current southwestern art; set it gently in the garbage

current southwestern art; set it gently in the garbage

fiction
edward w pritchard

At the church charity store I frequent for life's necessities sometimes in the a quarter for a twenty year old used magazine rack there will be a magazine or two hawking southwestern art by modern painters.

 The prices are atrocious and the subject matter of the pictures silly and insulting to the ancient Americans living in ancient New Mexico in times past.

First off if one wants good native American art and subject matter in Ohio there's the Butler Museum of Art in Youngstown which has an excellent collection of native American and "cowboy art" by masters such as Remington.

The prices for modern authentic southwestern native american art sold in galleries now across the Country are high. Most of the pictures lack the edge and vim that the old nineteenth century American West was about. Instead attempts by modern artists to recapture the spirit of the old Southwest have a Courier and Ives or Norman Rockwell patina that has lost it's glimmer.

Drive to the Butler museum in Youngstown and climb the steps to the second floor and look at a few of the pictures of old southwest Indians families as their  villages in New Mexico were vanishing back in 1880 or 1890. There is a haunting sadness in the faces in the authentic pictures of the old native American women and children that the artists of times past have captured that is missing from southwest art produced today.

Perhaps I am being overly critical. When was the last time you saw a modern painting that could compare with the works of the Italian masters of the 14th to 16th century?  Note to my sons; take the old man to the Butler museum soon he's rambling again. Perhaps his life like his writing needs a good edit.