Don Gray Jessie's Paintings Landscapes I Landscapes II Landscapes III Landscapes IV ... Sales Information Don's Paintings Still-lifes I Still-lifes II Still-lifes III Flowers I ... Sales Information Anschutz Collection of Western Art, Museum of Natural History (1985) In 1984, a 31 year-old Ph.D. candidate living in a Buffalo, N.Y. suburb was taken to court by his neighbors and the town for failure to cut his lawn. The man wanted to allow wild flowers to grow. A forced mowing took place this past July. Very recently, fines totaling $30,000. were reduced to $50. by a higher court judge who upheld the lawn mowing ordinance. What does this incident have to do with the exhibition of a century and a half of American Art at the Museum of Natural History, 79 Central Park West, through February 16th? Probably everything, if we use the Philip F. Anschutz Collection, "Masterpieces of the American West," to examine some meanings of the West in reality and myth. The West is, and has been, a metaphor for freedom, danger, challenge, expectation and opportunity. It is, and has been, wide-open spaces; great mountains and canyons; a bigger, higher, more dramatic sky; a rougher, arid, more primitive way of life. But the West is not just a place, it's an idea, a feeling, the stuff of man's eternal dreams of quest and fulfillment. For Thoreau, "Eastward I go only by force; but Westward I go free." The historical Western attitude (nearly everything is diluted or corrupted these days) would not tolerate the anti-life, restricting conformity of a prim and proper Eastern town telling a free man how to run his life, much less mow his lawn...if there were any lawns. | |
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