As I walked through the Museum of Art, I was looking for a painting that really caught my eye to write about. The room was filled with beautiful paintings of amazing landscapes from across America. The painting I chose may not have been the most breath taking scene, or biggest or most colorful but it caught my eye and I knew it was the painting to write about because I knew it better than any other.
Lafayette Maynard Dixon today is known for his paintings and illustrations of the Western United States and his authentic feel for the spirit of the region. Dixon was born in 1875 in Fresno California. He was always drawing as a child and after he got encouragement from Frederick Remington he continued doing illustrations. He was educated at California School of Design, but it was short lived as he gave up his formal art training to travel across the west documenting landscapes in his art and poetry. A trip across Arizona in 1905 was a turning point for Dixon and he returned to California, with intentions to paint parts of Arizona and Nevada. “That trip firmly established the artistic direction in which he would develop throughout the rest of his life” (Stremmel 1990).
Dixon had many trying years in his life, he was married three different times, had his San Francisco art studio destroyed by an earthquake, he was criticized at times as an artist but when he died in 1946, he is remembered as one of the most alluring and influential artists painting the beautiful western landscapes.
This oil canvas painting is a little varied from his usual highly distinctive style. Although it does have vibrant coloring, it is not as bold as some of his other paintings that have a more of a slight impressionism style. Dixon uses smooth brush strokes as well as defined geographic shapes to highlight the beauty of simplicity in this landscape. “The Plains” ultimately belongs to the modern period of Western art under the subtitle of Regionalism although he never commits to one school solety and uses elements of realism as well. I think this painting can be classified as early modernist and within that it is a regionalism painting because of the fact that it is a landscape of the western land and shows elements of strong lines separating parts of the painting and shapes such as rectangles and diagonal lines to emphasize the sky and the never ending road.
Regionalism at this time was just getting popular and Dixon is credited to be one of the first to paint regionalist paintings of places such as Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Regionalism painters found beauty outside of the big cities and crowded streets, but in nature and in the silent still landscapes of mountains, prairies, lakes and canyons. Dixon insisted that any art that did not develop an understanding of regionalism would remain impoverished and unfulfilled (Hagerty 2010).
This painting was done in 1931; this period is where Dixon was continuing to refine his oil paintings. He would do a rough sketch while in the field and then decide how to paint it on canvas. Sometimes he would do a full scale sketch in charcoal first, then light washes in diluted colors which would create both the light and dark spots and colors in the painting. He would then rapidly paint over the canvas as the image came to be. He would paint lightly usually and let the texture of the canvas show through. Dixon quotes of his style “As to my technique, it is no accident and is developed to meet my needs” He continues “My feeling is toward the thing I do, and austerity and clear definition are the dominating character of the arid lands I work in” (Hagerty 2010).
This painting, although so simple was considered so beautiful because it is a perfect depiction of the land that so many feel is the true beauty of nature. The plains are flat and yellow and some eyes might not find that beautiful at all, but there are certain people that find the plains the most breath taking parts of the world. The plains can make you feel so close to the earth and so much a part of something bigger. I think this painting and others like it by Maynard Dixon represent ideals of peace, serenity, of loving your land. I think a main expression of Regionalism is that we need to appreciate the land more, stop and take time out of the big city life and look around to what was not man made, but which was made by something higher. Look at the beautiful creations that we so many times take for granted. Dixon found so much joy travelling the open west and he saw beauty everywhere, he was confident that if he lost sight for a second, he could return to nature and renew his vision. Dixon saw his role at this time to “set up creative tensions between the visual myths and the real world” (James 1990). Many of his other paintings included the Native American tribes living in the west and he would live and travel with them at times and celebrated their heritage and lifestyle in his art. He believed that their own native arts helped “validate American culture” (James 1990). He thought of those modernist painters who tried to depict native art and make it something of their own were phonies and said “When a white man attempts to revert to primitive art, he generally makes a fool of himself. No white man can equal the authentic work of the primitive artist.” (Hagerty 2010).
Many said that Maynard danced between modernism and realism, and I think that he embraced rather than rejected modernism when it came more popular in the 1930’s and used elements of both in this particular painting to make it beautiful. Dixon was worrisome about the issues of cultural identity in the modernist era. “Dixon wrote numerous letters and essays affirming his argument that American artists needed to shaper their own style and artistic treatment” (Hagerty 2010). Overall this painting was one that did just that, he made a stand of one of his strongest convictions, he tied elements of the myths of the eye and the real world to create a painting that was truly his own style.
This painting to me is beautiful because when I saw it, it was not just a painting of a random landscape, but a painting that attached so much emotion to me because it looked just like the place where I have spent my life thus far. I grew up in Southern Alberta Canada and we are famous for our vast beautiful prairie landscapes. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the plains growing up, I just remember the long drives through them and I thought they would never end as we were driving through them to our destination. Although after my first year away from home, missing Canada a lot, I remember driving back from the States and going through the border and seeing the beautiful prairie plains, stretches and stretches of flat yellow earth, it gave me such a feeling of joy and I have ever since been very sentimental about the prairies.
I imagine Dixon felt the same way when he painted this painting, a joy for the feeling that this was his land, and that it was his duty to paint it for others. Before I researched this painting I did not know what style it was, what cultural context it arose from but I found definite beauty in it and so yes, a viewer can separate beauty form its cultural context, especially the uneducated in art like myself. Dixon said the plains had a feeling of lyrical freedom and that resonates true in me as well.
|
| The Plains Painting by Maynard Dixon |
 |
| Actual photograph taken an hour away from where I live Now can you see why I picked this picture? |
