Published on the occasion of the exhibition of The Cowboy April 25-Juni 21, 1981 organized by the San Diego Museum of Art San Diego, California.
Softcover, illustrated.



I am, and always have been, influenced by the cowboy mystique. Like most American males, cowboys provided the intellectual grist of my youth, and there were few aspects of my maturation unaffected by the cowboy ethic and its commercial applications; my juvenile cowlick was finally tamed by an ample application of Hopalong Cassidy hair tonic, my pre-adolescent ears were protected by a pair of flagrantly-labeled Roy Rogers earmuffs and, on a more lasting level, I discovered the joy of art appreciation when, on a school tour of the Metropolitan Museum, I encountered a breathtaking panorama of a cattle stampede rendered by Charles Russell. In short my youth was spent in total wild west rapture.
Of course, as I learned much later, my perception of cowboys and the American West was entirely naive, a result of popular myth and a dash of wishful thinking. When I eventually emigrated west, I expected my childhood impressions to be confirmed. I anticipated a frontier only slightly more civilized than that imagined in my youth, replete with careening tumbleweeds, glistening horses and a breed of man who chewed rather than smoked his tobacco, brawled rather than initiated litigation and was more at home on the range than the tennis court. I was, to say the least, disappointed.
The truth of the matter is that cowboys-real cowboys-are a rugged, lonely and often grubby lot. Or at least that is what I have been told by people who are supposed to know such things. I have lived in California for nearly ten years and have never met the kind of cowboy I emulated in my youth. I have marveled at the celluloid heroics of John Wayne. I have perused the writings of Zane Grey. I have even hummed a …………….. …………..