Montana Modernists: Changing Perceptions of Western Art (2022, Washington State University Press) by Michelle Corriel is an art history book focusing on the careers and work of a group of six post-World War II artists who made Montana their home and brought Abstract Expressionist influences from major modern American and European metropolitan areas. movements (especially Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Bauhaus) to a state that had almost no market for the avant-garde. Their goals were not to achieve commercial success, but to experience, teach, and spread an appreciation for modernist art in their communities.
“Place,” the first of three sections, explores the work and creative relationship of Montana natives and ranchers Bill Stockton (1921-2002) and Isabelle Johnson (1901-1992). The second, “Teaching/Artistic Lineage,” looks at the teachers who influenced Montana Modernists, then focuses on the pedagogical approaches and legacy of life and work companions, Frances Senska (1914-2009) and Jessie Spaulding Wilber (1912-1989). The third section, “Community,” discusses sociopolitical conditions in Montana after World War II and the decades following, highlighting the work of Gennie DeWeese (1921-2007) and Robert DeWeese (1920-1990) who settled in Montana in 1949.
Although relatively unknown in national or international settings, what made these artists notable was their willingness to thwart Montana’s Old West artistic tradition (such as depicting cowboys, Native Americans, and Charlie “Kid’s-style landscapes). “Russell).
While landscape and nature were important themes in their work, their approach to creating a sense of place was more about internal connections and emotional responses to their environment than the mimetic work of their mountain contemporaries who conveyed a mythologized notion of Western expansion and a fictionalized portrait. of the 19th century American frontier. Popular themes of 20th century mountain art centered around Big Sky Country landscapes and life on the range. According to Corriel, these common expressions were, at least in part, driven by tourism dollars generated by vacationers from Montana ranches who created a market for the myth of the West.
Montana Modernists is both an analysis of an artistic movement and a series of biographical sketches of its main influencers. Corriel clearly loves the land and the artists she portrays, alternating between didactic and ekphrastic passages, evoking a sense of the artworks parallel to how modernists evoked their surroundings. In describing Johnson’s “East Fiddler Creek” (1967), a hard-wash landscape painting that disappears into soft peach foothills under stormy skies, Corriel writes that the work “conveys the constant scraping of sagebrush against denim legs”. This statement is romantic, but it applies to anyone who has walked through a similar scene on the prairies. While these descriptive passages are enjoyable and reflect his background as a writer of art and author of fiction, his didactic writing is often bogged down by minute factual details and plagued by repetition of phrases and ideas, revealing the academic origin of the book.
Montana Modernists reveals a hitherto unknown story of the development of modernism in a region which, in the middle of the 20th century, did not accept to depart from mimetic and romantic realism. Fans of contemporary artists with Western roots like Theodore Wadell, Jerry Rankin and Patrick Zentz will be particularly interested in this text, as it traces the development and influences of the generation that guided them in their search for their voice as artists.
Montana Modernists: Changing Perceptions of Western Art by Michelle Corriel (2022) is published by Washington State University Press and available from the publisher and online retailers.
