Morris Museum of Art
Augusta, Georgia
706-724-7501
http://www.themorris.org/
Western Perspectives: Wilson
Hurley and George Carlson
April 19 - August 12, 2001
American artists have
interpreted and celebrated the West for over a century and a half, drawn
by the grandeur of the land, the rich traditions of the indigenous cultures,
and the drama of daily life on the frontier. The earliest artists were both
explorers and reporters, bringing back from the wilderness interior images
that often provided the first glimpses Eastern audiences had of the region.
Artists accompanied many government mapping and scientific expeditions that
explored and documented such spectacular regions as Yellowstone and Yosemite.
Later artists chronicled the rapid changes brought by the great flow of
western migration. In each step of the history of the West, from the fur
trappers and buffalo hunters to the flamboyant cowboys, from the inevitable
conflicts between indigenous peoples of the West and the immigrants who
were seeking to establish new communities, the artist was there to create
indelible images that have become part of the American experience.
In the last fifty years Western art has enjoyed an expanding
audience and a growing market of appreciative collectors. This rise in popularity
is due in no small part to the continuing vitality of the West as a subject
in popular media, ranging from vintage Hollywood westerns to the 1999 release
of the movie Wild Wild West. Of equal import is the rise in popularity
of regional approaches to the study of art. Across the country museums and
research centers dedicated to the study of regional art have emerged during
this time period. The Morris Museum of Art, dedicated to the research, exhibition,
and interpretation of Southern art, and the National Cowboy and Western
Heritage Museum are but two examples.
This exhibition brings together the work of two distinctive
Western artists, Wilson Hurley and George Carlson. Their works reflect the
Western artist's continuing interest in the majestic landscape and rich
indigenous cultures of the West. The western vistas of Wilson Hurley beg
comparison with the sublime paintings of the West by America's first school
of landscape painting, the Hudson River School. George Carlson's sculptures
of the Tarahumara, an indigenous people of northern Mexico, are linked in
part to the work of earlier Western artists, including Frederic Remington,
who rendered their impressions of Native Americans in three dimensions.
The works of art in this exhibition are on loan courtesy
of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and the National Cowboy and Western
Heritage Museum. Founded in 1965, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage
Museum was originally conceived as a tribute to the men and women who helped
establish the West as an integral part of America's cultural heritage. The
permanent collection of the museum, which is located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
includes significant works by artists associated with the West, including
Charles Russell, Frederic Remington, and Albert Bierstadt. The Samuel Roberts
Noble Foundation, based in Ardmore, Oklahoma, ranks as one of the 60 largest
private, charitable foundations in the United States.
George Carlson
A
native of Illinois, George Carlson (b. 1940) studied at the American Academy
of Art in Chicago and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After
working as an illustrator for several years, he moved to the Southwest and
studied sculpture and anthropology at the University of Arizona. Considered
a specialist in the Western genre, Carlson has exhibited his paintings and
sculptures across the United States and internationally. He has won numerous
awards, including the Prix de West and several Gold Medals from the National
Academy of Western Art in Oklahoma City. (left: George Carlson, Spear
Fisherman)
Carlson spent many years studying and living on various
Indian reservations in the American West. In 1973 
he traveled south of the border to Mexico's Sierra
Madre Occidental to live with the Tarahumara. A native people who live in
northern Mexico, the Tarahumara are considered one of the few indigenous
groups in North America that have been able to preserve their traditional
style of life almost unmodified by three and a half centuries of contact
with European populations. On this and subsequent visits, Carlson stayed
with the Tarahumara for several months at a time, making wax sculptures
that he later refined in his studio. Although an outsider, he gradually
fit into this fairly isolated society by not, as he said, "pushing
the river." Carlson also painted the Tarahumara in oils and pastels.
(right: George Carlson, Old Woman of Choguita)
Carlson's attraction to this uncontaminated indigenous
people is strong.
- The Tarahumara way of life is truly something special.
Under the heel of civilization, this unadorned and unpretentious culture
would be lost. As long as the scent of the primeval world, of instinct,
and of nature remains, the world will be a possible place for the artist,
beautiful and full of promise. This world, a little place in Old Mexico,
is in itself work of art to be treasured and preserved as a priceless masterpiece.
Carlson blends the representational and the abstract in
his sculpture. He foregoes the depiction of details in his work, opting
to reveal, in his own words, the "life force within." While his
choice of subject matter has been linked to the West, his abstracted style
distinguishes his work from the genre of contemporary Southwestern art and
places it within a larger realm.
The Tarahumara
The Tarahumara, or Raramuri, as they prefer to call
themselves, are an indigenous people of northwest 
Mexico. They live in small communities on the plateaus
and in the ravines and canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental, a beautiful
but inhospitable region of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Of Uto-Aztecan
linguistic stock, the Tarahumara are also linked to the Ute, Shoshone, and
Hopi of the American West, as well as the speakers of the Nahuatl languages
in Mexico and Central America. The name that they call themselves, "the
Raramuri," literally means "foot runners;" they call themselves
this because of the excessive running that they do along the mountains.
Not only a means of transportation and communication in their rugged environment,
running is also a sport in which villages compete against each other.
(left: George Carlson, River's Edge)
While many of the approximately 50,000 ethnic Tarahumara
reside in permanent communities or have been assimilated into Mexican towns,
several thousand maintain a migratory lifestyle, descending into the canyons
and ravines during the winter months to tend fruit orchards and returning
to higher, more temperate altitudes to practice subsistence farming during
the summer months. Their clothes also remain traditional: the men wear a
breechcloth and a wool girdle around their waists, with cotton shirts and
headbands, while women wear multiple skirts and full sleeved blouses, accompanied
by a bandana and a shawl around their backs for carrying things.
Today the Tarahumara are one of the largest indigenous
societies in North America. High birth rates, closely knit community structures,
and a relatively balanced diet have enabled them to survive in a sometimes
harsh climate. Today the greatest challenges to the Tarahumara lifeway come
in the form of tourism that is beginning to burgeon in this region of Mexico
and in the migration of the young to Mexican cities.
Wilson Hurley
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wilson Hurley (b. 1924) spent
his childhood in Oklahoma, Virginia, and New Mexico. Hurley's father, a
lawyer who later became Hoover's secretary of war, wanted his son to pursue
a 
military
career and sent him to West Point, where he earned an engineering degree.
After serving in World War II as an aviator, Hurley received a law degree
from George Washington University, and for the next 13 years he practiced
law in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He left the legal profession to paint full-time
in 1964. A founding member of the National Academy of Western Art, Hurley
is considered one of the Southwest's most prominent landscape painters.
(left: Wilson Hurley, California Suite)
Hurley is known for his sophisticated use of color and
light and his mastery in depicting the atmospheric effects of sweeping Western
landscape vistas.
- I think the first thing that fascinated me about the
West was the direct light.... When you paint in this country, you have
the direct wash of light from the sun, the bounced light, and the mild,
cold wash of light from the top of the sky. ... To show the beauty of the
sun reaching and really hitting some object could be likened to the chiaroscuro
of Caravaggio... applied to landscape.
The paintings on display are studies for Windows To
The West, a monumental series of five triptychs, or three-panel paintings,
commissioned by the Noble Foundation and installed in the Sam Noble Special
Events 
Center
of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The triptychs, each
measuring nearly 40 feet wide and 16 feet tall, celebrate the magnificence
of five distinctive landscapes of the American Southwest: the lower falls
of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, the Pacific Ocean at Point Lobos,
California, the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico with the Rio Grande in the
foreground, the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and Utah's Monument
Valley. (left: Wilson Hurley, New Mexico Suite)
In
an effort to unify the Windows To The West series, Hurley depicted
each landscape at sunset and with a common horizon line. His goal in painting
the series was to "unify the room while opening it visually and psychologically"
while transporting the viewers "to these beautiful places." The
final triptych of the series, which was begun in 1991, was hung in place
in August 1996. (left: Wilson Hurley, Utah Suite)
Subsequest exhibition regarding George Carlson
At the The Denver Art Museum George Carlson: Heart of
the West opened in late 2007. The museum said of the exhibit:
- The Denver Art Museum adds to its exciting exhibition
lineup when George Carlson: Heart of the West opens December 15
in the Hamilton Building's Dietler Western Art Galleries. The exhibition
will feature the work of living artist and former Coloradoan George Carlson,
considered one of the finest sculptors of western subject matter working
today. He is widely known for his sensitive interpretation of animals,
especially horses, in bronze. His figurative work features a number of
subjects including the Tarahumara Indian tribe in Mexico, with whom he
lived. Several pastel drawings from his journeys to Mexico will also be
displayed.
-
- "We think he is an artist who has stood the test
of time," says Ann Daley, Associate Curator of the Petrie Institute
of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum. "He doesn't like
to be considered a western artist, but we think he is appropriate. We've
admired his work for a long time, and think he is due an exhibition."
-
- George Carlson: Heart of the West will feature more than 35 objects from several lenders including
the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis,
works owned by a private Colorado collector, and the artist's studio. The
exhibition will be on view through April 13, 2008.
-
- In addition, George Carlson's work is highlighted in
the latest issue of Western Passages, published by the Petrie Institute
of Western American Art at the Denver Art Museum. "Heart of the West:
New Painting and Sculpture of the American West" includes essays on
George Carlson, collecting Western American art, the Museum's Contemporary
Realism Group, artist-explorers and the Western landscape, and full color
illustrations.
-
- The Petrie Institute will also present a symposium titled
Heart of the West: New Art/New Thinking on January 5, 2008, at the
Denver Art Museum. This one-day symposium will explore multiple perspectives
on contemporary western American art. Four prominent American art scholars,
curators, and museum directors will discuss topics including modernism
vs. realism in early 20th century western painting, museum roles in balancing
popular art with elitist institutional imperatives, status of contemporary
western art today, and post-modernist conceptions of the West.
rev. 1/17/08
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional
source by visiting the sub-index page for the Morris
Museum of Art in Resource
Library.
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
This page was originally published in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information. rev. 5/28/11
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
A
native of Illinois, George Carlson (b. 1940) studied at the American Academy
of Art in Chicago and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After
working as an illustrator for several years, he moved to the Southwest and
studied sculpture and anthropology at the University of Arizona. Considered
a specialist in the Western genre, Carlson has exhibited his paintings and
sculptures across the United States and internationally. He has won numerous
awards, including the Prix de West and several Gold Medals from the National
Academy of Western Art in Oklahoma City. (left: George Carlson, Spear
Fisherman)
