Review of Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890~1940 By Judith A. Barter

Authors

Sascha Scott, Rutgers University

Date of this Version

Winter 2005

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 46.

Comments

Copyright 2005 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

This catalogue, published in conjunction with a 2003 exhibition at the Art Institute, aims to demonstrate that Chicago artists and patrons fostered a unique way of understanding and representing the great American West. Judith A. Barter, field-McCormick Curator of American Art at the Institute, offers insights into Chicago's artistic ties to America's "new frontier." This refreshingly multifaceted catalogue provides readers with a nuanced discussion of the exhibition's objects while contextualizing them in the social, political, and cultural environment of Chicago, and America at large, from 1890 to 1940.

Barter's narrative begins with Chicago's World Columbian Exposition (1893), which coincided with the demographic closing of the western frontier. She argues that American intellectuals created an ideological "new frontier" through reinterpretations of western life, landscape, and history. According to Barter, artists and intellectuals created vivid myths about the Southwest as actual frontier life receded from collective memory. These myths aimed at preserving the quickly vanishing past, while also providing artistic stimulation for artists seeking a uniquely American vision. Claiming Chicago as the geographical gateway and hub for this redefined western frontier, Barter alleges that the Chicagoans' vision of the West differed from earlier east coast perceptions.

In her introduction, Barter states that, "Chicagoans by and large ignored the romanticized, exotic renditions produced by eastern travelers, as well as the 'action' pictures of artists such as Charles Deas or Arthur Tait." Taos-based artist Walter Ufer, whose many depictions of contemporary Pueblo people often fit this description, is one of her more convincing examples. Her use of other Chicago artists to argue for a unique Chicagoan vision of the West is less persuasive, however. Works by Victor Higgins and Ernest Martin Hennings, for example, are similar in content and style to their non-Chicagoan colleages who were also working in New Mexico. While Chicago artists between 1890 and 1940 may have had an interest in tribal life that was "empathetic, ennobling, interpretative, and modern," there is little indication that these traits distinguish them from their counterparts from other American cities.