Back during the days of the Reagan Administration, I was participating in the Tri-Delta Antiques Show in Dallas. Among the artworks on display in my booth was a cast of Frederic Remington’s iconic bronze The Bronco Buster. An older gentleman visiting the booth examined it for several moments and then turned to me.
“My grandfather had one of these when I was a boy, and he told me he was leaving it to me,” he said.
“Oh, really?” I answered. “Well, if you still have it, I’d love to talk with you about buying it.” “Have it?” He fumed, “I never got it! My mother gave it to the White House!” Now, every time he turned on the evening news, there was President Reagan in the Oval Office, and there in the background was the sculpture that my visitor felt rightly belonged to him.
It is a mercy that my visitor probably shuffled off his mortal coil years ago, given all the aggravation he would have suffered during the period since our chat, because through every administration, Republican or Democratic, persons viewing an image of the current inhabitant of the Oval Office could be assured of seeing The Bronco Buster sitting somewhere in the background. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Federal statute mandating that it be always on view.
I’ve been thinking about Remington since I viewed a recent webinar on the traveling exhibition “Mythmakers: The Art of Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington,” which is currently on view at the Amon Carter Museum. The speakers at the webinar were Maggie Adler, the curator of American art at the museum, and Adam Gopnik, a writer for The New Yorker who has written extensively on art. “Homer and Remington were touted by turn-of-the-century critics as artists whose work reinforced an American identity rooted in action, independence, and communion with the outdoors,” says the museum’s press release, adding that both artists cultivated this perception of themselves.
One of the interesting points mentioned by Adler and Gopnik was that this mythmaking was not based in fact. The fame of Homer and Remington would have been impossible without their connection with New York City: both artists came to national prominence because of the work they did as illustrators for New York magazines at the beginning of their careers. It was work that each sought to downplay later in life, but it was essential for their starts.
I have written before about the advantage of a New York connection, but this necessity is often ignored in the public imagination. Gopnik pointed out that in France, serious artists are expected to be connected with Paris, but that Americans like the idea of solitary geniuses working out there in the wilderness, on the coast of Maine like Homer at Prouts Neck, or like Remington, deep in Indian Country.
Both artists influenced the way we imagine their worlds. Homer’s fishmen in their Sou’wester hats, hauling in their nets on a foggy sea, remain icons of American art. Remington’s scenes of cavalrymen and Native Americans are even more iconic, for, as Gopnik said, they influenced film directors like Howard Hawks and John Ford. Our view of the 19th century American West, nurtured by a century of Hollywood Westerns and their television offspring, comes directly from Remington.
Perceptions, however, have changed. In Remington’s West, the white man is always the hero, and the Native American is at best a quaint relic of a dying civilization and at worst a murderous savage. Remington held many of the racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic opinions of WASPs of his time, and such views, expressed in now-published private correspondence, have earned him many a lambasting in recent years.
Remington’s art has long been suspect among East Coast critics as something enjoyed by the unwashed, movie-going masses, perhaps, but inappropriate for “high” culture. With recent deconstruction of the racism inherent in colonial tropes, furthermore, attacks on Remington’s art have intensified. “Remington has always been hated by the right people,” Gopnik remarked.
And yet the paintings and sculptures remain popular, and they are popular because of the exciting stories they tell. A Dash for the Timber, in the Amon Carter’s collection, is a perfect example of this work.
Toward the end of the webinar, talking about changing perceptions and their effect on the art of the past, Adler asked Gopnik his feelings about the current push to remove statues of Confederate generals from display in city squares. Gopnik replied that three considerations apply in such cases: the conduct of the general in the war, the context in which he is presented, and the artistic merit of the sculpture. He added that while he might support the removal of a sculpture from a public space, he would never support its destruction.
Whether it’s loved or hated by critics and art historians, Remington’s art will always be popular, the Western scenes, anyway. They’re well-painted and well-sculpted, something in which the eye can revel.
In his poem, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” W.H. Auden wrote,
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives,
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honors at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
And so with Remington’s art.
