Prodigal native son Robert Williams returns to Santa Fe to the Center for Contemporary Arts for his own display of paintings, each a fulsome vignette about human fear and aspiration, pulsating with colors of the fabled Southwestern sky.
“When I was a young boy, a very small boy living in Albuquerque, my mother told me about a painting she saw as a young girl in Santa Fe. It was a painting of a Penitente (practitioner of a religious community, chiefly among Spanish-American communities, known for their practice of self-flagellation, especially during Holy Week). The Indian was trudging across the desert, and in his back were hooks dragging four severed horseheads. This had a profound effect on me. Years later, at age 17, I was working as a truck driver and found myself with time on my hands in Santa Fe. I walked into one of the museums, and it hit me on the head like a hammer: the painting was called The Stoic, and had been painted in 1917 by a Joseph Sharp. The minute I saw it, I knew that I wanted to be an artist. The Stoic is still on display in one of the museums in Santa Fe. —Robert Williams
Longtime scholar of Mr. Williams’s career, Meg Linton, curates nearly 70 pieces on view for your perverse pleasure and pondering. Given that this occurs in New Mexico, where most UFOs choose to vacation, we suggest you join them for a visual trip of your own. Robert offers more insight in his own words.
Wrangling the Firmament
When a person thinks of Western cowboy culture, they think of Hollywood on the Pecos. This painting isn’t a tutoring lesson to set the record straight—just the opposite. Why stop with a world of Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger and “Ghost Riders in the Sky”? Nothing stifles art like authenticity, and this picture does everything to repel those inhibitions. This portrayal of a lone buckaroo lassoing the sky is, of course, the obvious take here. But the visceral depth of this painting is open to the high-art cognoscenti and how they want to look at it.
The Fraught Proposal
Although complex in composition, the crux of the story is modest. A young woman, caught in an emotional dilemma, is being pressed for her acceptance of a marriage proposal. However, she is fraught with anxieties and doubt. The scenario could end here, but the rest of the picture plane has become visually gangrenous. In the middle of a sensitive exchange, she envisions her apprehension, which takes the form of characters symbolic of future vicissitudes created by her lover. All this being said, the true pretext in this work is for the extensive occupation of aggressive imagery.
A Farce on an Extravagant Scale
Individuals who have lived in war torn areas and countries where day-to-day existence is burdensome have pointed out that frivolous leaps of faith are to be avoided. This unfortunately encompasses art—especially art that appears to be giddy flights of fancy. This painting is seriously just that. “Does the oblique and nebulous abstract nature of this work warrant further observation?” You, as viewer are also an element of this painting, along with the participants and their dog who are depicted within—unless, of course, you stop viewing it.
Adobe’s Implications Beyond Just Mud
Human beings, no matter how humble and impoverished, exude zeitgeist on their surroundings. The human condition, either with joy or pathos, is absorbed and assimilated into the very surface of these lodgings. An adobe mission or church, or even a cantina or brothel, harbors the previous occupant’s poetic ghost. Put simply, it is the old adage, “If these walls could talk.” How many great legends have washed away over time as the dirt walls erode back into the soil? No concern, just like the adobe brick maker’s achievements, there are more legends to come.
