History of Western American Art
Professor F. Levine (CSU)
a journey
The nature of the spiral
Never can see center
Art as philosophy
Tells you what you’re about
Your culture
Association
Cyclical
Products of culture – product of earth
Clouds
Spiritual breath
Spiritual rain – growth
Sky – father
Earth – mother
Wherefrom you come from and where you will return
Southeast Utah
Mesa Verde
San Juan county
How much emphasis you put into observation
Footprint as symbol
Occupation – spiritual awareness – something happened
Canyon – sacred return to the womb
Art – inside the mother
The earth as art on another plane and scale
Wind as sculptor
Downward into canyon – another world – mythological
200 B.C – 1300 AD
Orpheus
Dante
‘underworld’
Follow the water – retracing steps – a mystical experience
Landscape is carved, sketched
Sunrise, sunset – only definition of time – the day
Canyons
Flow
Nuclear family – small units
Architecture has survived thousands of years
Stone and water
Stone was everything – pure, aesthetic
Skilled architects – everyone
Mesa Verde
Chaco Canyon
The land/ the people
Jacal
Anasazi
Basketmakers 200 BC – 750 BC
Pueblo 750BC -1500 BC
Kiva
Quetzalcoatl
Pottery mound 1300-1475
Jacal – ancient enemy
Anasazi – Ancient People
Basketmakers – basket could hold water – Yucca fibers
Pit houses
Stone structures – inside and out
No bow and arrows – spears and atlatl
Imported from Mexico
Pueblo
Kiva – emerged from 3rd world into 4th world
Underground chamber
Ladder is roof
Quetzalcoatl – Bird –Serpent – Mayan – Aztec
Bird – heaven
Snake –earth
Pottery mound – paintings along kiva wall
In Central West Mexico – 15 layers of paintings
Pueblo – doorways found in entranceway to kiva
This shape found in pharaohs…
Mouth in turquoise
Doorway – suggested – between world of dead and world of living
Balance co-exist – dark and light
Elementary in structure – complex in content
Mesa Verde, Chaco, Kayenta
1970 Robert Smithson – Spiral Jetty
15 ft., wide 1500 ft. long
Archetypal – element – spiral
On all prehistoric cultures
Rothko – the simple expression of the complex thought
Two dimension …at some time positive – negative
Jetty – jutted out into a new environment
Frontier, nebula
Back and forth
In and out
Journey
Commitment – to seek the jetty
Rock art (engravings) – spiral pottery mound
Spiral symbolizes the journey of our lives
Cyclical journey
Cycle of the sun – life
Plants grow in spirals – galaxies are formed in spirals
Spiral onto corn plant
Corn is the most central image for this area – does not grow wild – no –one knows where it comes from
Some mysterious connection between corn and man
Production of corn mirrors the cycle of life
Seed growth harvest re-birth
Adolf Gottleib – Recurrent Apparition 1946
Spirit of the air
1945 – end of Western civilization as a viable civilization
Look back to find roots – connection with primal
Far removed and distant from the Western civilization
Dip into unsophisticated
Handprint – simple unsophisticated but profound
Red, yellow, blue, white
Spiral pattern implied in palm
Snakes are elemental creatures which carry prayers to the gods to bring rain
Snake coiled in hand – later letting go
Directional symbols
Directions associated with colors
North – white
East – yellow
South – red
West – blue
Art always has a purpose or function – it tells us something
Rembrandt – prodigal son
God forgives and welcomes back
Hands become the most important symbol
The ‘essence’ of his statement
Prayer
Hands images of the immortal
Hands as magazines
Hands communicate – far more than speech
Oscar Kokoschka
Existential – disassociated
Pollock – no. 1
Cody Wyoming – what the utility was
Done on ground – like Navajo sand paintings
Spiritual communication
Exacting beauty to draw attention from spiritual beings to heal a patient – spirit beings come into the sand and the patient then goes in to the sand and is then cured by the spirit. The sand paintings are then destroyed and buried so that the spirits would not come back.
Pollock – hand prints – as his attitude of prayer
Insignias in palm have different meanings
Handprints with every ruin
Flute playing y single males only
Paint blown around hand – found in earliest art findings in the world
Franz Marc – ‘Blue Horse’
Ephemeral – ultimate beauty blue as sky
Deer – in harmony with landscape –
Instinctual – at one with nature
We don’t use our instincts so much – bunny rap
We’re afraid of instincts
Lascaux and 15,000 years later in Utah
Deer as spiritual intermediary
Antlers as antennae
Not hunters
Basket-makers – huge enormous deer – ancient
Shaman stick
Bird taking man somewhere
Mythology – Ganymede
Too beautiful for earth
Zeus as bird takes him to the heavens
Transformation after death
Bird takes soul to heaven
Arrow – placed into ground – prayer for the dead
Spears – also cakes – gods like cakes
Shield –protection
Aztec, Mesa Verde, Utah
Vision – deprivation
Circle – shields, spears, and birds in Greek vase art around same time
Sun black hole in middle of universe
Kiva – shields – domestic turkeys and dog – ate dogs
Big shields
Spiritual warriors
Carved and painted – kiva – palms open
Canyon de che – Arizona – Navajo land
Northeast
Nealika – mask, shield and art are same thing
Snakes in fists – figures holding snakes
Terror and fascination – few animals that can really injure us.
Circle /square
Philosophical systems
Limited systems
Can’t deal with the infinity – so we take in pieces or limitations and frame them in a system of perception
Confirmation of existing knowledge
Becomes dangerous to step out of it
Need to explain
Dichotomy between two philosophies masculine/feminine
Left/right
Between 6th and 5th century B.C>
matriarchal/patriarchal
– fear of snakes –masculine idea
patriarchal god wanted
snakes associated with feminine authority
lightning as snake – from the sky
storms – create fire and water at the same time
magic
bites the earth – water
rivers
snakes and life
rain snakes
Wind snake – a coatl – snake carrier of prayers
Lightning Field N.M.
Walter DeMaria – I mile x I kilometer
Bridging of culture – mythological unity
Quataqotl – snake with horns
Hand in hand
Cycle – one form is a suggestion of ulterior form
Separating images
See fig. design image
Strength of hand in hand
Continuity – connectivity
Clan –cohesion
Early Pueblo – pottery – basket-makers
People of circle – bondage
Matisse – the Dance
Red, blue, green
Existential consideration
The circle breaks
Circle never broken in primal societies
Robert Smithson
Christo
Michael Heizer
Richard Diebenkorn
Mark Rothko
Adolph Gottlieb
Clyfford Still
Walter DeMaria
Linkage between past and present
Transition out of museum
Great western salt works
Amarillo Ramp
Highway – the aorta of the civilization
Where the road stops – civilization stops
And earth takes over
Elevates
Spiritual energy found in desert
Also maintains – elevated areas
West mountains and deserts
Christo – 2,054 steel posts for 20 miles
Then hung a curtain
For 2 weeks
Running fence
From concept to actuality
The awareness of landscape
Impermanence
Humble image
Group unity – to create something
The bomb, the pyramids
People as essential as the concept in the undertaking – universality
Back into the ocean
Rifle Gap Canyon
Impermanence
Michael Heizer – digs holes in the middle of desert – fills with water
Places rock in the middle
His father Robert was an archeologist
Utilization
Is there more – what are we searching for?
Is this sacred?
Double negative
Complex
Deny novelty
- Shapers of form
- Agents of meaning – personal or interpersonal –literary – mythological
- Agents of culture – cultural attitudes
Diebenkorn – ‘Ocean Park’
Points of transcendence, inspiration
Magical edge of the water
Effect of light – illumination
Rothko – large as intimate
Inside of it, part of it
Expression of night, Pacific Ocean
Fuzzy, floating, non-particular
Rothko, Vessels of Magic
Awareness, magical transcendence, awareness,
Morris Graves
Mark Tobey
Jackson Pollock
Rothko
Gottlieb
Still
Frontier – western
Art as frontier in 40’s and 50’s – abstract expressionism
Myth creation that art represents
Rothko – purpose of art is to make a connection with the past and primordial consciousness
Violently opposed to common sense
Simple expression of complex thought
Reassert picture plane
Flat plane – destroy illusion and reveal truth
Tragic and timeless
Artist as illusionist
Questioning of all prerequisite of the past
20th century
Moving towards something
Accept the uncertain as truth
Understanding as a means to obstruct terror
Terror- fear of the unknown
Observation as opposed to participation
Blurring of lines – no longer as emphatic
Light vs. dark
Conflict
‘Evil Omen’ – Gottleib 1946
Native imagery
Abstraction – the realism of our time
Pictorial problem
Chthonic – unworldly energy
Clyfford Still – heroic work
Topographic – 1954
‘Bird’ – Jackson Pollock
Pollock -‘Guardians of the Secret’
Pasiphae – wife of King Minaus mother of Taurus locked into prison on Knossos
Moby Dick – mystery itself
Squabby, boggy, squishy painting
Movement – women cuts circle
Night Ceremony
The Dark – started to give up imagery and references to Mythology
Shimmering substance
More airborne and celestial
Rhythm, dance, movement and feeling
Fragment , segments
Mark Tobey – ‘Void Devouring the Gadget Era’
Eternity
Illumination of gesture form – line endlessing
Prophetic light
Describing until it becomes light
Bird in moonlight
Morris Graves
Sea power – ineffable – humility
The Journey
Birds, flightless, trapped, earthbound
Georgia O’Keefe
Ernest Blumeshein
Bert Philips
Maynard Dixon
Irving Couse
William R Leigh
John Sloan
Morris Graves – ‘In the Know Bird’
Myth of 20th century man
Aggressive or vulnerable
Trees – common source – common root – universal connectedness
Science fiction – always violent
‘Fox with Phoenix’
‘Golden Goat’
‘Spirit Owl’
Mystical quality
‘guardian’
Georgia O’Keefe
Inst. of Chicago
N. Y. Chase School
Then Columbia – A.W. Dow
Taught at Amarillo, Texas
Powerful, organic
Wet quality
Crows – clever- majestic
‘Light Coming on Plains’
Concept of time – cylindrical
Sunrise to sunset
Each day is different – unique
Universal birth – marked by the appearance of light
Precious, rare
‘Evening Star’
‘Starlight Night’
‘From the Plains’ 1919
Thunderstorm – energy of the storm
Hopi belief – spirits of ancestors materialized
Growth
Synthenesia – music – Kandinsky
Music into colour
Tangible sensuality
‘New York at midnight’
Positive/negative
Push and pull
Movement contrast
w/angularity
‘the Shelter’
‘City at Night’
Extension of grids
Night life
Mid 19th Phenomena
France
Reversal – no moon
Vertical cities – horizontal
Male/female
Male dominated, rational,
‘Ranch of San Francisco’
‘Lawrence Tree’ for D.H. Lawrence
Organic pink
Dark
Cala Lilies
Jack in the Pulpit
Closed Clam Shell
Cow Skull, Red. White and Blue
Heroic, unfolding curtain
From Far Away Nearby 1937
Antlers
Black Cross
Mother earth – draped figures – oneness – togetherness
Dark Mesa
Greyhills – subtle colors
Red Hills and Bones
Sloan
Blumenshein
Philips
Leigh
Couse
Curtis, Edward
- Myth 1: the west as an open empty and dangerous wilderness that needs to be conquered
Civilized – Manifest Destiny
Religious Mission – subdued and reformed in their image
- Myth 2: West was a place where one would pursue the ideal of a morally redeemed community purified from the errors and sins of the past
- Myth 3: the West is a place where one might escape from the artificial and corrupting boundaries of society into a spontaneous open relationship with nature
- Myth 4: the West is a potential place of sudden wealth and power where in a single lucky strike one might leap from poverty to treasure.
John Sloan
Picnic – laughter
Haymarket – nostalgia
Saddle Beach – urban wilderness
Bathers – happy life is to be celebrated
Dust Storm on Fifth Avenue
Nature comes back into the city
‘Italian’ procession
East Sunset, Camino Monte Sol
Dance – spirits come alive
Connection with fear of unknown
The Old Storyteller
Pass on
Blumenshein
Morning, and Evening
Community, interdependence
Clouds
Forces that permeate the art
Stepping outside ox and looking back in
Clouds
Stop the world – intensity – hold it and keep it
Golden Range
Sun drenched land
Maynard Dixon
Worked as an illustrator in N.Y.
Drawing imaginary Indians
Documenting violence in books
Artists would paint pictures for the railroads and get free tickets back and forth
Christmas Eve Procession
Bring back the sun
Christmas – ceremony of lights
Fire and water – roots of civilization
Dependent on these
Both are mystical
Earthknower
Lauren Eiseley – ‘The Invisible Pyramid’
Seeking – process of nature – learning
Medicine Robe
Lone Indian – individual
Deerhunter
Bert Philips
D.H. Lawrence – ‘The Fox’
Dillard – ‘Teaching a Stone to Talk’
Buffalo Dance – Philips
William Leigh
Trained in Munich, Germany
Heavy-handed naturalist/Rudolphian
Navajo Chief – concentration on figure rather than landscape – wind
Red and Yellow
1907 – 08
Hopi Courtship
The Roper
Horse – associated with West
Dust
Leigh
Buffalo Killers
Consciously wiped them out
Farm land
Also to stall Indian way of life – buffalo – image of myth
Like a cloud soon to be a memory
Grey Wolf – another vanishing species
Driver for anatomical accuracy
Record before final termination – a vanishing trail
The eminent end – romantic
Respect for distance
Will be lost
Grizzly – Close Call
tension
Recognition of survival instinct
Couse – Vision of Past
Feeling of reverie
Heavy lids
Melancholy
Leigh – action, vitality
heroic
Dixon – meditative
‘Apache Shelter’
Lack of motion – painstaking detail
Narrative
Self –vision
Utilizing these people to tell a story he perceives
Snake Dance
4th world
in rain everything comes from below
Gather snakes – dress like snakes
Live with snakes for 4 days
Hopi – masks – Cachinas – hundreds
Rain always comes – nobody gets bitten
War Body
Large body small action
Yet the action lumes large
Linkage with heritage and maintenance of the culture
Sioux – Crazy Horse
Would not give up
Red Cloud – accepted reservation after going to Washington
Albert Blakelock – Twilight Reverie
Medicine Man
Edward Curtis – Princess Angeline
Daughter of Chief Seattle
Warriors – the time was wrong
‘we blew it’
Violation of actuality – steal away the spirits
Too objective
Watching the Dance
Butterfly – pubescent age but not married
Thomas Moran
Albert Bierstadt
Visual experience is not enough – does not give essence of being there
Where we came from
Where we are going
What we invest significance in symbolic or not
Something to be learned
Adam Clarke Vroman
1901 – adobe – whitewashed interiors
Interior mirrors exterior
O’Sullivan – new frontier
Seen for first time
Ladders
Ascending, descending as symbols, action
Canyon de Chelly
Where knowledge ends mystery begins
Grand Canyon
Desert
Blakelock
From N.Y.
1869
Montana – Utah
Transformation
A lot of his work is moonlight
Plains Indians and huge trees
Mystery illumination – not literal
Ghost-like mirages on a hot day
Monetary glimpse
Went nuts
Vision of Lights
Thomas Moran – spectacle
Before
Western Landscape
Grandeur
‘a man must put himself in his picture’
Moran – grandeur
Emmanuel Leutze
George Caleb Bingham
William Ranney
Concept of Western Art
Moran – Mountain Holy Cross
Place of purification
Divinity inspired water
Liquid essence of cross
The last frontier
Yellowstone – first National Park in world
Grand Canyon – also persevered
Legislation of beauty
Beauty defined by the U.S. Congress
That says that anything outside of the designated area is not preserved
Within these areas there are smaller designated areas to take pictures
Glory and grandeur of West become a religion and a philosophy
Chasm
Bigness – grandeur – personification
Ourselves – preserve
Limitless, unrealizable
Expression of vision
Wonders of world
Rock & cloud as one – formation
Depth & heights
Landscape as a mirror of ourselves
Spiritual locales
Feel, essence, emotion of painting
Cosmic connection
Massive
Sensation of awe, majesty
Harmony with nature
Never approach the literalness
Humbleness
Albert Bierstadt
Emerson, Thoreau philosophy
New England landscape
The Rocky Mountains
1863
Visionary quality
German Romantic tradition
Divine, delightful
Linkage with European painting
Thunderstorm – deer
Pure & untrampled revelation
Pristine
View rather than vision
More static
As if it really didn’t satisfy him
Took pieces from other
Ontnoma Falls
Estes Park
Thomas Birch
James H. Beard
F. Wilkes
H. Jackson
Charles Nahl
William Ranney
Charles Wimar
Remington
Bierstadt – Jenny Lake Rainbow
Primordial – like the beginning
The Great Expedition – Steven Long – Longs Peak
Survey expedition
See the west – national fever
Disillusionment 0f new potential in west
Depression, conflict, civil war
West became vision – revitalization of a dream
Forever changed as soon as it’s seen & tramped on
Manifest Destiny & the Ox
Lowlife – harness
Wagon country edge – ox-knife cutter
Domestication
If it breaks down, eat it
Ox replaces the buffalo – kill the wild
Symbol of settlement
Morning on the Platte
Native cultures never utilized the wheel – from tip of South America to tip of Arctic
Domestication – civilizing effect
Carrying forward of ideology – domestication& animality
Water colors – less overblown, less grandiose
Indians – Shining Mountains
Rocky Mtns.
Taming of wilderness
Altering of landscape
Mission – philosophical attitude
Special and preserved
Progress – God – industry
Innovation & change & attitude which still permeates
Chimney Rock – Oregon trail
Signposts that carry on the myth of a nation
Chimney Rock with Sioux Indians
Did not utilize wheel – they knew of it – toys i.e.
Rejected wheel because of evil connotations
Oregon trail – Golden Land – golden aura
Visionary, religious landscape
Middle class – not immigrants – besides northern European
In search of new life
Carried ideas, attitudes & objects with them
Soul of nation – ordained
Fulfillment of God’s will
Luetze – Westward – The Course of Empire Takes its Way
Bingham – from Missouri
Cultural myth
Daniel Boone – w/virgin Mary – looking like elf
Escorted by light with every step
Certainty in expression
Distinct from landscape & environment
The march of civilization
Feminine attitude – tame wilderness for women
So she can be comfortable & make babies
Progress – subdue & tame nature
Direction – west – catch up – lasso
Pointing, pointing
Thomas Birch, 1814
Conestoga wagon
James Beard – Westward Ho!
Exploitation was positive – God’s will
Moral imperative – truth, decency, honest
Eatin dead possum
Sacrifice
Eden – new paradise
James F. Wilkins, ‘An Artist on the Overland Trail‘
Conestoga Wagon Crossing Rocky Mountains
Darling – kids, animals
Coaches, wagons, Inns along way
Colman, Samuel – Ships of Plain
Tragedy on Plains
William Ranney – Prairie Burial
Wimar, Charles
Remington – Emmigrant Trail
The Turf House on the Prairie
Iron Horse – the railroad
Buffalo on Prairie
Oregon City
Exodus
H. Jackson
George Caleb Bingham
Rural Missouri – self –taught artist
Reflection, meditative
Languid, stream of time
Bingham – Jolly Flat Boatmen
Canvassing the Vote
County Election
Concealed Enemy
Bingham -Fur Trader Descending the Missouri
Wolf River – Bierstadt
Fur trader –cowboy –Indian
Menace and threat to western
Animal
Charles Schreyvogel
Walter Shirlaw
Charles M. Russell
Fred Remington
Alfred Jacob Miller
Karl Bodmer
George Caitlin
Indian – buffalo and vice versa
Schreyvogel – ‘Doomed’
Used every part of buffalo
Stayed with Bison till it died
Thanked it and prayed homage to them
Ceremonies
Skull placed in circle after death and facing the west
Shirlaw
Russell – nomadic ideal
Magic of animals
Remington – classical ballet
Actors – clinical
Remington – ‘Episode of Buffalo Hunt’
Alfred Jacob Miler – Romantic
Sporting – jolly good, well played, what fun
Bert Philips
Karl Bodmer, ‘Buffalo Dance’
Catlin – ‘Buffalo Surrounded by Wolves’
Search for White Buffalo – like Moby Dick
Strong affiliation with landscape
Lyricism – harmony blend
Flow – like waves
Seth Eastman
John Mix Stanley
Charles Deas
Caitlin – travelled up the Missouri to Yellowstone then walked…
Village of Mandan – people of the circle
Wajenta
Buffalo Bill
Indians began to line up for Catlin portraits – caused conflict
Mata type – 4 bears – 2nd chief of Mandan
He who jumps Over Everyone
Mandan Okipa
Rite of Self Torture
Travois
Bodmer, with Maximillian – took same journey as Catlin
Mata Tope
Statement with racist overtones
Accoutrements, trappings
Great Warrior
Miller
Henry Farny
John Howland
A.E. Matthews
Bank Langmore
Catlin – illusory
Karl Bodmar
Alfred Jacob Miller – Romantic
Cowboy element of European & also Indian
mountain
trapper
trappers Bride
lived off fashions of east – rugged, heroic
mountain people and bears
Fort Laramie
place of treaties – western expansion
detachment from east
Seth Eastman – savage, cruel and ignorant
uncivilized
John Mix Stanley – Abduction
Erotic license
Charles Deas – flipped out
Deas – The Death Struggle
Indians Approaching Ft. Union
William Ranney
Bierstadt – Indians near Ft. Laramie
130 years ago
Remington – Pioneers
Mystery of the Buffalo Gun
Innocent expectation
No satisfaction
Childhood imagination
Stories, tales and legends
Place you in midst of the action – armchair traveler
Myth of superiority – now the Russians
Become part of action
Saga, myth
Downing the Nigh Leader – Remington
Horse – fascination both sides respected honoured and killed as many as possible
Halt of the Night Calvary
Paradisiacal – element
Fiction grand fiction
Custer’s Last Stand
Charles Shreyvogel – Breaking Through the Lines
Pulls you into the picture
Better artist pound for pound
Defending the stockade
Pony Express
Henry Farny
Meditative
The Captive
Russell – sympathetic understanding
Snowstorm – friends
Mountain Man – fur trapper
Proud and strong
William Ranney –Fur Trappers
Individuals – savvy
Do not need society
Prospectors of New
John Howland
4th instant wealth & power
Precedes colonization of America
Propelled Spaniards here
Not interested in anything
But yellow metal that makes them crazy
Discovery of gold 1849 – Golden State
Gold –fever – national epidemic
Prairie Burial
Nahl – An Evening with the Miners
Comedy – not only greed
Absurd
Sunday Morning with Miners
Images incorporated in these pictures
Integrated with myth # 1
Sutter’s Mill – the place where gold was discovered
Alfred E. Mathews
Gold Towns
Russell – myth #3
Cowboy – wide open at one with nature
Much like Indian –freedom restraint
Imposition ways of life
Vitality of individual
Life on the range free and unfettered
No fences, ploughs
Montana – self-taught – authenticity
Community of shared belief
Independence, courage
Where pop. Is sparce
Men thrown upon own resource
Courage fundamental
Little choice – given courage – life developed
If potential danger – no cowards allowed
Brave – pride – courage
Basis & purpose of new civilization
Cattle Kingdom
Freedom – great distances
20 miles to Denver – holed up
Good guys & bad guys
‘In Without Knocking’
‘Waiting for Chinook’
40 degrees below zero for
1869 white out open range
Cold, mercy of elements
Cow takes place of Buffalo
finis
tomreading 
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