Maverick Art
Contemporary art
exhibit pushes the boundaries
of the term Western
Saturday, October 4,
2008* – Sunday, January 4, 2009
Los Angeles (July 1, 2008) — The Autry National Center of the
American West reveals a startling exhibition of contemporary art drawn primarily
from its permanent collection. Representing many different viewpoints, the
approximately 50 artists in this exhibition share a groundbreaking status within
their respective fields. From Maynard Dixon to Richard Misrach, Maverick Art
explores how these artists together expand the meaning of the term Western
in their collective search for a new image of the contemporary West.
- Untitled by Deborah Butterfield, 2007 cast bronze, 85 x 110 x 46, courtesy of the LA Louver Gallery
Maverick Art emphasizes work created after 1990 to reveal how contemporary artists see the West now as an artistic resource. While some explore the lingering presence of frontier icons such as cowboys and Indians, others have found new ways to connect Western mythos with the modern experience, revealing a dynamic place where tradition and innovation exist side-by-side.
"Maverick Art is about casting a wider net for our audience and the field of contemporary Western art alike. I'm interested not only in understanding how frontier mythos and imagery continues to influence our contemporary identity as Westerners, but also the emergence of newer themes, from freeway culture to the atomic bomb. Our notion of who constitutes a Western artist is changing as well. As the place itself becomes increasingly diverse, many artists seek to revive or reclaim historic traditions, producing new work that is linked to a cultural past but is also very much about the present," reflects Amy Scott, Curator of Visual Arts.
“Icons Past and Present”
Maverick Art explores how imagery from the era of westward expansion—primarily that of the Plains Indian warrior and the cowboy—continues to influence visual culture in the modern West. Whether a nostalgic celebration of historic icons from an outsider’s perspective, or the reclamation of Indigenous imagery and materials by artists from inside the culture, this section reveals a dialogue between established symbols from a narrative past and the contemporary response.
“Religion and Ritual”
Devoted to a surge of contemporary interest in Spanish Colonial art, the exhibit also looks at religion and ritual as a formative cultural value and source of ongoing artistic inspiration for many in the West. Blending overtly Catholic imagery such as crucifixes and the sacred heart with more secular icons like the low-rider, religion and ritual are seen as driving forces of contemporary culture.
“Land as Landscape”
Within historic Western art, perhaps no topic has received a more thorough artistic treatment than landscape and wilderness. Some contemporary artists choose to venerate open spaces as a grand, if dwindling, American resource; others investigate the tension between such ideals and the development or destruction of other parts of the Western landscape. Within the contemporary West, protected spaces such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon must increasingly vie for artistic attention with freeways and other forms of change and occupation; even the atomic blast becomes artistic fodder for those interested in how art has been used to aesthetically construct and visually distinguish land from landscape across the West.
Unlike most exhibitions of contemporary Western art, Maverick Art is not limited to a single stylistic vision or a united group of artists. Rather, it combines a range of artistic practices at work in the West today—from representational work based on longstanding realist and cultural traditions to abstract artists exploring contemporary themes not traditionally associated with the term Western. Though seemingly divergent, these paths can also be surprisingly continuous. For example, James Doolin’s monumental freeway painting, Bridges, directly engages the landscape traditions of the nineteenth-century sublime, while Preston Singletary’s glass sculpture, Balance of Power, draws from his Tlingit ancestry and the creation legend of Raven. Others, such as Deborah Butterfield and Richard Misrach, revisit evocative Western icons such as the horse or Yosemite’s Half Dome, but in ways that move beyond historic tropes to circumvent or subvert altogether traditional ideas of the term Western. By redefining the term, Maverick Art reveals not the limitations, but the potential of art made about the expanding cultural and conceptual dimensions of the West.
*Please note: The Autry National Center closes at 2 pm on Saturday, October 4, in preparation for the evening’s annual Gala.
