"The Advance," Frederic
Remington, 1896-98. Oil on canvas from the collection of the
Desert Caballeros Western Museum.
NORMAN, OKLA. - "," a major loan exhibition devoted to the two
most celebrated and influential artists of the American West is
on view at the University of Oklahoma's Fred Jones Jr. Museum of
Art through December 9.
Garnered from 42 public and private collections in the United
States, the selection of sixty-seven works includes many of the
artists' most celebrated paintings and sculptures, such as
Remington's "Cheyenne" and "The Outlaw," and Russell's "A Bronc
Twister" and "Counting Coup," as well as rarely exhibited
drawings, photographs, letters, and other documents.
Together these reveal how, despite striking similarities in
subject matter and style, the art of Remington and Russell
frequently reflects fundamentally different attitudes towards the
West, its people, and its place in America's future.
Remington, the Yale-educated Easterner, studied art with teachers
trained at the prestigious French Academy in Paris, and saw the
American frontier as a wild place to be tamed; for Russell, the
self-taught "cowboy artist" from Montana, the West was a paradise
to be preserved. Yet collectively, despite these differences,
their work projected an image - still very much with us today -
of the West as a place that cultivated and tested the
quintessentially American virtues of self-reliance, hard work,
and physical courage.
"This in-depth and thought-provoking comparison of the work of
Remington and Russell is long overdue," states Eric M. Lee,
director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. "It will stand as a
landmark in the study of Western art and in our appreciation of
two of its most gifted and influential exponents. This should be
a fascinating exhibition for anyone interested in our
ever-changing perceptions of the American West."
"A Bronc Twister," Charles M. Russell, 1920. Bronze sculpture
from the collection of the Montana Historical Society.
Curator of the exhibition is Peter Hassrick, a leading authority
on the art of Remington and Russell. Hassrick recently retired
from his position as the Charles Marion Russell Professor of
American Western Art and Director of the Charles M. Russell
Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the
University of Oklahoma. Dr Lee is curator in charge of the
exhibition at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. The exhibition is
organized by the Trust for Museum Exhibitions, Washington, D.C.
The first half of the exhibition explores in detail how the
artists' respective perceptions of the West evolved; the kinds of
artistic as well as cultural influences they absorbed; their rise
to fame; and public and personal reactions to their shared
celebrity. The balance of the exhibition comprises thematic
groupings that allow visitors to compare and contrast the
artists' portrayals of such subjects as the cowboy, Native
Americans, and women.
The exhibition begins by evoking the distinct personalities of
its two subjects. A photograph of Remington, circa 1902, shows a
portly gentleman, nattily attired in a derby hat and posed with
his cane and gloves. In obvious contrast is a 1907 photograph of
Russell in a cowboy hat, his jaw firmly set and a faraway look in
his eyes.
The introductory section also includes works typifying their
respective artistic styles and approaches. For example,
Remington's "The Discovery" (1908), in which two riders in the
prairie suddenly come upon human skeletons, illustrates his flair
for theatrical scenes suggestive of danger and unseen enemies.
Russell's "The Buffalo Herd" (circa 1890), in which several
generations of buffalo lumber peacefully towards a waterhole,
reflects his gentler and more idyllic view of the West.
An Unwitting Rivalry
Although Remington and Russell never consciously competed,
comparisons of their work were inevitable, and each artist had
his own coterie of detractors and supporters.
This section focuses on the efforts by the press and the public
to promote a sense of rivalry between Remington and Russell. On
view is Remington's famous bronze "Broncho Buster" (1895),
criticized by Russell's supporters as inaccurate in its portrayal
of a rearing horse. Displayed alongside it is Russell's allegedly
more correct sculpture of a bucking horse, "A Bronc Twister"
(1920).
East Meets West
Remington and Russell are thought to have met only once, in 1904.
Yet they clearly knew and learned from each other's work. This
section explores the nature of their artistic relationship, and
includes Russell's first bronze, "Smoking Up" (1904), a figure of
a cowboy shooting his gun in the air, that owes much in pose and
spirit to one of the rollicking cowboys in Remington's bronze
"Coming Thru the Rye" (first cast in 1903; represented here by a
posthumous cast of circa 1912-13).
Early Life in the West
As young men, both Remington and Russell went West in search of
adventure and self-identity. An 1883 photograph of Remington
(aged about 22), in rumpled jeans and shirt, was made during the
year he spent in Kansas operating a sheep ranch; displayed nearby
is the watercolor of his property, proudly inscribed "My Ranch."
The enterprise was a failure, and he subsequently embarked on a
career as an artist-correspondent with the military. Russell, on
the other hand, arrived in Montana Territory in 1880, when he was
only fifteen, and spent more than a decade working as a night
wrangler for various cattle operations. A photograph of 1884
shows him in full cowboy regalia - a buckskin jacket, chaps, and
hip holster.
Roosevelt, Remington, & Russell
Another section is devoted to a pivotal event in Remington's
rising career as an artist - the commission to illustrate the
book Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, written by another
Easterner with a love of the West, Theodore Roosevelt.
Published in 1888, this account of Roosevelt's youthful
experiences as a rancher in the Dakotas - replete with Indian
battles, frontier town shoot-outs, and bronco busting - was
enormously popular. It established Remington's reputation as the
preeminent illustrator of the American West.
Faded Dreams of the West
The exhibition makes clear both artists were keenly - and sadly -
aware that they were portraying a West and a way of life that
were rapidly disappearing. In Remington's painting "An Indian
Dream" (1898), he addresses this subject in a poetic and rather
theatrical manner - a lone Indian rider is shown against a
ghostlike backdrop of warrior braves in headdresses. Russell
evokes the Old West with greater specificity, as in his bronze
depiction of "Jim Bridger" (1929): The last of the legendary
mountain men, Bridger had died in 1881, soon after Russell's
arrival in the West.
Taming the West
Depictions of violent encounters between man and nature also
figure prominently in the work of Remington and Russell, both of
whom glorified the West as a place to test one's mettle and
masculinity. But, here again, there are important differences.
Remington's figures tend to show confidence and supremacy, as in
"The Outlaw" (1906), a bronze portrayal of a man dominating a
wild horse. By contrast, man's victory over nature is often less
certain in Russell's work, as exemplified in his painting "The
Broken Rope" (1904), in which a cowboy and his horse are downed
by a charging steer.
Women and the West
The exhibition turns to a subject that Russell readily embraced
and Remington tended to avoid - women. Russell's numerous
portrayals of domestic life, both among the white settlers and
the Indians, often included women. His paintings also - and
rather daringly for the time - acknowledged the existence of
interracial marriages in the West, as in his "Cowboy Bargaining
for an Indian Girl" (1895). The omission of women in so much of
Remington's work reflected his conviction that the West was
primarily a man's world; nonetheless, the exhibition includes a
strikingly beautiful exception, a nocturnal tryst entitled
"Waiting in the Moonlight" (1907).
Portraying Native Americans
A number of Russell's paintings, such as "On the Warpath" (1895)
and "Horse Thieves" (1901), illustrate his tendency to portray
Indians on their own terms, with empathy and respect.
Russell was, in fact, a serious student of Indian ways and formed
an especially close bond with the Piegan tribe. A vigorous, early
bronze entitled "Counting Coup" (1907) shows the Piegan warrior
Medicine-Whip vanquishing Sioux horse thieves.
Remington's images of Native Americans also reflect an admiration
for their physical prowess and bravery. Initially, however, he
tended to portray them from a white man's perspective. A case in
point is the watercolor "Cheyenne Scout" (1890), which shows an
Indian rider in military garb - a clear reference to Remington's
belief that mustering young Indian men into the US Army was an
effective way to assimilate them into American life.
The horrific experiences of the Spanish-American War (1898), in
which Remington served as an artist-correspondent, seem to have
left him with a heightened sympathy for Indians and their
imperiled way of life. "When His Heart Is Bad," painted in 1908,
a year before Remington's own death, shows an aged Indian
warrior, seated alone on a hillside, silhouetted against the
setting sun.
The Cowboy, an Icon of National Identity
Up until the 1880s, the cowboy was widely decried as a morally
dissolute and dangerous member of society. This section reveals
how Remington and Russell both helped to transform the cowboy's
image into a heroic emblem of American manhood and, ultimately,
an icon of national identity.
Remington led the way with such images as "Prairie Fire" (circa
1885), a thrilling scene of a cowboy driving a panic-stricken
herd of cattle to safety. "The Rattlesnake" (bronze, 1904), in
which a rider deftly controls his horse as it suddenly shies from
a coiled serpent, suggests the kind of everyday perils in a
cowboy's path.
Russell also celebrated the skill and gritty courage of the
cowboy, although he tended to provide more detailed accounts of
actual cowboy work. In his "Capturing the Grizzly" (1901), a
cowboy reins in his terrified horse with one hand and expertly
throws a lasso over the snarling bear's head with the other.
Russell's cowboy heroes could also be engagingly human and
fallible, as exemplified in his bronze "Where the Best of Riders
Quit" (1920), which shows a cowboy sliding down the back of a
nearly vertical rearing horse.
Ethnic Diversity in Remington's and Russell's Art
Native Americans were not the only non-whites in the West, and
Remington and Russell were unusual in the degree to which they
included other ethnic types in their frontier scenes. Indeed,
Remington was the only prominent Western artist to celebrate the
important role African Americans played in the military efforts
on the frontier.
This section features two notable examples, "Captain Dodge's
Colored Troopers to the Rescue" (circa 1890) and "The Advance"
(1896-98). Unlike many other contemporary artists, Remington and
Russell also included the Hispanic cowboy in their works. In
Russell's painting "Mexican Buffalo Hunters" (1924), his
admiration for the brilliantly colored attire and graceful
horsemanship of the vaqueros is apparent. (He once remarked that,
next to Mexican cowboys, the Anglo cowpunchers "look like hay
diggers.")
Curiously, neither artist painted Black cowboys, despite the fact
that an estimated one-third of all cowboys were African American.
Vintage 1910 photograph of Charles Russell painting from the
collection of the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue,
written by Hassrick and published by the Trust for Museum
Exhibitions.
"" completes its national tour at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of
Art. It was previously seen at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art;
the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Fla.; the Portland
(Oregon) Art Museum; and the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa
Ana, Calif.
Founded in 1936, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art houses a
collection of approximately 6,500 objects, ranging from old
master to modern and contemporary art.
Last year, the collection was greatly enhanced by the bequest of
the Clara and Aaron Max Weitzenhoffer Collection, an important
group of 33 French Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings
and works on paper that makes the museum one of the preeminent
repositories of Impressionist art in the Great Plains States.
In addition, in 1996 the museum acquired a significant collection
of works by artists of the Taos colony. Holdings in American art
also include works by Romare Bearden, Albert Bierstadt, Stuart
Davis, Sam Francis, Adolph Gottlieb, Edward Hopper, John Marin,
Thomas Moran, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Maurice Prendergast, as well
as important collections of photographs and Native American art.
The Charles M. Russell Center was established in 1998 at the
University of Oklahoma School of Art, along with an endowed
position in art history, the Charles Marion Russell Chair. Both
were made possible through the generosity of the Nancy Russell
Trust, with matching funds from the state of Oklahoma.
For information, 405-325-3272.
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