Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon [Hardcover]

Linda Jones Gibbs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0842524762 | ISBN-13: 978-0842524766 | Edition: 1

In May of 1937, Brigham Young University took possession of 85 paintings and drawings by Maynard Dixon, the groundbreaking artist whose images of the American west—created during long travels and lengthy residences with Native American communities—remain some of the most genuine work in Western Art as a genre. This book, lavishly illustrated with expansive color plates, centers on four texts examining very different topics. Gibbs begins with an account of the Dixon collection at BYU, then moves to a pair of essays exploring the reality, ideology, and abstraction at work in his images of Native Americans and the western landscape. In the final essay, photo historian Deborah Brown Rasiel grapples with the complex artistic influences at play between Dixon and his second wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. The resulting volume serves wonderfully as a visual, historical, and analytical history of an all-too-frequently overlooked artist.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: Brigham Young University, Creative Works; 1 edition (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0842524762
• ISBN-13: 978-0842524766
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 10.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,037,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Images of the Southwest & the streets of San Francisco, June 30, 2003

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon (Paperback)

I first encountered Maynard Dixon in William N. Goetzmann's "The West of the Imagination," a book about how America's picture of the Western frontier was shaped by early painters, illustrators, filmmakers and wild west shows. Born in 1875, Dixon stepped into a tradition defined by Charles Russell and Frederic Remington, but his portrayal of Western scenes falls somewhat closer in style and attitude to an eastern contemporary, Edward Hopper. His paintings of the Southwest are about the vast landscapes and the big sky, open spaces of color, light, and sharply contrasting shadow. Human figures are often absent or dwarfed by the scale of mountain and desert.

This book was assembled to accompany an exhibition at BYU, which has a large collection of Dixon's paintings, acquired from the artist in the 1930s by the University. There are a great many color plates and related black and white photographs, and the authors have provided an extensive written commentary describing Dixon's career, his work, and his relationship with the young photographer Dorothea Lange, to whom he was married 1920-1934. A central chapter in the book concerns his paintings of Native Americans, whom he ennobled while at the same time turning away from the conditions of poverty, desperation and government oppression in which they lived.

Lange emerged as a documentary photographer in the early years of the Depression, photographing the growing labor unrest and the unemployed that filled the streets of San Francisco. Returning from the "reality" that he preferred in the desert Southwest, Dixon joined her in creating a series of paintings portraying these same themes, concentrating on the dark, despairing, and often violent struggle between the out-of-work and the police. The book gives side-by-side examples of her photographs and his paintings from this period.

The book does not provide a comprehensive study of Dixon. While he denegrated his work as a commercial illustrator, it would be interesting to see his style and treatment of Western subject matter in that medium by contrast with his "artistic" work. The authors obviously respect Dixon's work as an artist, but they also raise questions about the authenticity of his vision, particularly of Native Americans, and the domestic role into which he placed Lange, whose own career went on hold for several years as she kept house and tended to children. You put the book down at the end, marveling at the images, while feeling a sense of ambiguity about the artist himself. All that aside, it's an informative and beautifully designed book and I recommend it highly.

Readers may be also interested in the journals of Everett Ruess, who also loved the deserts of the Southwest, was an amateur watercolorist, and visited Dixon and Lange in San Francisco before his disappearance in 1934.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some striking images, March 11, 2008

By 

Benjamin (UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon (Paperback)

Maynard Dixon's landscape paintings of the American West are distinctive and instantly recognisable: the bold and rugged terrain below stylised clouds and often rich colours; but there is much more to his work. As a youngster he was enthralled by the work of Charles Russell, so it is not surprising that is interests developed as they did. Dixon, a solitary man, was very taken with the open space of the West, and in turn by the indigenous peoples he found there. His interest in what he found went beyond trying to capture it on canvas, it influenced how he dressed, how he lived; he would live alongside the Native Indians while working.

This book was published to accompany the exhibition of the title held in Brigham Young University's new exhibition facilities in November 2000.

The account opens with the origin and history of the University's collection. This is followed by an essay which looks at Dixon's choice of career to paint the West at the time when the "frontier" had been declared officially closed. A discussion of Dixon's claim that he painted the real West forms a major part of the book; the final essay considers the influence between Dixon and his second wife, photographer Dorothea Lange. The book concludes with an Epilogue, a Catalogue of the Exhibition and a Selected Bibliography.

A large, square format book, it contains in excess of 110 full colour images and more the 60 black and white, the latter being almost entirely period photographs. The illustrations run with the text, and are mostly within a page or so of their mention in the text. The reproductions range from a few double page spreads and a number of full-page images to the postcard size, with just one or two very small images. The paintings encompass Dixon's Western landscapes, Native American Indians, and images of the Depression; the photographs include a number by Lange. It is an appealing book, well laid-out; the full page images are particularly striking.