Tourism and the Arts
Tourism and the arts go hand in hand in New Mexico, from the early days when tourism
became a conscious industry, through to our own times.
In the late 19th century the two main ideas motivating artists to visit and work here were
the concept of New Mexico as a picturesque locale with an exotic and colorful
population, and counter to this view, the goal of preserving and documenting authentic
lifestyles of the Native American and Hispanic communities. Both of these visions
resulted in paintings and photography shown back east in galleries and museums,
magazines and newspapers, souvenir postcards, and incorporated into calendars and
advertising materials.
One early group of artists settled in Taos. Bert Geer Phillips had studied at the Julian
Academy in Paris, where he met Ernest Blumenschein and Joseph Sharp. Their
passionate interest in the landscape and people of the New Mexico pueblos inspired
their fateful trip to the southwest in 1898. Outside of Taos, the wagon they were
travelling in lost a wheel bringing them into the town where, inspired by the landscape,
they decided to stop and paint. They became the only white artists operating in the
region, displaying their work out of their studios, and becoming a major attraction for
white tourists in Taos. The three artists helped found the Taos Society of Artists whose
six original members, including E. Irving Couse, W. Herbert Dunton, and Oscar
Berninghaus, tended to be European-trained illustrators and painters. By 1915, there
were more than a hundred artists working in Taos, though only a handful were voted into
the Taos society which finally disbanded in 1927, possibly due to decreased sales and
publicity.
Classical European art, which had formed the foundation for most of the teaching that
American artists experienced, had gone through a radical evolution. With the invention of
the camera in the late 1800’s, adventurous artists in Europe felt liberated from the
necessity to make representational art—the camera could do that! Instead, they began
to experiment with artmaking itself as Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism and
Cubism began to replace traditional picture making. In 1913, many American artists
were treated to their first view of these new developments at the Armory for the Arts
Exhibition in New York City where they saw the work of Cezanne and Matisse, Picasso
and Duchamp, and a long list of other innovators. For some, it was considered a
scandalous show, even an outrage. But for the history of American art, it was a
watershed that introduced artists, collectors, art historians and the public accustomed to
realistic art, to modern art. The show served as a catalyst for American artists, who
became more independent and created their own "artistic language." New Mexico and
its wide-open spaces offered an ideal place to explore, both in terms of subject matter
and artistic style.
In the early years of the 20th century artists came to New Mexico in large numbers
having been inspired by the early images, or having heard reports and seen the work of
friends who had visited; some artists came for health issues finding the climate a respite
for their tuberculosis. The coming of New Mexico Statehood in 1912 saw a rapid
increase in the population.
PLC Q: Explain the motivations that brought artists and writers to New Mexico.