It's Not About Cowboys: Cowboys as Subject in Contemporary Art

Abstract

Images of American cowboys are examined in a selection of lens-based artworks including Richard Avedon’s In the American West (1984), Laurie Simmons’ Cowboys (1979), David Levinthal’s The Wild West (1987-89), Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2 (1999), Anton Corbijn’s music videos “Personal Jesus” (1989) and “All These Things I’ve Done” (2005), James Casebere’s Western landscapes (1979-1985), and various cowboy images (1980-2013) by Richard Prince. While iconographically similar to historical art of the American West, these examples are not categorized under the same art historical rubrics nor widely exhibited at the same venues. Artistic intent as well as medium, often sets their work apart because it brings into question what stereotypical associations of the cowboy signify while at the same critiquing the historical treatment of Western subjects in popular culture. While working cowboys represent a sub-set of American labor, the image of the cowboy has been manipulated over time to create a larger imagined national identity. Existing scholarship regarding cowboy mythology is the basis from which artworks of cowboys are analyzed to consider how such images signify in relation to prevailing theories of visual representation. Roland Barthes’ theory of myth is employed in regards to how documentary photographs of cowboys achieved mythological status. Theories of simulacra also provide a framework for understanding how the recycling of cowboy imagery both perpetuates and changes the mythological meaning of such representations. Later manipulations in postmodern artworks are investigated in regards to how the imagery advances and/or dispels the myth of the cowboy hero.