One thing great about the Rockwell Museum is its rotating schedule of special exhibitions. So even if you’ve been there… even if you were there last year… there’s more worth seeing.
Just now there are three specials up, so my son Erik and I ambled in to have a look, and we were glad we did. First off, Erik discovered that he had met one of the featured artists.
This was Judy Abbott, one painter in a three-artist show called “Painted Journeys: In the Spirit of the American West.” Judy, Eva van Rijn and K.L. McKenna are all Woodstock-Hudson Valley artists who together were the first Artists in Residence at the Museum of Northern Arizona, and this exhibition flowed from their year there.
They have three divergent styles, and we quickly agreed that we liked Judy’s best. It’s closer to a photorealist style, for instance in her paintings of a great horseshoe bend.
But… while sticking to my original thought on what-I-like-best, once I stepped back a few paces I was again and again captivated by Eva van Rijn’s canvases – Blues of Black Canyon; Vermillion Cliffs; Capturing Dawn # 2 (with a distant photographer and his tripod doing just that); and Fence Line, with its mare and colt stepping along. It seemed to me that Eva was relying more on color than on line (though Judy had some outstanding colors too), and the impact of the two painters’ works varied with the viewers’ points of view.
K.L. McKenna’s pieces also placed strong reliance on color, and far less on line or realism. “My life’s work is to illuminate the mind in an exciting new way,” she says… “not to defy tradition, but to expand associations.” Stone Mountain From Above presents the viewer with vivid coloring and a bold free hand in depiction, with four horizontal bands – grass, foothills, mountains, and sky.
Up one floor in the Members’ Gallery, I really enjoyed “Untouched by Chaos: Karl Bodmer and the American West, 1832-1834.” Bodmer accompanied German Prince Maximilian on a journey up the Missouri, largely following the Lewis and Clark route, seeing that part of the world (and its peoples) before the white invasion went from a trickle to a tidal wave. Bodmer’s detailed and energetic aquatints became engravings to accompany the prince’s book.
Fort Union on the Missouri shows the four-square palisaded fort and the surrounding Indian town, with travois (both horse-drawn and dog-drawn) and horsemen to enliven the stunning setting. One lively scene is entitled Horse Racing of the Sioux Indians Near Fort Pierre. This was actually a relatively recent development, since it took centuries for escaped stock from Spanish settlements to build up population and reach the northern plains to be adopted by the people there. Hunting the Grizzly Bear, July 18, 1832 also captures the intensity of the moment.
Many artists have portrayed Indian fights, but Bodmer had an advantage; he’d actually been in one, as Assiniboine and Cree attacked the Blackfoot in Fort MacKenzie’s shadow. And a montage of Indian Utensils and Arms has art within art, with a clear and detailed rendition of a painted buffalo robe depicting the exploits of Mato-Tope. Interestingly, the robe documents fights using bow and arrow, shield, spear, tomahawk, and long gun.
Which leads us to an exhibition of firearms from the collection of Robert Rockwell III. This goes back to the early 18th-century Brown Bess musket and its cousin the Charleville musket, each type used in the American Revolution, along with the slower but more accurate “Kentucky” rifle. The Spencer repeating rifle was a large factor in Union victory during the Civil War, though the 1873 Springfield didn’t do Custer much good at the Little Big Horn. Marines were still using the bolt-action 1903 Springfield at Guadalcanal forty years later.
I enjoyed looking at the Civil War-era Starr army revolver and its cousins, though in fact it’s the long guns that really conquered the west. Despite the movies, the short-range and inaccurate hand guns were most effective for duels and assassinations (and killing pigs, of course), and many towns simply banned them.
Which leads to a couple of newer works now on exhibit by Jason Cytacki, emphasizing our “constructed” view of the west – that we don’t really see it as it actually is (or was), but according to a legend that we’ve chosen to enjoy. His painting See the U.S.A. (From Your Chevrolet) features mountains made of cardboard, and when you go, look closely at the Chevrolet. Though properly sized for the scene, it’s actually a child’s toy truck. Even though I have the “handicap” of being a historian, I also appreciate the legends – and the chance to look behind the legends. That’s why I always enjoy the Rockwell.