Art of the people - C.M. Russell Auction

Sunset, March, 1997 by Peter Fish

The C. M. Russell Auction offers the West the way it ought to be

It's late enough that half the crowd shifts restlessly in folding chairs, and the other half sips bourbon-and-sevens at the sidelines. But nobody pulls their eyes from the stage. Here, women in haute Western attire - buckskin evening gowns, turquoise jewelry - stroll a spotlit runway, each holding up a painting or a sculpture, displaying the West as captured on canvas or cast in bronze.

"Lot 195," the auctioneer shouts. "When Trails Meet. Do I hear $1,500?"

The C. M. Russell Auction in Great Falls, Montana, is among the preeminent events in Western art. By this, one means not "Western art" as encountered in a college survey course - the textbook progression from the Lascaux caves to Picasso - but cowboys and Indians, grizzly bears and coyotes. "Western art is art of the people," says Herb Mignery, a Colorado sculptor who was the Russell's guest of honor last year. "People associate art with something they don't understand. Western art is realistic. You can determine what is a head and what is a hand."

Art where you can determine what is a head and what is a hand is big business these days. While the Russell is not the most lucrative Western art auction, it is probably the oldest and the most beloved - largely because the profits help fund the Great Falls museum devoted to cowpoke-turned-artist Charlie Russell. Russell seems to have been that rarest of species, a genius who was genuinely a nice man. The fact that the auction begins with everyone singing happy birthday to Charlie warms the whole proceeding.

The auction is tamer than when it began 30 years ago. "We used to have mountain men, people showing off their pet wolves," one artist confided. "We've lost a lot of that Western vulgarity; we're getting too proper." Still, it's unlikely you would confuse the Russell with your average gallery opening. There, patrons' dark, severely cut clothes announce that they are aesthetes of razor-sharp sensibility. When clothing at the Russell makes a fashion statement, it tends to be "Yee-haw!"

During the day, patrons - high-rolling Texas ranchers and Minnesota cereal kings, and more moderately rolling Montanans - mingle with artists who have set up exhibit rooms in the motel that serves as auction headquarters. One of them is Oregon painter Joelle Smith, who does watercolors of ranch life: horses painted so you can practically hear them snort, cowboys presented with such careful detail you can differentiate a Nevada wrangler from a Montanan. "You can always tell a Montana cowboy," Smith says, looking around cautiously because there are in fact a lot of Montana cowboys nearby. "They don't care what they look like. Their outfits are practically tied together with baling twine."

Smith may be willing to critique Montana cowboys' sartorial habits, but she bristles, politely, at a common criticism of Western art - that it portrays a West that no longer exists. She paints the ranch life she sees, she says: "I'm documenting what's still going on." Mignery agrees. "Too many people have been told the West is dead," he says. "But there are ranches where things get done the same as they did a hundred years ago. Not all of us are able to lead that life. But we can all dream about it."

Even so, when you stroll from exhibit to exhibit, you encounter perhaps too many mountain meadows, Sioux maidens, and wagon trains creaking across unbroken prairies. Where, the cynic in you may ask, are the time-share condominiums, the coal-fired power plants, the rusted pickups dumped in some arroyo? Aren't those part of the West of the '90s? Charlie Russell, late in life, lamented the passing of the Montana he had painted: "The boosters say it's a better country than it ever was, but it looks like hell to me. I liked it better when it belonged to God."

But then the West as it should be may always be a bigger draw than the West as it is. This night's auction is packed, the bidding intense. And even after the auction has ended, art lovers crowd the halls. Among them are two guys in their 20s, both as broad as linebackers, both wearing cowboy hats. If you saw them admiring something, you would expect it to be a new John Deere tractor. But they study the art, very carefully. Eventually one gets weary and wants to hit the road. His buddy can't tear himself away. He disappears into Joelle Smith's exhibit room. "Sorry I took so long," he apologizes when he returns. "But she had pictures of horses in there."