ART REVIEW : Exhibits of the Old West Reach New Frontiers

Those with a passing familiarity with Western art tend to assume that the genre begins and ends with a Frederic Remington bronze of a cowboy on a bucking bronc. However, as is revealed in newly opened exhibitions at the Southwest Museum and the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Western art has a few other tricks up its sleeve.

Philip F. Anschutz’s 90-piece collection, on view at the Autry Museum through March 26, includes works by modernist painters Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Stuart Davis and Jackson Pollock.

The Southwest Museum’s exhibition of Carl S. Dentzel’s 40-piece collection (to March 25) features a painting by Sitting Bull. Jackson Pollock and Sitting Bull? Chroniclers of the Old West? This is but one of the revelations that emerge in these illuminating shows.

Titled “The Lure of the West” and “Masterpieces of the American West,” the shows, respectively, at the Southwest and the Autry museums include plenty of meat-and-potatoes Western art. The grand dame of New Mexico, Georgia O’Keeffe, is present and accounted for with two stunning landscapes at the Autry, and Remington and Charles M. Russell are generously represented as well. From there, the shows take some unexpected detours, the biggest one being a broad swing through Europe.

The Western frontier was like a magnet to adventurous souls during its golden period, and a large percentage of the artists represented here were transplanted Europeans. Those who weren’t from Europe usually studied there prior to setting up their easels on the lone prairie; consequently, the European painting conventions of the day--central among them being a strong bias toward the heroic--had a profound effect on Western art.

In viewing these shows, one is struck by an idealization of reality that echoed what was happening in the European academy of the period. Alfred Jacob Miller’s “The Buffalo Hunt,” for instance, is an astonishingly lyrical depiction of slaughter. William Tylee Ranney’s group portrait “Boone’s First View of Kentucky” is replete with adorable puppy dogs and bubbles with the squeaky-clean optimism of Norman Rockwell, while Albertus del Orient Browere’s “Gold Prospectors” shows us a cherubic bunch straight out of Disney.

Many Western artists prided themselves on historical accuracy and intended that their work perform the primary duty of photography and inform the viewer about the way things looked.

James Walker’s “California Vaqueros” is essentially an embellished fashion illustration, bent as it is on recording every golden thread on elaborate period costumes. A somewhat obsessive painter, Walker worked with the touch of a Photo-Realist and his “Judges of the Plains” is noteworthy for its painstaking depiction of cow drool.

Similarly, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait built his reputation on his meticulously correct renderings and his work was widely published by Currier and Ives. (Many of these artists were known in their day for a particular area of expertise--William Jacob Hays, for example, specialized in painting large herds of buffalo).

Both Anschutz’s and Dentzel’s collections are composed for the most part of portraiture, battle and genre scenes and landscapes, many of which are mawkishly sentimental. While the occasional landscape shows us something new--Fortunato Arriola’s sensual “Tropical Landscape” telegraphs the heavy eroticism of the Spanish influence in the West--the style of sublime landscape painting associated with Alfred Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and John Mix Stanley seems oddly dull. These images of breathtaking vistas that once represented human ideals have been exploited by the mass media to the point that they’ve been all but drained of content; when we see them now we think of Southwest Airlines and Wells Fargo Bank.

The dramatic landscapes may be a bit of a snore, but both shows feature numerous oddball pieces that are worth seeking out. Burger Sandzen’s “Colorado Mountain” is an electrified interpretation of nature a la Van Gogh, while Jackson Pollock’s 1938 figurative abstraction “Man, Bull, Bird” is fascinating by virtue of the fact that it has but the slightest trace of Pollock’s trademark style.

William Jacob Hays’ “Prairie Fire and Buffalo Stampede” resonates with the dark, surging power of a bad dream, while George Catlin’s “Mystery Lodge” is perhaps the most poignant piece on view. Depicting an exotic medicine man ritual, this modest canvas brings home the point that America’s only native mystical heritage has been all but extinguished. Mother Nature hasn’t fared too well at the hands of the white man either, and one comes away from this journey through the Old West struggling to believe that the land we see in these paintings is the same land we’re living in today.