Art of the American West Tucson Museum of Art

If you take a short drive downtown to the Tucson Museum of Art, you will find a thriving arts community. 

Upon entering the modern building, a broad spiral walk-way leads down to the Art of the American West collection.

The most popular event in Tucson is the Rodeo. Sweetheart of the Rodeo’s vivid colors portrays a cowboy on a bucking horse with hands whirling overhead, legs and feet thrashing, creating violent movement of the dangerous sport.  The reds and yellows suggest action and intensity of the rodeo by abstract expressionist painter, Walter Piehl of North Dakota.  Children are enthralled with this action-packed painting.

 In contrast to the violence of Piehl, William R. Leigh, known as the Sagebrush Rembrandt, uses soft southwestern colors in a painting called, The Rampage.  This rodeo cowboy is thrown off a horse in a comical depiction showing only his boots above the horse, leaving the rest to imagination.

Stereotypical western art is an idealized version of the west, and has the feel of a romantic movie. But in most early western art, there was a stereotype of Native Americans, depicting them as benevolent. The painting –Race for your Life shows a man traveling across the desert on horseback chased by angry Native Americans, demonstrating how Native-Americans were typecast.

By the 1970’s, the Native American Movement emerged in the US, especially in the Dakotas.  Native American painters were frustrated with the way they were depicted in western art and rebelled. Fritz Scholder believed Native-American’s were exploited for advertising to promote tourism in the southwest. Extreme and negative images were seen at gas stations, neon signs at hotels during that time, and other destructive images were common.

Scholder, greatly influenced by the Native-American movement, attended the University of Arizona and went to Santa Fe to teach art.  (I need to find out the  name)This painting is a symbolic image of a Native-American bound up like he is in a straight jacket with the iconic symbol of the bow at his waist.  Red and orange at the top, signifies either the setting sun or rising sun- as a new beginning for the way we see Native-Americans or the end of the way we depicted them in the past. It is up to the viewer to make that distinction.

Well-known western artist, Nickolai Fechin, was part of the Taos New Mexico Art Movement in the beginning of the 20^th century.  Born in Russia, he trained as an impressionist painter.  The colors he uses are not the clear realism generally associated with western art, but more an Impressionist loose method of handling by texturizing paint.

Maynard Dixon, known for painting cloud formations, is a well respected western artist who spent most of his life in Tucson.  Clouds in his paintings are highly valued by museums and collectors.  The museum houses a painting of his Tucson home and another with wispy clouds like those we see in the southwest. Dixon was married for a time to Dorothia Lang, famous 30’s depression era photographer. 

Sculpture and landscape paintings by Tucson artist, Ed Mahl, are geometric in shape, unusual for western art which typically is realistic.  Cowboy on horse sculpture is abstract modernism, reminiscent of Picasso style geometric angles. 

John Moyers, another important western artist, is part of Painters of the American West, a group formed in Sedona, Arizona.  The tribe and region of the country are identified by the costumes and horse blankets.  Before painting, he researches to create authentic and realistic art.

For the playful at heart, TMA houses a Spaghetti Western painting. As a child, William Shank loved watching Saturday morning westerns, including, The Lone Ranger, Hop-along Cassidy, Roy Rogers, and Clint Eastwood.  He became a big fan of Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns in the ‘70s, ‘80s.  To create his paintings, this Arizona artist took stills from western movies and had a silk screen made.  Once upon a Time in the West, with Henry Fonda and Charlie Bronson is a still from that movie. 

Visiting Art of the American West Collection in the Tucson Museum of Art will bring you back to a time when the wild, wild west was romanticized, politicized and realized, all left for your own interpretation.