Existing comment:
Wild West
Levinthal's Wild West series explores the powerful appeal of the American West and its place in contemporary culture. The artist attributes the persistence of this imagery in his own work to the impression that Westerns made on him in the 1950s and 1960s. While Hollywood didn't invent the myth of the West, its highly romanticized narratives helped to crystallize the characters and tropes and cement them in popular imagination. Wild West taps into the familiarity of these frontier fictions, showing cowboys, Indians, gunfighters, lawmen, and women in classic poses and scenarios. Although Levinthal hides the toy-ness of his subjects -- burying their bases in turf and blurring their forms -- the illusion is never quite complete. Levinthal invites us to recognize the layers of artificiality within his images, from the toys themselves to the mythical "types" they represent. As Levinthal describes, this is "a West that never was but always will be." |