Kerrville's Museum Of Western Art

An association of cowboy artists was pondering where to build a home to store and display their art when a man from Kerrville, Texas spoke up and said he had land to spare and would they like some? Which explains why this highly rated museum is located off the beaten path near Fredericksburg, Texas, if it's near anything at all.

It's a building filled with art and artifacts. Take the Conestoga wagon, named for the manufacturer in the Conestoga Valley of Pennsylvania (who knew?). The pioneers called them prairie schooners owing to their white canopies billowing like sails on the horizon. As they moved at a slow walking pace to the Pacific Coast...I know there is no resemblance but I saw our Promaster when I looked at these rugged homes away from homes for those hardy travelers.

The building was created using locally sourced mesquite wood to tile the floors and the ceiling is dotted with 28 specially arched skylights built by a Mexican specialist brought to Texas to do the work. He only got a thirty day visa so work that was planned to take 60 days was done in half the time.

Pretty impressive work:

Clearly a lot of thought has gone into the design and layout of the place and they are proud of it. 

It's called the Museum of Western Art but that in the end boils down to cowboys and related scenery and paraphernalia. I included this painting, by native Texan G Harvey, in an effort to illustrate the allure of the hill country in its prime: wild flower season, the best time to visit I am told.

Of artifacts I was struck by the bank donation of a shoeshine bench. It screams period dress and habits, like the swinging doors of a saloon bar on the wild frontier...

There were so many paintings, statues and items on display it was incumbent on me to try to find the ones that spoke to me. This one, below, by Fred Harman of Red Ryder comic book fame, took me back to the Conestoga wagon theme. The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci interviewed Henry Kissinger in 1972 and in that interview he confessed to his immigrant's idea of the cowboy as a metaphor for the American experience:

She asks him how he explains his popularity. At first he declines to answer. Then he gives in to her line of questioning: “The main point arises from the fact that I’ve always acted alone,” he says. “Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else.”

After being published in L’Europeo, the article is reprinted in several American newspapers and read all over the United States, where it becomes a scandal. Nixon is not at all pleased by the cowboy metaphor. Kissinger tries to deny that he has said these things, but he is contradicted by Oriana, who has a recording. 

For me the wagon gives me the stability and the independence that a motorcycle never did. I love stopping by the side of the road and having lunch "at home." But the lone cowboy is the romantic image. In the two pictures below, by Joe Beeler, I was fascinated by the study on the left and the final image, so much stronger with the powerful background, my favorite leading lines:

I'm not sure this painting translates well into a photograph because what grabbed me was the three dimensional quality of the red dirt. In person it was startling. Close up I saw tiny dabs of paint, red orange brown and yellow that together brought the dirt the cows were running over right into my face. Very impressive.

This cowboy was a modern representation, no guns, sunglasses (!) and quite fashionable at that... I loved the style of the rider, the pose, the long hair, the giant hat, the perfect control of the lasso, the ease of the posture. 

This painting below is the work of Harvey Young who studied in Munich and Paris came back to the West with what looked to me like a very European style. The light on the mountains reminds me of works set in the much less wild regions painted by British artists of the 19th century. Young had money apparently because ehe had a private rail car which he attached to trains as they went his way and which he used as his own home and studio on wheels. Not bad.

A section of the museum devoted to the education of the young tried to present a realistic view of the tough challenges of pioneer life. Fair enough.

The exhibits side step the more awkward questions raised by the migration westward. Indians and buffalos are notable by their forced submission to the new country expanding west but they really don't get a mention here.

In my mind the people who took to the trail and went west bus have been desperate in their lives back home wherever that was. This was no easy journey to a place known to them by reputation. And as far as this exhibition space goes that's enough. 

What I like most about the museum is the recognition it brings to a group of artists not well known or often shown. Frederic Remington is who we the general public know about, vaguely, but the others? It's really nice to see this art in this place celebrating a time and a place and a romanticism that lives in us to some degree today. Rolling across Texas in my covered wagon I spend time behind the wheel thinking about covered wagons taking all day to cover ground that took me half an hour. 

Hunting for the answer to my own question about the respectability of "cowboy art" in the art world I came across a great article published in 1987 in The Oklahoman and still to be found online, about an exhibit of western art in Paris of all places. 

A section from that article:

“But even in a country that invented the expression avante garde, it seems that everything old can be new again.

Jean-Claud Farjas, an artist with a painting hanging in the exposition, said: "I love it because it's painting that will come back to fashion. It's an honest kind of art."

Anore Jacque Min, a member of France's Legion of Honor, which admits only the most respected artists, went into more detail on the subject.

"I think that in the American painting of the West, the structure or construction of the landscape and personages are very special and characteristic of much of European paintings.”

I could have spent half the morning looking at the row of western saddles on display. Personalized, obviously loved in a way that goes far beyond the utility of a tool needed to ride a horse. The pommel reminds me of a cleat on a sailboat, used like the pommel to secure a line.

And then there were a couple of high class models, a stage coach and a chuck wagon. Amazing.

Nick Eggenhofer. was born in Bavaria. in 1897 and worked out of a studio in Wyoming. There is apparently a huge desire for cowboy stories in Germany, and in Italy when I was a child we loved a comic book series, still published about the adventures of a Texas Ranger called Tex Willer. 

I look at the chuck wagon model and think of the modern small camper trailers with kitchens built into the back offering an open air kitchen for campers who manage to sleep inside the tiny confines of the small tear drop trailers.

Looking at the stage coach I saw for the first time the structure of these machines, a flat ox cart frame underneath with the carriage body suspended on suspension above it for the comfort of the passengers. Brilliant.

Well worth the time to visit.

Rusty got his time around outside. It's a weird setting for a museum. It's plonked in the middle of a country club, between a swimming pool, a golf course and a bunch of private homes. 

We took off across country again and happened upon a lunch spot, underneath a raised portion Interstate 10. We got a bit muddled in our mapping and pulled over. As always Rusty wanted to get out when the van stopped. 

Layne said this looks like a good spot for lunch. Thats what I mean about traveling by van. You have your home wherever you are. A prairie schooner. 

In this instance lunch was a couple of Czech savory pastries from Austin. Kolaches they are called, pulled from our fridge and heated in our microwave. Easy.

Lunch where you want: life on the road.

Midnight in Paris

It was a quick visit to the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, a stop on the way home. Rusty spent three hours with a sitter, (rover.com) and I am trying to learn not to leave him behind with a lump in my throat. This time he got away and came haring after the car as we drove away which made it harder but I got through those three hours and so did he. I fear I enjoyed myself even more than he did walking with a lovely young university student and taking treats from her. 

We are member of the Dalí so we get to skip the lines at the entrance which is nice but our cards were messed up so leaving my wife to deal with the bureaucracy (it was her fault, she threw away the valid replacements and kept the outdated cards it turned out...) I tried once again to capture the essential Dalí surrealism in the wet Rolls Royce parked in the gift shop. They call it the Rainy Taxi frequently reproduced with a Cadillac and the driver with a shark's head. Not here:

Water streaming down inside the windows makes  a photograph as I like it, crisp and clear, impossible so I allowed myself some latitude and contented myself with the Countess' hand appearing through the mist. The other name for this piece is Mannequin Rotting In A Taxi Cab but I couldn't figure out how to spot snails crawling on her body....

The other creepy thing I've seen here previously is a holograph recreation of the artist himself, walking and talking on screens around the museum. My wife enjoyed the interaction, I shuddered and moved on. I do enjoy the innovations and the exhibits they are bringing to the museum which used to be a rather stuffy mausoleum but some of the surreal experiences are beyond me. I think Dalí would have loved them.

We were at the museum for one specific thing, the display of early 20th entry art focussed on 1929 in Paris when the Surrealists were coalescing around two distinct movements.  Dali landed in Paris and joined the "wrong" group quickly switching his allegiance to the more prominent Andre Breton group and the exhibit shows a short film recreating a clash between the poet and Gala, Dalí's wife (and by her estimation his muse) when Breton and Dalí were falling apart. 

The exhibit wasn't huge but it was full of images of the surrealists and their thoughts plastered all over the walls. Thus using the museum app you can listen to an audio tour of the artwork. The app audio is brilliant, you just hold the phone to your ear like a conversation with no need for headphones but the tours are a total headache to follow. I had to keep asking my wife where to go as she who is quipped with her infallible sense of direction was way ahead of me. I circled hopelessly lost for fifteen minutes staring at the incorrect pieces while ruminating on a totally irrelevant critique in my ear about something across the room.

Despite it being a holiday Monday and us being a bit later than usual owing to dog sitting detour it wasn't overly crowded.

I got to watch clips of several Surrealist movies including of course the infamous eye slitting by Bunuel in Un Chien Andalou which I hadn't seen for years. It seemed less horrifying than when I watched it in an art theater 40 years ago and of course much less horrifying than when it came out to audiences not quite used to trains driving toward them onscreen.

Giorgio de Chirico was among those with a picture on the wall and as usual they managed to put up a picture you don't associate with the more famous artist he became.

What I liked too was the fact that we got to see the faces behind the art which so rarely happens. What struck me about these avant guards creators was how bland they appeared in real life. They look like bankers and accountants in jackets and ties with neatly parted hair styles and even Dalí who cultivated public eccentricity later looked the part of an eager young salesman early on.

Then there was The Lighthouse by Tanguy whose story captured my imagination. Here was a Surrealist who started out as a sailor on a freighter and on a whim decided (as you do) to become an artist. he was inspired by what he saw so he left behind the workaday world of shipping as a deckhand and started expressing himself. He blamed Jacques Prévert the poet and de Chirico for his decision and  apparently they embraced him.  

Yves Tanguy:

Another of these bourgeois-turned-artist types shows up in the form of Pierre Roy of Nantes who became an architect and went on to forget that and take up painting instead. They had a couple of his works on display illustrating his roots combined with still life and open landscapes and a piece of surrealist tape (!) which really caught my fancy. 

It's one of the features of Dalí that I enjoy inasmuch as he displays his draughtsmanship at the same time as showing off his surrealist message through perfectly drawn works.  

Then there was Max Ernst and Loplop  is best explained by the Museum of Modern Art but was a birdlike representation of his alter ego in art. Remember these people called themselves surrealists so anything goes here...

I had never heard of Jean Arp, not even when he is known as Hans Arp. He was born in Alsace when France and Germany were arguing and fighting for possession of the border land so he grew up bilingual and used one name in French and the other when speaking German. Europe can be a messy place so we shouldn't be surprised when reality goes off the rails and surrealism takes its place. Please don't ask me to explain why I like this piece and it captured my attention. Mustache and bottles by Jean (Hans) Arp. There:

You wander through a decade of time, a period of intense living by survivors of intense warfare, facing the certain destruction of their world in a few years more and yet they hungered after meaning and explanation and description of life and they fought each other and the establishment to prove they were right. It must have been an extraordinary time and I knew nothing of it as I had to wait anther thirty years to be born. And now I'm old the whole proposition of scrambling to be heard and to be right seems nonsensical. What they left behind justifies it all.

Even if it can be hard to understand and sometimes even to enjoy. I saw some early street photos taken around Paris and I was struck by how banal many of them were, fuzzy black and white prints of streets and trees and fog, stuff you could expect to find on Instagram by people barely able to hold a phone camera steady. Yet photography was break through art form for surrealists, its immediacy and documentary qualities exposed them to new ideas of how to create art. The funny thing is, then as now Photography as Art is a tough concept to sell to the mass of people used to photography as phone snaps, or billboards, TV advertising. In 1929 the idea that a photographic print could be Art was laughable except to these people.

Alexander Calder is known as the Sculptor of Air. Considering he died in 1976 he offered a revolutionary view of sculpture by creating hanging pieces and as you can see artwork that is as ethereal as cobwebs:

There is still plenty of time to make a trek to St Petersburg, a city worth a visit anyway to check out for yourself the surrealist ferment ofParis between the wars. Well worth it.

As much as I wanted to get back to Rusty and then get home I like to stop and look out through the hurricane proof armored glass.

It gives a view of the gardens around the museum and Tampa Bay in the distance. 

And as this was the MLK holiday the parade that was to make leaving the city slightly awkward was getting underway for the long walk to the stadium near downtown St Petersburg. 

Rusty is an excellent traveling companion as he rides the back seat silently and uncomplaining, sleeping, sitting from time to time and looking out the window at scenery. He is as always no trouble at all.