Storytelling in Bronze
Charlie Russell miniatures
Beginning August 3, Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will host a unique series of events that include a Charles M. Russell bronze exhibition, a talk by Western scholar B. Byron Price and a film screening of Fort Apache.
The centerpiece of the programming is the exhibition, Charles M. Russell: Storyteller in Bronze, which opens August 3 and continues through September 30. The special gallery exhibition will feature several dozen small bronzes by the famous Western artist. The reception for the exhibition will take place August 24, from 5 to 7 p.m. The following day, August 25, will feature an 11 a.m. presentation by Price, the director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma. Price, whose writing on Russell represents the foundation of scholarship on the Western artist, has named his talk Produced and Directed by Charles M. Russell: The Cowboy-artist and Hollywood.
Later that day, at 4 p.m. at the nearby Jean Cocteau Cinema, will be a screening of John Ford’s timeless classic Fort Apache. The film will be introduced by award-winning Western author Johnny D. Boggs.
The August show is a follow-up to a similar show from 2017 at Gerald Peters that presented contemporary Western art alongside a discussion and screening of the film High Noon. The gallery will likely continue the series in 2019 with another exhibition that will be presented with, tentatively, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch.
For Charles M. Russell: Storyteller in Bronze,
the gallery will present a number of important small bronzes by Russell, including his first bronze, Smoking Up, which shows a cowboy pulling up on his horse as his gun is drawn and raised in the air.
In Emerson Hough’s The Story of the Cowboy, published in 1897 and illustrated by Russell, the author writes: “There was a time when the name of ‘cowboy’ was one with which to frighten children, and it carried with it everything of absolute disregard for law and order…in the early days of the drive, it was a regular and comparatively innocent pastime to ‘shoot up the town.’ To shoot out the lights of a saloon was a simple occupation, and to compel a tenderfoot to dance to the tune of a revolver was looked upon as a legitimate and pleasing diversion such as any gentleman of the range might enjoy to his full satisfaction.”
Other works on display include Russell’s famous bucking horse piece Where the Best Riders Quit. The artist’s wife, Nancy Russell, wrote a description of the piece when it was completed. “The old-time cowpuncher knew his horse and it was often a battle of wits when he was ‘breaking’ him to ride,” she wrote. “This horse is making a fight and is figuring on landing on his rider. This rider, being of the best, is thinking too. As he steps off his fighting horse he will be standing beside him when he lands and, having ahold of the cheek piece of the hackamore, will help the horse bump his head a little harder when he hits the ground. As the horse comes up the cowpuncher will grasp the horn and will be in the saddle when he gets on his feet again. Most horses think twice before they throw themselves a second time.” Russell completed the work in 1921, and in December of that year he showed it at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. Later, in 1923, after the Roman Bronze Works began casting the work, it was rumored that the first cast went to President Warren G. Harding during his visit to Montana.
A number of wildlife works will also be on view including a wolf piece, To Noses that Read a Smell that Spells Man, and two bear bronzes, Oh! Mother, What Is It? and Mountain Mother. Additionally, in keeping with the Hollywood theme of the programming, Gerald Peters will show the bronze Will Rogers, who Russell was friends with before his passing in 1926.
Another important work is Snake Priest, which depicts a seated Native American figure performing the Hopi Snake Ceremony with a snake whip. After the bronze’s casting, the figure was identified later by Nancy Russell as Lomanakshu, Chief of the Mishongnovi Snake Fraternity. The Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has written about the
work and indicates that Russell based the work on the actual dance. “While Russell might not have ever seen such a ceremony, he may have been familiar with a report about them by George A. Dorsey, published in the Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Series, June 1902,” the museum writes. “Dorsey witnessed a ceremony in Mishongnovi, a village in New Mexico. According to Dorsey, the whip was made of a shaft of wood about nine inches long, painted red, to which were fastened two long eagle tail feathers by many wrappings of buckskin thong. The sculpture seems to capture the moment when Lomanakshu exerts control over the coiled reptile. ‘As soon as the snake is dropped the gatherer concerns himself with it, either picking it up at once or first letting it glide away a short distance,’ Dorsey wrote. ‘If the reptile be a rattlesnake and threatens to coil, the man touches it with the points of his snake whip, moving the latter rapidly. A rattlesnake already coiled up and ready to fight, even the most experienced priest will not touch it until he has induced it to uncoil.’”
Charles M. Russell: Storyteller in Bronze continues through September 30.