “The Art of Survival:
Fine Irts. Flouston (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2. 1. Michael Edward Shapiro, “Remington The Sculptor” in
59 pi; Chiura Obata at Tanforan and Topaz” in Kimi Kodani Hill, Topaz Moon:
Feeder;. Remington the Masterpieces cd. Michael Edward Shapiro and Peter Chiura Ubata'sArt of the Internment (Berkeley, CA: I leyday Books, 2000),

1 lassrick (New York: lenrv N. Abrams, Inc., 1988), 186-87.

1
xiii-xviii.

16 29
Peter 1 lassrick. Remington. Russell and the Language of Western Art Alicia Caspar de Alba, Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master's House. Cultural
W ashington. DC: The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 2000), 57-63 & Politicsand the CARA Exhibition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998),
: ; 25: Dippie. Remington and Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection 2—3. ,
3-7; David R. Maciel, “Mexico and Atzlan in Mexico: the Dialectics of

17 Chicano-Mexicano Art” in Richard Griswold del Castillo, editor Chicano

W anda M. Corn. The Great American
Modern Art and National Thing:
Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-198$ (Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery,
Identity 29/5 1955 (Berkelev and Los Angeles: University of California
1990), 109-119.
Press. 1999). 260 and 2-6; Suzann Campbell, The Taos Artists and Their
30
Patrons. 1S98—1950 (South Bend. IN: Snitc Museum, University ot Notre 1 leather Fryer, “Into the Prefab West: Federal Settlements and Western

Dame, 1999), 43 & 75; I lughes, 389. Migration during World War II” in Scott Casper, editor, Moving Stories:
ls
Migration and the American West (Reno: LIniversity of Nevada Press, 2001),
John C Ewers, Artists of the OldWest (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973).
213-248.
1
lames k 1 tow ard, Ten Tears with the Cowboy Artists ofAmerica: a Complete 31
Mike Davis, “Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country,” in Matsumoto and
Historyand Exhibition Record (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland Press, 1976) 1-3;
,
Allemendinger 339-69; Karen Rice artist statement, www.karenrice.com.
,

The CAA’s principal founding members were artists Joe Beeler, Charlie,
Dve, George Phippen, and John Hampton.
20
Interview with Tom Watson, CAA Historian, March 10, 2002;
Howard, 1-3.

21
W alt Reed, John Clvmer: An Artist’s Rendezvous With the Frontier West
fFlagstaff, AZ: Northland press, 976) 16-33; James K. Ballinger,
“Introduction" in The Art of Frank C. McCarthy ed. Elmer Kelton (New
York William Morrow and Co., 1992) 12-13; Terpning Biographies,
www.askart.com/biography.asp.
22
Everv CAA member adheres to the artistic mission to ensure that “as
society change[s], the stature of western art within the area of fine art
remain solidly fixed.” “Cowboy Artists of America,”
[will]

www.askart.com interest/cowboy; interview with Tom Watson, CAA

Historian. March 10, 2002; Elizabeth Cunningham, Masterpieces of the
American Ur / Selections from the Anschutz Collection (Denver: The Anschutz
Collection, 1983), n.pag.
23
For more about the legal history and cultural impact of the Indian Arts
and Crafts Art see Gail K Sheffield, The Arbitrary Indian: The Indian Arts
and (.rafts Act (Norman: Cnivcrsity of Oklahoma Press, 1997).
24
Melissa Merer, “American Indian Blood Quantum Requirements: Blood is

The 1 < r Than Family,” in Valerie Matsumoto and Blake Allemcndinger,

editors. Over the Edge: Remapping the American West (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 231-49.

20
 FORWARD AND DACE AGAIN:
ARTISTIC PIONEERS OF THE AMERICAN WEST

Kate Bonansinga

INCE THE TIME of Daniel Boone (1735-1820), the Premodern Romantic and Imagined Views
American West has represented grandeur, freedom, and the It goes without saying that modern European art is not easily
excitement of the unknown. Artists have been both awed defined. However, it is generally agreed that Modernism began

S
(2002) in
by its beauty and frustrated by its demise. In the years that
separate the earliest

Cowboys ,
Indians,
work (1843) from the most recent
and the Big Picture, the West has been
after the Industrial Revolution of the

which was marked by urbanization and

Subject matter in art expanded from its
mid nineteenth century,
a growing middle
focus on historical
class.

crisscrossed with railroads, highways, and fiber-optic cable. This scenes, biblical narratives, and portraits of the moneyed classes

period also spans the advent and fall of Modernism, the shift from to include images of everyday objects, people, and landscapes.
nature to culture as artistic muse, and a mainstream embrace of Formal innovation was paramount.
materials other than paint and bronze in the making of fine art. Given this denotation, the paintings of Karl Bodmer,
Consequently, the perspectives, lifestyles, audiences, and inten- Albert Bierstadt, and H. W. Hansen are premodern. William
tions of the artists exhibited here vary dramatically R. Leigh, Thomas Moran, and Frederic Remington sit at

Perhaps the most important question this exhibition raises is Modernism’s nascence. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-
“What does it mean to be American?” Most of the artists exhibited century painters (Hansen, Bodmer, Bierstadt, Leigh, Moran,
here were born in the United States. Also, most are from families and Remington) lived most of their lives in places other

who came west sometime after the migration of Anglos, which than the West. They spent very little time with their subjects,
began in earnest in the early nineteenth century and then acceler- relying instead on paintings and sculpture by their European
ated rapidly by the turn of the twentieth. Some celebrate the West predecessors for models. To varying degrees, they depended
as a symbol of individualism, liberty, and identity; others critique upon a bit of first-hand knowledge, a bit of hearsay, and a
that widely accepted paradigm as a flawed mystique. I have chosen bit of artistic license to convey scenes that they believed to
to divide my discussion into premodern, modern, and postmodern be true. In a sense, they functioned as history painters,
representations, in order to more clearly place these works in the although their distance from their subject was geographic
context of other art being created at the time. rather than temporal.

21
 European landscape painting. Bodmer’s pictures and Maximilian’s
narrative were eventually published, informing an international
audience about this northwestern region of the United States.
Beginning with the Eong Expedition of 1820, the United
States government employed artists to produce visual documen-
tation to augment written reports of westward movement. 3
Anticipating a renewed westward expansion after the Civil War,

the government underwrote a series of ambitious explorations of

the West. Painters began to share the territory with photogra-

phers in 1871, when the photographer William Henry Jackson

accompanied Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden’s United States
Geological Survey party to explore Yellowstone. By the twenti-
eth century, the photograph, rather than drawn or painted

imagery, became the most accepted medium for documenting

visual reality. New printing processes were developed to repro-
duce photographs in general-interest publications such as

Harper's and Scribner's. When the photograph took over the

depiction of the physical world, many artists were compelled to
explore new territory. Metaphysical and psychological ideas, as

well as abstraction and new aesthetic concerns, dominated

artists’ time and interest. T hus, photography was, in part,

responsible for the birth of Modernism.

Karl Bodmer (1809-1893, nos. 3 and 4) painted ethnographic Painter Thomas Moran (1837-1927) joined Hayden’s survey

studies of Plains Indians before they were relegated to reserva- party in 1871. Already familiar with Jackson’s photographs, 4 he

tions. His portraits were so fascinating to Anglos that they set eventually depended upon them for his engravings for the 1872

the standard for the “noble savage,” the stereotype of Indians as publication Picturesque America a tourist’s guide to western
,

uncultured, but honorable. Born in Switzerland, Bodmer studied American scenery. Born in England, Moran immigrated to the

painting in Paris. In 1833-4, he accompanied Maximilian Wied- United States when he was seven years old. He returned to
Neuwied, a Prussian prince, on an expedition to observe the England in 1861 to copy the work of the J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851),
native tribes at the American Fur Company outposts along the who is best known for his atmospheric renderings of landscapes
upper Missouri River. Bodmer returned to Europe
1
in 1834 and and bodies of water. Moran followed Turner’s practice of transform-
never again visited the American West. Instead, he became a ing his subject in his imagination before setting it down on
French citizen and a member of the Barbizon School, where he 5
paper. Like the American Hudson River landscape painters of

associated with Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875), Jean-Baptiste- the mid nineteenth century, he first sketched from life and then
6
Camille Corot (1796-1875), and other painters of French rural painted from these sketches in his Philadelphia studio. The
life I le went on to exhibit in several French salons. 2 artist contended that the combination oi photographic precision
The renderings that Bodmer produced during his time in and compositional license yielded a higher truth that could never
America are illustrative, detailed and, it is assumed, representative be obtained by simply documenting nature.
of the early frontier existence. He treated Indians, flora, and fauna Children ofthe Mountain (Fig. 4) was exhibited at the 1867

equally as specimens, to be classified in the spirit of scientific World’s Fair in Paris, along with other American paintings and
inquiry that was prevalent at the time. This body of detailed, visual sculpture. I lere, a waterfall is centered on the canvas, a bright
documentation is distinct from his later painting practice, which is point crowned by a turbulent sky, framed to the right by dark and
more typical of nineteenth-century proto-impressionistic somewhat foreboding boulders. A lone bird soars above. Though

22
a ray of sunshine pierces the clouds, the overall feeling of the Weekly launched Remington’s career. I le went on to create more
painting is ominous. I luman presence seems unwelcome. This than two thousand images for the printed page. By 1904, just five

image is somewhat reminiscent of places in the Rocky years before his death. Remington was offered and accepted an
Mountains, but it was painted in France and is completely imagi- exclusive four-year contract with Collier's Weekly, the artist gained

nary. Moran had not yet seen the Rockies, which he visited for total freedom to select his own subject and also earned $1,000

the first time with Hayden’s survey. In 1879 he declared, “I place per painting. In exchange, Collier's secured reproduction rights
no value upon literal transcripts from Nature. My general scope is to twelve paintings per year. Through such widely distributed
not realistic; all my tendencies are toward idealization... 1 believe publications, Remington’s romantic images shaped public per-

that a place, as a place, has. ..value. ..for the artist only so far as it ception of the West.
7
furnishes the material from which to construct a picture.” But In Saddling Fresh Horses (no. 5), Remington documents the
viewers of the time period may not have been aware of Moran’s beginning of a mounted, group outing. Each of the men and
philosophy of artistic entitlement. They rarely questioned a horses commands equal attention from the viewer. Later in his

painting’s fidelity to its depicted site, which was typically so career, Remington tended to ennoble his subjects, isolating them
remote that they could not experience it first-hand. on the picture plane so that other elements in the composition

Fueled by faith in Manifest Destiny, the viewing public was became secondary. At the same time, he moved away from picto-

hungry for experiences of the American West. Under this nine- rial realism and towards the distillation of light and color he had

teenth-century doctrine, white Americans believed that they had admired in the works of the American Impressionists, particu-
a divine right to dominate the entire continent. Revered writers, larly Childe I Iassam (1859-1935), John Twachtman (1853-1902),
such as Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, glorified the and Thomas Dewing (1851-1938). Remington’s stylistic shift

mystery and power of nature and its association with God. Their coincided with his realization that the West that he was portray-
audiences relished their descriptions of boundless natural drama ing had vanished. In 1900, ten years after the US Census Bureau
and places waiting to be conquered in God’s name. The more declared the closing of the frontier, he wrote “Shall never come
awesome the natural wonder, the more challenging and com- west again— it is all brick buildings— derby hats and blue cover-

mendable its inhabitation would be. The East Coasters who alls— it spoils my earlier illusions — and they are my capital.” 9
moved west of the Mississippi saw their relocation in part as an Remington pushed the boundaries of his media in the latter

attempt to control the chaos of nature. Those who remained at part of his career. His initial experiments with a brighter palette

home, enthusiastically consumed images and stories of pioneer- and looser brush strokes occurred soon after his foray into

ing efforts. In 1872, Congress paid $10,000 for Moran’s Grand sculpture in 1895. His first three-dimensional work, The Bronco
Canyon ofthe Yellowstone a landscape based on the
,
artist’s field Buster (no. 6), was derived from his illustration A Pitching Bronco,
sketches from his 1871 trip. The lighter palette and gestural published in Harper’s Weekly in 1882. In 1909 Remington decided
brushstrokes in this later painting seem fresh and modern in con- to reinterpret Bronco Buster by increasing its size, suggesting that

trast with the more traditional style of Children of the Mountain. he considered it his most successful sculpture. Although by the
The purchase gave congressional validation not only to Moran’s end of his career he was expanding his repertoire and coming into
artistic vision, but also to his choice of subject. some critical acclaim, Remington’s popularity and facility at narra-

Frederic Remington (1861-1909) is well-known for his ener- tive illustration kept him from being fully accepted in fine art cir-

getic renderings of cowboys and Indians on horseback. He shared cles.

10
At the time of his death Remington was crossing the bridge
with Moran an interest both in the American West and in novel to Modernism. He began his career enhancing the gusto of fron-
painting styles. Educated at Yale University and the prestigious tier life, and ended using this subject matter to explore formal
Art Students League in New York City, Remington, like Moran, concerns pioneered by the most innovative artists of his day.

traveled in the West but painted in the East. And, like Moran and In contrast, John Clymer (1907-1989), Frank McCarthy
many other artists of the time, he worked for east coast maga- (b. 1924), and I Ioward Terpning (b. 1927) are revivalist painters of
zines that looked to the West for fresh material. By publishing the late twentieth century. Their role models are the history

sketches from Remington’s trip to Arizona in 1882, Harpers painters of premodern times, rather than their contemporaries

23
 13
who have forged new paths in art making. Charier spent most ot killed. This story of betrayal impressed John McMullen, the
his life in Wyoming and had a prolific career as an illustrator tor businessman and art collector who owns these three paintings, as
clients such as the Chrysler Corporation, Field and Stream, Good well as many of the other works exhibited here. McMullen
Housekeeping and the Saturday Evening Post. McCarthy and claims, “We destroyed the Indians and then depicted them as

Terpning spent most ot their time in Arizona. Like the easterners bums.... We didn’t treat them fairly.” 14
Moran and Remington, these contemporary western artists con
vev images from their imaginations. 1 lowever, time rather than

space distances them from their subject. They live in the modern Modernist Renderings of Westerners
West, hut paint the Old West as they believe it was over one hun and their Landscape
dred years ago. Like Bodmer and the other nineteenth-century In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain after more
painters, they represent the American West as wild, exotic, other. than two centuries of colonial rule. Soon afterwards, in 1848,

All three ot these artists have been inducted into the Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe I lidalgo, thereby ceding

Cowbov Artists ot America (CAA), an all-male association of to the Llnited States half of its territory, including what are now
painters and sculptors who are committed to the creation ot nos- Texas, New Mexico, Lltah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and part
talgic representations of the romanticized Old West. The CAA of Colorado. By 1879, the railroad from the East reached Santa Fe
began in 1964 as the brainstorm of the organization’s three and Anglos began to settle the area, perpetuating the spirit of
founders while thev were attending an old-time Round Up near American expansionism. Both Frederic Remington and Joseph
Magdalena, New Mexico. 11
Every year since then, CAA has Henry Sharp (1859-1933), an Ohio-born artist who studied in

sponsored an annual exhibition of members’ works. During the Antwerp and is best known for his honest portrayals of pueblo
first years it was held at the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma Indians, visited New Mexico in the 1880s. There, the dramatic
City, and since 19-3 it has been a fund-raising project of the landscape and the confluence of Native American, Spanish, and

Men’s Art Council at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Mexican cultures provided engaging artistic subject matter.
Arizona. Sales from the exhibition grossed two million dollars Sharp’s second visit in 1893 included a stay in Taos, and Harpers
12
each year in the late 1990s. Weekly published one ot his illustrations of the Taos pueblo that
15
These sales figures are notable. Americans today are still year. In 1895, the artist was back in Europe, this time in Paris

hungry for portrayals of the Old West. Somehow these imagined studying in the studios of academic painters. There, he met the

scenes conveyed as illustrative documentation, capture the free- young American painters Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960)
dom and independent spirit that Americans believe are our most and Bert Phillips (1868-1956) and spoke to them about Taos’s
distinctive national traits. Santa Fe, New Mexico supports one beauty and history. Intrigued by Sharp’s stories, Blumenschein
of the largest art markets in the United States due to vigorous and Phillips ended up settling in Taos in 1898, initiating an artistic
16
merchandising of cowboys and Indians, from bronze sculptures center that would maintain its vitality until World War 1 .

to Native American crafts. Indians on the warpath seems to be The list of artists who spent time in Taos, Santa Fe, and the

a particularly popular subject; we consume images of the people surrounding area during the first half of the twentieth century

we annihilated. McCarthy’s Forming the Hostile Cdrcle (no. n), reads like a Who’s Who of American Modernism. They include
Terpning’s War Cry to the Sun (no. 12), and Clymer’s Crazy Horse Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Stuart Davis (1894-1964), John

(no 10) convey scenes of Natives fighting to protect their home- Sloan (1871-1951), Fremont Ellis (1897-1985), Marsden Hartley
land, desperate acts of a people attempting to survive. Crazy (1877-1943), Robert Henri (1865-1929), John Marin (1870-1955)
17
I lorse was the great Sioux leader and warrior who defeated and, of course, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986). By the third and
General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, the most fourth decades of the twentieth century, more and more Anglo
noted Indian victory of the nineteenth century. But a year later, artists called the West their home for at least part of the year.

he and his Oglala Sioux surrendered. And though a United States Where once the artists residing east of the Alleghenies had

agent promised Crazy I lorse safety and security, he was instead looked west to the Rockies and beyond for exotic but real subject

arrested and detained at a guardhouse, where he was eventually matter, now artists in the West turned east toward the
stylistic avant-garde, since painters in eastern cities were experi-

menting with abstraction. Western-based artists applied their

stylistic inquisitiveness to their paintings of the landscapes and

peoples who defined the West. Through the efforts of the Taos

Society and the Santa Fe Railway, both the east and west Coasts

were repeatedly exposed to paintings of the Southwest.

The years between the world wars are not represented in

Cowboys, Indians, and the Big Picture, though the effect of

Modernism is apparent in several contemporary works in the

exhibition. For example, the figurative works of Sidonie Caron

(b. 1932) embrace a modernist acceptance of everyday subjects Fig. 5 Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, 65 x 93 in. Lost.

and those of Rick Bartow (b. 1946) convey a modernist aspiration

towards transcendence. Caron lives in Portland, Oregon but was passed away when Bartow was five years old. Soon afterward the
born and educated in England where, in her words, “...there’s artist’s uncle became his mentor in native teachings, encouraging

nothing like a cowboy, but rather a hunting, horsy set. Cowboys him and his brother to spend time with the elders and to research
18
need vast territory.” She has been painting for years, moving the stories, traditions, and practices of the Yurok and other

from figuration to abstraction and back again. Hands on the Horn tribes. This connection with his cultural roots helped Bartow to

and Getting a Grip (nos. 24 and 25) are two of a series of six paint- recover from the psychological duress and general disillusion-

ings of cowboys’ hands that evolved from her investigation of ment that followed him home after service in the Vietnam War.
the bodies and movements of manual laborers. She first became Today he lives in Newport, Oregon, the place of his birth, and is

interested in cowboys as workers when she saw a series of late active on the Siletz Confederated Reservation.
nineteenth-century sepia prints of this subject by Texas photog- Animals such as coyote, deer, hawk, and ravens populate
rapher Edwin Smith (1880-1952). To her, as to most Europeans, Bartow’s drawings, which are distinctly expressionistic in style.

the cowboy is quintessentially American, a romantic icon exclu- Traditionally, shamans’ masks were carved in the likeness of ani-

sive to our culture. mals. The creatures served as role models for the shaman’s trans-
But Caron represents the cowboy not as an icon of freedom, formation from human to greater-than-human channeler of

but rather as the uncelebrated worker, with neither property nor the divine. Aesthetically, Bartow’s work is allied with artists who
respect. Her dark palette and artistic intention is more closely convey angst and change through aggressive and gestural mark-
aligned with the French painter Gustav Courbet (1819-1877) than making, such as the English painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
with Frederic Remington. Courbet’s 1849 painting, The and the German Expressionist Florst Janssen (1929-1995), whom
Stonebreakers (Fig. 5), was a milestone of Modernism because it Bartow respects. Die A/tersschwache (no. 34), which translates as

realistically portrayed workers, a subject previously thought “decay, decrepit,” is one of Bartow’s many self-portraits. The
unworthy of representation in art. Caron compares these paint- artist has a difficult time articulating what compels him to render

ings to earlier American representations of ethnic, migrant his own image, but here he wears what might be interpreted

workers, but states that her focus on the hands alone sets them literally as an Indian headdress, a symbol of the heritage that is

apart from this genre. “You only need one small piece to get the cornerstone of his complex identity

the whole picture. ..with very little information you can tell A modern distillation of form characterizes the works of
immediately what it is.” Viewers’ preconceived images of what Chiura Obata (1885-1975, nos. 14 and 15) and Agnes Martin
a cowboy should look like fill in the rest of the story. (b. 1912, no. 13), both of whom use the western landscape as a

For Rick Bartow, art mirrors life. Flis personal quest for self- source of inspiration. Chiura Obata brings an outsider’s perspec-

fulfillment and improvement is manifest in the subjects of the tive to the painted American landscape. Obata was born in

native myths that he represents in paintings, pastel drawings, and Japan, where he studied painting from the age of seven and prac-
sculptures. Flis father, who was the source of his Yurok heritage, ticed Nihonga, which joins traditional Japanese ink painting

25
with Western Naturalism. Traveling to Yoscmite anti the Sierra national art that would represent “the expression of the

Mountains. Obata depicted monumental landscapes using American people.” 19

washes tit pale color on silk. 1 Its style is rooted in Zen philosophy, Throughout the 1940s anil 1950s, Martin traveled regularly
which accepts the brevity and lack of import of human concerns between New Mexico and New York City, studying at both the
in the face ot the eternal magnificence of nature. University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and at the Teachers
Obata emigrated from Japan to San Francisco in 1903 and College, Columbia University, where in 1952 she received a
was in the United States when the Second World War broke out. Masters of Arts degree. Beginning in 1958, Martin secured a
1 le and his family w ere confined to an internment camp in Topaz, string of enduring relationships with New York dealers, first at
Utah during the war, where he was the founder anil director of the important Betty Parsons Gallery, then with Robert Elkson

the Topaz Art School. Within an art historical framework, the Gallery, and ultimately with Pace Gallery, which evolved into

unfair treatment of innocent Japanese residents by the United PaceWildenstein, where she still exhibits today. She was deeply

States is ironic because many American artists, including Ad involved with the New York Minimalists, who aspired to convey
Reinhardt and John (age, developed an interest in Japanese Zen the essence of life through spare, economical forms. She admired

Buddhist philosophy during the post-war years. Zen’s insistence the transcendent color-field paintings of Barnett Newman
on the import of the present moment and on a healthy detach- (1905-1970) and Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and developed cama-
ment from material objects was attractive during a time when raderie with her artist neighbors in downtown New York, who
many people were still devastated by widespread, human-initi- included Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923) and Lenore Tawney (b. 1925).

ated destruction and loss of life. Many important artists, includ- Yet Martin was continuously drawn to the quiet expansiveness of
ing Surrealists, with their focus on Jungian and Freudian the American West. She took a year- and-a-half long hiatus from

philosophy and teachers from the Bauhaus, escaped to the painting in 1967, traveling and camping in the western portion of

United States from war-torn Europe. They shifted the center of Canada and the United States. In 1969, she settled in Cuba, New
the avant-garde from Paris to New York, where the mingling of Mexico, and today lives in Taos, where she continues to paint.

Asian and European ideas and belief systems invigorated the art Her mature work, such as the graphite striations on gessoed
scene in America, and gave birth to Abstract Expressionism. canvas exhibited here (no. 13), conveys a perfection that exists
These artists built upon the fusion of abstraction and representa- only in the mind’s eye, one conveyed through points, lines, and

tion that the second wave of the Taos artists and other early circles that do not exist in nature. Undeniably attracted to open
Modernists propounded, taking it to new heights in purely and quiet natural environments, Martin shuns the imperialist
abstract works. impulse that prompted westward expansionism and the
Agnes Martin’s minimalism benefited from the break- exploitation of the land. Though Martin’s bands of horizontal

throughs of these mid-century painters. Like many American lines might be interpreted as abstracted landscapes, they are
intellectuals of the 1950s, she turned to Asian philosophies as a more rooted in Greek classicism and its striving for an illusive

source of inspiration and definition. During her childhood in balance and perfection that the world around us cannot provide.

Saskatchewan, Canada, Martin developed a disciplined approach In 1972 she wrote:

to life and w ork rooted in the Presbyterian faith and an apprecia-

tion for wide-open, natural space. She moved with her family to I believe in the recurrence

Calgary. Alberta, then Vancouver, B.C., and then on her own, in That this is a return to classicism

1931, to Bellingham, Washington to care for her pregnant sister. Classicism is not about people
Attracted by what she termed the “American character,” or inde- and this work is not about the world...

pendence of mind and egalitarian attitudes, Martin remained in Classicists are people that look out with their back to
W ashington State to graduate from high school and study at the the world

Western Washington College of Education. In 1950, Martin It represents something that isn’t possible in the world

became a United States citizen and four years later defined her More perfection than is possible in the world

artistic goal as helping to establish a distinct and authentic It’s as unsubjective as possible

26
 the Ideal in America is the natural man past several decades. In this exhibition, Alexis Smith, Allen

The conqueror, the one that can accumulate Ruppersberg,Joe Cantrell, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, and 1 Iarry

The one who overcomes disadvantages, strength, courage Fonseca use photographs and found objects to convey their ideas.
Whereas inspiration, classical art depends on inspiration... In an act that expresses the enchantment of reinvention,
The classic is cool... Patricia Anne Smith (b. 1949, nos. 22 and 23) renamed herself
detached and impersonal... Alexis at age seventeen, when she went to college. The theme of

Being detached and impersonal is related to freedom... reinvention prevails in Smith’s collages, where she gives new con-
To a detached person the complication of the involved life text to preexisting things. The artist has spent her adult years in

is like chaos Los Angeles, where Hollywood has a dominant presence, and
If you don’t like the chaos you’re a classicist... people often assume new and unpredictable roles. “I think the

Painting is not about ideas or personal emotion West helped me form a sense of self,” said Smith in 1991. “I have
When I was painting in New York I was not so clear assimilated so much of its history from my father and his family:

about that its traditional pioneer values of individuality — being who you
Now I’m very clear that the object is freedom... 20 want and changing your life and doing what you please.” 21
Cinderella Story (no. 23) is part of Smith’s Jane series of 1985, an

All of these artists have located a sense of truth in life in outgrowth of her interest in heroines. The artist recalls, “I started

the American West, and portray it in a Modernist, yet individual- with Jane Doe, then I made the comparison between Tarzan and

ized, manner. Caron enlarges and ennobles the hands of mythic Jane and Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay being couples, then
cowboys; Obata abstracts expansive landscapes; Martin finds I thought of otherjane couples...” 22 Jane is an every woman figure,

freedom and clarity in her simplified existence and in minimalist one who fully experiences the joys and pains of life, but often goes

compositions. These artists tend to focus on philosophy and spir- unrecognized. The central image in Cinderella Story is a photo-

ituality, rather than on the ironic sociopolitical critique pursued graph of the actress Frances Farmer in her role as Calamity Jane in

by their postmodern colleagues. the 1941 film Badlands of Dakota. Jane, a fearless woman of the Old

West, was born in Missouri around 1850 as Martha Canary, and as

a teen moved to Montana with her family She became famous for

The Postmodern West: Popular Culture as Muse her skill with horses and guns, for her alliance with Wild Bill

I will divide the postmodern works into two groups, first dis- Hickock. She was also known for wearing men’s clothes, which she
cussing those that employ images from popular culture and then adopted when she joined General Custer as a scout at Fort Russell,

exploring those that reinterpret Old Master paintings of the West. Wyoming during the Indian Wars. Her nickname “Calamity”
In many respects, the American West is still free of the empowers her present, mythical status. The name was given to her

traditional social restrictions and conventions of the East. Most by others, validating her as an independent woman of the West,
of the contemporary artists discussed below live in urban envi- capable of overcoming unexpected mishaps. Here, Smith adorns

ronments in the West, namely Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Jane’s buckskin jacket with a three-dimensional traditional cor-

Portland, Oregon. They tend to base their artistic practice in sage, a feminizing counterpoint to the gun in her hand. This addi-

personal experience but create work that transcends the personal tion of flowers creates an effective interplay between the actual
by employing imagery with wide appeal and recognition. They and the photographed, the acted and the fantasized. The phrase
share with the western pioneers of the last two centuries an “It was well past midnight, and she was very tired” is superimposed
enchantment with reinvention, an embrace of the new and the over Jane’s belt of bullets, simultaneously referencing the fairytale
adventurous, and a breaking open of conventions. hour when the Cinderella’s coach becomes a pumpkin and the
Since the advent of Postmodernism in the mid-1960s, more human frailties of this greater-than-human figure. Smith masks
and more artists have used non-traditional materials, often Jane’s eyes with strokes of red, neutralizing her face and making
appropriating everyday stuff and assembling it in new ways. her a symbol of the courageous and independent women of the
Photography, too, has found acceptance in fine art circles in the Old West, a female partner for Remington’s anonymous cowboys.

27
 Allen Ruppershcrg's (b. 1044) western images are just one the distribution of American lands for agriculture and commerce
element of his larger investigations of both the relationships and the subsequent development of the modern capitalist econ-
between word and image and the undercurrents ot meaning in omy. In the Battle of I Iorseshoe Bend of 1814, Jackson promised
objects and interior spaces. Cover Art (Space Adventures) (no. 20) government friendship to the Cherokees in exchange for their
explores, in bis words, "space in every respect: interior, exterior, help with battle tactics, since his white troops had failed in a
”
23
objecth e. non-objective. The artist juxtaposes calendar photo- frontal attack on the Creek Indians. Accepting this promise, the
graphs ot idyllic landscapes into a puzzle-like collage. It, like Cherokees swam the river and came up behind the Creeks,
the others in the series ot twenty or so works, was conceived ot claiming victory for Jackson.
as a faux mock-up for a pulp fiction book cover. Predating the I he subsequent treaty granted Indians individual land
time of computer graphics, this “cover art” was seemingly ready ownership, thus splitting Indian from Indian, and providing
to move from the table of the art director to that of the printer. Jackson and his friends the opportunity to purchase seized
Ruppersbcrg plays with the idea of authenticity by appropriating Creek land. Between 1814 and 1824, whites took over three-

cheap calendar art. titling it “cover art,” anti scaling it like a grand fourths of Alabama and Florida and parts ofTennessee, Georgia,

landscape painting. The title also brings to mind both govern- Mississippi, Kentucky, and North Carolina. White settlements
ment-funded explorations ot outer space, and the claims of UFO soon bordered Florida. Jackson raided that state and launched
sightings that have made Roswell, New Mexico infamous. the Seminole War of 1818. After he brokered the American

Though the history of the West is only one aspect of acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1819, he became governor.
Ruppcrsberg's eclectic investigations, it plays an instrumental The atrocities continued as cotton plantations sprang up.

part in the art and identity of Joe Martin Cantrell (b. 1945), a part Gold was discovered in Cherokee territory in Georgia and thou-
Cherokee Indian now living in Portland, Oregon. His great-great- sands of whites invaded and staked claims. In an act of betrayal
great-great-great grandfather, Joe Martin, died on the Trail of by the United States government, the Cherokee Indians, once
Tears. In 1996, the artist learned of this heritage and of the origin promised our friendship, were forced west from their homes
of his middle name. In response, he began a body of work that beginning in 1834. In 1838, 17,000 of the remaining Cherokees
includes Road Sign along the Trail of Tears. were finally rounded up, crowded into stockades and sent on
In Road Sign Along the Trail ofTears, Cantrell duplicates and a forced march to Oklahoma that was to become known as the

enlarges the photographic portrait of our seventh president Trail ofTears. As they moved westward, an estimated 4,000
that graces the twenty-dollar bill. Cantrell shot bullets from a died of sickness and exposure. 25
replica 1830 vintage gun to obliterate the portrait, as much a Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940) addresses her Cree and
tongue-in-cheek comment on road signs used for target practice Shoshone Indian ancestry and identity in prints, paintings, and

throughout the West as it is a symbolic act of revenge against mixed-media works. She typically portrays traditional Indian
24
Andrew Jackson. Cantrell also included a sign for the Dead subject matter (such as running horses, teepees, and figures) in

Indian Memorial Highway, a stretch of road near Ashland, outline over solid passages of painted color. The palette and ren-
Oregon, a few hours south of Cantrell’s home. dering recall the great modern masters Vasily Kandinsky (1866-
Cantrell made seven bullet holes, one for each Cherokee 1944) and Joan Miro (1893-1983), while also referencing Indian

clan. From each hole hangs a string of plastic beads, painted red ledger drawings. A transitional art form, ledger drawings straddle
on one side, silver on the other, to represent blood and tears. the line between the traditional hide paintings of aboriginal

Andrew Jackson is celebrated in most history books as the cham- times and the easel paintings of the 1920s. The pictorial style
pion of the frontier farmer and laborer and a shrewd statesman draws on the art of the ancient Plains Indians, who exaggerated
and businessman, but he was also instrumental in the policy of and simplified dominant attributes of animals and people on
Indian Removal that cleared the land for white occupancy hides, rocks, wood, and bone. Buffalo, for example, were
between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. In identified by their humps; tribal affiliations were indicated by
1820, 120,000 Indians lived east of the Mississippi, and by 1844 costume and hairstyle. By the early to mid 1800s, frontier artists

fewer than 30,000 were left. T his drastic change was vital to such as Karl Bodmer encouraged warriors to use paper and col-
ored pencils to depict their accomplishments, resulting in autobi- ret a bios of Biblical personages and narratives. In St. Coyote ,

ographical narratives rendered with a geometricized realism. The Fonseca downplays the residue of pain caused by the Spanish and
subject usually floated on a flat expanse with little concern for Christian invasion and instead emphasizes the transportability of

spatial perspective. Later, captured warriors were encouraged by the revered: an Indian Coyote becomes a Christian saint. The
United States officers to glorify pre-reservation life in scenes of artist is more interested in using humor to dissolve boundaries
village life and warfare. 26 than in revisiting historical events.

Quick-to-See Smith evokes these Indian pictorial practices These artists cull information from contemporary culture to
of ledger drawings and pictographs in sophisticated composi- create imagistic, mixed-media montages of their experiences in

tions that balance spontaneity and control in what she calls today’s world. They combine allusions to the collective myths,
“sweetgrass... bars of contemporary grids.”27 In War Shirt { no. 38), popular icons, and the often-gritty reality of the American West,
painted vertical swaths ot yellow, red, and blue create a flat back- and imbue them with a postmodern sense of satire.
ground for the outline of a shirt. Recent images of Indians culled
from newspaper photographs and merchandising propaganda
emblazon it, badges on a contemporary warrior. The Postmodern West: New Twists on the Old Masters
Harry Fonseca’s Coyote character has many manifestations. Several contemporary painters in the exhibition look to the

The titles of Fonseca’s works include Snapshot: Wish Ton Were Here history of European art as a starting point for their visual

Coyote, When Coyote Leaves the Res: Portrait of the Artist As a Young comments on today’s world. They fuse competent technique
Coyote, Coyotes with Watermelons, and Coyotes with Cotton Candy. with intelligent allusions to artistic styles of the past to
This canine is a recurring character in western and southwestern explore human relationships with one another and with the

Indian mythology, a clever trickster who both outsmarts and is surrounding landscape.
deceived by his environment. The Couer d’Alene Indians believe Michael Brophy (b. i960) portrays the boundaries where

the coyote was the source of the universe. Fonseca (b. 1946) nature and culture meet in landscapes altered by human pres-
claims, “For me the Coyote is a survivor and is indeed the spice of ence. In scale and medium, his compositions are true to the
28
life.” He portrays the Coyote as bipedal and places him in con- grand, oil on canvas, western landscape tradition established by

temporary settings, dressed in contemporary human garb that premodernists Moran and Bierstadt, but they are neither ideal-

exaggerates the role he is playing. The aesthetic is decidedly ized nor romantic. Brophy portrays the deforestation that scars

Funk, a California-based tributary of Pop Art of the 1960s and Oregon today with unforgiving realism and satirical wit.

70s. Funk tends to poke fun at life with all its pain and mishaps, Goodnight Irene (no. 16) is one of a recent series of “staged”
and is identified by a bright, neon palette and by the use of car- scenes: parted theater curtains unveil a canyon of tree stumps.
toon protagonists as subjects. Musical notes from the Leadbelly tune “Goodnight Irene”
What makes Fonseca’s St. Coyote (no. 33) particularly fasci- float above the tree stumps, forming a horizontal band across
nating is its reference to Christian altarpieces. A painted image of the sky. This tune adds an additional historical dimension to the

a theater curtain frames the piece, unveiling the masterpiece. St. painting. In May 1941, Woody Guthrie and his family left
Coyote is dressed in a leather jacket and black Converse sneakers, California for the Northwest, in the hope that Guthrie could
and is surrounded by winged coyote angels descending from the write songs for a documentary film about the dams being built
clouds. Red roses are strewn at his feet. Fonseca transplants a on the Columbia River. After he arrived, the Bonneville Power
character from Indian mythology into a format prescribed by an Administration hired him for 30 days, paying him $266 to
imported religion, one that went hand-in-hand with the Spanish write a song a day. The contract produced “Roll on Columbia,”
colonization of the Southwest, and with their destruction of “Jackhammer Blues,” and “Grand Coulee Dam” along with
its native people. The political and religious subjugation of the twenty-three others. For “Roll on Columbia,” Guthrie com-
natives was very near complete. By the eighteenth and nine- bined his lyrics with Leadbelly’s music. This brilliant piece of
teenth centuries, indigenous Americans who lived along the propaganda convinced an American public gripped by hard
Camino Real between Mexico City and Santa Fe were painting times of the value of cheap electricity. Ironically, the dams that

29
Guthrie's songs promoted have had well-documented detrimen- unusual choice of color, Romero has entered a territory opened
tal environmental and social effects, a result that would, no by turn-of-the century Fauvists such as French painter I lenri

doubt, have caused heartache to the leftist poet. Matisse (1869-1954). This cowboy ironically has the red skin of
With the exception of a brief period of study in Europe, the Red Man, possibly a comment on the value of transcending

Brophv has spent his entire life in Portland, Oregon, a city racial difference and prejudice.
surrounded by lush forests and dramatic mountains. The local Romero’s Freeway Wars (no. 30), conveys the random shoot-
timber industry utilizes these natural resources, providing ings between drivers on congested highways in Los Angeles, a
jobs and fulfilling the consumer demand for wood products. sprawling city that lacks public transportation. In this recent
Brophv renders the clear-cut forests of his native Oregon in lumi- manifestation of the human brutality that has, in part, shaped the
nous color applied in painterly strokes by a sure and practiced history of the American West, frustration rather than imperial-

hand A self-professed “day hiker," the artist is neither an out- ism prompts violent territorialism. The automobile replaces the
doorsman nor a politically active environmentalist. His intention steed as an emblem of mobility, masculinity, and power. The
is to paint what he sees, what he calls “constructed landscapes, painting style in Vaquero is best described as loose and expression-

panoramic views and how they’ve been mediated.” 29 By staging istic, but in Freeway Wars Romero employs simplistic blocks of
hi s scenes, Brophv plays on the idea of a dramatic landscape, color and shapes with exaggerated curves to create a cartoon-like

reminding us that our natural surroundings are, at best, becoming atmosphere, emphasizing the ridiculousness rather than the
rarefied places of recreation and entertainment. At worst, they horrific violence of road rage.
are being destroyed. In conclusion, Michael Brophy imbues a historical format
Frank Romero (b. 1941) was a member of Los Four, the first with sardonic imagery that comments on the worrisome state of
Chicano artists’ collective to be exhibited at the Los Angeles our natural environment. Frank Romero’s Freeway Wars conveys
Counts Museum ol Art in 1974. Incorporated in 1975, Los Four the edginess and frustrations of urban life. What these artists
was committed to politically charged image making. They told share is a need to frankly comment on our current state of affairs.

the story of Mexican Americans bv combining graffiti with icons This sets them apart from their modernist predecessors, firmly
drawn from Chicano popular culture, such as the lowrider, the establishing them in the postmodern art world.

crucifix, and the Sacred Heart. Romero’s Vaquero (Spanish for

cowboy) of 1982 (no. 29) is not far removed from his previous sub-

ject matter. In fact, Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Conclusion

Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, The past century and a half have been marked by profound
described a vaquero sculpture by another prominent Chicano change. Many sociological, cultural, and technological transfor-

artist, Luisjimenez, as making “...many points that are key to our mations have impacted both the American West and the world of
program: that American art began in the Hispanic Southwest, art. What many of the artists exhibited here have in common is
that Latinos are the most rapidly growing segment of the popula- that they have been relegated to the periphery of European-

tion, that the traditional American symbol of the cowboy began based American fine art. Nineteenth-century American artists

with Latinos in the Southwest.” 30 who painted images of frontier life were thought to be unimpor-
Romero’s Vaquero is a male version of Alexis Smith’s tant contributors to a conversation dominated by their contem-
Calamity Jane, in that both are reinterpreted portraits of the poraries who painted portraits, still lives, and biblical and
western hero. 31 Romero paints a cowboy with a melancholic historical narratives in the European tradition. Artists of Native
expression. I lis face is bracketed by his plaid shirt and bow tie American and Chicano heritage are often known more for their

below and his ten-gallon hat above, which consumes the entire ethnicity than for their artistic talent and ideas. Even artists who
top half of the composition. The hues are exclusively red, white, create in the formats and styles of their European predecessors
and blue, a wry reference to the American flag; the brushstrokes but live in the West may receive, at best, a cool embrace from the

arc bold and confident, conveying minimal detail. The vaqueros east coast art world. Only in the past few decades has recogni-

skin is not flesh toned, but a bruise-like red and blue. With this tion become more democratic, with the de-centralization of the

3°
 13
art world and a broader embrace of non-white cultures. All of The details of Crazy I Iorse’s death are still being disputed. See Robert A.
Clark, editor, The Killing of Chief Crazy Horse: Three Eyewitness Views by the
the artists represented in this exhibition have been impacted in
Indian, Chief He Dog the Indian-white William Garnett and the White Doctor,
some way by their experience as Americans in the American Valentine McGillycuddy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976).
14
West. Their visual expressions warrant a careful and considered Conversation with the collector, March 2002.
15
look as subjective interpretations of and contributions to our Van Deren Coke, Taos and Santa Fe: The Artist's Environment 1882-1942
,

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1963) 12.

cultural history.
16
Taos Society of Artists was organized in 1912. Its original members were I

I. Couse, Bert Phillips, Oscar Berninghaus, Ernest L. Blumenschein, W.

I Ierbert Dunton and Joseph Henry Sharp. In March 1927, the Society was
dissolved by a vote of its members.
17
1 Coke, 24.
John Jacob Astor founded the American Fur Company in 1808. Its posts
18
ranged westward from the Mississippi River to the coast of Oregon. I Iis Conversation with the artist, April 2002.
friend Washington Irving wrote “The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 19
I laskell, Barbara, Agnes Martin (New York: Whitney Museum of
USA” based on the French fur-trapper’s exploits on the Great Plains and American Art, 1992) 96, as quoted from Martin’s application for a I Ielene
in the Rocky Mountains in 1837. Irving journeyed to the West to visit the
Wurlitzer Foundation grant in 1934.
Osage and Pawnee Indian nations. In Elizabeth Cunningham, West, West,
20
West: Major Paintings from the Anschutz Collection (Denver: The Anschutz Excerpted from Agnes Martin’s “The Untroubled Mind,” as published in

Collection in association with University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 16-17. Haskell, 15

21
2
William Goetzmann and Joseph Porter, The West as Romantic Horizon Richard Armstrong, Alexis Smith (New York: Whitney Museum of
(Omaha, NE: Center for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum, 1981) 54. American Art, 1991) 9-10.
22
3
Cunningham, 21. Armstrong, 140.
23
4
Estelle Jussim, Frederic Remington, the Camera if the Old West (Fort Worth: Conversation with the artist, March 2002.
Amon Carter Museum, 1983) 11. 24
Conversation with the artist, April 14, 2002.
5
Joan Carpenter Troccoli, Painters and the American West: The Anschutz 25
In Dec. 1838, Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s successor to the presidency,
Collection (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000) 141. addressed Congress: "It affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress

6
Thomas Cole's (1801-1848) paintings of the Hudson River valley were the of the entire removal of the Cherokee nation of Indians to their new
first of a tradition that came to be known theHudson River School. Just homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress at

asBodmer recorded what was then thought of as a vanishing race, Cole its last session have had the happiest effects." See I loward Zinn, A
and other Hudson River painters captured the moment when wilderness People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Collins

became farmland. Cole remarked that the painter of American scenery in Publishers, 1990) 124-46.

his day was privileged because “all nature here is new to art.” See Gloria- 26
See Edwin Wade, The Arts of the North American Indian (New York: ludson I

Gilda Deak, Profiles of American Artists Represented by Kennedy Hills Press, 1986) 187.
Galleries (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1981) 33. 27
Edwin L. Wade and Rennard Strickland, Magic Images: Contemporary
7
Troccoli, 141. Native American Art (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981) 80.
8
The sketches that he sent were translated into wood block
prints and 28
As quoted in Wade, Magic Images , 94.
then published. The was developed by 1889,
half-tone printing process 29
Conversation with the artist, April 14, 2002.
and this photographic reproduction process eliminated the need for the
30
intermediary wood block. Jussim, 21. As quoted in Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Chicano Art: Inside/Outside the Master’s
9 House, Cultural Politics and the Cara Exhibition (Austin: University of Texas
As quoted in Kellie Keto and Melissa Webster, Remington: The Tears of
Press, 1998) 185.
Critical Acclaim (Santa Fe, NM: The Gerald Peters Corp., 1998) 1.

10
In 1899 he was refused full membership for the final time from the
National Academy of Design’s annual juried exhibition. He never again
subjected himself to the scrutiny of this leading arbiter of taste. See Keto
and Webster, iv.

11
Describing this experience, Charlie Dye, one of the founders wrote,
“Those vaqueros sure showed us how to handle a rawhide right and sit up
straight on a bronco. We had a wonderful time, a thousand laughs, and the
thought hit us that other cowboy artists would have enjoyed it as well.”
www.caamuseum.com
12
Since the early 1980s, the CAA has been affiliated with the Cowboy
Artists of America Museum
in Kerrville, Texas, which is dedicated to col-
lecting, displaying, and teaching about the finest in contemporary
Western art. CAA members assist the museum’s art education program in
training artists in the techniques ofWestern art and applied realism.

31
 ENDURING ICONS, CHANGING REALITIES:
THE VESTVARD TRAIL OF THE COWBOY IN AMERICAN ART

By Marilynn S. Johnson

N THE EARLY SPRING of 1887, cowboys on the northern of Owen Wister’s The Virginian would establish the range-riding
Great Plains emerged from their bunkers to find hundreds horseman as the standard western hero in hundreds of western
of rotting cattle corpses strewn across the range. During that novels and films. 2

bitter cold and snowy winter, cattle owners lost roughly one- Although the cowboy would soon become synonymous with
I third of their total herds, joining the ranks of stockmen on the American frontier, he was a newcomer to western art and
the southern Plains who had faced similar losses the previous popular culture in the 1880s. Earlier artistic renderings of the
winter. Overproduction and overgrazing, combined with summer West had focused on the trans-Allegheny frontier and the buck-
drought and winter blizzards, devastated the western cattle busi- skin-clad figures of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett or the
ness. Pressed to meet their loans, stock owners rushed the scouts and trappers who succeeded them into the hinterlands
remaining animals into a declining market, a move that further of the mountain west. As Brian Dippie has observed, this buck-
depressed prices and drove many into bankruptcy The process skin brigade of early nineteenth-century western art gave way to
repeated itself in the Great Basin of Nevada two years later. By the cowboy via the transitional figure of Buffalo Bill Cody, the

1890, the much-heralded western cattle boom had burst. 1

frontiersman-turned-entertainer who introduced his Wild West
Ironically, the decade that marked the demise of the cattle Show to American audiences in 1883. A master showman, Cody
boom also saw the rise of the cowboy as the new icon of the brought his life experiences as an army scout and Indian fighter
American West. Romanticizing the pastoral life, cowboys began together with his fictional persona as the fearless hero of western
to publish their memoirs, and artists began to paint scenes of dime novels. Filled with crowd-pleasing feats of western riding,

cowboys, Indians, horses, and cattle roaming the range. In 1888, roping, and shooting, his Wild West shows were rip-roaring

an up-and-coming adventurer named Theodore Roosevelt extravaganzas of frontier history that familiarized audiences
authored his highly popular Ranch Life and Hunting Trail which ,
around the world with the American West and helped establish
featured the exploits of cowpunchers and buffalo hunters on his the cowboy as its internationally recognized symbol. 3

North Dakota ranch. Over the next two decades, the cowboy Among more genteel eastern audiences, the work of
became a fixture of western Americana, and the 1902 publication Frederic Remington (1861-1909, nos. 5 and 6), Charles Russell

33
USo-4 1926), Charles Schrewogel (1861-1912), and other turn-of- barbed wire enclosed much of the range, many cowboys had
the -vcnturv artists plaved a similar role. With the notable excep- become fence-mending ranch hands, and most Indians were

tion of Russell. these artists were based in the Hast and worked confined to barren and shrinking reservations. “I knew the w ild
out of studios in places like 1 loboken, New Jersey (Schreyvogel) riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever,”

anil New Rochelle. New York (Remington). The market tor their Remington wrote in 1905, “and the more I considered the subject,
work was largely eastern. As newspaper and magazine illustrators, the bigger the Forever loomed.” Americans’ anxiety about the

thc\ produced images tor Harper’s, Collier's, and other New York- closing of the frontier was most clearly expressed by the historian
based magazines, and as tine artists, they exhibited their works at Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 address, “The Significance of

New York galleries that catered to western art. To get material the Frontier in American I listory.” Noting that the recent 1890
and inspiration tor their works, they studied frontier history, census had abandoned the idea of a “frontier of settlement,”
took frequent trips out west, anil collected western tack, cloth- Turner argued that the nation’s frontier past was the wellspring of
ing. and other artifacts to use as props in their studios back the American character. It was the frontier experience, he
homi Authenticity became the rallying cry ot western art, with insisted, that gave rise to the uniquely American values of inde-

the artists and their critics engaging in a never-ending battle over pendence, resourcefulness, and self-reliance — as well as the
the technical accuracy of equine anatomy, saddlery, chaps, and American system of democracy itself. Reflecting the Eurocentric
other cowboy paraphernalia. 4 culture of his times, Turner saw the frontier as “the meeting point

The documentary mission of turn-of-the-century western between savagery and civilization” and believed that the struggle
artists was driven bv the desire to preserve away of life that was to tame the frontier was what made the country great. 5
fast disappearing. Bv 1890 the buffalo herds were already gone, Turner’s address was a particularly eloquent statement of

long-standing and deeply cherished beliefs about the western

frontier. Popular narratives and images of western pioneers had

long emphasized these themes of independence, freedom and
self reliance, and the western artists of Turner’s day— influenced
by the popular imagery of the Wild West shows (fig. 6)— updated
the rugged western hero into the more familiar form of a post-
Civil War cavalryman or cowboy. Their desire to document the
authentic West was not merely a personal avocation but part

of a larger national effort to celebrate a set of American values

that seemed endangered by modern urban industrial life. As
Americans faced a growing tide of immigration, a burgeoning fac-

tory system, labor unrest, and the proliferation of urban poverty

and decay, the artists’ image of the Old West as a repository of

traditional American values of independence and individualism
was a reassuring message. Turner and other western enthusiasts
had long identified the West as a kind of safety valve for eastern
ills; with the closing of the frontier, the artists’ renderings of the

Old West would preserve that way of life and provide a kind of

psychic escape from modern day problems. 6

Never mind that the reality of cowboy life was not particu-
larly independent or self-reliant. Most real cowboys were low-
paid hired hands, some of whom worked for large corporate
Y ip. 6 !>uffalo Hill f Wild West and (.ongress of Rough Riders ofthe World,
Ihftoncal Sketche f and Programme (Chicago: Blakely Printing Co., 1893).
cattle companies owned by absentee investors in the East or
I ••
c rert D. ( traff Collection folio 784, The Newberry Library, Chicago. abroad. They lived in crude dugouts for most of the year or in

34
 courageous struggle to tame the frontier (no. 6). Unlike the
sweeping panoramas of western painting, the bronze cast pro-
vides no context, because it is not necessary— the viewer
immediately recognizes this image as the human embodiment
of the western saga. In other paintings, such as Russell’s The Slick

Ear (fig. 7) and Roping a Grizzly (fig. 8), cowboys test their

manhood against ornery bulls, grizzly bears, stampeding cattle,

and a variety of other savage beasts. 8

Remington is perhaps best known for his works depicting

cowboys and cavalrymen fighting Indians in an epic drama of the
Anglo-Saxon conquest of the West. Relying on the principles
of Social Darwinism, Theodore Roosevelt popularized this
theme in his four-volume The Winningofthe West (1889-1896) in

which he depicted a rough-and-tumble western frontier as the

crucible of a superior white American race. Like many early
Fig. 7 Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), The Stick Ear , 1914. Oil on Remington paintings, Dash for the Timber {fig. 9) reflected this
canvas, 30 x 33.5 in. Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University ofTexas
same struggle, as dashing white cowboys sprint at top speed from
at Austin. 1985.83
savage Indians in hot pursuit. Such chase scenes became a com-
tents during the annual cattle drives to the nearest railroad line. mon cliche of western art, as did the so-called “last stands” of
Low pay and isolated working conditions were so grim that a Custer, the cavalry, and assorted cowboy outfits. Gathered in a

group of cowboys in the Texas Panhandle organized a strike in tight cluster with their backs to each other and their rifles

1883, but the Panhandle Cattleman’s Association ruthlessly sup- pointed out, the cowboys of Russell’s A Desperate Stand (fig. 10)
pressed it. Although some cowboys who worked under the open heroically stand their ground as galloping Indians slaughter their

range system managed to start their own herds, the enclosure horses and their comrades. Both the chase scenes and the last

movement led by large-scale cattle owners made this mobility stands depict moments of danger and perhaps imminent defeat
increasingly difficult. Maverick-chasing cowboys were more likely for the cowboys, inverting the historic roles of victors and vic-

to become the targets of vigilante violence led by the stockmen’s tims. The artists thus seek to enlist our sympathy and respect for

associations than to become successful ranchers on their own a besieged white race, a message that no doubt played well in an
homesteads. In the Southwest, moreover, hard-pressed cattle urban society facing mass immigration and industrial strife.

companies gradually replaced Anglo cowboys with Mexican and

Tejano vaqueros ,
who earned only half to two-thirds the wages

paid to Anglos. In Texas and Indian Territory (Oklahoma), a

significant number of the cowboys were black, while in the

northern Plains, the Blackfeet, Crow, and other native peoples

7
raised cattle as a means of survival during the reservation era.

The vast majority of turn-of-the-century cowboy paintings,

however, depicted these westerners as heroic white men. Like
Buffalo Bill’s frontier reenactments, Remington’s paintings of

cowboys fighting Indians, roping cattle, and other frontier

adventures highlighted the western struggle against nature and
savagery, a violent battle that would help rejuvenate a sickly
Fig. 8 Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926 ), Roping a Grizzly 1903.
eastern civilization. One of his most famous sculptures, The Watercolor on paper, 19.5 x 28.5 in. Buffalo Bill Historical Society,

Bronco Buster, uses dramatic gut-busting action to convey the Cody, Wyoming. Gift of William E. Weiss. 19.73

35
 reality, though, the more settled domestic visions of the West in

which women were likely to appear held little interest for him or
for most other turn-of-the-century cowboy painters. When
women did appear, as in Charles Schreyvogel’s The Summit Springs
Rescue i86<) (fig. 1 1) or Charles Russell’s Cowboy Bargainingfor an

Indian Girl (fig. 12), they were usually depicted as dependents to be

rescued or property to be acquired by white male protectors.
Although Annie Oakley had pioneered the role of the sharp-

shooting cowgirl in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show back in 1885

(fig. 13), western painters rejected this image as inauthentic

Fig. 9 Frederic S. Remington (1861-1909). Dash for the Timber, 1889.
Oil on canvas. 48. 25 \ 84.12? in. Anton Carter Museum, Fort Worth, (though they accepted equally inauthentic accounts of last stands
Texas. 1961.381
and other heroic feats by white men). Later historians would
Moreover, Remington’s rendering of the frontier myth also argue that the western environment had a bracing and liberating

served to justify imperialist adventures abroad. Theodore effect on white women as well as men, but most turn-of-the-cen-
Roosev elt's Rough Riders, who led the charge up Kettle Hill in tury western artists were not prepared to admit women to the
the Spanish- American War, adopted Remington’s The Bronco free-wheeling masculine frontier they cherished. Likewise,

Buster (no. 6) as the emblem of their unit. 9 Despite the daring and African Americans were also purged from this mythic cowboy
danger portray ed in these works, viewers knew that in the end frontier. While Remington produced several works documenting
the West was won. The appropriation of western imagery thus the exploits of the army’s Buffalo Soldiers, he did not permit

helped reassure Americans that the nation would prevail in its them into the ranks of his canvas cowboys. Remington admitted
latest battle against Spanish barbarism and Native savagery. that there were some good black cowboys out west but noted, “I

art also had a strong gender ideology —

11
Cowbov it was a genre wouldn’t want to mix with them.”

created bv and for white men. The winning of the West was not I Iispanics and Native Americans, however, were another
only a battle of the races, but an opportunity for white men to test story. Their prior possession of the land, their sheer numbers, and
their mettle against primitive conditions, savage beasts, and bar- the obstacles they presented to white expansion into the West

barous people. In a society that some believed had grown overcivi- made them a force to be reckoned with, both in myth and reality.

lized and effeminate, a sojourn in the Wild West offered American Early works by Remington, Schreyvogel, and other artists based

men a chance to revitalize themselves and reaffirm their man- in the East portrayed Indians as bloodthirsty savages who
hood — a process Richard Slotkin calls “regenerative violence.” As deserved the rough treatment they received at the hands of white
western artists suggested, the West was a male domain where

"men with the bark on,” as Remington put it, bonded with one
another through violence and male bravado. While cowboys
worked together to round up cattle or fend off Indians, they also
spent time off together in the dugouts and the cattle towns. In

Cowboy Race (no. 8), H.W. Hansen (1854-1924) portrayed the

lighter side of cowboy life — the male camaraderie and competi-
tiveness that characterized this freewheeling world of single men.
Like the regenerative violence against savagery, the raucous male

bonding of the cowboys was a bracing antidote to the sentimental

and feminized Victorian culture of the East. 10
As a white male genre, cowboy art effectively erased
Fig. 10 Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), A Desperate Stand, 1898.
women's presence from the Old West. Remington rarely included Oil on canvas, 24.125 x 36.125 in. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth,
yy omen in his works, claiming that he could not paint them. In Texas. 1961.158
 surroundings. But perhaps the most important painter of

vaqueros was Edward Borein (1872-1945), an Oakland-born artist

who worked as a cattlehand on several California ranches in

the 1890s. Late in the decade, he traveled to Baja California in

search of the authentic Spanish and Mexican roots of the

American cowboy. In 1903, he too visited the Hearst ranch,

where he signed on for a two-hundred-mile trail drive to move

3800 head of cattle north to New Mexico .
13
1 Iere, in the less

developed spaces of the Chihuahuan desert, cowboy artists like

Borein could re-live the long drives of the 1860s and 70s, recap-
turing the Old West with a picturesque Mexican twist.

Borein’s romantic renderings of vaqueros and hacienda life

Fig. ii Charles Shreyvogel (1861-1912), The Summit Springs Rescue 1869, (fig. 14) were well received in California, where a Spanish revival
1908. Oil on canvas, 48 x 66 in. Buffalo Bill Historical Society, Cody,
movement was underway. Beginning in the late 1880s with the
Wyoming. Bequest in memory of the Houx and Newell families. 11.64
publication of Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona, California

cowboys and cavalrymen. In the early twentieth century, how- publishers and promoters had been cultivating a sentimental

ever, Charles Russell began to present more dignified images of image of the region’s Spanish past, presenting it as a benevolent,

Indians, albeit ones that were filled with nostalgia for a noble but pastoral society of missions and haciendas. Charles Fletcher
doomed race. Unlike Remington and Schreyvogel, Russell had Loomis, editor of the Southern California magazine Land of
moved to Montana as a sixteen-year-old and had spent his adult Sunshine and one of the chief architects of the mission revival

life in the West, where he worked on a ranch and came to know movement, was drawn to Borein’s vaquero images and hired him
many cowboys and Indians on a sustained basis. His paintings of as an illustrator. Borein’s romantic images of vaqueros haciendas, ,

Indians, which soon eclipsed his love affair with the cowboy, and missions would help sell a booming California real estate

commemorated a lost way of life and expressed the artist’s sym- market to the readers of Harpers, Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post,
pathy for those whose traditional ties to western lands were and the California-based Sunset Magazine His studio in Santa

under assault. As railroads, barbed wire, agriculture, and eastern- Barbara would become a west coast gathering place for fellow
financed development put an end to the nineteenth-century western artists, including his close friend Charles Russell. Like

frontier, Russell and other western artists idealized the Native Borein, many of these artists looked to Mexico and Spanish-era
American past and lamented its demise. Increasingly, western
paintings of both cowboys and Indians riding the plains evoked

the same wistful longing for an unspoiled, bygone era. By con-

trast, depictions of the lives of contemporary Indians imprisoned
12
on reservations were nowhere to be seen.

Like the Indians, Hispanic cowboys — or vaqueros— were

common subjects of western art whose popularity grew over
time. And like Russell’s native subjects, the vaquero was depicted

as a traditional figure, preferably one who remained on the

hacienda (ranch) in Mexico. Remington began painting vaqueros in

the early 1890s following a trip to a Babicora, a cattle-raising

hacienda near Chihuahua, Mexico owned by the California

heiress Phoebe Hearst (mother of William Randolph Hearst). Fig. 12 Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926), Cowboy Bargainingfur an
Indian Girl, 1895. Oilon canvas, 19.125 x 28.25 in. Hood Museum of Art,
When Charles Russell traveled to Mexico in 1906, he was equally Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Gift ofj. Shirley

entranced with the vaqueros colorful clothing and picturesque Austin, Class of 1924. P961.261

37
 less about epic drama and conquest and more about the serenity
and simplicity of an earlier era. This nostalgic vision grew out
DlJffALtl IilLL'5 //JUJ V/£ 51'"
of western artists’ genuine reverence for the old pastoral West,
(&tfGK£S5, KOI/gH KlDEflS OF THE WORLD. but it was often promoted by individuals and institutions that

were exploiting such images to attract new population and

investment to a rapidly developing region. In the process of sell
ing the West, of course, the boosters helped to despoil the

very qualities idealized in western painting. This vicious cycle

would continue throughout the twentieth century.
The popularity of the cowboy art genre, however, fell off

markedly during the it)20s, eclipsed by new styles, subjects, and

popular media. In the wake of the Armory Show of 1913, the
American art world was heavily influenced by European
Modernist styles ot Impressionism, Cubism, and other less repre-

sentational approaches. Although Remington and other western

artists would experiment with Impressionist cowboy painting, it

was the second generation ofTaos artists that fully embraced

Modernist styles to create their very personal evocations of the
southwestern landscape. The work of the Taos artists, which
included the distinctly female perspectives of Georgia O’Keefe

(1887-1986), eventually overshadowed the masculinist cowboy

school. Although wealthy westerners continued to acquire works
by Remington and Russell, national attention now focused on the
Taos painters as the interpreters of western life. Remington
MISS ANNIE OAKLEY,
THE PEERLESS LADY WING'SHOT. enthusiasts, in fact, complained that the Metropolitan Museum
Fig. ij A Hoen & Co., Miss Annie Oakley, The Peerless Lady Wing-Shot ,
of Art had little regard for its valuable collection of the artist’s
c. 1890. Four-color lithograph, 28.5 x 19 in. Buffalo Bill Historical
Society. Cody, Wyoming. 1.69.73
works and had stuck one of his most famous bronzes, Coming
Through the Rye, in a dingy, poorly lit stairwell. In the years follow-

California and the Southwest as inspiration for their paintings ing World War II, cowboy genre artists would remain in the

of a colorful and pastoral Old West— one which meshed well with shadows as Abstract Expressionism furthered the trend away
the boosterism of California publishers, land developers, and a from representational art.

growing Hollywood film industry. This is not to say, however, that the cowboy disappeared
As the careers of Borein and Russell indicate, western- from American culture during these years. Devotees of the Old
based artists with their own homegrow n views of the region West could now turn to a thriving industry of western films that

were gradually eclipsing the earlier generation of eastern recreated traditional cowboy themes for a popular audience.

sojourners such as Remington and Schreyvogel. Western critics From the 1920s to the 1960s, Flollywood produced hundreds of
began to attack the latter as “Wild West Fakers,” denouncing the Westerns in an exciting celluloid format that was well suited
technical accuracy of their paintings as a byproduct of their to both the action-packed adventure of Remington and the
social distance as easterners. At the same time, the Montana- romantic nostalgia of Russell. Hollywood also launched the
based Russell became known as the premier “Cowboy Artist.” careers of cowboy singers and performers such as Gene Autry
Would-be western painters would now have to prove their (fig. 15) and Will Rogers and contributed to the rise of a national
authenticity by living and working in the West as Russell had country-western music industry in the 1930s and 40s. Although
done Increasingly, their depictions of the cowboy West were the I Iollywood cowboy temporarily lost ground to the movie
 _25> w*? ern cities sprouted skyscrapers downtown and industrial parks

and suburban subdivisions along their peripheries. Although the

term “Sunbelt” was not coined until the 1970s, the roots of this
phenomenon date back to World War 1 and the pro-growth
campaigns of western political and economic leaders.

As the urban West grew in wealth and population, local

civic leaders sought to transform their communities into world-
class cities. While some corporate leaders worked to establish

eastern-style cultural institutions such as art museums, sym-

phonies, and dance companies, others promoted mass cultural
activities such as professional sports — creating new teams with
a distinctly western flavor (the Cowboys, the Broncos, the
49ers, etc.). Taking the western heritage more seriously, some of
the region’s homegrown capitalists founded specialized muse-
Fig. 14 Edward Borcin (1873-1945), Vaqueros in a Courtyard, 1925.
Watercolor on paper, approx. 10 x 15 in. Arlington Gallery, Santa ums that celebrated western culture. One of the first such muse-
Barbara, California.
ums was the National Cowboy Hall of Fame founded in

gangsters of the 1930s and the war heroes of the 1940s, he Oklahoma City by Chester Reynolds, former chairman of the
enjoyed a triumphant comeback in the fifties and early sixties. H.D. Lee Company (the Kansas-based maker of Lee jeans).

Preoccupied with stories of gunfighters and outlaws, the Opening its doors in the late 1950s, the Cowboy Hall of Fame
Western became a Cold War parable about America’s role in the brought together western historical artifacts and exhibits with a

world, the saga of a flawed but valiant western hero who fought growing collection of western cowboy art and film memorabilia.

against those who threatened civilization. Cowboys also made a A similar effort was underway in Cody, Wyoming, where the
successful transition to television, with western shows like Buffalo Bill Museum opened a new gallery of western art in 1958

Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and Bonanza capturing some of the greatest

TV market shares of the 1950s and 6os. 14 Thanks to the film
and television industries, the cowboy became a more popular
national icon than ever before — one that symbolized American
confidence and righteousness in a Cold War world beset by
hostility and insecurity.

At the same time, however, social and economic develop-

ments in the West were also laying the groundwork for the

reemergence of the cowboy as a distinctly western figure. During

World War II, the Pacific Coast and much of the Southwest
underwent explosive growth with the expansion of military
bases, scientific research facilities, aircraft plants, shipyards, and
other defense operations. Building on this wartime boom, the
corporate leaders and development interests that dominated
many western cities successfully attracted new businesses in the
postwar period through low taxes, minimum regulation, cheap
unorganized labor, and the active recruitment of federal defense
projects. As the plight of older northeastern cities grew worse
Fig. 15 Posterfor Gold Mine in the Sky 1938. Hershenson-Allen Archive,
in the t950s and 60s, population and economic activity gravitated West Plains, Missouri. Reproduced from More Cowboy Movie Posters
to the growing urban centers of the South and West. Soon, west- (West Plains, MO: Bruce Hershenson, 1998).

39
 1 .ike the painters of Remington and Russell’s generation,
many CAA artists are former illustrators who value authenticity as

one of the hallmarks of good western art. And like their predeces-
sors, they focus on the past, depicting the Old West as a reposi-
tory of traditional American values of freedom, independence,

hard work, and self-reliance. Although many of the early CAA

works concentrated on violent, action-packed scenes reminiscent
of Remington and I lollywood Westerns, later works have featured
the more Russell-like scenes of a serene and pastoral West, includ-
ing a greater emphasis on pre-conquest Indian life. Even in the
more dramatic works, scenes of violent conflict between cowboys
Fig. 16 Frank McCarthy (b. 1924), Lost Trail, 1972. Oil on canvas, 24 x 36
in.. Courtesy of Cowboy Artists of America Museum, Kcrrville, Texas.
and Indians are rare. Cowboys test their mettle not against savage

Indians, but against bucking broncos, charging cattle, roiling

funded bv the Whitney family. In 1961, the Texas oil and pub- rivers, and other violent forces of nature. Indeed, the slaughter of
lishing magnate Anion Carter opened the Amon Carter Indians is no longer a compelling subject— contemporary artists

Museum in Fort Worth, with his treasured Remington and have effectively erased those violent (and very real) episodes from

Russell collections as its centerpiece. Another prominent their views of the western past. While the West continues to be an

oilman. Thomas Gilcrease, had also amassed numerous works by all-male world of heroic adventure, it is tempered by a greater rev-

western artists at his estate in Tulsa. Seizing the opportunity erence for Indians (who are no longer a threat) and tor the scenic
to acquire a major western art collection, Tulsa residents passed wonders of the natural environment. In short, Russell’s influence

a bond measure in 1954 financing a city-owned Gilcrease has been more critical than Remington’s.

.Museum. 15 These venues, and others that would open over the At the same time, however, contemporary cowboy artists
next two decades, formed a growing museum circuit for western differ from their turn-of-the-century predecessors in that they

art and helped re popularize the works of Remington, Russell, have been influenced by the powerful conventions of Hollywood
and other turn-of-the-century artists. Westerns (fig. 16). CAA artists, for example, are much more likely
As demand for these artists grew, a new generation of cow- than Russell or Remington to depict cowboys as gun-toting law-
boy painters began to attract attention. Citing Remington and men or outlaws — a common motif in western films of the 1950s
Russell as their progenitors, these male artists produced a fresh and 60s. Moreover, the breathtaking scenery of many western
outpouring of works depicting cowboys, Indians, cattle, and films has also turned up in the paintings of contemporary western
buffalo on colorful tableaus of western landscape. In 1965, four of artists such as Howard Terpning (b. 1927, no. 12) and Frank
these artists — Charlie Dye (1906-1972), Joe Beeler (b. 1931), McCarthy (b. 1924, no. 11). The snow-covered mountains, tower-

George Phippen (1916-1966), and John Hampton (1918-2000) — ing rock formations, and colorful canyons that set the scene in

formed the Cowboy Artists of America, an exclusive all-male many of today’s western paintings would make John Ford himself
group of western painters and sculptors. In a much-repeated proud. Likewise, the abundant use of color and photo-realist
story, the founders tell how they gathered in a tavern in Sedona, techniques by many of these artists is striking. In their works,

Arizona and drew up the organization’s bylaws, using those of the the Technicolor of the celluloid West has been transferred to the

Coconino County Sheriff’s posse as a model. Their mission was painter’s canvas, with the film-like realism contributing to the

to ensure the quality and authenticity of western art by limiting artists’ quest for authenticity. Western sculptor Harry Jackson
membership to a select few; they also sought to promote their (b. 1924) acknowledged the influence of I lollywood more
u ork through an annual exhibition and to provide camaraderie directly. His 1980 bronze, The Marshall, depicted John Wayne
among the artists through an annual trail ride and camp-out. The galloping on a horse in his movie role of Rooster Cogburn (True

first CAA exhibition took place the following year at the Grit 1969). The piece was so successful that Jackson ultimately
,

National Cowboy I lall of Fame. 16 created three different versions.

40
 Following the upswing in the western economy, the cowboy observers agreed, emphasizing the patriotic quality of cowboy art

art market boomed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Beginning in which pride in the frontier past translated into pride in the

in 1974, the OPEC oil embargo precipitated a sharp escalation in country as a whole. Others emphasized the strong work ethic
oil prices that set off a full-scale oil boom in many
and energy represented in western art: “The traditional hardworking cowboy
western states. The wealthy ranchers and oilmen who were the reminds us to earn our own keep,” one enthusiast explained.
traditional collectors of cowboy art now bought up whatever Moreover, some collectors identified with western artists,

works were available, setting off a similar boom in the western art many of whom were self-taught and dismissive of the abstract
market. The popular frenzy for western art produced some styles that dominated the eastern art world. “Cowboy art is like

unusual events. In 1979, for instance, a group of western artists an underground art movement,” said Art News writer Sheldon
gathered on a mountainside near Helena, Montana, where — at Reich, “it’s a separate but flourishing cultural manifestation

the firing of a pistol — they began a thirty-minute “quick draw” as which has virtually nothing to do with the elite establishment of
six hundred anxious buyers looked on. When it ended, the pieces the east or west coasts.” 17 Like the Sagebrush Rebellion of the

were auctioned off for as much as S2000. In energy boomtowns early 1980s (a movement demanding the return of federal lands

like Houston, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix, CEOs of local corpo- to western states), the resurgent popularity of cowboy art

rations, banks, and real estate development companies joined reflected a growing western populist impulse based on a long-
the fray, acquiring western art for their offices and homes. In standing resentment of federal authority and eastern elites.

these rapidly developing Sunbelt metropolises, the traditional Indeed, since the late nineteenth century, western populists had
themes of the new cowboy artists offered an instant connection chafed under the economic tyranny of eastern-owned corpora-
to the region’s history and myths. tions, banks, railroads, and their allies in the federal govern-

By the early 1980s, the CAA annual exhibit (which had ment. In the postwar era, the western populist impulse took a

moved to the Phoenix Art Museum in 1973) was attracting more conservative form, in which western leaders denounced
record crowds and prices, and the value of works by many CAA the regulatory and tax burdens of a liberal federal government

artists was increasing by thirty to forty percent per year. and the moral corruption of a cultural elite based on the east and
Successful CAA artists, who had once traveled to the sales in west coasts.
their RVs and camped in the parking lot, now arrived in Cowboy art— with its validation of freedom, individualism,

Cadillacs and Mercedes. Frequently described as “stampedes,” patriotism, masculinity, hard work, and anti-government pop-

the CAA art sales were also gala events featuring prime rib din- ulism-meshed well with the New Right political agenda that
ners, country-western music, and Arizona Senator Barry had come to dominate much of the West. Right-wing Republican
Goldwater as master of ceremonies. In 1983, a group of Texas oil- Barry Goldwater was the most visible promoter of CAA art,
men and ranchers provided a more permanent institutional base but other western politicians were also well-known collectors.
for the CAA with the founding of the Cowboy Artists of Some of them, like President Lyndon Johnson and Texas
America Museum in Kerrville, Texas — an institution wholly Governor John Connolly, were Democrats or independents, but
dedicated to contemporary cowboy and western art. During this it was conservative Republicans who were most eager to identify
same period, a number of new journals dedicated exclusively to cowboy art with their brand of Americanism. When President
western art commenced publication. Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his western friends wasted no
The new western art boom flourished amid a powerful con- time sending him an assortment of art works to hang in the

servative political resurgence based in the South and West. White House. Philip Anschutz, president of a Denver oil and gas
Dealers in CAA art, in fact, reported that most of their buyers development corporation, loaned many of these works, noting,
were male entrepreneurs from the Southwest, who were usually “this type of art will project the image of the new administra-
18
Republicans. According to then National Cowboy Hall of Fame tion-renewed vigor and self-reliance.” As a former actor in

Director Dean men appreciated western art

Krakel, these western films, Reagan embraced cowboy art that mirrored his

because “the cowboy and cowman represent, to most of us, the own love for riding and ranch life back in California. His incorpo-
rugged individualism that made this country great.” Many ration of western art into the White House symbolized the grow-
mg power ot the West in American politics and suggested that Jemison (b. 1945) remembers watching Westerns as a child but

traditional western values were now America’s values. never seeing people like himself portrayed in these sagas.
1 listorians. however, were busv contesting such notions. Influenced by the New Western history, Jemison uses his paper
The rise ot the New Western historv, which rejected Turner’s rosy bag series to depict the previously invisible cowboys, including
\ tew ot the frontier, was stirring controversy in the late 1980s. the African American range riders ( Black Cowboy no. , 26). In

\\ hile promoting democracy, individualism, and self-reliance tor a different vein, Sidonie Caron (b. 1932) plays with the notion of

some white pioneers, these historians argued, the frontier had western authenticity by separating discreet details of cowboy
also giv en rise to violent conquest, dispossession, and environ- work from their larger mythical context, thus highlighting the

mental destruction for others. When a group of New Western importance of cowboy labor and craft {Brand X and Gettinga
historians attempted to incorporate these alternate perspectives Grip nos. 24 and
, 25).

into an art exhibition at the Smithsonian in 1991, all hell broke As these works suggest, the cowboy icon continues to have

loose. Western art aficionados were scandalized by the “politi- an irresistible visual power. In the past, cowboy artists have used
cally correct” accounts of western conquest and the exposure of a cloak of realism and authenticity to validate western myths
western artistic motifs as self-serving myths. Demanding that about manly courage, Anglo-Saxon superiority, freedom, inde-
historians "leave our mvths alone,” angry art patrons and western pendence, patriotism, and hard work. But despite their attempts
conservatives pressured Congress to revoke federal funding for to control the image to serve particular ideological ends, the cow-
19
the Smithsonian exhibition. In the end, the run-in with the boy (and cowgirl) will continue to be appropriated by many
New Western historv onlv reinforced western art lovers’ commit- different artists for a wide variety of aesthetic and ideological
ment to traditional themes and images. purposes. More than a century later, the cowboy and the West
Bv the early 1990s, Republicans had vacated the White continue to fascinate us as much as they did in the days of Turner,
House and the western energy boom was long over. But the cow- Russell, and Remington.
bov genre remained popular in the West, and the CAA continued
to draw manv- enthusiasts. Following the energy market collapse

that crippled much of the Southwest economically in the late

1980s, CAA artists found new' adherents among the Hollywood 1

Richard White, “Animals and Enterprise,” in Clyde Milner, et al., editors,
The Oxford History of the American West (New Yorkand Oxford: Oxford
jet set and the growing population of wealthy vacationers who
University Press, 1994), 266-67.
bought homes in resort towns like Aspen, Colorado and Jackson 2
Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and Hunting Trail [1888} (New York:
Hole. Wyoming. 20 The appeal of contemporary cowboy art has Winchester Press, rep. 1969); Owen Wister, The Virginian (New York:
McMillan, 1904); Brian W. Dippie, West Fever (Seattle: Autry Museum of
thus broadened, but unlike the work of the turn-of-the-century
Western Heritage and University of Washington Press, 1998), 44.
artists, it remains a largely regional phenomenon. 3
Dippie, West Fever 24-26; Peter H. Hassrick, Remington, Russell and the
,

The resiliency of the cowboy icon, however, is most evident Language of Western Art (Washington, DC: Trustee for Museum
Exhibitions, 2000), 129-31.
in the wavs it has crossed over to new interpreters and new audi-
4
Hassrick, Remington, Russell 21-2, 30-34, 85.
ences. Viewing the subject from a more humorous postmodern ,

5
Brian W. Dippie, “The Visual West,” in The Oxford History of the American
perspective, Alexis Smith (b. 1949) uses cowgirl images in
West 690; Hassrick, Russell, Remington
, ,
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The
135;
Cinderella Story (no. 23) to comment on gender stereotypes and Significance of the Frontier in American I listory,” Proceedings of the Forty
consumer culture. Alternately, Chicano artists like Frank First Annual Meeting of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Madison, WI:
1894), 79-112.
Romero (b- 1941) and Robert Buitron (b. 1953) have reclaimed 6
Richard White, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill,” in James R.
the image of the vaquero. Romero uses elements of Mexican arte Grossman, editor, The Frontier in American Culture (Berkeley, CA:
folklorico to create a more complex figure in The Vaquero (no. University of California Press, 1994), 11-13; Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter
29).
Nation (New York: Atheneum, 1992), 191-2; Alex Nemerov, “Doing the Old
In Leccidn 34 (no. 28) and Missing Legends ofthe West (no. 27), America: the Image of the American West, 1880-1920,” in William H.
Buitron emphasizes both the cultural hybridity of the western Truettner, editor, The West as America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution, 1991), 297-303; Dippie, West Fever, 32.
cowboy and the reconstruction of that culture in a modern
urban world, hike Buitron, Native American artist Peter

42
7
White, “Animals and Enterprise,” 261-2; David Montejano, Anglos and
Mexicans in the Making of Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988),
79-82, 90-92; David Lopez, “Cowboy Strikes and Unions,” Labor History
18 (1977): 325-40; Ronald Zeigler, “The Cowboy Strike ot 1883,” in Paul
Carlson, editor, The Cowboy Way (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press,
2000), 77-93; Kenneth Porter, “Negro Labor in the Western Cattle
Industry,” Labor History 10 (Summer 1969), 346-74; Sarah Massey, editor,
Black Cowboys of Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
2000). For information on Hispanic and Native American cowboys, see
Jorge Iber, “Vaqueros in the Western Cattle Industry,” and Thomas
Britten, “Indian Cowboys of the Northern Plains,” both in Carlson, The
Cowboy Way , 21-32, 45-62.
8
Dippie, West Fever 40; Hassrick, Remington,
,
Russell, 131-33.

9
Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, 4 vols. (New York: G.
Putnam and Sons, 1889-96); Dippie, West Fever, 67, 72; Nemerov, “Doing
the ‘Old America’,” 301; White, “Turner and Buffalo Bill,” 50-51.
10
Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation-, Dippie, “The Visual West,” 691; West Fever, 51;
Jane Tompkins, West of Everything (New York: Oxford University Press,
I99 2)-
11
Hassrick, Remington, Russell, 92, 101, 156; Corlann Gee Bush, “The Way We
Weren't: Images of Women and Men in Cowboy Art,” in Susan Armitage
and Elizabeth Jameson, editors, The Women's West (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1987), 19-33; Glenda Riley, “Annie Oakley: Creating the
Cowgirl,” Montana 45 (Summer 1995): 32-47.
12
Hassrick, Remington, Russell, 43-47, 107-110, 119-22.
13
Hassrick, Remington, Russell, 140; Arlington Gallery, “Biography for
Edward Borein,” www.askART.com/biography.asp.
14
Anne M. Butler, “Selling the Popular Myth,” in The Oxford History of the
American West, 790-91; Bill Malone, Country Music USA (Austin:
University ofTexas Press, 1985), 142-44; John Cawelti, The Six-Gun
Mystique (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press,
1999), 96, 98.
15
“The Bull Market in Western Art,” Business Week, June 13, 1970, 93;
Deborah Trustman, “Cowboys and Indians,” Atlantic Monthly, August
1979, 95-6. See also, web sites for Buffalo Bill Historical Center
(www.bbhc.org/news/BBHChistory_oi.cfm), the Gilcrease Museum
(www.gilcrease.org/4hist0ry.html), the Amon Carter Museum (www.carter-
museum.org/amon_g_carter_bio.html), and Chester Reynolds (www.into-
tran.com/ChesterReynoldsi.htm).
16
Joe Beeler, “The Cowboy Artists of America,” American Artist, April 1970,
67-74; Bob Heiberg, “The Cowboy Artists of America,” Southwestern Art 5
(1976-77), 47-9.
17
Sheldon Reich, “A Genuine Longing for an Older, Simpler Time,” Art
News, December 1974, 32.

18
“The Reagans Look West,” Art News, Summer 1981, 11; Jerry E. Patterson,
“The Western Art Rush,” Art News, December 1974, 30.
19
Mary Panzer, “Panning 'The West as America’: or, Why One Exhibition
Did Not Strike Gold,” Radical History Review, 52 (1992), 105-113; Michael
Kimmelman, “Old West, New Twist at the Smithsonian,” New York Times,
May 26, 1991, sec. 2, 1; Martin F. Nolan, “Shootout at the PC Corral,”
Boston Globe, June 16, 1991, A 35; Eric Foner and Jon Wiener, “Whose
West?” Nation, July 29/August 5, 1991, 141, 180-66.
20
Ollie Reed, Jr., “Cowboy Art,” Albuquerque Tribune, April 18, 1997, B3.

43
 ART AND AUTHENTICITY:

AMERICAN INDIAN CREATIVITY AND IDENTITY

Eva Marie Garroutte

“He is ofMaidu Portuguese, and Hawaiian

,
descent. ” IKE OTHER PROFESSIONAL ARTISANS, American
(Harry Fonseca) Indian artists are frequently the subjects of short bio-
*s» graphies and interviews that accompany the work they

L
”
“[She is] a painter of Salish, French, Cree, and Shoshone heritage. display. The foregoing statements are excerpted from

(
Jaune Juick-to-See Smith) gallery brochures, art magazines, internet sites, and
1
fsj exhibition catalogues .

”
“He grew up a stone's throw from the Cattaraugus reservation. The acknowledged purpose of such writings is to describe an
(Peter Jemison) individual, to locate his or her creative production in the context

of a life history for the benefit of viewers and buyers. But these

“[He] was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where his parents were active in statements also do more, pointing beyond the individual to the
the urban intertribal community. He spent summers with hisfather's environment in which he moves. They reveal the larger social con-

relatives on the Hopi reservation, where he learned Hopi traditions text in which racial-ethnic identities are never simply asserted, but

and ceremonies. ” (Dan Lomahaftewa) negotiated. American Indian artists (and American Indian people in

general) are not free simply to claim the racial-ethnic identity that

“[He] calls himselfan American artist who paints Indians, not an Indian they, or even their tribal communities, feel characterizes them
artist.... He does not attempt to be authentic. "(John Nieto) best. Rather, they must submit their claim to the judgment of vari-
ous audiences that will evaluate its legitimacy.
”
“My art, my life experience, my tribal ties are totally enmeshed. Because artist statements are part of those negotiations,

(Jaune fuick-to-See Smith) they must be composed with exacting precision. These state-
rsi ments painstakingly lay out multiple ancestries and meticulously
‘“For me, who has never been in a reservation situation, it would befool- specify relationship to a reservation (even, as in the Jemison

ish to try to do tribal art. ...I do some traditional things, but it wasn t description, offering a measure of physical distance separating

passed on to me. ” (Rick Bartow) the youthful artist from that legitimizing location). They also

45
explicate rhe nature and specific provenance of any cultural “Indian-produced,” and (unlike a related law passed in 193s) it

know ledge that is said to underlie the work, establishing how the attaches significant fines and prison sentences to its violation.

artists received it and from whom. The negotiated character of Peter Jemison (b. 1943) suggests one of the reasons that this legis-

Indian identitv claims also accounts for the diffidence with which lation w’as created in his sculpture Made in Japan (no. 35). Many
artists describe tribal identity. Although all the artists identify buyers consider artwork more valuable if it is created by an
Native ancestry, a number qualify or even reject the title of Indian person. Consequently, a great deal of “Indian art” has
“Indian artist." been produced— often in Asian countries, but also domesti-
It is neither right nor wrong that an audience might want cally— and falsely labeled. In 1985, the Commerce Department
to know the kind of details that regularly appear in Native estimated that specious “Indian art” imported from foreign
artists' biographies, or that artists and their agents might want countries created $40-80 million in lost income for genuine
to share such facts. But such examples lead us to consider the Indian artists every year, or between ten- and twenty-percent of
3
American racial consciousness as it applies to American Indians, annual Indian art sales.

l'hev direct us to explore the ways in which the process of identi- By regulating people’s right to identify themselves as Indian

fication in this American racial-ethnic group is unique. in connection with their sale of artwork, the Indian Arts and
Crafts Act thus protects many Native artists from unfair compe-
tition. At the same time, like other legal definitions, it seriously

Defining Indians disadvantages many genuinely I ndian people who are unable to
I his essav will explore two of the many formal and informal satisfy the definition of “Indian” contained in the Act.

definitions that circumscribe claims to Indian identity. It will also There are many sound, historical reasons why some people

examine the ways in which the artists move from being passive of exclusive or partial Indian ancestry are not citizens of govern-
subjects of such definitions to become active participants in the mentally recognized tribes. The situation is so complex that its

4
conversation about Indian-ness, using their work to challenge discussion is well beyond the scope of this essay. 1 lowever, one rea-

externally imposed definitions of racial-ethnic authenticity son that some Indian people do not possess tribal citizenship is

that a central criterion of enrollment in the majority of American

Indian tribes is “blood quantum,” or degree of Indian ancestry.

Legal Definitions of Identity Given that Indian people have the highest rate of intermar-
Definitions grounded in law’ have a considerable impact on Indian riage of any American racial group, it is not surprising that some
people. The federal government uses a wide array of distinct mixed-race Indian people cannot meet the minimum blood
legal definitions to distinguish Indians from non-Indians. Such quantum required by their tribe for citizenship. 5 But an individ-
laws recognize that American Indians are much more than a racial ual with an objectively high blood quantum may also have
minority: they are also a category of citizens with very particular difficulty establishing Indian identity because of the way in which
rights and responsibilities in relation to the federal government. blood quantum is reckoned.
In historic negotiations, the federal government agreed to com- Initial calculation of blood quantum usually begins with a
pensate tribes for the large amounts of lands and other resources “base roll,” a census listing of tribal membership and degree
2
that they surrendered, often by force. This compensation of ancestry (usually self-reported) in some particular year. (Most
includes certain benefits in the form of education, health care, were established in the late nineteenth or early twentieth cen-
and hunting and fishing rights. Legal definitions ensure that turies). These base rolls allow one to calculate that the offspring

modern Indian people receive their inherited rights and prevent of, say, a full-blood Navajo mother and a white father is one-half

non Indians from improperly gaining access to them. Navajo. If that half Navajo child in turn produces progeny with a
A legal definition with particular consequences for American I Iopi person of one-quarter blood degree, those progeny will be
Indian artists is contained in the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of judged to be one-quarter Navajo and one-eighth I Iopi.

i 990. It specifies that only those individuals who are citizens of a As even this rather simple example shows, such calculations
state or federally-recognized tribe may market their work as can, in time, become infinitesimally precise. A person’s ancestry
may be parsed into so many thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths, one- cooperation from mixed-bloods than full-bloods. They crafted
hundred-twenty-eighths, and so on. The final figure is authenti- lenient definitions of Indian identity, following a logic expressed

cated by a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood or CDIB, a by President Benjamin I Iarrison’s Commissioner of Indian
document issued by the United States government. While indi- Affairs, Thomas Jefferson Morgan, in 1892: “To decide at this

vidual tribes set their own criteria for citizenship, most rely time that. ..mixed bloods arc not Indian. ..would unsettle or
on blood quantum, setting a minimum requirement that can vary endanger the titles to much of the lands that have been relin-

from as high as one half in some tribes to as low as one thirty- quished by Indian tribes and patented to citizens of the United
9
second in others.
6
States.” Eater, however, when the question of legitimate land

In all cases even a small deviation in the calculation may ownership was more settled, the government formulated more
make a modern descendant unable to meet his tribe’s citizenship restrictive definitions. It often insisted on a standard of one-

standard. A person’s status can be affected by ancestors who quarter, or even one-half, blood quantum before it would legally

eluded federal census takers, who spoke English poorly, who define individuals as Indians. 10

understated or underestimated their actual tribal blood degree, The government’s self-serving vacillations on the subject

who refused to acknowledge a child’s paternity, or who were of American Indian identity continued in the twentieth century.

orphaned and consequently had incomplete knowledge of a par- For instance, in the late 1960s, the Department ofjustice went

ent’s ancestry. It can also be substantially reduced by a forebear to considerable lengths to exclude Alaska Native communities
with mixed American Indian and African American ancestry, from the benefits of the 1946 Indian Claims Commission Act,
since such people were often treated quite differently by census a bill which created a special tribunal to hear tribal claims

takers than people of exclusively Indian, or of mixed American against the federal government for violations of treaties and
Indian and white ancestry. 7 agreements. The attempt ignored a long series of court decisions

Joe Cantrell (b. 1945) addresses the inherent unreliability of holding that any of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas,

blood quantum records in his humorously imagined Authentic regardless of nomenclature, should be included under legislation

Indian ID Card (no. 36), a computer-generated variant of the fed- written to apply to American Indians. Cantrell’s imaginary

eral government’s CDIB. Cantrell’s card explicitly purports to identity card, which requires the holder to specify, whether or
certify what the real document implicitly assumes: that a person’s not his tribe “has land worth taking,” suggests that the American

ancestry really can be traced and recorded with complete accu- government’s motives for drawing legal boundaries are not
racy over many generations. It assigns a blood quantum based on always disinterested.

the sardonic promise that “every sexual encounter of all this per- In short, Indian-ness is hardly an unproblematic identity—

son’s ancestors since 1492 has been recorded and the heritage of one that individuals simply choose to claim — but one that must
all these folks was absolutely known.” be carefully negotiated. But whether or not they successfully
Cantrell’s piece also raises the significant issue of the gov- endure the rigors of formal, legal identity definitions, today’s

ernment’s shifting definitions of Indian-ness. The Indian Arts American Indian artists are often subject to still other, informal

and Crafts Act is hardly the only piece of legislation to specify a standards of authenticity.

particular definition of Native identity. The American govern-

ment has crafted many distinct legal definitions, and still uses a
range of definitions for different purposes: a 1978 congressional Cultural Definitions of Indians
survey counted thirty-three definitions then in use. Some specify Native artists, like American Indian people, generally are subject
one or another minimum blood quantum requirement; some to identity definitions based on their cultural experience. Rather
specify other criteria altogether. These variant definitions often than grounding identity in legal fictions, cultural definitions hold

serve particular governmental interests. out the promise of something observable and enduring. At first

For instance, when land cessions required signatures from a consideration, they appear to locate claims to identity in the dis-

certain percentage of tribal members, nineteenth-century gov- tinctive lifeways and thoughtways that define “peoplehood.” It is

ernment agents found that they were more likely to secure such clear that historic Indian groups used cultural practices to distin-

47
guish their own from members of other groups, and most Indian advertising icons— depicted as stoic chiefs, noble warriors,

people today continue to consider culture an important determi- bloodthirsty savages, uncivilized buffoons. She reminds us that

nant of identity. At the same time, even such an apparently sensi- such depictions of Indians as primitive and other are etched
ble standard presents some puzzles and problems. deep into American popular culture, so much a part of our daily
1 or one thing, the dominant society’s cultural definitions of experience that we literally fail to see them. Would educated
Indian ncs> often feature extremely odd requirements. In partic- Americans tolerate similarly crude caricatures of other racial-

ular. non Indians usually demand that “authentic” Indians be ethnic groups? The work invites us to question to what extent

anachronisms. The mainstream image of Indians is frozen in a familiar images continue to influence our thinking.

y n idb imagined past memorialized in the paintings of Western Externally-imposed cultural standards of American Indian
Realists such as Karl Bodmer (1809-1893, nos. 3 and 4) or Frank identity can be treacherous even when they do not characterize
McCarthy (b. 1924. no. 1 1). In this regard, American expectations Indian people in the vulgar shorthand of Chief Wahoo and his

about Indians are quite different from their expectations about many kindred. Just as legal definitions can exclude legitimately

other racial groups. Indian people from recognition as such, cultural definitions also

By yvav of illustrating this point, anthropologist Jack Forbes sometimes create debatable boundaries around Indian-ness.
compares common assumptions about individuals of Indian Many legitimately Indian people do not have access to the life

ancestry yvith common assumptions about individuals of African experiences that others imagine for them. They may not know
ancestry. As he yvrites, “Africans always remain African (or black) their language, their traditions, or even their tribe (as in the case

even yvhen they speak Spanish or English and serve as cabinet of many infants who were adopted by non-Indians before the
secretaries in the United States government or as trumpet passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 made this much
plavers in a Cuban salsa group...” Indians, on the other hand, more difficult).

"must remain {culturally] unchanged in order to be considered It is not that contemporary Indian peoples do not maintain
Indian." This presumption prevails in much popular, and even thriving, intact cultures: somehow, with a persistence and
scholarly, opinion. resilience that almost defy the imagination, they do. The Flopis,

Forbes continues, “I am reminded of a Dutch book on ‘The for instance, still perform the ceremony for which John Nieto’s
Last Indians’ featuring pictures only of South American people Snake Dance is titled (no. 32). The Cherokees still tell their own,
still living a wav of life which is stereotvpically ‘Indian.’” By con- powerfully perspectival histories, as Joe Cantrell’s Road Sign on the

trast, “Blacks.. .are not seen only as traditional villagers in Africa. Trail of Tears reminds us (no. 37). But not all Indian people remain

No one would dare to write a book on ‘The Last Blacks,’ with pic- connected to distinctive ceremonies or socially-located stories.

tures of ‘tribesman’ in ceremonial costumes. So the category of The reasons are painfully evident. Agents of the American

"black" has a different quality than has that of ‘Indian’...” 11 government devoted many years and millions of dollars to separate
The prevalent and powerful contemporary stereotypes of Indian people from their cultures through policies such as warfare,

Indian cultural authenticity declare that an Indian who is not missionary work, forcible relocation, land allotment, boarding

an historical relic is no Indian at all. Rick Bartow (b. 1946) gently schools, and the criminalization of American Indian religious prac-

tweaks these stereotypes by giving his distinguished elder not tices. It would be very suqtrising if these efforts had not been
only a feather headdress but also a pair of dapper, wire-rimmed widely effective in destroying language, spirituality, familial and
spectacles (no. 34). Are viewers surprised at this combination communal relationships, geographic ties, and other elements of
of the svmbol of the exotic warrior with the hallmark of the Native cultures. In fact, they have damaged Indian communities

gentle intellectual? and cut many Indian people adrift from their heritage.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940) likewise takes up images The sad truth is that many Indian people have paid, and

of Indians that pervade American racial consciousness, but she is continue to pay, the economic, social, familial, personal, and
less interested in understatement. She makes an all-out assault on other consequences of an Indian ancestry, but have little “tradi-

cultural stereotypes in her War Shirt (no. 38), which is decorated tional culture” left to compensate them for it. Hopi/Miwok poet
with contemporary' images of Indians — from sports mascots to Wendy Rose recounts her own experience of cultural loss. Rose
says that she thinks of herself as an “Indian writer.” Yet she is well as the conceptual categories humans dream up. Reality always

aware that her biography is unlikely to satisfy the requirements of escapes the most concerted intellectual efforts to discipline it.

a cultural definition of identity. She writes: Coyote always draws us back to the complexity, and the richness,

at the core of all human experience, reminding us not to accept

It is not Indian to be left so alone, to be alienated, to be society’s answers too easily. Ubiquitous and indestructible, he
friendless, to be forced to live on the street like a rat, to be reminds Indian people that survival is possible, even for those

unacquainted with your cousins. It would certainly be better who do not fit neatly into the available categories.

for my image as an Indian poet to manufacture something,

and let you believe in my traditional, loving, spiritual

childhood where every winter evening was spent immersed
1
in storytelling and ceremony, where the actions of every The descriptions of the artists appear in the following sources: Margaret
Archuleta, “Coyote: A Myth in the Making” (Fonseca exhibition brochure,
day continually told me I was valued.
National History Museum
Foundation, 1986) “Artist Profile: Jaune Quick
To- See Smith” (Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the
Arts, n.d.) available online at
In reality, Rose concludes, “[tjhere is nothing authentic
http://www.nmwa.org/legacy/bios/bjqsmith.htm; Michele Alaimo, “Peter
about my past; am sure that I would be a great disappointment
I
Jemison: Native American Historian,” available online at
12 http://www.rit.edu/-paradigm/stories/seneca.htm; Catalogue entry for
to anthropologists.” As the bitterness of this statement implies,
Dan Lomahaftewa’s Kiva Dreams in the current volume; “John Nieto: A
cultural definitions can impose an additional burden of shame New West Artist,” ArtLife Arizona (Tucson: The Stanbery Corporation,
upon those who have already suffered a profound loss. 1999-2000). Available online at
http://www.artlifearizona.com/articles/nieto.html; Margaret Dubin,
“Talking Yurok: Painter/Sculptor Rick Bartow,” Indian Artist 36
(winter 1999).
2
Conclusion Wilcomb E. Washburn, Red Man's Land/White Man's Law: A Study of the
Past and Present Status of the American Indian (New York: Charles Scribner’s
As Indian people, the artists in this exhibition are forced to negoti-
Sons, 1971).
ate formal and informal standards of identity that have no counter- 3
H.R. 101-400, 101st Cong., 1st Sess., Congressional Record 1990, 4-3.
,

parts in other American racial-ethnic groups. The distinctiveness 4

See further Eva Garroutte, Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native
of their situation is reflected in information about their work; their America (Berkeley: University of California, 2003) and Gail K. Sheffield,
The Arbitrary Indian: The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (Norman:
artists’ statements point to a clear awareness of their audience’s
University of Oklahoma Press) 1997.
demanding expectations about racial authenticity. 5
C. Matthew Snipp, American Indians: The First of This Land (New York:
,

But these artists do not just respond to the pressures on Russell Sage Foundation, 1989) 157.

6
them to make claims that will be judged legitimate by externally- Russell Thornton, “Tribal Membership Requirements and the
Demography of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Native Americans,” Population Research
generated criteria. While recognizing that legal and cultural
and Policy Review 16 (1997): 33-42.
definitions often make sense, these individuals use their art 7
Circe Sturm, Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation
to challenge and subvert identity definitions imposed on them. of Oklahoma (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) Kent Carter,
The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes,
Inviting us to consider the shortcomings of some of the most
1893-1914 (Orem, Utah: Ancestrycom, 1999).
powerful standards of Indian-ness, they help us to see beyond the 8
Sharon O’Brien, “Tribes and Indians: With Whom Does the United States
tidy categories into which we file people. Maintain a Relationship?” Notre Dame Law Review 66 (1991) 1481.
9
It is a lesson of which Harry Fonseca’s St. Coyote might Thomas J. Morgan, Annual Report (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1892) 36.
approve (no. 33). As the trickster figure who scampers in and out
10
Washburn, 167.
of a number of Indian tribes’ sacred stories, Coyote is as Indian as
11
Jack D. Forbes, “The Manipulation of Race, Caste, and Identity:
anyone gets. Yet in Fonseca’s rendering he appears as an urban
Classifying AtroAmericans, Native Americans and Red-Black People,”
renegade in leather and chains, looking distinctly unlike anyone Journal of Ethnic Studies 17, no. 4 (1990): 23-24.
12
who would fit either a legal or a cultural definition of Indian Wendy Rose, “Neon Swann and Arnold Krupat, editors,
Scars”, in Brian /
Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers (Lincoln:
authenticity. But then again, why not? One of Coyote’s custom-
University of Nebraska, 1987) 260-61.
ary jobs is to remind his audience that real life is never as orderly

49
 CONTRIBUTORS TO THE CATALOGUE

HEATHER FRYER is a native Oregonian who considers Portland her home. Currently,
she is adjunct assistant professor of history in the Department of History at Boston College,
where she teaches modern European history, American Civilization, and the history of the
American West. Articles from her dissertation on the impact of federally run communities
on the West have been published in the Journal ofthe West and the University of Nevada’s
Halcyon Series in Western History. She served as curatorial assistant to the McMullen
Museum of Art from 1996 to 1999, where she co-curated an exhibition of Edward Curtis
photographs in 1998.

KATE BONANSINGA is Director of University Galleries at the University ofTexas at

El Paso. She has lived in the American West since 1991, the same year that she earned a

Master of Arts in art history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has
written extensively on contemporary art.

MARILYNN S. JOHNSON is associate professor of history at Boston College where she

teaches U.S. and western history. She is the author of The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the

Eastbay in World War II (University of California Press, 1994). Though not a cowgirl, she led a
nomadic academic life in California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, and Wyoming before
landing in Boston.

EVA M. GARROUTTE is a tribally-enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

Having received her PhD from Princeton University in 1993, she is an assistant professor in
the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Her book, Real Indians: Identity and the
Survival ofNative America (University of California Press, 2003), explores ways that modern
American Indian racial-ethnic identity is negotiated, modified, challenged, and even revoked;

it then develops the emerging intellectual perspective of “Radical Indigenism.” Professor

Garroutte also works in the field of medical sociology, attempting to understand and improve
the health ol American Indians.

51
CATALOGUE ENTRIES
 WESTERN REALISTS

N AMERICAN STYLE that began in the nineteenth cen- The Twentieth Century Revival
tury, Western Realism sought to capture the grandeur of The later generation of western American artists working in
the West in a manner that both documented and aug- the first half of the twentieth century was seen as a revivalist

mented the unfamiliar, palatial western landscape and its movement promoting realistic American genre painting. In

people. The forerunners ot this movement were Albert the midst of the tumultuous 1960s, a growing number of
Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, and Karl Bodmer. In representing artists romanticized the West by portraying it as the mythic
the West, the artists used many approaches, including Realism, place it was in the nineteenth century. In 1965, five western
Romanticism, and ethnographic documentary portraiture. The artists committed to revitalizing western culture and glorify-

product of a journey to explore American Indians, Bodmer’s water- ing the cowboy within the visual arts formed the Cowboy
colors and sketches were thought to be ethnographically accurate Artists of America (CAA). To this day, Cowboy Artists like
depictions of Native Americans in the Great Plains. Although John Clymer, Frank McCarthy, and Howard Terpning revere
highly detailed and skillfully drawn, Bodmer’s drawings demon- the first generation of western artists, especially Bierstadt and

strate the pervasive nineteenth-century fascination with the exotic Remington, and strive to continue their tradition. They are
and the need to capture and record the unfamiliar. In concert with highly committed to authenticity in representation and

the United States government’s promotion of Manifest Destiny, believe that historical reconstruction is a successful vehicle for

Bierstadt created commissioned images that would inspire west- conveying the cowboy heritage. Their work consists of cow-
ward movement. Bierstadt ’s paintings functioned in part as propa- boy and Indian imagery of the “Wild West.” While their ten-

ganda, which explains the exaggerated vistas, heightened emotion, dency toward idealization can be seen as a glossing over of the

and unlikely scenarios. These forefathers of American Art created current state of affairs of Native people and modern cowboys,
dazzling depictions of the western plains, inciting enthusiasm for the art of CAA members aims to be true to nature, ethno-
the west coast and an enduring allure for its cowboys and Indians. graphically accurate, and patriotic.

55
 No. i

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

Mountain Sunrise 1877

,

Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 in.

Collection of Mr and Mrs. Alec 1 . Petro

No. i Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) No. 3 Karl Bodmer (1809-1893)
Mountain Sunrise 1877 Tableau #46: Chiefof the Blood Indians, Ward '.hiefofthe
Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 in. Piekann Indians, Koutani Indian, n.d.
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Alec 1 . Petro Aquatint on paper, 34.25 x 28.75 in.

Collection of John J. McMullen, Colorado

While Bierstadt is considered one of America’s foremost land-
scape painters, his style comes from his training at the Karl Bodmer left his native Switzerland at age twenty-four to
Dusseldorf School, where history painting and landscape were accompany German Prince Maximilian on an ethnographic
the central focus. Less concerned with making literal portrayals study of American Indians. Bodmer’s work in the Great Plains
of their subjects, Bierstadt and his contemporaries strove to yielded hundreds of watercolor portraits of Indians and images

evoke awe and inspiration. Here, Bierstadt uses classic of their ceremonial practices. I Ie was highly critical of the ten-
Dusseldorf techniques— grand scale, craggy rocks, sensational dency by other artists to romanticize Indian life. Ethnographers
skies of bold, contrasting colors, and attention to the minute and curators praised his work, believing that he produced purely
detail in stones, plants, and wildlife — to convey to American objective documents of Indian customs.

viewers the greatness of their expanding nation. Because After completing his travels with Prince Maximilian,
Bierstadt often altered the appearance of specific landscapes, Bodmer made group portraits of notable Indian leaders. Each
one cannot be certain of the location, though the present work tableau gives the viewer a sense of the diversity in tribal dress.

is very likely to be either Yosemite or Yellowstone. Both captured In this print, each of the three chiefs wears plain clothing,

Americans’ imaginations in the 1870s, as new railroad lines unlike the ceremonial garb of Mato-Tope (no. 4). Stomick-
drew tourists to these majestic locales, which became America’s Sosack, chief of the Blood Blackfeet (left), was in a hurry when
most popular national parks. Bodmer painted his portrait, so it lacks the elaborate detail

characteristic of Bodmer’s work. The portrait shows a peace

medal which Maximilian claimed had an image ofThomas
No. 2 Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) Jefferson, suggesting it might have been given to Stomick-
The Buffalo Trail ,
c. 1867 Sosack or one of his relatives by members of the Lewis and
Oil on canvas, 31.8 x 48 in. Clark expedition. Bodmer, however, described the medal as
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston having the Native symbols of clasped hands, a tomahawk, and
Gift of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik peace pipe. The Piegan Blackfeet Chief Spotted Elk (middle)
Collection of American Paintings 1813-1865, 1947 47.1268 was known for his skill in warfare against the Salish tribes, as

well as his aggressiveness and arrogance, which offended

Bierstadt scholars speculate that this scene of an infinite trail of Anglos and Indians alike. Here, however, Spotted Elk is in

buffalo was painted in the British landscape tradition to resemble mourning for his nephew, who was recently killed by the Blood

an English park: sky, trees, and lake form a circle, reflecting the Blackfeet tribe. I Iis plain robe and shedding of ornamentation
stylistic balance of European Neoclassicism. In addition, is an accurate depiction of Piegan mourning costume. I lomach
Bierstadt’s characteristic rich glow emanating from an Ksachkum, Chief of the Kootenai/Piekann (right, spelled by
unidentified source recalls the British painter J.M.W. Turner Bodmer as Koutani), is adorned here with a buckskin shirt and
(1775-1851). By rendering an open, green terrain, Bierstadt made buffalo robe. He is ornamented only with a necklace of braided
the West seem less alien to European audiences. Bierstadt’s sweetgrass, which is indigenous to the area and had medicinal
grand scale, sharp tonal contrasts, and attention to detail are con- and ceremonial functions.
sistent with the Dusseldorf style, as applied in Mountain Sunset
(no. 1). Even without the dramatic peaks, cliffs, and waterfalls,
Bierstadt conveys the grandeur and infinite abundance of the

West that characterize his frontier paintings.

57
 No. 2

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

The Buffalo Trail , c. 1867

Oil on canvas, 31.8 x 48 in.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gi ft of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings 1815-1865, 1947 47.1268

5*
 No. 3

Karl Bodmer (1809-1893)

Tableau #46: Chiefof the Blood Indians, War-Chiefofthe Piekann Indians, Koutani Indian n.d.
,

Aquatint on paper, 34.25 x 28.75 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

59
 No. 4
Karl Bodmer (1809-1893)
Mato-Tope, c. 1843

Aquatint and engraving on paper, 12 x 8.25 in.

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado

60
No. 4 Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) No. 3 Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
Mato-Tope, c. 1843 Saddling I'resh I lorses, c. 1890
Aquatint and engraving on paper, 12 x 8.23 in. Pen and ink on paper, 31 x 26 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

Mato-Tope (or Four Bears) was a Mandan chief revered for his Of all the early Western Realists, Frederic Remington most
success in warfare. Until the mid nineteenth century, the Mantlan influenced America’s view of the West. I Ie became interested in

lived near the mouth of the Knife River in the Dakotas. Bodmer western scenes while working as an illustrator for the national

and Maximilian spent the fall of 1833 and the winter of 1834 magazines Harper’s Weekly, The Century Illustrated ,
and Scribner’s

studying the tribe. The Mandan, who reportedly had light skin, Magazine. Readers were eager to see what the West and its people
blue eyes, and silver hair, fascinated European observers. Some were like. In order to meet this demand, Remington made fre-

Europeans concluded that the Mandan were long lost descen- quent, extended tours of the West, where he observed cavalry

dants of the Welsh. Modern scholars dismiss this theory, noting officers, cowboys, and Indians. Increasingly, Remington infused
that prematurely graying hair was prevalent among other Plains his work with action and drama to honor the initiative of the
Indian groups; rather they attribute the Mandans' unusual skin cowboys he met.
tone and eye color to intermarriage with non-Indians. In this uncharacteristically static scene, cowboys prepare
Bodmer painted several portraits of Mato-Tope, who will- for action. Viewers can easily picture what will come next.

ingly donned his elaborate garments, headdresses, and weapons The popular pictorial works of Remington and his followers

for each sitting because he, too, was a prolific painter of Indian (including Charles Russell and 1 . W. I lansen, no. 8) are

life. Instead ofwatercolor portraits, Mato-Tope recorded vivid images of cowboys roping cattle or chasing Indians atop

Mandan battle scenes on buffalo hides and as body art. Here, galloping horses.

Mato-Tope displays his history as a warrior. His hair is adorned

with a wooden knife, which is a replica of one he took from a
Cheyenne warrior he defeated in battle. Each split turkey feather No. 6 Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
represents an arrow injury, and each of the six colored sticks The Bronco Buster, 1895
signifies a gunshot wound. Other feathers denote victories in Bronze, 23 in.

warfare and membership in elite warrior societies. The painted Collection of John J. McMullen, Colorado

yellow stripes on Mato-Tope’s arm stand for his major battles and
the handprint on his left breast indicates that he took captives. Remington initially saw little future in making sculpture (which
Mato-Tope’s rich life as a warrior, tribal leader, artist, and histo- he disparagingly called “muds”), and only began working in three-
rian ended three years after Bodmer painted this portrait. He dimensional media late in his career. As his first major sculpted
was one of dozens of Mandan who died of smallpox transmitted work, The Bronco Buster was, a yearlong experiment in the dra-

by white settlers. matic possibilities of three-dimensional composition. Working

from meticulous drawings of cowboys and horses in action,

Remington pushed the boundaries of bronze-casting techniques

to heighten the tension in this image of a man taming a wild
horse. The asymmetrical poses of the horse and rider challenge

the laws of gravity; in reality, this cowboy’s ride would end in a

spill. Remington believed, however, that the men who tamed the
West had superhuman gifts of initiative, courage, and resilience.

Here, he depicts the heroic western character.

61
 No. 5

Frederic Remington (1861-1909)

Saddling Fresh Ilorses ,
c. 1890
Pen and ink on paper, 31 x 26 in.

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado

62
.

No. 6
Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
The Bronco Buster, 1895
Bronze, 23 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

63
 - No. 9
No. Will 1.1m Robinson Leigh (1866-1955) John Clymcr (1907-1989)
I he Gambler: End ofthe P/ay, 1892 Green River Rendezvous, n.d.
Oil on canvas, 58 x 50 in. Oil on canvas, 30 x 48 in.

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado

Know n bv his contemporaries as the “Sagebrush Rembrandt,” Green River Rendezvous memorializes the annual gathering of the
William Robinson Leigh was best known tor his magazine fur traders in the Green River Valley, Wyoming, a typical early

illustrations ot cowboys and Indians. The Gambler: End ofthe P/ay nineteenth century event in the West. The first Rendezvous was
is tvpical ot Leigh's work, which usually features cowboys, organized in 1825 by a trapper, William Ashley, who brought
Indians, or wild animals in a flurrv of action. Gambling embodies efficiency to the fur trade’s network of lone mountain men fre-

the western ideals ot taking chances and living by one’s own wits quenting remote trading posts. Ashley divided his expedition
and. as seen here, can often end in violence and conflict. In an into small groups that would trap independently throughout the
unusual interior scene, Leigh captures an outburst ot gunplay in a spring and then meet at I lenry’s Fork on the Green River in late

saloon. W ith a cow boy's agility the gambler shoots dow n his summer. Much to Ashley’s surprise, the gathering drew free-
opponents, who presumably objected to a wily card play. Lacking trappers as well as Indians. In this image, Clymer depicts the
the established courts and police forces of the East, residents of meeting ot two worlds by the contrasting dwellings (teepees vs.
w estern mining and cattle towns occasionally resorted to huts) and by the large void that separates the two groups. Despite
gunfights tor conflict resolution. In both western literature and their physical separation in the painting, the Indians and white
I lollyw ood cinema, the dramatic action of the shootout came to trappers and fur traders have joined together as a community for
represent a ritualized defense of male honor. a brief period of time to partake in a celebration of their com-
mon natural environment.
Until the 1840s, the Rendezvous replaced trading company
No. 8 I lerman W. I lansen (1854-1924) agents as the hub of frontier commercial activity. The meetings,

Cowboy Race (Going to Town), 1902 lasting a full day, had a festive atmosphere, with food, drink,

Oil on canvas, 36.75 x 30.5 in. music, and cards. Anglo trappers and Indians informally traded

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado manufactured goods for handmade artifacts.

Building on Remington’s definitive images of the West, I lansen

painted w estern scenes with subtle coloring and a strong narra-

tive trajectory. I lis work shows his intimate knowledge of
Arizona, where he spent summers sketching. I lansen was one of

the first Western Realists to introduce a whimsical element to

cowboy life. Paintings of cowboys at work often transform their

subjects into mythic figures, solitary men testing their strength

against the challenges of an unforgiving land. I Iere, in a race to

town, cowboys playing together emphasize mischievous and boy-

ish behavior, revealing the humanity of these heroic icons.
I

No. 7
William Robinson Leigh (1866-1955)
The Gambler: End of the Play 1892
,

Oil on canvas, 38 x 50 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

65
 No. 8
I lerman W. Hansen (1854-1924)
Cowboy Race (Going to Town), 1902
Oil on canvas, 36.75 x 30.5 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

66
 No. 9
John Clymer (1907-1989)
Green River Rendezvous, n.d.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 48 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

67

.
 No. io
John Clymer (1907-1989)
Crazy Horse 1975
,

Oil on canvas, ;8 x 34.6 in.

Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado

68
No. io John Clymer (1907-1989) and the covers of novels. Like other Western Realists, McCarthy
Crazy Horse, 1975 bases his work “in truth” and their settings “in reality,” while also
Oil on canvas, 58 x 34.6 in. striving to “redesign. ..the beauty and character of God’s creation
Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado in the West.” McCarthy employs mountain men, cavalry, cow-
boys, and Indians in high-speed action scenes, as seen in Forming

Crazy Horse (1849-1877) was a young Lakota warrior who, at age the Hostile Circle. His backdrop of mountains and plains evokes
thirteen, led his first war party. He fought under Oglala Chief the Technicolor Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s, while his realis-

Red Cloud against Anglo interlopers in present-day Wyoming, tic technique highlights the actual topography of the western
and played a vital role in the defeat ofWilliam J. Fetterman’s country. This painting captures the moment of heightened ten-

cavalry brigade at Fort Kearny in 1867. As suggested by Clymer’s sion before a clash between Anglo settlers and Indians. The
elaborate depiction of him, Crazy Horse was a notorious war- contrast between the two sides is clearly delineated by the inclu-
rior. He is shown here in an impassioned state of belligerence, sion of a covered wagon in the background, which is recognized
adorned in Native clothes and body paint reserved for warfare. as the mode of transportation for white settlers. The suspense
Resisting the United States government’s attempt to remove and threat created in the scene by the approaching Indians
the Lakota people from the gold-rich Black Hills to reserva- is intensified by the polarity in size between the predators and
tions, Crazy Horse gathered 1,200 men from Cheyenne and their prey.

Oglala villages to drive out U.S. forces. He eventually helped

Sitting Bull defeat Custer’s Seventh Cavalry in the Battle of

Little Bighorn in 1876. No. 12 Howard Terpning (b. 1927)

Although the Lakota won at Little Bighorn, the U.S. cav- War Cry to the Sun, 1980
alry continued its attempts to drive the tribe off its homeland. Oil on canvas, 30 x 50 in.

They harassed Indian villagers and eventually starved the Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado
Lakota people by slaughtering entire buffalo herds. Crazy Horse
went to war against General Nelson Miles in 1876-77, but the One of Hollywood’s leading poster artists, Howard Terpning cre-
hungry Lakota were unable to mount a forceful resistance. The ated images for such well-known films as Lawrence ofArabia, The

Lakota were moved to a reservation, which they were unable to Guns ofNavarrone, and the re-release of Gone With the Wind. In
leave without the U.S. government’s approval. When Crazy the mid-1970s, Terpning abandoned commercial graphics and

Horse attempted to take his ailing wife to her parents, the Army moved to Arizona. His interactions with Indians in the area

arrested him. When he struggled, the two arresting officers held piqued his interest in Native history, leading him to paint scenes
his arms firmly behind his back, and a soldier fatally stabbed of Native life at the turn of the century. Terpning’s depictions of

him with a bayonet. ceremonies and traditional life are the product of extensive

archival research. This painting depicts a war recounting about

their victory as they return home. The scalp locks in the fore-

No. 11 Frank McCarthy (b. 1924) ground indicate success in battle. Terpning’s careful detail, bold

Forming the Hostile Circle 1983

,
color, majestic landscapes, dramatic action, and poignant facial

Oil on canvas, 34.3 x 35 in. expressions have garnered him the epithet “The Storyteller of
Collection ofjohn J. McMullen, Colorado the Native American People.”

During his childhood on the east coast, Frank McCarthy was a

great fan of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, I Iollywood Westerns,
and the western-themed paintings of N.C. Wyeth. McCarthy
developed his own Western Realist style during his studies at the
Art Students’ League and went on to illustrate movie posters

69
 No. ii

Frank McCarthy (b. 1924)

Forming the Hostile Circle 1983,

Oil on canvas, 34.3 x 35 in.

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado

70
 No. 12

Howard Terpning (b. 1927)

War Cry to the Sun, 1980

Oil on canvas, 30 x 50 in.

Collection ofjohnj. McMullen, Colorado

71
 CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPES

URING THE INTERWAR PERIOD in America, artists contemporary western landscape. They address issues like urban-

began migrating westward, away from the flourishing art ization, nuclear testing, and the treatment of nature as a commod-
scene of the east coast to visually interpret the landscapes ity as well as environmental threats caused by these developments.
and peoples of the West. They problematized the tradi- Concerned with the threat of nuclear testing by the federal gov-

tional definition ofwestern art by using the techniques of ernment, Liz Lerma (no. 17) and Karen Rice (no. 18) visually fight

the New York and European avant-garde artists into their portray- back against the desecration of their homeland. The art of con-
als of the West. Although the Taos Modernists are the best known temporary western artists is not one of documentation or nostal-
(no. 13), there are many other artists following in this tradition gia, but is an ardent attempt to provocatively convey political,
today including artists from the West’s diverse ethnic communi- cultural, and social messages specific to the West. While their
ties. What unifies them is their desire to express an individualized Cowboy Artists of America contemporaries depict an optimistic
and subjective experience in the western landscape. and ideal western civilization, the artists in this section draw
Whether working in collage, ceramic, or the more traditional on the negative outgrowth that has taken place due to western

oil on canvas, the artists push the conventions of western art and expansion in the second half of the twentieth century.

73
 No. 13

Agnes Martin (b. 1912)

Untitled #<?, 1984

Acrylic and pencil on canvas

Collection of Daniel and Iilissa Arons

74
No. 13 Agnes Martin (b. 1912) California at Berkeley, where he taught until the United States

Untitled #8 1984
, government’s internment ofjapanese Americans in 1942. While
Acrylic and pencil on canvas, 72 x 72 in. separated from the California art world by barbed wire and
Collection of Daniel and Elissa Arons armed guards, Obata painted the desert landscape around the
Central Utah Relocation Center (called Topaz).
Though Canadian by birth, Agnes Martin has been painting in the Always attuned to the beauty around him, Obata brought
seclusion of the New Mexico desert since 1967. Earlier in her East and West together by usingjapanese media and tech-
career, she lived and worked in New York, where her distinctive niques to paint the land of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas

practice of superimposing fine penciled grids on densely woven Moran. This painting’s simplicity and attention to open space
canvases washed with bands of color gave momentum to the bur- mirror the Japanese aesthetic, while the subtle tonal shifts,

geoning Minimalist movement. Martin’s spare, precise, desert- its luminescence, and the beautification of nature distinctly
colored works evoke a meditative state in the viewer, much like recall Bierstadt’s grand landscapes (nos. 1 and 2).

the quiet awe inspired by the New Mexican landscape.

Many critics have interpreted Martin’s works as minimal

depictions of the southwestern landscape. Although Martin has No. 15 Chiura Obata (1885-1975)
argued against this interpretation, countless viewers have Near Topaz, Utah, c. 1943
inscribed their own nostalgic longings for a specific, personal Watercolor on paper, 13.5 x 18.5 in.

western landscape onto her works. These responses to Martin’s Obata Family Collection
work bear upon the central question of postmodern western art:

is there one real West, or is each viewer’s vision of the West just Near Topaz depicts the landscape with the openness and free-

as authentic as the West portrayed by Albert Bierstadt and dom typical of western painting. However, the title indicates it
Frederic Remington? Though lacking the subtle bands of color was painted inside the barbed wire of the Central Utah
characteristic of her Untitled series, the sandy tone and contrast Relocation Center (called Topaz) where west coast residents of
between the thin pencil lines and vast unmarked spaces in this Japanese ancestry were held during World War II. Obata taught
piece evoke the West’s open landscape in many viewers. art to his fellow internees to help them focus on the beauty of
the natural world rather than on the demoralizing aspects of

camp life. Here, Obata’s mountains beckon the viewer to scale

No. 14 Chiura Obata (1885-1975) them and pass over to the Promised Land of California.
Topaz Mountains ,
c. 1943 While Bierstadt (nos. 1 and 2) painted mountains as symbols of
Watercolor on silk, 15.25 x 19.25 in. America’s supposed Manifest Destiny, Obata’s peaks do not
Obata Family Collection encourage eastern fortune-seekers toward an unknown Eden,
but encourage California’s Japanese residents to hold out for
Chiura Obata emigrated from Sendai, Japan to San Francisco in their return home.
1903. At eighteen, Obata lived in San Francisco’s Japantown,
where he supported his independent study of painting by work-
ing as a domestic laborer. In 1922, Obata became one of thirty-

four founding members of the East-West Art Society. The

Society, which included Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and
American artists, shared Obata’s belief that in the art world
“there shouldn’t be walls between the poor East and the rich

West.” Despite California’s virulent anti-Asian prejudice,

Obata’s work was celebrated among California artists. In 1932, he

earned a position on the fine arts faculty at the University of

75
 No. 14
Chiura Obata (1885-1975)
Topaz Mountains, c. 1943
Watercoloron silk, 15.25 x 19.25 in.

Obata Family Collection

76
 No. 15

Chiura Obata (1885-1975)

Near Topaz, Utah, c. 1943
Watercolor on paper, 13.5 x 18.5 in.

Obata Family Collection

77
No. it) Michael Brophy (b. i960) No. 17 Liz Lerma (b. 1951)

GoOibiigbt Irene. 1999 Nuclear Landscape, 1988

Oil on canvas, 50 x 48 in. Ceramic and mixed media, 16 x 16 x 2 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Laura Russo Gallery, Collection of the artist

Portland, Oregon
The vast lands of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico,
As it a scene in a play, parted theater curtains unveil a shocking Colorado, Utah, and Texas were ceded to the United States by
view of tree stumps, dramatically presenting the slaughter of the Mexico as a result of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848). Rather
wooded Columbia Gorge. Both the falling curtain and the word than seeing Mexico and the American Southwest as separate,
“Goodnight" suggest that the environment is nearly dead. many Mexican American (or Chicano) activists describe a single

Michael Brophv’s theatrical imagery satirizes America’s con- homeland called Atzlan. In Nuclear Landscape, Chicana artist Liz

sumption of the land for camping, rafting, mountain biking, and Lerma explores the ways in which nuclear testing sites effected

other forms of entertainment. her ancestral home. The federal government altered the land

The musical score inscribed with the folk song “Goodnight forever during World War II, when the Southwest became the

Irene" alludes to Woody Guthrie's unwitting role in the demise birthplace of the Atomic Age.
of the Columbia Gorge. In 1941, the federal government com- An indigenous Mexican medium, pottery is mixed from
missioned Guthrie to write songs promoting its massive dam earth, reinforcing the artist’s connection to the land. Like the

building project. Eager to promote public power during the land, it is both durable and fragile. Representing the cycle of life
depths of the Great Depression and in a state of financial need and death, the circle offers a pinhole view into a horror of

himself, Guthrie wrote the lyrics to “Roll on Columbia.” Set to a unknown expanse. Haphazard barriers restrain the viewer from

Leadbellv tune, the song celebrated the successful harnessing of a the desert and mountains beyond. The crisscrossed impressions

mightv western river and praised the use of technology to serve suggest the artificial barriers between Mexico and the American
the public. Ironicallv, the dams that Guthrie’s songs promoted Southwest, as well as the barbed wire that surrounds nuclear
have had well-documented detrimental efFects on both the natu- reservations. Inside, Calaveras, or skulls and skeletons, is the only

ral environment and the welfare of local communities. human presence. In Chicano visual culture, calaveras symbolize

close relationship between the living and the dead, who

remain part of family and social life after their passing. They also
represent the downtrodden who cast humor on death in order

to survive a difficult life. There is a palpable gravity to the tall,

wispy bones and the skull with eerie manufactured-looking eyes.

The lines forming the barricade are stitched, suggesting that

the barriers are falling apart. In Aztec mythology, fragile-looking

salamanders called axolotl can walk through fire and regenerate

themselves. In this painting, they represent a further sign of hope

for the people of Atzlan.

78
 No. 16
Michael Brophy (b. i960)
Goodnight Irene, 1999
Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Laura Russo Gallery, Portland, Oregon

79

.
 No. 17

Liz Lerma (I). 1951)

Nuclear Landscape, 1988

Ceramic and mixed media, 16 x 16 x 2 in.

Collection of the artist

80
No. 18 Karen Rice (1968) wagons. The enchanting glow of the lights and the rich purple
Burning Sage ,1998 tones of the night sky create a sense of mystery, evoking
Dry pigment and charcoal on paper, 42 x 48 in. both the promise of the good life and the dangers of a fast-

Collection ofToni Matlock moving, conflict-ridden urban environment.

Karen Rice’s western landscapes expose “the wild edges ot urban

areas or industrial sites; changes of seasons; layers of history No. 20 Allen Ruppersberg (b. 1944)
inherent in the land; the ragged edges where the illusion of con- Cover Art/Space Adventures 1985 ,

trol breaks down." Rice grew up in southern Washington near Mixed media collage, 80 x 120 in.

the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which was built by the federal Courtesy of Margo Lcavin Gallery, Eos Angeles
government as a plutonium processing plant for the Manhattan
Project during World War II. Because large expanses of western A native of Cleveland, Allen Ruppersberg first experienced the
land have been the federal government’s main staging area for West through family vacations to California. 1 lis enchantment
atomic research and development throughout the nuclear age, with Disneyland led him to pursue animation before
westerners have been disproportionately threatened by radia- turning to fine art in the 1960s. As the author of the 1972 novel

tion’s damaging effects on the environment and human health. Greetingsfrom California ,
Ruppersberg brings an interest in

Like Bierstadt’s untamed landscapes (nos. 1 and 2), Rice’s depic- narrative to America’s most storied region. I Iere, the artist sprin-

tion of a nuclear reservation holds an intriguing blend of danger kles text over a collage of cheap calendar photographs of western

and mystery, with the Department of Energy’s "No Trespassing" locales. The words ‘Space Adventures’ evoke a connection
signs forming a forbidden frontier. The power lines strung across between America’s frontier spirit in taming the West and the
the background suggest a human presence, but have a ghostly, nation’s exploration in outer space.

post-apocalyptic aura. Instead of rendering her landscapes on The scale of Ruppersberg’s work transforms the mass-
canvas, Rice builds her charred, irradiated landscapes on paper, produced tourist images into a grand landscape in the tradition

which shares the land’s dual qualities of frailty and endurance. of Bierstadt or Moran. However, the title Cover Art, indicates
that the piece is a mock-up of a pulp fiction book cover. In

this way, Ruppersberg suggests that western landscape paintings,

No. 19 Peter Alexander (b. 1939) like travel advertisements or western novels, transform the
VanNuys 1987 ,
West into a commodity.

Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 66 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Brian Gross Fine Art,

San Francisco

Peter Alexander is a member of the Fetish Finish School, a

group of Los Angeles Modernists who, beginning in the 1960s,

reacted against the dominance of Abstract Expressionism.
They make large, geometric compositions with materials from
southern California’s animation industry and car culture,
such as spray paint, plastics, acrylic, and automotive lacquers.
Van Nuys explores the new western landscape, where open

space has turned into suburban sprawl, and vast stretches of

terrain are strung with highways and electric lights. The hover-
ing perspective reminds the viewer that Americans now
traverse the continent in airplanes rather than covered

8
 No. 18
Karen Rice (b.1968)
Burning Sage, 1998

Dry pigment and charcoal on paper, 42 x 48 in.

Collection ofToni Matlock

82
 No. 19
Peter Alexander (b. 1939)

Van Nuys 1987

,

Acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 x 66 in.

Courtesy of the artist and Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco

83
 No. 20
Allen Ruppersberg (1). 1944)
Cover Art/Space Adventures 1985
Mixed media collage, 80 x 120 in.

Courtesy of Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

*4
 CONTEMPORARY COWBOYS

HE COWBOY IS AN ALL-AMERICAN icon popular- this section aim to acknowledge the modern cowboys and cow-
ized both by western artists, like Remington, and by girls who encompass many races and many lifestyles.
movies and television programs based on the “Wild West.” Working in a variety of styles, these contemporary artists
The cowboy is recognized outside of American culture as grapple with issues of gender, race, violence, and the threat of the

well, as the rugged, all-American hero. However, as various West’s industrialized culture. When looked at as a composite,
ethnic groups and western women have come forward to reclaim the work of these artists portrays the many facets of the cowboy’s

their part in western history, Americans have been required to existence in the Western Plains, from his daily activities and

broaden their perception of the American cowboy in a multicul- his less-than-noble actions to his more heroic endeavors and clas-

tural West. The story of the West is a powerful and mysterious one sic skills. Often using postmodern strategies, the artists com-
that has enlivened those excluded from it to revise and expand ment on history’s exclusion of central figures native to the West
history to make room for their western experiences. The artists in and create provocative imagery to inspire change and inclusivity.

8s
 No. 21

Dotty Attie (b. 1938)

They Traveled West, 1990-91

Oil on linen, 24 x 13 in.

Courtesy of P P.O. W. Gallery, New York

86
No. 21 Dotty Attie (b. 1938) No. 22 Alexis Smith (b. 1949)
They Traveled West 1990-91
,
Zen Rodeo, 1999
Oil on linen, 24 x 13 in. Silkscreen on handmade paper, 13.5 x 26 in.

Courtesy of P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York Courtesy of Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

Dotty Attie is known for her reorganization of old master and With Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in mind, Alexis Smith created
historical images to make provocative statements about histor- the painting ch Rodeo. I ler interest lies in the tension between
ical memory. She also regularly infuses canonical images with the American tradition of searching for the Promised Land

irony in an effort to incite new interpretations. Here, Attie and the post-frontier restlessness of the inability to find it. The
extracts the focal point of Charles Wimar’s painting, The Attack Beat writers offered Americans a solution to this dilemma in

on an Emigrant Train (1856), and fractures the image into four their Zen-inspired proposition that the Promised Land might be
planes of action. The artist lays the image on a textual founda- a state of mind, rather than a specific place. At the same time,
tion that ironically asserts that they traveled west to live a bet- Zen Rodeo includes some odd contradictions. The setting is not a
ter more independent life. The opportunity to claim large rodeo; the bull and horseman are not confined to an arena and

tracts of land that now belonged to no one was not to be there is no audience. Instead, the figures inhabit two spheres,
missed. Obscured but legible, the text reads with deliberate one of “desire” and the other of “addiction. ’’The delicate silhou-
double meaning. ettes evoke nostalgia for the black-and-white television cowboys,

Attie’s images excise Wimar’s background figures of a while the parchment-like quality of the paper and the austerity

wagon train in back and a group of Indians charging from the of landscape give the work a reflective, Zen-like quality that
right, throwing focus on the heart of the conflict over the land is akin to that of Agnes Martin (no. 13). Both sides of Smith’s
that belonged to “no one.” In the wagon, the man in the top right diptych are littered with fragments of Marlboro packs, suggest-
frame shoots into nothing, while the mother’s wounded daughter ing that distorted western imagery and addictiveness threaten

sinks out of reach into the lower frame, where an apparently destruction and spring from the American West. Desire

unarmed Indian raises his fist, perhaps in self-defense or indigna- expresses the spirit of Manifest Destiny, or the thrill of the
tion. In the left frame, an Indian man is shot in the back by white chase to the Promised Land, while addiction refers to the
settlers; the fracture line of the image separates the Indian from excesses of Manifest Destiny, or the insatiable lust for conquest

the wagon and the whites he was attacking, refocusing the narra- that taints the human spirit, as well as the land. If consumption

tive on the shooting. In rearranging a familiar image of Anglo- and conquest embody America’s post-frontier future, Smith sug-
Indian encounter, Attie challenges viewers to reconsider its gests that perhaps it is time for a changed state of mind.
historical meaning, and shows the visual signs to be arbitrary,

even fictitious.

87
 No. 22
Alexis Smith (b. 1949)
Zen Rodeo, 1999
Silkscreen on handmade paper, 15.5 x 26 in.

Courtesy of Margo Lcavin Gallery, Los Angeles

HH
 No. 23
Alexis Smith (b. 1949)
Cinderella Story 1985,

Mixed media collage, 32.3 x 21 in.

Collection of Linda Burrows, Beverly I fills

89
No. 23 Alexis Smith (b. 1040) No. 24 Sidonie Caron (b. 1932)

( indere/Ia Ston 1083

. Brand X, 2000
Mixed media collage. 32.3 x 21 in. Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 24 in.

Collection ot Linda Burrows, Beverly 1 lills Courtesy of the artist and the Attic Gallery,

Portland, Oregon
In iqSt. Alexis Smith produced a series ot thirty collages reflect-

ing stereotypes ot both real and fictional women named Jane. Sidonie Caron is one of many artists who turn Western Realism

Smith appropriates and inserts a photograph of Frances Farmer in on itself by narrowing the focus of her pictures from tradi-

dressed as Calamity Jane. By applying colored paper over the tional cowboys in action in open space to discrete movements
photograph. Smith adds angry, red eye shadow, a gold corsage, in cowboys’ execution of their work. In her investigation of cow-
pearl earrings, and a Princess Grace stamp. The superimposed boy labor, Caron finds the same qualities of courage, skill, and
text that reads "it was well past midnight, and she was very tired” dominance over the natural world that Remington (nos. 5 and 6)

suggests the figure will assert her will at the point of a gun. and I Iansen (no. 8) celebrated. Caron, however, finds these
Though gender is the clear subtext, the problem at hand is qualities in the cowboy’s daily chores, which are pictured as feats

unclear; one assumes the target of her gun is a man, and the in themselves. She chooses to convey an understanding of what

fatigue was caused by long hours of housework, long sessions in a cowboys do, rather than weave a mythology of hyper-masculinity
studio or press junket, or long periods of ennui. The title, and violence. Here, Caron’s enlargment of the cattle branding
Cinderella Ston introduces Smith’s central questions about the serves to elevate the task’s significance and communicate the
intersection of power and glamour in women’s lives, and how a physical exertion required in the cowboy’s everyday life.

shift in power (represented bv the gun) would make lady-like

notions ot glamour culturally and socially obsolete.

The second, and equally compelling question, centers No. 25 Sidonie Caron (b. 1932)

around the identity of the figure that is recognizable as Farmer, Getting a Grip ,
2000
or Calamity Jane. The figure’s multiple identities create con- Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 in.

tusion. Smith's figure, which resembles the artist, also expresses Courtesy of the artist and the Attic Gallery,
her perspective on western identity, emphasizing the pioneer Portland, Oregon
attitude toward the importance of individuality and self-

assertion. But who is this mysterious cowgirl? Is it Smith, the One of Caron’s central artistic concerns is painting figures

artist who pioneered the genre of Los Angeles humor in concep- engaged in everyday physical labor. Caron’s cowboy scenes are
tual art' Is it Farmer, the actress who sacrificed her Hollywood known tor finding forgotten aspects of western life in small,

career (and eventually her sanity) as a statement against con- poignant detail. Instead of energetic scenes of roping and riding,
formity. commercialism, and sexism in the film industry? Or is Caron pays homage to the skilled labor performed daily by

it Calamityjane, the legendary cowgirl who rode the range cattlemen and women. Although we cannot see the cowboy’s
with the men as an equal because she was reputed to be the best face, his hands humanize what is often viewed as a mythic figure

shot in the West? The ambiguity of Smith’s image carries with of the past, invoking instead a vital member of contemporary
it an evcrvwoman quality, much as Remington’s cowboys did for western society.

American males.

90
 No. 24
Sidonie Caron (b. 1932)

Brand X, 2000
Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 24 in.

Courtesy ol the artist and the Attic Gallery, Portland, Oregon

91
 No. 25
Sidonie Caron (b. 1932)

Getting a Grip, 2000

Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 in.

Courtesy of the artist and the Attic Gallery, Portland, Oregon

92
!

No. 26 (front)
G. Peter Jemison (b. 194;)
Black Cowboy, 1995

Mixed media on paper bag, 16 x 16 x6 in.

Collection of the artist

93
 No. 26 (back)
G. Peter Jemison (b. 1945)

Black Cowboy 1995

,

Mixed media on paper bag, 16 x 16 x (1 in.

Collection of the artist

94
No. 26 G. Peter Jemison (b. 1945) Instead, Jemison offers a vision of a multicultural West, popu-

Black Cowboy 1995 ,

lated by heroes with whom every American child can identify.
Mixed media on paper bag, 16 x 16 x 6 in.

Collection of the artist

No. 27 Robert C. Buitron (b. 1953)

G. Peter Jemison is from the Heron elan of the Seneca nation and Missing Legends of the American West, 1995

grew up on the Cattaragus Indian reservation. Educated at From the series El Corrido de Happy 'Brails

SUNY Buffalo and the University of Siena, Italy, he was strongly (starring Pancho y Tonto)

influenced by the conceptual movement (particularly Robert Chromogenic print, 13.75 x l 7-5 > n -

Rauschenberg and Kurt Schwitters) as well as by the emerging Collection of the artist

Indian Postmodernists. Working from diverse traditions,

Jemison’s work focuses on portraying complex political and cul- In 1995, the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps commemo-
tural problems. For the past twenty years, he has rendered these rating the heroes of the American West. Missing from the
images on paper bags, referring to traditional Seneca beaded pantheon of Indian, African American, and Anglo men and
bags, as well as to contemporary consumer culture. women were Mexican Americans. Missing Legends raises ques-
Black Cowboy was inspired by a 1995 exhibition about the tions about Mexicans’ place in western history, and the reason for

little-known history of black cowboys on the Chisholm Trail. his/her exclusion from this otherwise inclusive tribute. Here,
The exhibition was in Fort Worth, Texas, where a statue Robert Buitron has staged a scenario in which the characters,
memorializes Will Rogers, another famous cowboy who is Pancho (the Cisco Kid’s amiable sidekick, who ate too much and
remembered in popular culture as an all-American comedian struggled with the English language) and Tonto (whose “Native”

rather than by his Cherokee heritage. As Jemison unearthed skills in fighting and navigating the open terrain got the Lone
more of the hidden history of African American, Native Ranger out of deadly scrapes), design their own stamps to com-
American, and Mexican American cowboys, he recalled his plete the postal service’s philatelic pantheon. Their model,

childhood experience of gathering with other kids in front of an older Mexican man in serape and sombrero (portrayed by
the TV at the neighborhood hotel to watch black and white Chicano artist Carlos Cortez), brings to mind Hollywood cos-
cowboy movies. Every day, cowboys like Tom Mix, Bob Steele, tuming, if not nineteenth-century ethnic clothing styles. In this

and Hoppalong Cassidy fought rustlers in a West where racial image, Pancho and Tonto reflect on Joaquin Murrieta (a “bandit,”

minorities primarily existed as enemies or sidekicks. While or Chicano freedom fighter who resisted encroachment by
Anglos recall Tonto riding alongside the Fone Ranger, Jemison Anglo miners on Mexican land), Juan Cortina (who captured the
joins Robert Buitron (nos. 27 and 28) in asserting that “Tonto city of Brownsville, Texas to assert Mexicans’ “sacred right of
wasn’t really a cowboy.” self-preservation”), and the thousands of unknown vaqueros and
The Museum gift shop bagjemison took home with him Indian guides who taught Anglo cowboys how to thrive on the
became the impetus for bringing to light the cowboys who had western frontier, only to be dispossessed and erased from
been erased from history and popular culture. Black Cowboy recorded history.
appropriates the images of the iconic Hollywood cowboy roping
and riding; the cowboys are altered with bold, expressionistic

application of color and superimposed upon them are giant

images of dark-skinned men in cowboy hats, identified with

enthusiastically-penned labels reading, “Black Cowboys,”

“Hispanic Cowboys,” “Native American Indian Cowboys,” and

“White Cowboys.” The original text, reading “The Rockwell
Museum,” is scrawled over to read, “The Swell Hat.” Black
Cowboy is not simply a rejection of the Hollywood Western.

95
 No. 27
Robert C. Buitron (b. 1953)

Missing Legends ofthe American West, 1995

f rom the series Id Corrida de llappy Trails (starring Panchoy Tonto)

Chromogcnic print, 13.75 x 17.5 in.

Collection of the artist

96
 No. 28
Robert C. Buitron (b. 1953)

Leccion 34 1999
, (From the series Mai burro, man )

Chromogenic print, 13.625 x 17.125 in.

Collection of the artist

97
No. ’S Robert C. Buitron (b. 1933) plation. The layered blues and reds of Mexican arte folklorico
Leeeion 34, 1099 (From the series .\L/ burro, man) form an ambiguous facial expression, which can be read as sadness,

Chromogenic print. 13.02^ \ 1-.123 in. anger, resignation, or even boredom, while the carefree brush
Collection of the artist strokes forming the cowboy hat add a whimsical quality to

the composition. Though fixed in space, Romero’s vaquero is

f ramed bv the Chicago skyline rather than the expansive west- not a static, idealized figure of the past, but one embodying
ern frontier, the cowboy is dressed as the Marlboro man being layered identities as a worker, a Mexican, and an American which
taught hv two vaqueros to rope a shim, red plastic bull labeled have been shaped by his historical epoch, as well as ours.
"Azucar" (Azticar, meaning “sugar”). In this strange scene,
Robert Buitron brings humor to his investigation of the com-
modified. kitschified, mythic West. The Marlboro man, unlike No. 30 Frank Romero (b. 1941)

the vaquero. is an urban creature, borne of advertising genius Freeway Wars 1990 ,

instead of the rugged frontier spirit. The artist notes of him 34-color silkscreen, 31.5 x 38 in.

that, “the clothes are clean, pressed, and not a bead of sweat Courtesy oflkon Ltd. and Kay Richards, Santa Monica
around the shirt collar.” as one might expect at the end of the
cattle trail, where steers are purchased, processed, and distrib- Freeway Wars like Van Nuys (no. 19) and Cinderella Story (no. 23),

uted by Chicago capitalists. Similarly, the capitalists’ white col- has the independent spirit of Los Angeles art which presents pop

lars also show no traces of sweat. The “lection” to be learned cultural subjects in bold colors and materials. Drawing inspira-

from this scene has as much to do with class as with race. tion from folk art and from images of heroic scale, Frank
Recognized bv Advertising Age as the leading advertising icon of Romero’s reconfigurations of old mythologies are also suggestive

the twentieth centurv, the Marlboro Man’s luster issues from and, sometimes darkly humorous. Los Angeles art, particularly

his wealth, instead of from his hard work, rugged individualism, Chicano art, which Romero pioneered, is strongly influenced by

and western roots. the city’s multicultural milieu. A native of Southern California,
Romero studied art through high school and college, and in 1973

co-founded the Chicano artists’ collective “Los Four.” Los Four

No. 29 Frank Romero (b. 1941) drew on the style of the Mexican muralists to make collaborative,

Vaquero, 1994 large-scale images addressing issues specific to Mexican

Serigraph, 30 x 39.3 in. Angelinos. In its bright imagery and dark subject matter, Freeway

Courtesy of Ikon Ltd. and Kay Richards, Santa Monica Wars unifies Romero’s seemingly disparate array of concerns
about being a Hispanic artist living in Los Angeles, New Mexico,
The label Chicano, initially a pejorative term and later adopted by and Mexico.
young Mexicans in the 1960s, was a means of identifying their neo- In contrast to Alexander’s aerial perspective of Los Angeles

indigenous stance. Chicano artists did not develop a unified, (no. 19), Romero’s paintings capture the city from street level,

identifiable style, but a bicultural one that fused American and where Angelinos resolve conflict swiftly and independently at
Mexican sources. Some Chicano artists, influenced by farmworker the point of a gun. Unlike William Leigh’s The Gambler (no. 7), or

organization campaigns in California and Texas, developed the even Smith’s Cinderella Story (no. 23), Romero’s urban “cowboys”
specialized imagery of labor culture. Many others sought to fight urban overcrowding and the impersonal battles against the
reclaim elements of Mexican culture and identity that had been Californian culture that relies heavily on the freedom offered by

subsumed into more general “western culture. ’’The cultural figure the car. However, as in Leigh’s The Gambler, Freeway Wars may be
most lost to historv is the vaquero, or the original Mexican cowboy read alternatively as the modern shootout in which minority
who is part of the heritage of many Mexican Americans. In con- youth, pushed to America’s margins (instead of beckoned to new
r rast to Anglo depictions of anonymous, caricatured vaqueros frontiers), engage in sporadic gunplay to establish territory,
frenetically looping lassos, f rank Romero’s Vaquero sits in contem- mete out justice, and restore masculine honor.
 No. 29
Frank Romero (b. 1941)

Vaquero 1994
,

Serigraph, 30 x 39.5 in.

Courtesy of Ikon Ltd. and Kay Richards, Santa Monica

99
 No. 30
Frank Romero (b. 1941)

Freeway Wars, 1990

34-color silkscreen, 31.5 x 38 in.

Courtesy of Ikon Ltd. and Kay Richards, Santa Monica

100
 CONTEMPORARY NATIVE AMERICANS

INCE THEIR FIRST ENCOUNTER with Europeans, The artists in this section challenge stereotypical images of

Native Americans have negotiated conflicting definitions Indians, forcing the viewer to acknowledge Native Americans as
of their identity. Rather than the freedom to express their fellow members of modern society. Combining Modern and

S identity as they experience

restrictive categories

eral officials and the Indian

it, Native artists encounter
and standards of “Indianness” by fed-
art market that pose both creative
Postmodern art techniques with traditional forms, these

reveal the vibrancy of contemporary Native culture.

imagery from Native mythology to address past and present

artists

They also use

injus-

and political challenges. Mainstream American culture expects tices, from the Spanish conquest and the Trail ofTears to the grow-
Native artists to remain historical relics, producing only tradi- ing commodification of Native art. Together, these works offer a
tional crafts or images of the past. more complete picture of Native American identity today.
 No. 31

Dan Lomahaftewa (!>. 1951)

Kiva Dreams, 1996

Acrylic on canvas, 28 x 36 in.

Montclair Art Museum; Museum purchase; prior gifts of Mrs. T. P. Adler, Mrs. LcRoy Christy, and Acquisition Fund,
1996.51

102
No. 31 Dan Lomahaftewa (b. 1931) No. 32 John Nieto (b. 1936)

Kivu Dreams, 1996 Snake Dance, 1987

Acrylic on canvas, 28 x 36 in. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in.

Montclair Art Museum; Museum purchase; prior gifts Montclair Art Museum; Gift of Anita Stanford, 1994.43
of Mrs. T. P. Adler, Mrs. LeRoy Christy, and Acquisition
Fund, 1996. 51 John Nieto lives and works in New Mexico, where his Spanish,

Navajo, and Apache relatives have lived for over three hundred

Dan Lomahaftewa was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where his years. He began studying Native cultures at the urging of his
parents were active in the urban intertribal community. He spent grandmother, who asked him to paint images that accurately
summers with his father’s relatives on the Hopi reservation, portrayed Native identity and lifestyle. Identifying himself as

where he learned Hopi traditions and ceremonies. an American artist who paints Indians, rather than as an Indian

Here, Lomahaftewa depicts a woman with the traditional artist, Nieto strives to express the unity of all indigenous
Hopi squash-blossom hairstyle and a katsina figure. Katsinas are American people. The Indians represented in his work are not

central to Hopi religious and family life. Represented by masked romanticized, imperiled, or conflicted. While his subjects

dancers and specially crafted dolls, katsinas connect the Hopi to are traditional, Nieto’s brilliantly colored geometric forms are

the spirit world. In katsina rituals, there is no boundary between strongly influenced by Fauvism, Expressionism, and Asian

the spirits and the human participants. The katsina dancers painting techniques.

simultaneously pray to the spirits and embody them. Through Performed every two years in strict secrecy, the I Iopi Snake-

the katsinas the

,
Hopi communicate with their ancestors and pray Dance culminates eight days of prayer for rain. The dance,
to the gods for rain, good harvests, turquoise, and for harmony which is rarely observed by non-Indians, involves highly hon-
within the community. ored dancers holding live rattlesnakes in their mouths. With
Lomahaftewa ’s thickly layered, vividly colored acrylics their devotion to historical authenticity, Bodmer (nos. 3 and 4),

convey both joy and nostalgia. This mixture of emotions is often Clymer (nos. 9 and 10), andTerpning (no. 12) would have
unexpected to the western viewer, since European cultures attempted to capture the minute details of the dancers’ cos-
usually associate nostalgia with melancholy. The woman and the tumes and gestures. In contrast, Nieto ignores these identifying
katsina are rendered in the style of ancient pictographs, evoking marks, and instead creates an iconic portrait of a single dancer’s
the timelessness of the Hopi culture. At the same time, the spiritual experience.

color and movement suggest that Hopi culture remains vibrant

today. Combining ancient Hopi symbols with modern European

painting, Lomahaftewa’s work becomes a meditation on the
unity of peoples and places, and breaks down the divisions that

Euro- American culture creates between body and spirit, nation

and nation, and past and future.

103
 No. 32
John Nieto (b. 1936)

Snake Dance, 1987

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 in.

Montclair Art Museum; Gift of Anita Stanford, 1994.43

104
 No. 33
I farry Fonseca (b. 1946)
Saint Coyote 1993
,

Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in.

Collection of the Fonseca Studio, Santa Fe

105
No. 33 l him Fonseca (b. 104(1) No. 34 Rick Bartow (b. 1946)
Suint Coyote, 1003 Die A/tersscbwacbe, 2001
Acrvlic on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Pastel and graphite on paper, 40 x 26 in.

Collection of the Fonseca Studio, Santa Fe Courtesy of Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon

Since 1079 , larrv Fonseca has painted the exploits of Coyote, Most of the work produced by the Native American Fine Art
the Native hero whose skill at disguising himself allows him to movement focuses on the political, social, and economic forces

plav tricks on the powers that be. In Fonseca’s work, Coyote that affect Native culture. Rick Bartow’s work, however, centers

appears as a hip. contemporary figure who sings doo-wop, on deeply personal issues. The artist struggles to define his place in

dances ballet, rides motorcycles, and sketches in Paris. By the world as a Yurok Indian who did not grow up on a reservation,
adorning the trickster with the trappings of American popular as a Vietnam veteran, and as a non-traditional artist. As a result,
culture. Fonseca parodies the dominant culture’s narrow view Bartow’s images do not fit neatly into established ethnic, cultural,

of Indians. Coyote often acts as the artist’s alter ego, appearing or stylistic categories. Drawing on expressionist works by Francis

as a biting satirist. Fonseca notes, “At times, Coyote is very Bacon, Lucien Freud, and Horst Janson, Bartow’s self-portraits use
plavtul and foolish-in that, there is a great freedom. However, I Native and Furopean visual languages to describe the subtle and
never forget he is wild, he is a dog, that he can bite very, very difficult processes of personal transformation.

hard: he is a survivor.” Bartow’s title is the German word for decay, dissolution,

In Saint Coyote, Coyote challenges the Catholic Church’s or decrepitude, but his figure does not appear in this state.
proposed canonization of Father Junipero Serra (1713-1784). Instead, the artist brings together his often-incompatible iden-

While Serra is an iconic figure in California history, his efforts to tities into a single, coherent image. Many of Bartow’s self-
colonize California for Spain and Christianize the natives con- portraits depict dramatic changes, merging the artist’s human
tributed to the deaths of thousands of Indians. From 1769 to figure with the bodies of sacred animals such as the raven,
1821. the indigenous population of California dropped from the coyote, and the salmon. Although Die Alterschwasse depicts

>0 to 200,000 due to epidemics, harsh work routines, and a subtler shift from bespectacled artist to a headdress-
the execution of resisters. Fonseca’s play on Renaissance wearing Indian, the vivid red and blue brushstrokes testify to

painting, with bemused, dog-faced putti floating above a check- the power of the transformation.

ered floor, was originally titled “Sorry, Father Serra, Only the
Best Coyotes Will Do.” Fonseca quips further that, “if anybody
is going to get to sainthood, it’s going to be Coyote before
Father Serra.”

106
 No. 34
Rick Bartow (b. 1946)
Die Altersschw ache 2001
,

Pastel and graphite on paper, 40 x 26 in.

Courtesy of Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon

107
wt*

No. 35
G. Peter Jcmison (b. 1945)

Made in Japan, 1994

Kgg tempera on coated rice paper, umbrella, 28 x 38 x 38 in.

Collection of the artist

108
No. 35 G. Peter Jemison (b. 1945) No. 36 Joe Cantrell (b. 1945)

Made in Japan, 1994 Authentic Indian II) Card 2002 ,

Egg tempera on coated rice paper, umbrella, Mixed media, 22 x 26 in.

28x38x38 in. Collection of the artist

Collection of the artist

Rather than allowing individuals to determine their own ethnic
According to the dominant archaeological model, humans came identity, the federal government imposes legal definitions of
to North America across a now-submerged causeway between indigenous heritage. Artists are required to prove official tribal

Asia and Alaska 12,000 years ago. Human skeletons that predate membership or a “Certified Degree of Indian Blood” before they
the first known remains of the northwestern tribes and appear to can identify their work as Indian art. While this law protects
have Caucasian features support this Land-Bridge theory. Some Native artists from cultural theft, the government’s use of a
Anglo groups in the West use the Land-Bridge theory to argue “blood quantum” as the standard for Native identity is problem-
that Indians, as migrants from Asia, have no more claim to the atic. Given that Native Americans have mixed with other peo-
land than later European settlers. ples for 500 years, it is difficult to determine anyone’s exact
In Northeast Indian creation myths, a turtle holds up the degree of indigenous genetic material.
world. By painting a turtle on ajapanese parasol, Peter Jemison Satirizing the government’s attempts to define his identity,

refers to the conflict between the scientific claim that humans Joe Cantrell creates in Authentic Indian ID Card his own docu
entered the American Northwest from Asia and the Northwest mentation. The artist labels a photograph of himself with his

Indian claim that their ancestors have lived in the region since Cherokee name, Agiyo. In his instructions for disposing of the
the dawn of time. bearer, Cantrell invents the “Treaty of I loaxalooser,” evoking the

Made inJapan also investigates the Japanese exploitation of government’s repeated attempts to profit from its control of
American Indian culture. Because the United States’ Indian Arts Indian people and their ancestral lands over the last 150 years.

and Crafts laws do not apply to foreign manufacturers, Japan is Cantrell’s self-portrait alludes to Edward Curtis’ widely

now the primary source of cheap replicas of Indian artifacts. criticized Indian photographs. Without regard for ethnographic

Indian art is far more lucrative for foreign companies than for accuracy, Curtis (1868-1954) dressed his subjects to match his

Indians, who rarely produce sacred objects for sale. By reducing idea of what an Indian should look like. Cantrell depicts himself
Native control over the production of Indian artifacts, Asian in the familiar pose of the “blanket Indian,” surrounded by an
manufacturers enable Anglos to consume the exotic elements of incongruous assemblage of artifacts, including a Sony laptop, a
Indian culture without grappling with the historic injustices and Laguna Pueblo blanket coat, and the rifle, bag, and powder
present-day inequalities that Indians experience. horns that his ancestors carried on the Trail of Tears. Cantrell
undermines the stereotype that Indians use traditional objects
rather than modern consumer goods, asking the viewer: do Nike
shoes become Indian artifacts when worn by a contemporary
Native American?

109
No. 3~ loc t anrreil (b. 104s) Mandan warrior, the feather denotes a wound sustained in battle.

Road Sign on the Trad ofTears, 2002 The turkey feather may hold the same meaning for the figure

Mixed media, approx. 8 \ 1 2 in. constructed here by Cantrell. The metal head is riddled with bul-

C ollection of the Artist let holes, but his elimination from history is an enduring injury
for this faceless warrior.

R .... Sign on the Trail of Icon is a work-in-progress and a medita- While Robert Buitron (no. 27), Peter Jemison (no. 26), and
tion on the distortions in America’s collective memory of the Alexis Smith (no. 23) place themselves within the pantheon of

past. The artist assembles found objects, photographic images, western-American heroes, Cantrell positions himself in opposi-
and constructed pieces that encapsulate events in the relation- tion to the “heroic” Indian fighter. The artist’s weapon of choice
ship between Indians anti Anglo Americans. Echoing the form of is ironic humor, instead of bald anger. Cantrell refers to Road Sign
a historic landmark. Roail Sign tells us more about America’s per- as “just a joke thrown back at whoever created the jokes of
ception of the past rather than the actual events that took place. treaties and promises.”
Cantrell begins with a photograph of the sign for Dead Indian
Memorial 1 lighway. Though originally named to honor the lives
of several slain Southern Oregon tribesmen, the name has an No. 38 Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940)
ambiguous w ording that could be understood as celebration for War Shirt, 1992
the deaths of anonvmous Indians. Oil and mixed media collage on canvas diptych, 60 x 84 in.

The lower marker features Andrew Jackson, who is simulta- Montclair Art Museum; Museum purchase; funds pro-

neously one of the most beloved and the most reviled American vided by Tamar and Emil Weiss and prior gifts of
presidents. I le is best remembered lor having democratized the Ronald B. Swart, 1993.27

American political process bv extending voting rights to white,

working-class men. Native Americans, however remember As early as the sixteenth century, prominent Plains Indian men
Jackson for passing the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Act decorated their buckskin shirts to commemorate their achieve-

forced 5,000 members of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, ments in battle. Elaborate stitching, thick fringe, swaths of

Chickasaw and Seminole nations to evacuate their ancestral green, blue, red, and yellow paint, feathers and locks of human
homelands and w alk 1,200 miles to Indian Territory (present-day hair from vanquished enemies adorned the shirts. As a result, the

Oklahoma.) An estimated 4,000 Native Americans died from shirts became biographical records of the distinguished men who

hunger, exposure, disease, and violence at the hands of soldiers. wore them. Quick-to-See Smith adorns her War Shirt with seem-
Cantrell, who is descended from one of the survivors, discovered ingly random images of Indians from Cold War era advertise-
in 1995 that his ancestor and namesake, Joe Martin, died along ments and product labels. The original shirt’s biographical

the Trail. richness is replaced with anonymous stereotypes. The shirt also
Rood Sign on the Trail ofTears is Cantrell’s ironic tribute to his appears to be standing, but there is no warrior to wear it. By sepa-
fallen ancestor and the beloved President. The piece renames the rating the shirt from its owner, the artist emphasizes the efface-
Trail ofTears the “Andrew Jackson Scenic Wilderness Trail.” The ment of the individual’s Indian identity.

sign is shot through with a .50 caliber caplock (the assault rifle of Today, the Indian war shirt has become a coveted commer-
choice in the 1830’s) like the pockmarked signs lining western cial item. Specialty outlets sell buckskin war shirts for around
highways. But Cantrell’s “vandalism” also involved stringing red $1,000, while other stores offer patterns based on museum
plastic beads with mirrors through the holes, to commemorate pieces. This market feeds nostalgia for the Old West by allowing
the bloodshed and tears, and for viewers to see their reflection in Anglos to purchase exotic objects without coming into contact
that pool. with contemporary Plains Indians. Just as the logos on Quick-to-
Cantrell added the aluminum “head” that peers from behind See Smith’s shirt are more present than the figure wearing it, the

t he signi well into the creative process. Like Bodmer’s Mato-Tope commercial war shirts make Native Americans even less

no 4;, Cantrell s Indian observer wears a turkey feather. l or the visible in our culture.

IK)
 IN K U.S. GOVERNMENT CERTIFIED INDIAN
Under the Treaty of Hoaxalooser, 1623, as amended in

various subsequent documents, the U.v.

certifies this person to be a genuine indigenous person

of the Oklahoma Cherokee persuasion, number:

CO130814.
The Great White Bushwhacker avers that every sex-
ual encounter of all this person’s ancestors since 1492
has been recorded and the heritage of all those folks
was absolutely known, and the results verified, and
recorded. GWB further promises, honest Injun, that
THIS time, he ain’t lying, no shit.

Please treat this Indian in the correct way. If he gets

uppity, he should be disciplined like any sealawag. If
he has to be shot or lynched, preserve the ears and
check for tattoos. They eould be collectible, might even
be worth something.
BAR CODE:
Agiyo: His mark moonshine

Useful facts about this Indian

He/His tribe has/ain’t got (eirele as applicable)
1. Casino^-Casino that makes money
2. Land worth taking, mining, storing nucular waste or nerve
gas, growing blackberries, ehiggers and poison snakes on, or just
worthless reservation to bomb for practice.
3. Communicable diseases or the ones not to be worried about like
drinking, drugging, depression, genetie PTSD and other
natural processes: nature’s way of killing off lesser speeies
4. Tattoos worth tanning for 01’ Hickry House
5. A tin pony newer than 1982 or a color other than brown
6. Anything else of value to sivilized people
t. Visible traditions worth stealing

No. 36
Joe Cantrell (b. 1945)

Authentic Indian ID Card 2002 ,

Mixed media, 22 x 26 in.

Collection of" the artist

 No. 37
Joe Cantrell (b. 1945)

Road Sign on the Trail of Tears, 2002

Mixed media, approx. 8x12 in.

Collection of the Artist

I 12
 No. 38

Jaunc Quick-to-See Smith (b. 1940)

War Shirt, 1992
Oil and mixed media collage on canvas diptych, 60 x 84 in.

Montclair Art Museum; Museum purchase; funds provided by Tamar and Emil Weiss and prior gifts of Ronald B. Swart, 1993.27

113
 PHOTOGRAPHS HAVE BEEN PROVIDED COURTESY OF:

Gan’ Gilbert, Office of Marketing Communications, Boston College; nos.i, 24,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; no. 2

Dann Coffey, John J. McMullen Collection; nos. 3-12.

Montclair Art Museum; nos. 32 and 38 and Peter Jacobs; no. 31

Joe Cantrell; nos. 36, 37.

Liz Lerma; no. 17

Robert Buitron; nos. 27, 28.

Adam Reich; no. 21

Earl Kage; no. 35

Kevin Vickers; no. 26

Paula Goldman; no. 22

Douglas M. Parker Studio; no. 23

Ikon Ltd., Santa Monica, CA; nos. 29, 30.

Scott Lindgren; no. 19

Chris Autio; no. 18

Kim Harrington; no. 14

Rebekah Johnson; no. 34

Dana Salvo; no. 13

University of Michigan Museum of Art; fig. 1

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.,Paul Mellon Collection; fig. 2

Keep America Beautiful, Inc.; fig. 3

The Anschutz Collection, Malcomb Varon; fig. 4

Office of Marketing and Communications, Boston College; figs. 5, 15.

Newberry Library, Chicago; fig. 6

Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, U of Texas, Austin, Rick Hall; fig 7

Buffalo Bill Historical Society, Cody, WY; figs. 8, 11, 13.

Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; figs. 9, 10.

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; fig. 12

Arlington Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA; fig. 14

Cowboy Artists of America Museum, Kerrville, TX; fig. 16

MCMULLEN MUSEUM OF ART
BOSTON COLLEGE

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