拍品专文
"I do not paint Indians or cowboys merely because they are picturesque subjects, but because through them I can express that phantasy of freedom of space and thought which will give the world a sentiment about these people which is inspiring and uplifting." (D. Hagerty, p. 73)
This artistic aim of Maynard Dixon is fully realized in his work of 1914, The Navajo. Maynard Dixon's paintings from the 1910s onward reveal a unique vision based on intimate personal experiences and lack the propogandistic and myth-making messages of most nineteenth and twentieth century Western art. Although his images were manipulated and organized to heighten their sense of drama and power, they were by no means romanticized or embellished to promote previous notions of the West as a Garden of Eden, nor were they images in the vein of James Earle Fraser's The End of the Trail which celebrated the end of a weak race. Rather, Dixon created heroic images of the Native American people meant "to symbolize spiritual and poetic memories of Native American life." (D. Hagerty, p. 85) Often, as in The Navajo, "the figures are frozen against neutral backgrounds, and, illuminated by a flood of low-angle, early morning or evening light...imbued with a mysterious, energizing force." (D. Hagerty, p. 85) Maynard Dixon brings to The Navajo a serene and silent calm, reflecting the peace and contentment with which he viewed the West.
"The melodramatic Wild West is not for me the big possibility. The more lasting qualities are in the quiet and more broadly human aspects of western life. I am to interpret for the most part the poetry and pathos of western people seen amid the grandeur, sternness, and loneliness of their country." (K. Starr, "Painterly Poet, Poetic Painter: The Dual art of Maynard Dixon," San Francisco Historical Quarterly vol. 53, no. 4, Winter 1977-78, p. 301
Although based in San Francisco until the last few years of his life, Dixon was continuously drawn to the desert landscapes and native cultures of the American West. As a young boy, Dixon was inspired by the great illustrators of the day, particularly Frederic Remington, and followed a similar career path by working as a book and magazine illustrator in California from 1893 until 1907 when he established a studio in New York where he worked until 1912. Producing illustrations for western adventure stories and meeting the demand for melodramtic, romantic images of a place he considered home, Dixon felt he was "being paid to lie about the West" (W. Burnside, p. 55) and thus returned to San Francisco in 1912 where he began his career as a painter and muralist.
In 1914, after completing the murals for Anita Baldwin McClaughry's Jinks Room, Dixon painted The Navajo for an important exhibition in November at Vickery, Atkins and Torrey in San Francisco. This exhibition featured thirty one recent works depicting the deserts and Native people of Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon. These pictures show Dixon's awareness of the modernist trends in painting brought to light by the Armory Show of 1913. In The Navajo, the artist has created a strong composition with a monumental figure on a horse silhouetted against a characteristically banded landscape dividing land and sky. The immediate foregound composed of short, quick brush strokes and the longer, more suggestive strokes forming the horse, figure and sky reveal the strong influence of French Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. This dazzling foreground closely resembles that of the Jinks Room murals yet the more subdued palette of this work enhances its atmospheric effects and its wonderfully serene, contemplative aura. With an unusually confident and assured young hand, Dixon captures the dynamic coexistence of the vital energy and absolute stillness of nature.
While The Navajo posseses much of the simplification and reduction of forms which is developed further in Dixon's later work, his entire oeuvre stands apart from the trendy, avant-garde styles prominent in the most advanced art circles of New York. Dixon maintained that an artist "must be aware of schools, cults, dogmas, isms; must learn from all and give obediance to none." (L.C. Powell, "The Essential Vision," The Drawings of Maynard Dixon, San Francisco, 1985, p. 13) In 1915 after painting The Navajo, Dixon asked himself: "Should I go along with the "new movement", adopt a new and fashionable point of view, get my views "imported," or should I look at my world with more candid eyes, be plainly honest with myself and so achieve something perhaps not so starling but at least sincere?" (D. Hagerty, p. 36) Following an independent path, Maynard Dixon produced a large body of work which bears a stylistic and psychological stamp that is uniquely is own.
This artistic aim of Maynard Dixon is fully realized in his work of 1914, The Navajo. Maynard Dixon's paintings from the 1910s onward reveal a unique vision based on intimate personal experiences and lack the propogandistic and myth-making messages of most nineteenth and twentieth century Western art. Although his images were manipulated and organized to heighten their sense of drama and power, they were by no means romanticized or embellished to promote previous notions of the West as a Garden of Eden, nor were they images in the vein of James Earle Fraser's The End of the Trail which celebrated the end of a weak race. Rather, Dixon created heroic images of the Native American people meant "to symbolize spiritual and poetic memories of Native American life." (D. Hagerty, p. 85) Often, as in The Navajo, "the figures are frozen against neutral backgrounds, and, illuminated by a flood of low-angle, early morning or evening light...imbued with a mysterious, energizing force." (D. Hagerty, p. 85) Maynard Dixon brings to The Navajo a serene and silent calm, reflecting the peace and contentment with which he viewed the West.
"The melodramatic Wild West is not for me the big possibility. The more lasting qualities are in the quiet and more broadly human aspects of western life. I am to interpret for the most part the poetry and pathos of western people seen amid the grandeur, sternness, and loneliness of their country." (K. Starr, "Painterly Poet, Poetic Painter: The Dual art of Maynard Dixon," San Francisco Historical Quarterly vol. 53, no. 4, Winter 1977-78, p. 301
Although based in San Francisco until the last few years of his life, Dixon was continuously drawn to the desert landscapes and native cultures of the American West. As a young boy, Dixon was inspired by the great illustrators of the day, particularly Frederic Remington, and followed a similar career path by working as a book and magazine illustrator in California from 1893 until 1907 when he established a studio in New York where he worked until 1912. Producing illustrations for western adventure stories and meeting the demand for melodramtic, romantic images of a place he considered home, Dixon felt he was "being paid to lie about the West" (W. Burnside, p. 55) and thus returned to San Francisco in 1912 where he began his career as a painter and muralist.
In 1914, after completing the murals for Anita Baldwin McClaughry's Jinks Room, Dixon painted The Navajo for an important exhibition in November at Vickery, Atkins and Torrey in San Francisco. This exhibition featured thirty one recent works depicting the deserts and Native people of Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon. These pictures show Dixon's awareness of the modernist trends in painting brought to light by the Armory Show of 1913. In The Navajo, the artist has created a strong composition with a monumental figure on a horse silhouetted against a characteristically banded landscape dividing land and sky. The immediate foregound composed of short, quick brush strokes and the longer, more suggestive strokes forming the horse, figure and sky reveal the strong influence of French Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. This dazzling foreground closely resembles that of the Jinks Room murals yet the more subdued palette of this work enhances its atmospheric effects and its wonderfully serene, contemplative aura. With an unusually confident and assured young hand, Dixon captures the dynamic coexistence of the vital energy and absolute stillness of nature.
While The Navajo posseses much of the simplification and reduction of forms which is developed further in Dixon's later work, his entire oeuvre stands apart from the trendy, avant-garde styles prominent in the most advanced art circles of New York. Dixon maintained that an artist "must be aware of schools, cults, dogmas, isms; must learn from all and give obediance to none." (L.C. Powell, "The Essential Vision," The Drawings of Maynard Dixon, San Francisco, 1985, p. 13) In 1915 after painting The Navajo, Dixon asked himself: "Should I go along with the "new movement", adopt a new and fashionable point of view, get my views "imported," or should I look at my world with more candid eyes, be plainly honest with myself and so achieve something perhaps not so starling but at least sincere?" (D. Hagerty, p. 36) Following an independent path, Maynard Dixon produced a large body of work which bears a stylistic and psychological stamp that is uniquely is own.