The MMFA’s remarkable new show arranges visual art around
excerpts from classic western films, making original and provocative
connections.
Montreal Gazette
By Ian McGillis
“We do not want people to leave this exhibition with the
same image of the subject that they come in with,” said Mary-Dailey Desmarais.
The curator of the huge exhibition opening at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts next Saturday can rest assured. Equal parts
jaw-dropping spectacle and sobering critique, Once Upon a Time … The Western
arranges a vast array of visual art, from the mid-19th century to the present
day, around excerpts from classic western films, making original (and often
counterintuitive) connections that take something we thought we knew and turn
it into something completely new.
Those who have always thought of the western as a
quintessentially American form — that’s to say, most of us — will be surprised
at just how much, and how smoothly, the show incorporates material from all
over the world. The Italian spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone are well
represented, as are regional variants from France and Germany, but so are
Canada and, perhaps most unexpected of all, Quebec. How many remember, or knew
in the first place, that Quebec rock legend Robert Charlebois had a part in
Leone’s A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe? Or that celebrated Montreal
photographer William Notman shot portraits in his local studio of Buffalo Bill
and Sitting Bull?
Montreal photographer William Notman shot this portrait
in his studio of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, circa 1885. (Photo: Golden,
Colorado, Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave)
Another common perception of the western is that it is
locked in the past, its golden age and cultural relevance having ended sometime
around the early 1960s with films like The Misfits and The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance. On the contrary, the exhibition is full of salient reminders of how
the form, far from disappearing, morphed into a canvas that could be adapted
for any number of purposes, from the blaxploitation westerns that turned racial
stereotypes upside down to the late-1960s anti-war counterculture.
“It was really a surprise to me to discover the critical
approach of films like Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man and Ralph Nelson’s Soldier
Blue (both from 1970),” said Desmarais. “They were pointing out parallels
between the way Indigenous peoples were treated in the American West and the
violence coming out of the Vietnam War.”
The exhibition follows that subversive impulse into the
present day, as with the homoerotic element that was first introduced in Andy
Warhol’s underground Lonesome Cowboys, transposed into a contemporary urban
setting by John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, and finally brought into the
mainstream by Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. A light is also shone on the
underappreciated depiction of strong female characters in recent films like
2010’s Meek’s Cutoff, with Michelle Williams, and 2014’s The Homesman, with
Hilary Swank.
[Once Upon a Time … The Western arranges a vast array
of visual art, from the mid-19th century to the present day, around excerpts
from classic western films. Albert Bierstadt’s Emigrants Crossing the Plains
dates back to 1867. (Photo: Oklahoma City, National Cowboy and Western Heritage
Museum, gift of Jasper D. Ackerman. Image courtesy of the Dickinson Research
Center)]
For Desmarais, the mission and challenge of Once Upon a
Time was to strike the right balance between celebration and critique.
“We want to position this show as a critical take on the
problematic aspects of the genre,” she said. “We show the use of the term
‘Indian’ as being completely misguided; we point out how so many of the
landscape paintings of the West ignored or marginalized the people who already
lived there; we address cultural appropriation, stereotypes of Indigenous
people, misuse of cultural artifacts, misunderstanding of Indigenous culture.
We make the work and perspective of Indigenous artists central to the show.
“But at the same time, we didn’t want to tear apart the
genre. There are beautiful aspects to what it was, a romance that has been
attractive to people for generations. We thought, ‘Let’s find a way to show the
construction of this mythology, to show the fictions embedded in it.”
Timing can be a tricky element in an undertaking as big
as Once Upon a Time, but even so, the show is landing at a juncture when its
themes are especially resonant and pertinent.
“Yes, I believe it is,” said Desmarais. “In our particular
historical moment, we see issues of gun violence, race, gender identity playing
out daily on the news. We also see the legacy of the cowboy in American
politics and styles of leadership — and not just with the current presidency,
but historically. The perpetuation of violence is mirrored in the culture of
violence that one sees developing in these films. It’s more important than ever
that we look at the ways in which a culture creates its own myths and
stereotypes.”
AT A GLANCE
Once Upon a Time … The Western: A New Frontier in Art and
Film opens Saturday, Oct. 14 and runs through Feb. 4 at the Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke St. W. For tickets and more information, visit
Timing can be a tricky element in an undertaking as big as Once Upon a Time,
but even so, the show is landing at a juncture when its themes are especially
resonant and pertinent.
“Yes, I believe it is,” said Desmarais. “In our
particular historical moment, we see issues of gun violence, race, gender
identity playing out daily on the news. We also see the legacy of the cowboy in
American politics and styles of leadership — and not just with the current
presidency, but historically. The perpetuation of violence is mirrored in the
culture of violence that one sees developing in these films. It’s more
important than ever that we look at the ways in which a culture creates its own
myths and stereotypes.”
More Information
Once Upon a Time … The Western: A New Frontier in Art and
Film opens Saturday, Oct. 14 and runs through Feb. 4 at the Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke St. W. For tickets and more information, visit https://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/upcoming/once-upon-a-time-the-western/
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