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PrintArt — Sooner style
Four books that provide insight into our state’s artistic past.
What is the art of Oklahoma? If it is possible to define art regionally, who are we?
Four books written, compiled and published in 2009 under the sponsorship of Gilcrease Museum best describe our artistic past.
If you have lived in Oklahoma anytime at all, you can’t help but absorb this state’s rich, colorful history, and there is no better teller of truth than art.
Indulge your senses and buy/keep in ready use these books: “Thomas Gilcrease,” “Willard Stone,” “Charles Banks Wilson” and “The Senate Collection: The Art of the Oklahoma State Capitol.” The four are a visual quartet in harmony and history.
Thomas Gilcrease was lucky. Because of his Creek blood, he was allotted 160 oil-rich acres. But it was more than luck that directed his interests to American art. Many oil tycoons have come and gone and nary a canvas purchased.
What drove him to collect more than 3,000 works of art, sponsor archeological digs, support developing artists and establish a museum? Read the book and learn.
Willard Stone was one of Gilcrease’s favored sculptors. Stone wrote to Gilcrease in 1945, “I never could talk. And if my work won’t speak for itself, then I guess I will always be silent.”
To see a Stone sculpture is to be engulfed in a soft noise. The smooth, rounded surfaces characterize Native American lore and whisper in your ear. Even the fierce bison are rendered tame under Stone’s fingers. Stone’s “Running Buffalo” sculpture murmurs. Why does Stone smooth the angular? Read and find out.
Charles Banks Wilson, our state’s Thomas Hart Benton, is a prolific pictorial historian.
“The human face is the one universal language,” Wilson says.
His portraits of purebloods Woody Guthrie, Angie Debo and other legendary Oklahoma figures number among his best. What is the face of Oklahoma? Read and discover.
Wilson painted the murals in our state Capitol. More than 100 works by other Oklahoma artists or about Oklahomans, which Sen. Charles Ford of Tulsa collected, are on view in Oklahoma City. A portion was exhibited at Gilcrease Museum during the Capitol renovation in 2009.
The book, “Art of the Oklahoma State Capitol: The Senate Collection,” empowers you with a visual understanding without the 150-mile drive.
Twenty artists, from Beeler to Wimmer, are displayed in this book.
The jacket cover image is Mike Wimmer’s depiction of “Osage Treaty of 1825,” an Oklahoma version of Howard Chandler Christy’s famous painting, “Scene of the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.” The juxtaposition is jarring. Instead of powdered wigs and cravats, Osages in full costume of feather and blanket accept the quill to sign. Was this treaty betrayed? Read and see.
