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7/9/2001

The Wild West

Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishoj

Painting, photography, sculpture and Native American objets d'art

A classic myth in a new light
ARKEN's autumn exhibition THE WILD WEST is one of he first exhibitions in Europe to question the traditional depiction of America's Wild West.

The Wild West - the words alone spawn a host of associations: images of magnificent nature, savage Indians and fearless pioneers spring up on one's inner screen. The well-known stories of "how The West was won" pass before the mind's eye. The images and stories often stem from books and - not least - movies, paintings and photographs. These have given us an idea how the landscape, the culture and the Native American looked like, and how the enormous, osten-sibly sparsely populated area was conquered. In other words: our conceptions of The Wild West are very much influenced by art. With the exhibition THE WILD WEST, ARKEN has under-taken to demonstrate how.

Images of the American West. In more than 230 works, THE WILD WEST depicts the white man's encounter with America's nature and aboriginal population. In the course of 50 years, from 1850 to 1900, the vast area was populated by people with European backgrounds. The aboriginal population was banished, their numbers decimated, and the basis for their tradi-tional way of life disappeared. It was a territorial expansion unequalled in recent times, becom-ing the prerequisite of the modern USA and American identity. Even today, individualism and freedom are at the core of USA's understanding of self.

THE WILD WEST follows the artistic and culture-historical development in the portrayal of The Wild West. The exhibition demonstrates how art has contributed to nourishing the myth about America's Wild West. But it also challenges these conceptions and presents a Native American culture far more varied than suggested by the white man's depictions. The new Americans' first portrayals of the Native Americans' lives as well as nineteenth century photo-graphs of the magnificent American landscape and "noble savages" are shown along with a number of original Native American objets d'art - including a genuine tepee. Sculptures and paintings from the current American art scene offer a critical view of the original nostalgic pres-entation of The West. In this manner, THE WILD WEST ventures into an area that has been given increasing focus in the USA in the last ten to twenty years but which until now has re-ceived little to no attention in Europe.

The core of the exhibition is a series of photographs of the landscape and the aboriginal popu-lation in The Wild West. American landscape photography pioneers Carleton E. Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan and W.H. Jackson are abundantly represented as are photographers of Native Americans Edward S. Curtis, Frank Rinehart and Joseph K. Dixon. On display are, furthermore, works by artists including Frederic Remington, Laura Gilpin, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, George Catlin, Georgia O'Keeffe and Andy Warhol as well as painting, sculp-ture, graphic prints and Native American objets d'art, emphasising the Native American cul-ture's own versatile aesthetic idiom.

THE WILD WEST is based on loans from Denver Art Museum, Denver Public Library and Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.

THE LANDSCAPE

CONFIDENCE IN THE FUTURE, NOSTALGIA AND CRITICISM
- THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE THROUGH 150 YEARS

Divine, virginal and magnificent: to the brave and the hopeful, The Wild West, from the mid-dle of the nineteenth century, epitomised a land of opportunity. The desolate, paradisiac land-scape with the vast prairies and the grand massifs was filled to the brim with unutilised re-sources. The fulfilment of dreams and future happiness awaited the fearless pioneers and immi-grants who went west to settle on the prairie. In the reports the American government publi-sised in the 1860s and '70s the message was unequivocal. The conclusions were reached on the basis of several expeditions to impassable regions. They were based on both scientific, geological accounts and photographic reports about the area's character and potential.

The expeditions included pioneer photographers Timothy O'Sullivan, William Henry Jackson and William Bell. Their portrayals of The Wild West are detailed and scientific. They present it like an, indeed alien, but also unspoiled, earthly paradise, ready to be conquered by the white man. The photographs set new standards for the depiction of landscapes. And with their opti-mism, pioneering spirit and confidence in the future and the industrial development, they con-tributed to the creation of the myth of The Wild West as the epitome of freedom, independ-ence and endless opportunity.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the confidence in the future is gradually replaced by a longing for bygone days. The photographs become nostalgic and grandiose. An example is An-sel Adams' evocative landscapes indepted to both famous American nineteenth century paint-ers Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt and photographers such as Carleton E. Watkins and William Bell. Another example is Laura Gilpin who in her photographs of Navajo Indians sought to depict the harmony between man and nature in The Wild West's aboriginal people. Gilpin's photographs present the traditional way of life of the people who had its means of sub-sistence taken away by the white man. In this manner, they suggest that the country which ear-lier photographers portrayed as uninhabited and desolate in point of fact embraced a highly developed culture - also before the white man's arrival.

During the last 30 years the problematic present has been the theme in the landscape photo-graphs from the American West. The American photographers Robert Adams and Richard Misrach have both - in true pioneering spirit - followed in the footsteps of Carleton E. Wat-kins, Timothy O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson. They too have mapped and documented The Wild West in pictures. And in their photographic style, they obviously acknowledge the legacy from their sources of inspiration. However, the landscape depicted has lost its innocence. The artists present the consequences of industrialisation and the past decades' nuclear tests. Rather than inviting and desirable, the landscape today is abandoned.

Read more and the events during the exhibition at the web site

Reservations for events at ARKEN can be made Monday - Friday 10 - 16 at tel. +45 43 54 02 22. Tickets can be bought at ARKEN during opening hours.

ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst
Skovvej 100, DK-2635 Ishøj
Tlf. +45 4354 0222 I Fax +45 4354 0522 I
E-mail: ksondergaard@arken.dk

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