The myth of cowboy

An exhibition of sculpture dedicated to the Far West has opened in the New York Museum of the Metropolitan Museum. Bronze statuettes of chamber size, which allowed relatively inexpensive replication of the original, turned out to be an indispensable part of a decent situation in American apartments of the 19th century. Each such composition was a desktop memorial to the West with its Indians, bison, cowboys and freedom to the horizon.

The first cowboys appeared in Texas at the beginning of the 19th century, when there, as, however, now, there were a lot of free pastures for cattle. To distill huge herds hired experienced riders, usually Mexicans, mulattos or African Americans. For each herd of 2500 goals there were a dozen cowboys, who led a difficult nomadic life, which seemed romantic only to the townspeople from the eastern coast.

At first, there was nothing specifically American in the figure of a cowboy. The same character in similar conditions arose in South America, in the endless pampas of Argentina and Uruguay. This is the shepherd-haudo with their colorful folklore and a kind of outfit (poncho, soft boots, a bright belt with a wire for tea-mat). Moreover, the cowboys were in the old world. I saw them on the southern outskirts of France, in Kamarg. In this still the shellless area of the salty swamps of the mouth of the Rona, wild white horses, direct descendants of a prehistoric horse have been preserved. These European Mustangs go around the Provencal riders, calling themselves “curtains”. They consider themselves the first cowboys to export this image to the New World along with all its attributes, including the famous blue jeans.

In other words, the unique role of the cowboy myth is not associated with history, but with the psychology of America, which the most famous artist Frederick Remington managed to portray in textbook sculptures. The nail all the exhibitions - his best work “Bypass Bronko”. She became an American icon and was awarded a place in the oval office of the White House.

On the semi -domestic slang of the cowboys “Bronko” - a word denoting a horse that has not yet known the depths. The same can be said about the cowboy, going around the stallion. Helped and cheeky, they are even like externally. Both are caught by the author at the time of dynamic balance, which may end in the fall of both.

A strut for sculpture, the posture reveals the hidden meaning of the masterpiece. The metaphor of the Wild West is on two legs, and both are horsepower. If the bronze Indians are elegian (sunset sunset), then cowboys live in a short present, in an intermediate state between the reckless will and the inevitable civilization. It is not surprising that the horse stood on its hind legs.

The horse is one of the most ancient symbols of the unconscious, spontaneous. Only by curbing this powerful and obstinate beginning, a person subjugates the destructive forces both in the external and in the inner world - in himself. Exceptional geographical circumstances - the youth of the American fate - overturned an archaic myth in modern history. In her context, the cowboy myth plays in the vastness of the Wild West the mystery of the birth of order from chaos. As every lover of westerns knows, the best sheriffs come out of lonely cowboys.

The cowboy myth, embodied in the Hollywood Western, the second century feeds the world with raw emotions, but the cowboys themselves were enough. The railway and barbed wire took their jobs, except, of course, the one that showed by show business.