NOT SO PLAIN ART OF THE AMERICAN PRAIRIES

Since the first European encounters with the grasslands of central North America, beginning with Coronado in the mid-sixteenth century, prairies have alternately confused, dismayed, overwhelmed, depressed, and inspired those who would contend with their contradictions. They have been described as being both nothing and everything, empty as well as vast, monotonous and endlessly varied. For those who saw them in their pristine state, prairies were often disorienting, a place to be lost, whereas today they have become the heartland where Americans look to find their truest identity. While such disparities have frustrated many writers who have attempted to convey something of this landscape to others, visual artists have encountered special difficulties, primarily because of the prairie\u27s lack of geographical features that would contribute to a view. The European conventions of landscape composition that dominated painting until the twentieth century were completely unsuited to such a featureless country, and the metaphorical alternatives available to literary portrayers were, for the most part, non-visual. As a result, many artists avoided the subject, even those committed to documenting their experiences and who encountered the scenery daily for long periods in their travels. Although the enterprising solutions of other artists, both in the nineteenth century and more recently, have been overshadowed by other types of landscapes, grassland pictures constitute a significant genre within American art as subtle, challenging, and fascinating as the land and history they depict