Taking Aim: Rhetoric of the Gun in Images and Words

On a day filled with tragic images of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, it seems absurd to blog about anything else. As advertised, this is a blog about how “looking at art leads to thinking about life,” but today I’m interested in how looking at certain images (and the words that accompany them) lead to thinking about death, specifically death delivered from the barrel of a gun. For all those who proclaim a constitutional right to bear arms, I’ll counter with a 9-year-old girl’s constitutional right to know what it’s like to be 10, something one of today’s victims will never experience. Yes, guns don’t kill people—crazy people with too easy access to guns kill people, sometimes under the influence of visual and verbal propaganda that makes light of taking aim on a human being while knowing full well that someone may take it serious, deadly serious. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Taking Aim."

Native Intelligence

Growing up in California, Grace Carpenter Hudson watched her mother teach the local Pomo Indian children, one of the first whites to bring school education to that tribe. Born February 21, 1865, Hudson developed an early fascination with the customs of the Pomo as much as with the Pomo people themselves. After years of learning art and attempting portraits and other genres, Hudson finally decided to indulge her interest in the Pomo Indians and painted National Thorn (above, from 1891), which promptly won awards and gained Hudson widespread fame as a painter of “Indian” pictures. Much of the American Indian painting genre consists of “manly” visions of violence and Wild West theatrics ala Frederic Remington and his kind that is long on drama but often painfully short on the facts. Hudson’s close association with these native people allowed her access to the facts of the case, but it is her empathy for the Pomo that really sets her apart from the crowd. Some may argue that it took a woman artist to recognize the humanity of Native Americans, but I think that it was more a case of her upbringing emphasizing the fundamental humanness of the Pomo that shaped her view of them.

By the time that Hudson began to paint the Pomo and record their customs and way of life, the Pomo and most other Native American groups were already beginning to disappear and assimilate into American culture. Paintings such as The Seed Conjurer (above, from 1896) hint at a larger mythology of the Pomo without giving any further detail. Both Hudson and her husband John collected Native American artifacts, which helped provide props for Grace’s paintings. What I feel is most appealing about Hudson’s paintings is the fact that the subjects are people first and Native Americans second. The Seed Conjurer refuses to transform the man into some magical shaman but rather shows him as simply a human being practicing his religious beliefs. Hudson’s paintings push back at the dehumanizing forces that helped make the alienation and forced migration of the Native Americans palatable to the general public.

Because of her deep affection for the Pomo people, many of Hudson’s paintings, especially the later works, slip from the edge of empathetic into the swamp of sentimentality. The Watermelon (above, from the 1920s) shows a young Pomo child “sharing” a ripe watermelon with his much too adorable dog. During her travels to Hawaii and the American Midwest, Hudson tried her hand at painting other indigenous groups, but she never found the same personal identification with them that she had built with the Pomo. Hudson painted almost seven hundred paintings related to the Pomo people over four decades, so you can forgive her for falling into the trap of popularity and eventually repeating herself and diluting the power of her earliest works. Because of such kitsch-like evocation of children and animals, Hudson’s reputation has taken a bit of a beating over the years. Hudson offers a wholly different view on the approach of Western art to Native Americans that makes the scenes of cowboys and Indians seem incomplete and downright childish.

Way Out West

When George de Forest Brush studied with Jean-Leon Gerome in Paris, Gerome taught Brush the same two things he taught all his students: a love of the human figure and a passion for romantic adventure. Born September 20, 1855, Brush took Gerome’s lessons in a whole new direction. While his teacher explored the Middle East and the Orient in his art, Brush ventured out into the romantic frontier of the American West. In works such as The Sculptor and the King (above, from 1888), Brush took the classical approach to painting the human figure and applied it to the life of the Native American people. Unfortunately, Brush arrived long after the Native American way of life had become a thing of the past, so his paintings recreate an idealized version of that world. In The Sculptor and the King, Brush confusedly mixes Mayan wall reliefs with American Indian culture, resulting in an anthropological jumble, but the beautiful technique and sympathetic approach to Native American life, which popular American culture had demonized by that time after years of conflicts over land, more than make up for the factual errors.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, currently has an exhibition of Brush’s “Indian Paintings.” During his lifetime, such works brought Brush his greatest fame and recognition by other artists. As pointed out here, N.C. Wyeth emulated many of Brush’s Native American paintings in his own works, including Brush’s Mourning Her Brave (above, from 1883). The idea of ascribing human emotions to allegedly “subhuman” Native Americans was a novelty at the time, harking back to the days of George Catlin, who had first-hand knowledge of native people. Frederic Remington depicted Indians as pure killers. William Ranney had little knowledge of Indians, visual or otherwise, yet still chose to depict them as a malicious, if unseen, force. Although Brush came too late to see the great native civilizations of the plains, his belief in the romantic concept of the “noble savage,” helped him forge a vision of these people as ideal versus the compromised life of “civilization.”

Once he gained prominence with his Western paintings, Brush’s art came into demand and he was able to concentrate on the lucrative field of portraiture. His Mother and Child (above, from 1902) shows the rich color and subtle molding Gerome taught to all his students. Brush’s mothers with their children often resemble Renaissance madonnas in their lavish glamour. Whereas someone like Thomas Eakins, another Gerome student, took those lessons and went to the extreme of studying physiology and figure to the near exclusion of romanticism, Brush goes to the opposite extreme, infusing romanticism into everything at the expense of exactitude. Brush strove to bring the ideas of Europe to the American arena, superimposing Old World values on the New World, including its original inhabitants. Brush took an American West already turned mythic and gave it a better set of myths to live on.

Yippie Kay Ay

I’ve never been much for Westerns. My father loved them, so I’d sit through tumbleweed-infested flicks and wonder what all the fuss was. Certain films, like The Searchers, certainly caught my attention, but for the most part I found the fantasy of the American West just too fantastic. The art of Frank Tenney Johnson helps ease some of my inborn aversion. Born June 26, 1874, Johnson lived in the Midwest for most of his life before heading to New York City to learn art at the Art Students League of New York under American Impressionist John Henry Twachtman. Johnson headed west soon after, taking Twachtman’s style with him and eventually perfecting the play of moonlight on figures in motion, most often cowboys riding their mounts, as in Texas Night Riders (above, from 1929). In contrast to Frederic Remington, who mythologized the West like no other (my favorite “bad” Remington shows a man loading a rifle on a galloping horse by spitting the bullet down the barrel), Johnson shows remarkable restraint, presenting an idealized vision of cowboys, of course, but one that remains rooted in reality.

What separates Johnson from Remington may be the fact that Johnson actually spent time on ranches, observing and talking with the men who worked with the animals and faced the obstacles of nature. Remington wove his images out of brief opportunities of observation, taking just enough visual memory back for him to interject his own imaginative flights of fancy. In Ever Westward (above, from 1910), Johnson paints a wagon train of pioneers crossing the continent to the promise of a new life. The painting contains a high level of sentimentality, down to the grizzled old hand leading the pack with his faithful dog alongside, but that dreaminess softens rather than obscures a factual core. Remington would have a horde of “Injuns” pour over the nearest hill and the pioneers desperately circling the wagons, whereas Johnson shows the mostly quiet course of everyday life. Johnson reportedly painted often with his fingers to achieve his effects, just another way that his paintings are “hands on” more than those of other Western artists.

Johnson illustrated many of the Western novels of Zane Grey, adding evocative visuals to Grey’s evocative prose. Grey’s dramatic inventions play right into the stereotypes of the Old West, but his sense of the beauty of the landscape and the cowboy life match those of Johnson well. Johnson’s Nocturne (above, from 1915) seems like something Whistler would have painted had he found himself at home on the range. The range of blues makes this a symphony of tones. The shadow obscuring the rider’s face lends the work a sense of mystery that pulls you into the story being told. The white line running down the horse’s face anchors the entire work. Regardless of subject matter, Johnson knew the art of composition and tonality inside out. Because of his subject matter, however, and his deft handling of it, Johnson belongs with the ranks of those truly American artists who painted American life as it was truly lived.

On the Wild Frontier

Whereas other artists celebrating the American West, such as Frederic Remington and William Ranney, spent little time witnessing that time and place firsthand, Charles Marion Russell knew the life of a rancher and horseback cowboy intimately. Born March 19, 1864, Russell, known more popularly as C.M. Russell, read everything he got his hands on that could teach him something about the still “Wild West” while growing up in Missouri. Explorers and traders coming back east through Missouri brought with them more stories that Russell would transform into sketches and clay figures. Russell’s painting Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia (above, from 1905) owes much to these men who seemed larger than life to the young artist. Although Lewis and Clark’s expedition was history when Russell was born, the yen to explore the mysterious plains still captured many imaginations, including Russell’s.

At the age of sixteen, Russell left school and traveled to Montana to work on a sheep ranch. Within a few years, the artist graduated to full cattle-hand status. Such hands-on experience gives paintings such as Bronc to Breakfast (above) a life and reality that Remington’s outlandish depictions of superhuman feats lack. Russell’s eye for detail as well as narrative impact create a mini-story in a simple image, here the disruption of a hearty breakfast on the plains thanks to an out-of-control mount. Of course, Russell indulges in some fiction as well, depicting only white cowboys in contradiction of the reality that most cowboys were African-American former slaves. I’ll give him the benefit of a doubt that he knew the true face of the cowboy but had to make some concessions to salability in a mostly white market. It would be fascinating to know just how aware Russell was of the work of Remington, whose widespread fiction easily outpaced Russell’s realism, forcing him to “catch up” as best as he could while remaining as true as possible to the subject.

And where there’s cowboys, there is, of course, Indians. In Ranney’s paintings, Native Americans are rarely scene and occasionally hinted at as a malevolent off-screen presence. In Remington’s paintings, Native Americans become the embodiment of evil itself, the savage villains to play the foil against the virtuous cowboys with their devotion to their almost Arthurian code of conduct. Russell paints Native Americans as neither saints nor sinners but equal participants in the battle between humans over the same stretch of land. He is clear-eyed enough to have seen the conflicts between different tribes, as in When Blackfoot and Sioux Meet (above, from 1905), rather than portray Native Americans as a monolithic force. The combination of men and animals struggling against one another gives this painting a narrative force and drama that verges on the cinematic. In fact, Russell knew such early Western film stars as William S. Hart, Will Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks, who collected Russell’s paintings as inspiration for their films. If Russell contributed to the mythic aura of the American West, it was inadvertently and the unfortunate result of painting the reality so well that it became hard to separate from the myth.

Out of the Ashes

When the age of the illustrated magazine was reaching its end in America, William Glackens and similar artists found themselves at a loss. Born March 13, 1870, Glackens joined the group of artists known as The Ashcan School or The Eight that met and centered around Robert Henri. Like Henri and John Sloan, Glackens moved to New York City in search of work and material. Almost as a swan song of the age of illustration, McClure’s Magazine sent Glackens to cover the Spanish-American War in 1898, when he drew Loading Horses on the Transports at Port Tampa (above, from 1898). (Could that actually be Teddy Roosevelt directing proceedings in the lower right corner?) Unlike Frederic Remington, who mythologized the war in the service of those stage managing it, Glackens casts a clear, realistic eye on the day to day activities of the troops, presaging the yen for realism he would soon bring back to New York City.

Just before leaving to cover the war, Glackens had returned from a trip to Paris with Henri to see the latest art movements there. Glackens found himself enthralled by the paintings of Manet, which brought a new kind of realism to French art. Glackens took the Zola–inspired realism of Manet and brought it back to America and the Ashcan School, which is, ironically, considered by many to be the quintessential “American” school of art. Glackens’ Chez Mouquin (above, from 1905) shows wealthy New Yorkers enjoying a night on the town, but they could easily be figures from the cafes of Paris as painted by Manet. If you saw these people reflected in the mirror of A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, you wouldn’t even look twice. It seems fitting, however, that Glackens used the art of Paris to depict the life of New York City, just then beginning to become the great world city we now know it as.

Glackens’ Francophilia grew stronger and stronger, eventually expressing itself in a choppy style of painting with vibrant colors that approached Impressionism. March Day—Washington Square (above, from 1912) leaves the polish of Manet behind for the atmospheric effects of Pierre Auguste Renoir, who supplants Manet in Glackens’ heart. The Ashcan School is justifiably associated with the dark streets and alleys of New York, but Glackens brings that group out into the fresh air with a flair that is downright French. Glackens shared his love of Renoir with his old schoolmate Dr. Albert C. Barnes, purchasing works for Barnes before the good doctor began purchasing on his own, finally amassing the collection that became The Barnes Foundation. In the middle of Dr. Barnes’ grand collection of Renoir, Matisse, and others, the room dedicated to the work of William Glackens seems a strange home for an Ashcan artist until you allow yourself to look closely and realize the family resemblance.

Wide Open Spaces

Not many artists can say they have a mountain named after them, but Thomas Moran can. Born February 12, 1837, Moran took the Romantic love of nature fostered by Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School and brought it to the American West, capturing the beauty of untouched landscapes such as those of Wyoming that would become Yellowstone National Park. Paintings such as Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (above, from 1872) helped inspire the U.S. Congress to creat the National Park System in 1916 to preserve these natural settings for future generations. Today, the National Park Service site contains a collection of Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone as a lasting tribute to his contribution to saving this land.

Moran may have been the purest of the American Romantic landscapists. He recognized the genius of J.M.W. Turner when few others did, and even travelled to England and Europe in the 1880s to paint landscapes in the same exact places that Turner had years before. In addition to depicting real-life landscapes, Moran created landscapes of the imagination inspired by the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Robert Browning, among others. Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came inspired a painting by Moran of the same name (above, from 1859). When Moran arrived at Yellowstone with the government exploratory team to chart that undiscovered country, the hot mud lakes and geothermic geysers must have seemed like one of his imaginary landscapes come to life.




Moran’s paintings of the American West are as diverse as the landscape itself. Just in Wyoming, Moran could paint both the geysers and gorges of Yellowstone as well as The Tetons (above, from the 1870s) that would become Grand Teton National Park. Mount Moran, one of the highest and most difficult mountains to climb in that range, stands today as a testimony to the power of art to shape minds and preserve the natural beauty it captures. Whereas artists such as Frederick Remington traveled west and created fiction, Moran ventured forth and copied the majestic fact of the American landscape. Moran may have applied some of his own Romanticism to those depictions, but I prefer to see that as just another part of the truth of the landscape rather than false embellishment.

Painting the Myth

At the end of the 1962 Western movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, a journalist cynically says, "If you are forced to print the truth or the myth, you always print the myth." Frederick Remington, born on this date in 1861, helped paint the myth of the American West like no other. Although he was born and lived most of his life in New York, Remington spent just enough time in the West to gather enough material to spin his mythic world of Native Americans and Cowboys. “Cowboys are my cash,” Remington once said. Remington cashed in on the myth he created, becoming the most financially successful artist of his time, spreading out from illustration and painting to even sculpture in his exploration of the legendary American West that was disappearing at the same time he was capturing it for the public. In works such as The Cigarette (above, from 1908), Remington created an image of the Cowboy as a romantic figure living a chivalric code of the land, appealing to the young American nation in need of a mythic, heroic past.

To modern eyes, it sometimes seems hard to believe how popular and how powerful the image of the West became. In improbable scenes such as Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun (above, from 1892), Remington almost dares the viewer not to believe that a man on a speeding horse can somehow spit a bullet down the barrel of a rifle. Of course, the American public quite willingly suspended their disbelief, swallowing whatever Remington spit out, and continues to even today as the idea of the American West lives on powerfully in movies. The Italian Spaghetti Westerns genre speaks of the power of that myth to spread to even Europe as the defining image of what America is about.

Media mogul William Randolph Hearst recognized Remington’s power over the public and enlisted him to illustrate the Spanish-American War and Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders’ exploits in Cuba. Upon landing in Havana, the anxious Remington cabled to Hearst: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst replied: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst soon got his war and his pictures, including Remington’s painting of The Charge of the Rough Riders, with T.R. at the center leading his men, two dead Spanish scouts off to the left, and a man beside T.R. dramatically reacting to just being shot. Remington remorselessly presents all the heroism of war, cashing in on another myth. When Roosevelt and the Rough Riders parted ways, the men gave their leader a series of gifts, one of which was a copy of Remington’s sculpture The Bronco Buster (above). Roosevelt carried that sculpture all the way to the White House a few years later, forever uniting Remington’s myth of the Cowboy with “cowboy diplomacy” on a presidential level, something we’re saddled with even today.