The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part III: A Golden Moment (2013)

We conclude our look at Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954) with this, A Golden Moment, painted just one year ago.

Though the last two pictures we looked at were of American Indians, Rodríguez spends nearly as much time painting miners, prospectors and Wild West bad men.  He also paints children of the plains, as well as Mexican and Indian women in a manner that could only be called Sanitized Cheesecake.

Rodríguez is a conundrum – a painter of undeniable skill and talent, but without any taste or point of view.  He too often relies on pyrotechnics to achieve his effects, and short-changes his own considerable abilities.

Today’s picture is certainly not Rodríguez at his best; though correct enough in its component parts, they don’t seem to fit together in any real way.  The prospector is wonderfully drawn, but there is no real sense of his weight or bulk upon the rocks.  The gun in his belt looks more like something drawn on his shirt than a real weapon, and I’m not quite sure where the back of the man’s body is hiding.

More egregious is the dog, who looks like he was stenciled onto the background, like one of those sets we got as children where we rubbed figures into pre-painted pictures.  The poor hound seems to hang there, not really in this picture at all, and obediently looking off to the side to see if its time to get out of it. 

How can this happen?  Again – look at the man, divorced from the rest of the picture.  Or, better yet, look at the pickaxe, bucket and pan.  All are executed with a sure hand; even the dog -- the component of the picture that screams “kitsch” with bruised lungs – is competently done.  It’s just that all of these pieces look like they were stitched together, a painting more Frankenstein than Buffalo Bill.

Alfredo Rodríguez clearly wants to be a modern Charles Marion Russell or Frederic Remington; but his passion is commercial, not personal.

The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part II: American Indian

We are spending this week looking at the work of Mexican-born artist Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954), who currently lives in California. 

Rodríguez, like many of his generation, grew up to be obsessed with the American West.  It’s important to remember that though Westerns are few and far between today, that the 1950s and 1960s were a boom time for Western films and television shows; comedian Bob Hope once quipped that NBC meant “Nothing But Cowboys.”  While a boy growing up in Mexico, Rodríguez got a steady diet of American television Westerns playing in reruns.  Like many of his generation, he was marked for life.

Rodríguez’s work has been covered in such books as Western Painting Today by Royal B. Hassick,  and Contemporary Western Artists by Peggy and Harold Samuels; he has also been covered ins such magazines as Art of the West, Western Horseman, and International Fine Art Collector. He has illustrated textbooks and histories, as well, and the prolific artist is one of the most successful contemporary painters in the Western genre.

We at The Jade Sphinx wax and wane on our admiration for Rodríguez.  His efforts to keep the American West alive are met here with riotous applause.  So, too, are his abilities as an artist.  We just wish he had better taste.

Today’s picture is a case in point.  It is quite striking – Rodríguez’s skill at drawing is in full display here.  Look at the network of fine lines etched into the subject’s face, let alone the shadow of his long hair playing against his cheek.  More impressive still are the feathers atop his head, created with such complete control of line and contour as to be surprisingly lifelike.

His sense of coloration is more subdued here than yesterday’s picture – though the dramatic sky, dotted with clouds and merging into the wooded background is perhaps a bit too calculated.  And there, in short, is our problem with the work.  This is a picture calculated to its every brushstroke.  Not that all great pictures are not planned – that’s not exactly what we mean here.  Instead, it seems as if Rodríguez were checking off a list of tropes necessary or expected for this type of picture, and delivering them without comment or insight.

Is our Indian stoic and insightful?  Check.  Brilliant blue sky and wide-open spaces?  Check and check.  Peaceful village rendered in desert colors?  Check.  Water, grass and teepees?  Check, check, check.  It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this picture – it is actually quite splendidly done – it’s just that there is little-to-no point of view and composed by route.  One cannot help but wish that Rodríguez harnessed that remarkable technical ability into a more personal statement on the West.

It makes a superb cover for a paperback Western; as a finished work of art that stands alone on its ability to move us, it falls short.

More Rodríguez tomorrow!

The Art of Alfredo Rodríguez, Part I: Profile of a Chief (2006)

This past week, we were lucky enough to entertain a dear friend who is also deeply devoted to the arts.  We were talking about the art world in general and The Jade Sphinx in particular when he opined, “you know, you may want to write about artists who are still alive every now and then.”

Astonishing thought…

At the same time, I had been reading S. C. Gwynne’s masterful Empire of the Summer Moon, a look at the Comanches, who were at one time most powerful Indian tribe in American history.  (Expect more on this book, later – it is magnificent.)  And that called to mind the paintings of Alfredo Rodríguez (born 1954).

Rodríguez started drawing and painting in his earliest boyhood; it was as natural to him as learning to walk or speak.  He was born in Mexico, and grew up fascinated by stories of the American West.  The West of his imagination is peopled with strong, colorful Indians, prospectors, homesteaders, and miners.  His pictures have been corralled by private collectors and several corporations, and he currently exhibits at numerous invitational art shows around the country, including the Masters of the American West at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, as well as in the Heritage Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, The West Lives On Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, and the Art Pacific Gallery in Wailea, Hawaii. Collectors include the late Gene Autry, actress Connie Stevens, and Pilar Wayne (widow of actor John Wayne).

Rodríguez became a professional artist 1968 and made a steady career of magazine illustration before moving into fine art painting.  He has been a remarkably prolific painter, and his oeuvre varies remarkably in quality.  There are works that have a striking, stark declarative power – here is the past as I see it, peopled by remarkable giants now long gone.  Other pictures, particularly those involving children or family scenes, are sentimental and soft … bordering dangerously on kitsch.  Like many painters who have had to make a living in the extremely competitive field of magazine illustration, Rodríguez often panders rather than paints.  However, when Rodríguez is at the top of his game, he is quite something.

Today’s painting, Profile of a Chief (2006), exemplifies all that is great and questionable in Rodríguez’s work.  The technical aspects of Rodríguez’s work here are quite wonderful: notice, the superb draughtsmanship in the depiction of the face, or, better yet, the brushwork that not only delineates the lines of various feathers, but moves them in-and-out of shafts of light.  Though the visible hand has aged into a claw, the deep lines in the knuckles and stained thumbnail are clearly visible.  The beadwork is rendered with loving detail, and the fringe of his buckskin has a wonderfully tactile quality.

And yet … and yet, Rodríguez becomes the victim of his own desire to please.  The coloration of the picture, though striking, is simply too … much.  It is if Rodríguez almost did not trust his own considerable talent enough, and felt the need to overcompensate, to dazzle with color to hide any possible defects in the drawing.  Many contemporary painters are guilty of this – extremely talented men and women who, without the long tradition of atelier training to provide confidence and context, default to excess to guarantee success. 

For all of its excesses, though, Profile of a Chief is a well-executed picture.

More Rodríguez tomorrow!