MONTREAL.- The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting Once Upon a Time… The Western. This major multidisciplinary exhibition offers a new interpretation of the Western film genre by examining its links to the visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography) from the mid-nineteenth century to today.

Initiated by the MMFA, the exhibition is co-produced with the Denver Art Museum (DAM). It is part of the official programming of Montreal’s 375th anniversary.

Once Upon a Time… The Western celebrates the beauty of the Western while revealing some of its more sombre aspects. The exhibition explores themes related to questions that are still current today, such as violence, the stereotypical representation of the sexes, interracial relationships, and the fabrication of stereotypes. It addresses certain prejudices against the peoples of the First Nations that it helped perpetuate. It also shows the extent to which art has the power to both maintain and challenge the most widespread beliefs.

The exhibition studies the creation, transmission and transformation of the Western myth in North America in both the United States and Canada. Over 400 paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, artefacts, film stills and excerpts show how the genre has evolved through ongoing dialogue between the fine arts and cinema.

Nathalie Bondil, Director General and Chief Curator at the MMFA, explains: “Since I began living in Montreal, gateway to the West, I’ve had the idea for this multidisciplinary project. Americans have a unique relationship with film: Hollywood played a key role in inventing a national history, with the Western as one of its main vehicles. From Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to the current sociopolitical scene, the legend of the Western hero is indelibly imprinted in the heart of the American identity. The invention of the Western is that of a cultural history, when the story of how the West was won is, in fact, over.

I wanted to show, first of all, how image-making has drawn on the resources of history, visual art and film to construct a mythology that came to typify the American West. Secondly, I wanted to explore how artists have re-appropriated this mythology in order to denounce chauvinist values, racial stereotypes, annexation of land and the culture of violence, all of which are endemic in the civilization. This genre, which in the past was straightjacketed by patriotic, puritan and simplistic censure, has become a powerful instrument for criticism: the Western reflects disenchantment with the American dream or accompanies social revolutions. I wanted Montreal to have an exhibition that would take an in-depth, multilayered and socially engaged look at these current issues.”

Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Curator of International Modern Art at the MMFA, co-curator of this exhibition who is responsible for the Montreal edition, adds: “The Western has always been more than a simple story of ‘cowboys and Indians,’ outlaws and bandits and saloon brawls. At its core, the Western is an epic story of nation building, of the triumphs and failures, the fantasies, and even the hypocrisies that the process entails.

And above all, behind the legends, real lives were lived. The expansion into the West destroyed entire populations of Indigenous people, leaving in its wake violated treaties and broken lives. One of the concerns here is to examine the stereotypes of the First People as perpetuated by the Western, by demonstrating the power of art not only to shape myths but to shake up the most firmly established among them.”

Evolution of a genre, from the twentieth century to the present day
Once Upon a Time… The Western comprises three elements, like a movie: the set, the cast and the action. The great paintings of Western landscapes, popular novels and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, all of which helped drive American mythology. A look at the types of figures that presided over the creation the Western, including the cowboy, the “Indian,” the trapper, the scout and the pioneer, have much to tell us about the prevailing stereotypes, conveyed by artist-illustrators such as Frederic Remington, Charles Schreyvogel and Charles Marion Russell. The typologies for action are established: attacks on a stagecoach or train, duels and saloon brawls and cavalry charges.

The exhibition also traces the evolution of the Western, first through photography and then with excerpts from numerous films: from silent shorts (The Great Train Robbery) to the big screen with Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Aldrich, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, John Schlesinger and Henry Hathaway, among others. John Ford embodies the culmination of the classic Western, while Sergio Leone, with his iconoclastic detachment, reframes the genre. The overview concludes with the Western revisited, with films by Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, Joel and Ethan Coen, Tommy Lee Jones and Paul Thomas Anderson.

The exhibition also shows how the genre served as a means of expression for the counter-culture movement during the Vietnam War, with films that reflected the growing concern for safeguarding personal freedom. Visitors will see, as well, the original Harley Davidson from the film Easy Rider and major paintings by Andy Warhol and Fritz Scholder that speak to the emergence of the American Indian Movement. The final part of the exhibition will concentrate on a reinterpretation of the Western genre by contemporary artists from the 1980s to today, works that sometimes cover the themes of race, sexuality and gender. Indigenous artists conclude the story, with their own take on the Western.