Cyrus Dallin the Challenge Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art
When a cowboy starts collecting Western art, you'd expect to see a lot of horses and saddles. That's not true for Utah rancher George Wanlass. Equally he amassed fine art for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Fine art, he was drawn to brainchild, minimalism, transcendentalism, even Funk assemblage.
Dorr Bothwell, Stag's Eye, 1946. Gift of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation. Collection of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State Academy.
Wanlass' drove is featured along with other acquisitions in a new exhibitCollecting on the Edge at the museum on the Utah State Academy campus in Logan, Utah, through May 4, 2019. The California desert is well-represented by artists including Agnes Pelton, Dorr Bothwell (formerly of Joshua Tree), Helen Lundeberg, Noah Purifoy and occult artist Marjorie Cameron,
In this interview with Bolton Colburn (former managing director of the Laguna Art Museum) Wanlass offers his take on what it means to be a collector, a process that's often similar "hunting in the night." The edited interview is an extract from the extensive (75 contributors) exhibit catalogue.
The visionary collector–the great-nephew of museum founder Nora Eccles Harrison–gathered the piece of work over a bridge of 30 years. Fifty-fifty those of us who love the traditional boots-and-saddles will exist inspired by Wanlass' all-embracing arroyo to the West.
BOLTON COLBURN: How did you come up to art collecting, particularly for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art?
GEORGE WANLASS: My interest in fine art really started with my grandmother, Marie Eccles Caine. Many pieces in the museum are marked, "Souvenir of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation." She was a great lover of dazzler, but besides that she'd attended art schools in New York and in Chicago. This was a very unusual thing for a immature woman in Utah early in the twentieth century. She was acquainted with Mahonri Young, Gifford and Reynolds Beal, and local artists like Henri Moser. I always loved and appreciated the Moser landscape painting in her home, because it was associated with her. The important thing she gave me, perchance the offset ability that 1 needs in order to capeesh fine art, was a willingness to look. Many people enter a museum, and walk by art, and never really look. Once I saw a couple at the museum who made a complete excursion of the downstairs gallery in maybe 4 minutes, and they never stopped to look at anything. If you don't stop and look, you'll never encounter anything. My grandmother taught me to await. On our drives upwardly Logan Coulee, a local beauty spot, she would say, "Oh, wait at that! Oh, look at this!" Her emotional reaction to what she was seeing encouraged me to await. That was an important feel for me, because I began to see what she could run into, maybe not in its entirety, but at least in part.
A 2d experience, instrumental in educational activity me something about the value of art itself, derived from trips to Europe when I was sixteen and seventeen years old. My mother dragged me through every art museum bachelor. I remember that I was resistant at the time, merely my resistance paled. I began to capeesh the fact that this was valuable, exciting, and enriching textile that I should exist paying attention to.
Strangely plenty, my offset profession was dairy farmer. I attended Amherst College, then graduate school at the Academy of Kansas. From there I went on to Stanford University. At some point I became disenchanted with the idea of a hereafter every bit a instructor of history. I decided I wanted to become into agronomics, so I took a bullheaded leap and became a dairy farmer. Concurrently, I came across a very modest painting by Henri Moser in a local junk store priced at seven dollars. Equally I paid for it, the woman said, "Oh, y'all're buying that for the frame, aren't you?" And of grade, I didn't say anything, which is a good policy to follow if you lot're going to be an fine art collector. Yous don't want to let people know what it is yous're collecting, because and then the prices go upwards. It was the kickoff of a collection of Utah historical fine art. Timing is so disquisitional; you tin't collect things that are not bachelor. Just at that time, there was a great flood of historical Utah art coming from several different sources, and in that location wasn't much of a collecting audience.
Collecting on the Edge at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art. A visitor admires Two Worlds by Henrietta Shore.
My history as a collector for the adjacent twenty years was constrained by the fact that I could merely leave my extremely demanding occupations, offset dairy farming then ranching, for very brief periods of fourth dimension. I also lacked funding. Fortunately the art I was looking for was not expensive at the time. I clustered quite a sizable collection of Utah artists. My goal then was to buy at least one slice past each of the many historically significant Utah artists.
That'south where I started. When the art museum came along, I thought, "Well, great, I'll go along my collecting, and we'll get from at that place." With the support of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation I bought a Cyrus Dallin sculpture, The Claiming, for the museum, and then a Mahonri Young sculpture, Right to the Jaw.
There was a minor celebration at the museum when the Young sculpture was unveiled and the university president came. I don't know what others thought, but I believed that this was the beginning of big things. Shortly afterward a new director was hired, Peter Briggs. For about ii and a one-half years, he poured himself into the place, and information technology began to resemble a existent museum. Briggs'due south expertise was in prints and in the art of New United mexican states. He and I went to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We looked at fine art past Oli Sihvonen. Nosotros tried to visit Charles Maddox, merely Charles forgot his appointment with us. We did see Frederick Hammersley. We were onto the fact that there were some important artists out there.
Marjorie Cameron, Untitled, 1955 Gift of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation. Collection of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University.
BC: What was your relationship with dealers?
GW: I learned to value certain dealers. I don't retrieve a collector tin can reach annihilation totally on his own. The dealer Tobey Moss was a bully source and an important connexion for the museum. She had access to Lorser Feitelson's estate, and Lorser himself was a collector. She also represented the Peter Krasnow estate, Jules Engel, Helen Lundeberg, June Wayne, and many other important Los Angeles artists. So I had this connexion, and after Peter Briggs left, I continued information technology. I bought Post-Surrealist works by Lorser Feitelson, by his wife, Helen Lundeberg, by Ben Berlin, sculpture by Krasnow, and much more from Tobey.
At that time, if ane wanted to learn about these artists, or this menstruation of time, California fine art from 1920 to 1950, at that place were no expert reference books. I think the first catalogue I ever saw that considered early modernist L.A. artists was Turning the Tide. It was like hunting in the dark, start one lead, and from at that place to some other, on your own. For instance, one time I looked at a Ben Berlin painting at a dealer's. I had to determine whether this was of no neat value or was an important piece of fine art. It wasn't like the dealer knew which it was; she had a relatively low cost on it. Obviously she valued it, only not very highly. This painting subsequently became the cover analogy for the Pacific Dreams catalogue.
Dealers were frequently surprisingly interested in my opinion of worth. I idea that was indicative of the fact that they didn't have any skilful reference fabric—any record of shows or of the historical market. For a collector this is a wonderful state of affairs, and I took advantage of it. I had a limited amount of money to work with, and if I could brand it go farther, that was all to the benefit of the museum.
Equally the drove began to abound, my power to look at things and judge their value besides grew. Not so much their monetary value, because I don't think that'due south e'er really been of import to me. I've never resold anything of my ain, and I know the museum has never sold anything that I bought for them. There should be some importance attached to art as information technology finds its place in the historical record, and I was beginning to exist able to guess that. My training came from the artists I was buying.
If you lot look closely, and you pay attention to what you're seeing, you begin to be schooled by skilled artists. There's a native visual aptitude, yous either have it or you don't. But across that, you can be trained. If you've seen drawings from the schools of the early nineteenth century, these were places where wealthy people were trained in the art of analogy. One could become very accomplished at a certain level. Rather than studying painting or drawing, I learned what I learned in a purely visual sense.
BC: Tin you lot give some examples of what and how you collected?
GW: In San Francisco I bought Jay DeFeo'south Dr. Jazz for what seemed like an astronomical sum of money to the other members of the foundation. I also bought a Robert Irwin disc for approximately the same amount. My strategic approach was to save the big-ticket items until the end of the fiscal year, and it worked out fine for a while. Merely the foundation members wanted an caption of why I was ownership what I was buying.
It was very hard to explicate to the unknowledgeable why something was of import, when they didn't brand whatever effort to research the fabric I provided them. I was resistant likewise. I was running a ranch. I didn't accept time to work on developing explanatory material. In part the rupture was my fault. As I said, I didn't have any support. I didn't have anyone to turn any responsibility over to. I was also making a monetary sacrifice, because everything I did was on my dollar. I didn't charge travel expenses to the foundation, I paid them myself. And I must say, my ranch was not what you would call an economically successful enterprise.
The pursuit of fine art was very demanding. I retrieve running from gallery to gallery to museum when I went to San Francisco and Los Angeles, because I didn't accept much time, and I wanted to see more, and find more than things. I went to New York, I went to Santa Fe looking for art. The best office of it was that affordable and desirable art was available. Remember, if you're a collector, and you have an opportunity to buy something today, you ameliorate purchase it if yous recall it'southward going to exist anything at all, because tomorrow it's going to exist gone, and it might never reappear. Sometimes material shows upward suddenly, and artists are suddenly accorded new importance.
Agnes Pelton, Nurture, 1940. Gift of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation. Collection of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University.
Agnes Pelton paintings stored in a farmhouse in Northern California suddenly showed up on the market place. Information technology's unlikely that we will see any more than Pelton paintings of that quality for auction. Something similar happened with the estate of Henrietta Shore. At that place was this picayune show of her paintings, fabric that had been stored on a Canadian farm. In that location were 2 I was interested in: one was Ii Worlds, which I bought, and the other is at present owned past the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Hither it all was, and so all of a sudden it was gone. I learned to take reward of circumstances, even though sometimes the work seemed expensive. Henrietta Shore's Two Worlds was in the Whitney's retrospective of twentieth-century American art. That's a significant painting in the bigger scheme of things.
At that place were dealers I relied on for introductions to artists and to artists' estates. One of them was Paule Anglim. She had several San Francisco artists in her stable that she idea were important, and I came to believe too. Ane of them, for instance, was David Ireland. I remember going to Ireland'southward firm before he died and getting a tour. Such an experience is not replaceable, and i remembers it always. He came to Utah State Academy and gave a talk virtually his sculpture Ego, which I bought, in a way that would make sense to everyone. Ireland was a real nuts-and-bolts guy. He didn't talk art theory. He spoke near what he did in a very prosaic and totally convincing way. When he finished, what might seem to exist a bunch of sticks in a chiffonier could clearly be perceived as an important work of art.
George Wanlass. Photograph courtesy of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art.
Then a collector receives not just the thrill of buying something just also the enjoyment of the fine art itself, the realization that one is going to be able to enjoy it indefinitely. In addition in that location'southward a great reward to be derived from the opportunity to meet the artist. Many of these artists are memorable. They're intelligent and they're creative in a way that I can just brainstorm to fully capeesh. I was being paid back royally all the while I was collecting.
I've lived with an creative person now for twenty years, my married woman, Karen Carson, and I've watched her create. I take a chance to walk into her studio on a daily ground and see her face up problems and solve them. It gives me an entirely different appreciation of what a difficult profession fine art is. Not but the selling of the things you make, but more chiefly making them successfully. I watched her create a painting serial in a barn studio at my ranch in Idaho, upstairs over the equus caballus stables. She began to paint banners. I had no experience with banners every bit fine art. I wasn't sure that banners could ever become real fine art. I thought, "Hmm, I don't recall this is going to become anywhere." And then over time, she works it, and she works it, and in the end she creates something dissimilar anything ever seen before, and information technology'southward wonderful.
http://artmuseum.usu.edu/exhibitions/collecting_edge
Catalogue: https://upcolorado.com/university-printing-of-colorado/item/3290-collecting-on-the-edge
Noah Purifoy, Untitled, 1990. Assemblage of woods, plastic and metallic. Gift of the Kathryn C. Wanlass Foundation. Collection of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University.
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Source: https://www.californiadesertart.com/collecting-on-the-edge-george-wanlass-travels-to-the-outer-limits-of-western-art/