Lafayette Maynard Dixon
Top of the Ridge
1932
Oil on canvas
114.3 cm x 145.4 cm (45 in. x 57 1/4 in.)
Gift of C.R. Smith, 1976

Bold, simplified shapes, shallow representations of space, and absolute stillness distinguish Maynard Dixon's western images. His works are frequently described as more "modern" looking than those of his contemporaries, perhaps because the western genre tends toward the documentary and/or nostalgic. Indeed, unlike many of his peers, Dixon did have an interest in the new modernist ideas of abstraction. But his art was also greatly influenced by his passionate engagement with Hopi culture and its notion of constant time without beginning, middle, or end. Technical considerations may have affected the look of Dixon's work as well. Prior to painting Top of the Ridge, the artist had spent most of a decade painting murals for private commissions. Of the five Dixon works that came to the Blanton Museum as part of the C. R. Smith Collection, this most resembles a typical mural subject, with its expansive horizontality anchored by a primary, almost centered vertical, and with its reliance on dynamic line and compositional rhythms rather than specific details. It may also be relevant that Dixon was married to the noted photographer Dorothea Lange in the 1920s: in much the way that a photograph "freezes time," Dixon's canvases are silent and without motion.