CM RUSSELL ART AUCTION

There are two “swing points” or seasonal picket pins in my year. One is the Montana Festival of the Book in the fall and the other is the CM Russell Museum Benefit Auction the Great Falls Ad Club does on on Charlie’s birthday in March. Norma Ashby was the Force who created the first auction. This is the 39th and Norma put in an appearance despite losing her husband just recently. In the lives of Great Falls people, this is a major event. In the existence of the Museum itself, the money is crucial. But the auctions are not the same over the years. In fact, the genre of Western Art is morphing enough that the owners of “Art of the West” magazine felt they had to defend the boundaries in their March/April issue. Fine representational art, in the form of plein aire painting and “classical” art, is threatening to re-engulf “Western art.”

I often speak (cynically) of the Industrial Cowboy Art Cartel. What I mean is (taking one word at a time) that it is less a matter of individual inspiration and skill than it is a manufacturing process (industry); that is based on a romantic and dramatic notion of the West (cowboy); that portrays objects “in a representational manner” (art); and “a monopolistic control of the market” (cartel). Those who take the romantic “cowboys and Indians” point of view (especially the customers) want to feel that the artists are unique and that buying their works will take the customers into their privileged world -- that it is a “blameless” and even “patriotic” thing to do. The cartel members want customers to use art as they would use any other capitalistic means to store and trade money to increase value, like the stock market or real estate. They’re very much invested in strategies that control that or predict that process -- auctions and the websites that monitor them are their ticker-tape.

A common advertising concept is “branding.” First of all, one establishes a “brand” of commodity like Coca Cola, or Pepsi, or RC. So the person who paints in a representational way and lives in the West or chooses to paint Western subjects, is ahead if they are “Western” or “Cowboy” artists. They are very much aided by the Manhattan dominated “modern” art world which pretends that “real” art is unrecognizable, but excellent for pondering: articles, curating, cocktail party talk, status marking. They have overplayed this attitude enough that an equal and opposite defensive contempt has developed among ordinary people who love calendar art and loved magazine art before it disappeared: the people who don’t feel that it is a failure of intellect to read a Western, no matter what one’s educational level might be. So this “branding” is very much assisted by the need of the less-initiated to have a high-status art product that doesn’t require a course in how to talk about it. (I like the pun between this kind of “branding” and the kind of branding one imposes on cattle in order to prove ownership.)

The artist or gallery works within that “branding” to establish the individual artist as a sub-brand like “Zero Coca Cola,” or “Cherry Coke,” or “Diet Coke.” The artist develops a style, maybe a particular subject matter, a technique or a practice. Soon he or she finds himself “painting to the market,” that is, painting what will sell. Certainly Charlie Russell did this -- at least if Nancy had anything to do with it. Now the artist is manufacturing.

The cartel grows up around cowboy art because of the need for promotion and what some elegantly call “curating,” which means “what is it and how much is it worth.” One can see, literally, what the current market will bear by watching the auctions. (There are several peripheral auctions that happen parallel to the Russell Auction, which brings in the big-bucks customers and speculators because the Auction now has enough clout to market major artists’ works.) This is the first year there has been an explicit “Appraisal Show,” in which one brings one’s own objects (peripheral materials like posters, books, cowboy and Indian artifacts are often sold alongside art). I count ten “appraisers” (who are not called “curators” because they are not academic and not affiliated with non-profit institutions) and I’m VERY uncomfortable with some of the most avaricious of them being on the boards of Montana nonprofits.

At this Appraisal Show, if the object is worthy, one is invited to take one of three actions: keep your object but insure it or loan it to an important non-profit, sell it through the auction, or donate it for a suitable tax deduction. (Watch the law carefully on this last one -- the laws are squirming.) The effect of this is that the cartel gets a feel for what’s out there without having to travel. (Dick Flood got his start selling leather supplies all over the West. He and others went through about this time of year with a car trunk full of materials they’d found one way or another -- in those days, maybe stashed in chicken houses or hanging in smoky saloons.) It also lets them vacuum up more material for more auctions and more museums, galleries, historical societies and so on. AND it establishes them as authorities who can impress and guide customers. The customers, of course, always hope for big money or high status. These events open up marvelous opportunities for graft, deception, and self-aggrandizement. Buyer beware.

This is also the first year that the Russell Auction has frankly “de-accessioned” materials -- that is, sold art from its own collection. This is happening all over at the moment, with the justification that there is no room to display the works properly (In the huge mausoleum that is the CMR Museum, that’s laughable!) or that the “focus” of the collection is different. Thus, they auction the Couse paintings (very valuable) on grounds that they are concentrating on the “northern Plains,” which is not true. The most notorious example of this was some time ago when ancient Indian baskets were sold out of the Maryhill Museum in order to buy paintings by a friend of the curators. Or for the most recent scandal, Google “Eakins”+“The Gross Clinic.” Closer to home was Russell’s “Exalted Ruler,” being sold by the Elks, which at least gave the public enough notice to raise money and buy it for the museum.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the artists themselves are welcome to sell direct to customers in the individual “corrals” represented by motel rooms in the same motel where the auction has happened by the swimming pool for many years. It’s down to a system by now -- even the parking, which is complicated by the semi-trailers where the ordinary motel furniture is stashed plus the U-Haul trailers and stock trailers that bring the art, some of which is extraordinarily large. Galleries and independent traders also abound here. Networking goes on as fast as any frenzied spider could make a web.

Two seminars are always presented at this event. In the past they’ve been carelessly prepared by the artists who speak and the technology of presenting images via computer projection has crashed. This did not happen at the Ginger Renner/B. Byron Price presentation, maybe (cynically) because these folks are from the cartel side of the equation. Ginger Renner makes money from being able to identify Russell works, separate out the fakes, and estimate values. She earned this knowledge through marriage to and experience alongside Fred Renner who devoted himself to Charlie from the time he was a little boy living in the same Great Falls ‘hood. (Fred has passed on.) Also, Ginger is a person of great charm who can tell a story as smoothly in her husky Southern accent as any movie star.

B. Byron Price, who runs the CM Russell Center for the Study of Western Art at the University of Oklahoma, represents the academic side of the cartel (previously in nonprofit management). The Center, which is funded by the Trust left by Nancy Russell, has been absorbed into the project of creating a C.M. Russell Catalogue Raisonee, which is a huge database of his more than 5,000 works complete with images, provenance (where each piece has been and is now), size, etc. This will dismay those who have profited from works that “might be” Russells, but will be good for trade in people represented as a Russell alternative. Anyway, it’s clear that B. Byron has found his niche. He’s a natural nit-picker and bean-counter who is very much into being industrious in a way that can be called scholarship. He also enjoys being anointed by the cartel.

Though I was fascinated by this seminar, my real purpose in going was to webwork with friends old and new and that I did. This brings me to the real crux of what I thought about driving back under a gray, complicated sky. (There were many different levels of kinds of cloud and a strong wind creating both arches of cloud and stacks of lenticular -- saucer-shaped -- clouds.)

This is about the Indian side of Western side, because the cowboy side has long been “owned” by the Reagenesque people who put Remington bronzes in the Oval Office, gone crazy-glitzy in the slick life-style magazines who pander to the rich and make bull-riding into a major show biz extravaganza. The Indian-art side has split out in several very interesting ways, but the split I want to address is between white artists who are from “here” and white artists who are from “outside.” I see a pecking-order scuffle. It’s rather like Ian Frazer fist-fighting with Alexie Sherman. (Egad!) Or -- wait! I said both white -- maybe Ian Frazer fist-fighting with Frank Waters.

Those who come from outside want their painting expertise and experience in the larger world to be recognized. They feel they are the heirs of the Cowboy Artist of America heroes who turned to easel art when the illustrators’ market crashed. And they are slick -- they can handle people who are rich or intending to get richer. They understand branding and cartels. They run onto a problem when they come to Indians because they are romantic and don’t really know very many Indians, esp. not the 19th century kind. And Indians operate in entirely different ways. Anyway, they don’t want to paint contemporary Indians or even reservation Indians.

There are others who have lived around here early in their lives and returned because they love it. These people KNOW Indians, have known them all their lives. They did know the 19th century old-timers who are gone now and their romanticism runs in a rather different direction, based on their direct experience and not secondary sources like books or movies. They figure that should trump newcomers. I used to say that we belonged to the “Before Fred Fellows Society” (BFFS), which wasn’t really fair since Fred identified as a cowboy. Anyway, some of the BFFS’s have had a rough go of it and are not treated with much kindness by the cartel.

There are a few Indian artists exhibiting now. And I got kissed by former student Richard Ground (and hugged by his wife Elsie). Their daughter, Amorette AKA Pretty Owl Woman, posed for David Powell, my near-relative since I’ve known him so long, and a photo of that showed up on the front page of the GF Tribune this morning -- that is, the Quick Draw, not the kiss. (A video of the Quick Draw and a photo gallery of the whole auction are available on www.greatfallstribune.com.)

I also enjoyed meeting Tom Gilleon, whose trademark mystic tipi paintings are so loved, and his wife, Laurie Stevens, whom I’ve known since she was part of “Latigo & Lace,” the excellent shop in Augusta. Now she’s emphasizing her own art. It was these two who gave me the free tickets to the Montana Nutcracker ballet. And I ran across Rex Rieke several times, busily trying to figure out whether certain “ancient” pipes really were that. Don’t ask me! No idea. I was sorry to miss Rex’ wife, who reads this blog.

I knew nothing about most of the artists, quite a bit about the art, and an uncomfortable amount about the cartel members. The art buyers and patrons were aging quickly. For many of them, this will be the last roundup. But the auction doesn’t seem to be winding down.