The Rage for Cowboy Art

In the Western states, prices are soaring for contemporary paintings that dφict cowboy and Indian themes. The best Western artists are now ready to storm the ramparts of the Eastern Establishment.

BY JOSHUA GILDER

ou can tell a successful cowboy the bend in your knee." medium-sized oil by Clark Heulings artist by the boots that line the floor Not, as you might think, to keep out went for a record $310,000, the most ever Yof his closet: snakeskin, elephant scorpions. This is purely a question of paid at auction for the work of a living ear, lizard, eel, and the aristocrat of cow­ fashion. These are "party" boots, for artist. Some grumbling was heard that boy boots, ostrich, the ones all covered wearing to occasions like the annual Jim Fowler, the Phoenix art dealer who with little black bumps where they pulled Western Heritage Sale, an auction of made the winning bid, already owned out the feathers. Gary Niblett, at 38 the Western art held every spring in the lobby some 20 Heulings and was trying to youngest member of the prestigious of the Shamrock Hilton in downtown inflate the value of his stock. ABC's Cowboy Artists of America, has his Houston. Attended by big oil money, big 20/20 was there to interview him, and boots custom-made. He pulls up his jeans cattle money, and prominent politicians one Santa Fe dealer remarked that if leg to reveal a shiny black expanse of (John Connally, a long-time enthusiast Fowler had known that he was going to sharkskin running up the length of his of Western art, is a sponsor), the sale is be on TV, he would have bid a million. calf. "It's real important,"he explains, "to held in high Texas style: Prime beef cattle Whatever Fowler's ambitions, the get the high ones that come right below and prize quarterhorses take turns on the Western art market hardly needed his auction block with paintings by the most added boost. In the last five years, prices Joshua Gilder is an associate editor ofSaturday Review. popular Western artists. Last year a for Western art have started to soar with

"The Rookie Bronc Rider" (1974) by (inset): A clear-eyed chronicler of contemporary Western life.

"Dust of Many Pony SoIdiers"(1981)by Howard Terpning(ins( In the tradition of Charles Russell and . PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED no end in sight. At the same auction, an To some extent, the success of these sense the growth of Western art is a oil by sold for $191,000 and contemporary artists is a reflection of popular movement, and it is one particu­ the year before one by sold what Peter B. Rathbone, head of the larly tuned to the country's Volksgeist. If for $100,000. The boom is all the more American Painting Department at existing museums won't hang cowboy striking considering thai 20 years ago Sotheby Parke Bernet, calls the "explo­ art, enthusiasts will build their own. Ex- Western art had virtually no market at sive" growth of 19th-century Western Governors Connally and Dolph Briscoe all. A few isolated artists plied their art. Once extremely popular. Western art of Texas and Senator Barry Goldwater lonely trade, with no public to mention went into a long decline that lasted well of Arizona are all honorary chairmen of a and absolutely no critical recognition. into the 1960s. Frederic Remington's new museum in Kerrville, Texas, being Gordon Snidow, famous for the Coors bronze "Coming Through the Rye" (of built especially to house the work of the cowboy poster that adorns just about which only five of the 12 or so that were Cowboy Artists of America. every store in the West that sells beer, says cast are still in private hands) sold 20 that when he was starting out, there was years ago for $12,000. In 1972 it brought hen people in the West speak only one gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, $175,000, then a record price for an of Western art, they mean that handled cowboy art. Now there are American bronze. Today, Rathbone esti­ Wrealist art with Western themes more than 30, and other centers have mates, it could easily bring $500,000, and or subject matter. In the forefront of grown up in neighboring Phoenix and Remington oils have already hit the $1- Western artists are those who call them­ around the Santa Fe-Taos axis. The million mark. These prices, in turn, are selves cowboy artists, and the elite of this movement has matured to the point part of the increased popularity of all group are the members of the Cowboy where it has even begun to spawn its own American art. Rathbone points out that Artists of America. Non-members such criticism, and several magazines have his department recently passed the as Clark Heulings, whose work tends sprung up to cover the art and events: Impressionists, until then the most popu­ more toward Mexican village scenes, and Artists of the Rockies / Golden West, Art lar, in its total number of subscribers. Wilson Hurley, a painter of panoramic West, The Santa Fean, and others. Popu­ Certainly Americans in general are show­ Western landscapes, credit the C A A with lar artists can't paint fast enough to keep ing an increased interest in their heritage, opening up the Western market. The and this plays a part in the overall expan­ up with the demand for paintings that CAA was founded in Sidona, Arizona, in sion of the market. regularly sell for $30,000 to $50,000, and 1965. Five artists, gathered together at often tell of being booked two or three Contemporary Western art, however, the Oak Creek Tavern before starting out years in advance. Western artists are has grown up independently of the art on a trail ride, decided to form an associa­ learning the pleasures and perils of celeb- Establishment. Most major Eastern mu­ tion, styling their bylaws on those of the rityhood; they appear on the Merv Grif­ seums and galleries have to this day Sidona Sheriffs Posse. They outlined fin show with Burt Reynolds (an avid remained completely indifferent: An several objectives, among them "to per­ collector), go trail riding with Clint East­ exhibition of cowboy art being organized petuate the memory and culture of the wood, and party with Linda Grey of out West is having trouble finding a Old West as typified by Frederic Rem­ Dallas. Many also find themselves for the home for a planned visit to New York ington, Charles Russell, and others,"and first time in their lives in the position of City in 1983. Many critics refuse even to "to insure the authentic representation of having their taxes audited. recognize Western art as art. In a real the life of the West, as it was and as it is."

"Headin' for the Barn" (1981) by Gordon Snidow (insetj: Celebrating the frontier spirit- painting people, as Remington once described it, "with the bark still on them."

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PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Niblett wears a special "CA" belt buckle "Long Cold Winter" (1981) by John Clymer (inset): big enough to sink him like a stone if he Known for his carefully researched, detailed, historical paintings. ever fell in the water. Harvey Johnson will lovingly show you his Colt six shooter, one of a limited series made by Colt especially for the Cowboy Artists. It has ivory handles and elegant gold engraving on its coal-black steel, and though it has perfect balance, it would seem a sacrilege to shoot the thing. Cowboy art, like any school of art, varies widely in quality. Five artists stand out, either for the quality of their work, the prices they command, or both: • Gordon Snidow, 44, is perhaps the best cowboy artist around today. He has a lucrative contract with Coors beer that dates back to 1979 when the company spotted his painting, "Colorado Kool- aid," a picture of a cowboy takinga break from bronco busting with a can of Coors The artists of the CAA emulate Rem­ was also felt that cowboy artists should beer in his hand. A native of the ington's and Russell's action-filled paint­ be cowboys as well as artists, so today, Southwest, Snidow now lives near the ings, blending a romantic vision of the with their membership grown to 23, the Jicarilla Apache reservation in Ruidoso, Old West with an historically accurate CAA still gets together every year for a New Mexico. In places like this there are depiction of that way of life: Every saddle week-long trail ride. still real-life cowboys outside of rodeos, girth is tied correctly, every feather in an The success of the CAA has inspired and it is their life that Snidow depicts in Indian's war bonnet is in place and of the the formation of several other artists' his excellent gouaches. Snidow avoids proper species. In Howard Terpning's associations, among them the National the criticism sometimes leveled at his col­ "Dust of Many Pony Soldiers," for in­ Association of Western Artists, the leagues—that their historical paintings stance, an anthropologist could tell by Northwest Rendezvous Group, and are derivative of Russell and Reming­ the warriors' clothing which tribe they Women Artists of the American West. ton—by painting only his contempora­ belonged to. Still, membership in the CAA remains ries, giving his paintings an immediacy and importance absent from paintings The CAA decided early on that the the most coveted: The "CA" brand after that draw their subject matter from the subject matter of cowboy artists was to be an artist's signature automatically raises past. His handling of paint, especially in cowboys. This included, by extension, the value of his painting several thousand his figures, is sometimes reminiscent of Indians, and the mountain men that Har­ dollars, and the increased visibility of the , whom Snidow con­ vey Johnson has made his specialty—but annual CAA show can only help sales. But mostly it's a matter of pride. Gary siders one of the great American populist not landscapes and animal pictures. It artists; but Snidow's own work goes far beyond illustration with his sophisti­ cated handling of light and his perceptive •PiliiHi^^i^lHHB/^ jl^n^^^^H characterization. "Headin'for the Barn" "^BM^^^^^HI^^T(whicI h sold for $40,(XX)) won the 1981 •'^'v^vw'^' 4ek.'''*'*" .'^^PJ»,-^* gold medal for "other media" at the CAA show. • Gary Niblett is the rising star of the CAA. Niblett is a cowboy born and bred, and he has a scar above his right eye, given him by a Brahmin bull in his first and last rodeo, to prove it. ("I was doing Mt just fine," he says, "until they opened the . -'M gate.") After school, Niblett moved to ^ Los Angeles where he worked as a back­ t^r ground artist on such cartoon classics as The Flintstones and Jack and the Bean­ stalk , devoting all of his spare hours to his serious painting. It was in Los Angeles ν^.'ί**"· that he met his beautiful Polish-emigree wife, Monika. She and their young daughter often pose for Niblett; together they make up the mourning family in "Typhoid," the hit of last year's CAA "On the Trail of the Deer" (1981) by Gary Niblett (inset): A show. Niblett, whose paintings sell for up contemporary scene of Indian hunters in New Mexico. to $30,000, paints contemporary scenes

34 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG Saturday Review/January 1982 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED as well. "On the Trail of the Deer" is a owboy art can trace its roots back genous American art: After all, it has a modern-day scene of Indiarr hunters on at least as far as the early 19th cen­ history almost as long as this country's. the reservation near his home in Angel Ctury, when George Catlin, per­ But if you trace the lineage oi modernist Fire, New Mexico. Niblett's work is haps the greatest Western artist of all American art—the kind the Whitney infused with a sense of the land and a time, took his paints and brushes and favors—you 11 soon find yourself back in simple, direct relation to the people ventured into the wilderness in the com­ Paris among the Cubists. The museum among whom he grew up. pany of William Clark (of Lewis and has in the past held exhibitions that • Howard Terpning, 54, grew up in Mis­ Clark). His close observations of the included Russells and Remingtons, but souri, Iowa, and Texas. The newest beautifully savage country molded a new they represent history and are not likely member of the CAA, he has already and powerful aesthetic, one that incoφo- to challenge accepted notions of what collected his share of medals and awards; rated the sweep of the plains and the contemporary art is all about. It's not just "Dust of Many Pony Soldiers," which primitive dynamism of the people who that today's cowboy artists paint realism, sold for $47,000, won him Best of Show lived there. His portraits of Indian chiefs and often in a narrative mode. This award at last November's annual CAA are noble, and his paintings of scenes such would present no problem to critics and show. The past six years, Terpning has as "Buffalo Hunting" are full of action curators if they could get the right devoted much of his time to painting and bravery, and for all the smallness of theoretical fix on it. Various forms of historical pictures of the Plains Indians, the canvas, they have tremendous scope. realism have been in fashion on and off at whose life he portrays less through action Catlin was, as well, deeply concerned with least since the photo-realists, and "narra­ and narrative than through his fine, dra­ preserving in his art a record of the Indian tive" art is now all the rage. But cowboy matic rendering of light and place. race he greatly admired but feared to be art, one suspects, will always remain •John Clymer, 74, produced more than doomed. As such, Catlin was as much unacceptable. 100 covers for the Saturday Evening Post ethnographer as artist. The problem is that cowboy art is before turning his attention exclusively Remington and Russell continued the unequivocably stating values, precisely the sort of values that are going to dis­ comfort refined aesthetes who are per­ Cowboy art is unequivocably stating values, the fectly at home with the violence of Punk American middle-class values of striving and art. Gordon Snidow summed it up when he described the success of Western art as prospering, optimism and individualism. largely a middle-class phenomenon. Where he grew up in New Mexico, says to Western subjects. He is the most tradition of painter as historian into the Snidow, before World War II, people expensive cowboy artist, with his 1981 early 1900s, though by the time they got didn't necessarily think in terms of finish­ oil, "Long Cold Winter," which won a there the West they were chronicling was ing high school. After the war, all these silver medal at the last CAA show, selling mostly a thing of the past. But as with people could suddenly afford to go to for the astounding nonauction price of Catlin, the innate drama of the land college. They could start thinking about $150,000. His historical scenes, which he inspired a dramatic (some critics say art for the first time, maybe even attend a still executes much in the narrative style melodramatic) response. Indians attack few art appreciation courses. In the West, of the old Saturday Evening Post illustra­ stagecoaches, or ambush cavalry, and so "middle class" isnt a derogatory term. It's tions, are often built around common­ on. Their narrative art found an imme­ almost synonymous with America. Just place, telling incidents. diate public sympathy. Both Remington as these people are unabashedly patri­ •James Bama, 55, now lives with his and Russell made their livings at first otic, they want their art to reflect their family on the southern fork of the Sho­ selling illustrations to the popular week­ values, the American middle-class values shone River in 's primeval "Big lies of the day: Collier's, Scribner's, of striving and prospering, of optimism Horn" country; but until the age of 41 he Harper's, Century. and individualism. They relate these worked in as a commer­ Such present stars of the CAA as Tom values, perhaps romantically, to the cial artist. Bama is a loner. He's not a Lovell, Howard Terpning, Harvey John­ frontier spirit, what Remington was de­ member of the CAA or any other artists' son, and Frank McCarthy also started scribing when he said he wanted to paint group, and he's rare among the many out as professional illustrators, mostly in people "with the bark still on them." cowboy artists who have come out of New York City, and even the real cow­ One of the guiding principles of mod­ New York in maintaining his ties back boys among them, Niblett and Snidow, ernism (it will probably hold true for East. He still sells all his workthroughthe worked long years as commercial artists. "post-modernism" too) is that it is anti- Coe Kerr Gallery in New York City, for While it's something they're glad they no bourgeois, from the Surrealists' call, prices ranging from $35,000 to $75,000. longer have to do, most of them look on "Epater les bourgeois,'" to the Abstract- Bama's best paintings—though not his their commercial work as a valuable Expressionist movement away from most popular— are his studies of con­ apprenticeship in the demanding tech­ "bourgeois easel painting." Cowboy art, temporaries as contemporaries, rather niques of realism. regardless of its artistic merits, could than the Hiawatha maidens (his biggest never be assimilated into this history. seller in reproduction) or the locals who hat are the chances of the cow­ Perhaps it's just as well. There is more like to dress up weekends as mountain boy artists breaching the ram­ than one current in art history, and while men. In his rodeo scenes, such as "The parts of such a highbrow insti­ modernism seems to be getting lost in the Rookie Bronc Rider," and his pictures of W tution as the Whitney when they bring ever proliferating eddies along the way. the young Indians at Wounded Knee, their exhibition East next year? It is, of Western art's current is running strong Bama achieves a purity of light and a course, the Whitney Museum oi Ameri­ and picking up momentum. It does, after smoothness of tone that transcend the can Art, and certainly a strong case could all, have the tremendous advantage that limitations of his photo-realist style. be made that Western art is the truly indi­ many people like it. •

Saturday Review/January 1982 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG 35 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Why Baryshnikov Is Under Fire

As a dancer, he*s still a superstar. But as the director of the American Ballet Theatre, he has alienated many soloists in the company and badly staged the great Russian classics.

BY WALTER TERRY

n stage, Mikhail Although inexperienced as Baryshnikov contin­ a director, Baryshnikov jumped Oues to step, spin, and into his new job with enthusi­ soar with the smoothness that asm. In a matter of three or has marked him as one of the four months, he began to place great dancers of this century. his mark on the company (SR, Behind the scenes, however, February 1981). The corps de all is not so smooth, for there is ballet, which had been under- a vast difference in the duties rehearsed in previous seasons, required of Baryshnikov the emerged as a finely polished superstar and Baryshnikov unit. The national dances (for the new and still inexperienced example, a czardas or a ma­ director (15 months) of the zurka), important to such American Ballet Theatre. 19th-century classics as Swan There is criticism, both Lake and Raymonda, were inside and outside ABT, that now done with a style and Baryshnikov, 34, has badly flourish that had eluded most overhauled the great Russian American dancers in the past classics, especially Swan Lake but in which Russians have and Giselle. Moreover, the long excelled. Baryshnikov dancers themselves complain also stressed the accent-on- that he has dangerously youth approach by entrusting thinned out the ranks" of the many leading roles, even on major soloists—those dancers opening nights, to dancers still who have graduated from the in their teens. corps but are not yet "stars." But with these positives i And finally, many ABT danc­ Baryshnikov: "We hardly even see him," complains one dancer have come negatives. Barysh- ers grumble that Baryshnikov nikov's changes have alienated is too remote, too inaccessible to be an of 1980, his qualifications for thejob were many of his dancers, especially the senior effective director. "Ballet Theatre is my almost exclusively rooted in his personal soloists, those in their late 2()s and early home and I love it," says Fernando prestige as a dancer. A young star of 30s, who are complaining that they are Bujones, an ABT star. "But it is very Leningrad's Kirov Ballet, he had defected not being used enough and not given a different from what it used to be. Pushing to the West in 1974, performed with ABT chance to dance principal roles. Rebecca aside the mature soloists makes foravery for a time, switched his loyalties to Wright, one of ABT's most highly bad gap. And I don't agree at all with the George Balanchine's New York City praised soloists, quit the company last changes Misha has made in the classics." Ballet for a year, and returned to ABT month in frustration. In their consis­ When Baryshnikov assumed the direc­ shortly before he was tapped by the tently rave reviews of her performances, torship of the 40-year-old ABT in the fall board of trustees of the Ballet Theatre critics had often complained that she was Foundation to succeed Lucia Chase and being underused by Baryshnikov. "I had Walter Terry is the dance critic for Saturday no illusions or hopes for promotion," she Review. Oliver Smith, co-directors since 1945.

36 PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG Saturday Review/January 1982 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED