By Beauty Obsessed: Gilbert Waldman Collects the West
A new exhibition featuring the Gil Waldman Collection opens at Arizona’s Western Spirit museum.
Scottsdale, AZ
Now open at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West is By Beauty Obsessed: Gilbert Waldman Collects the West, which features stunning examples from the collection of Gil Waldman, a founding trustee at the Arizona museum.
“Gil is one of our strong supporters and we wanted to honor him and his exceptional collection,” says the museum’s chief curator, Tricia Loscher, who has curated the show with the collector’s wife, Christy Vezolles, who has worked for many years in the art market. “We’re very fortunate to have a local collector with wonderfully important works willing to share his collection with the museum.”
Works in the show include a number of prominent examples from Taos, New Mexico, including major works from members of the Taos Society of Artists such as Eanger Irving Couse, Joseph Henry Sharp and an important portrait from associate member Robert Henri. “It’s not by chance that there are so many paintings by the Taos Society of Artists in the Waldman Collection,” says Vezolles. “He and his wife Nancy became members of the Philbrook and Gilcrease museums when they moved from Albany to Tulsa in the 1950s. Before long, they began summering in New Mexico, where they joined the local art museums, attended seminars on the Taos Society of Artists and began collecting in earnest in the 1980s, about the time they began spending winters in Scottsdale. The TSA paintings became the core foundation of the collection. Although Nancy passed away in 2011, Gil has enthusiastically continued to add to his collection.”
“In addition to the TSA paintings, I also have a number of works by other artists depicting the Taos Pueblo and Ranchos de Taos Church,” Waldman says. “The terrain, architecture and culture are so iconic and the light is unlike
anywhere else. That’s what has drawn artists (and me) to northern New Mexico for well over a century. That, and the expressive quality of the vibrant color palette and loose brushstrokes, draws me to the artworks.”
Besides Taos, another theme within the collection is works by modernist Southwest painters—artists represented are Emil Bisttram, Olive Rush, Joseph Amadeus Fleck and two works by William Penhallow Henderson—as well as works by and of women.
“Female artists are typically outnumbered for a variety of reasons, particularly in the Western genre. Nonetheless today, the most valuable artwork painted west of the Mississippi is by a woman—georgia O’keeffe, whose work is found in Gil’s collection,” Vezolles says. “Alice ‘Gene’ Kloss is particularly important to his collection. She is best known for her exquisite etchings, of which he owns 73. In addition, he owns six of her paintings, one of which is on view in the show. The Phoenix Art Museum presented an exhibit of over 60 works drawn from Gil’s Kloss collection in 2014. Gil has always made acquisitions based on the quality of work and the emotions it elicits from him. Since half of the world is female, naturally, many works reflect that aesthetic, either in subject or creator. In recent years, he has increasingly sought out early-20th-century paintings by women of the West. While that is somewhat challenging, his collection of Pueblo pottery and Navajo weavings is quite the opposite— those works are overwhelmingly by women.”
For many collectors, part of the thrill of owning art is in the chase. Hunting the pieces down, waiting for them to go on the market and working with the dealers to acquire the best works—that’s all part of the fun. Waldman is no exception. “I have a few very trusted dealers from whom I make most of my purchases. Because of the relationships we have developed over the years, they know what I like and often approach me about a painting before it is even hung in their gallery. I also buy at auction and occasionally online, if I know the gallery to be reputable,” he says. “In the late 1980s I saw Jozef Bakos’ Pine Trees and Road in an exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe, along with a label stating, ‘Courtesy of Zaplin Lampert Gallery.’ The gallery had been open for maybe a year and I had yet to step foot in it. I raced over and met Richard Lampert and Mark Zaplin. Happily, the painting was for sale. It was the first of many purchases from
them, as well as the beginning of a great and enduring friendship.”
He continues, “The first major Taos Society painting I acquired was a Joseph Henry Sharp winter scene, purchased in 1988. When I saw it, I immediately thought, ‘That painting would certainly have a great cooling effect on a hot day in Arizona.’ It was displayed in the window at Golden West Gallery in Scottsdale, along with a Maynard Dixon. Being fiscally cautious, I purchased only the Sharp (Winter 1904, Crow Reservation, Montana), which is seen in the exhibition. I often wish I had bought them both. In subsequent years, I purchased several Dixon paintings and drawings, which are on display in the Maynard Dixon exhibit, being shown concurrently with By Beauty Obsessed.”
Additionally, the collection also features important landscapes from Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt, two of the titans of American landscape painting. The Moran watercolor is Green River Valley, Wyoming,
and the Bierstadt paintings are Yosemite Valley and El Capitan – Yosemite Valley.
“Western art isn’t just about cowboys and Indians, although that certainly is one aspect. It unquestionably can be as important as any other genre of American art, with complex themes and unique perspectives,” he says. “I particularly delight in finding works by artists from the eastern U.S. and Europe who came west of the Mississippi to record their personal impressions, then returned home—albert Bierstadt, Robert Henri, Valentine Bromley— as well as those who made the West their home—the Taos Society of Artists, Charles Russell, Leon Gaspard. Each conveyed their perceptions in their own distinctive style.”