When the Masters of the American West exhibition opened at the Autry Museum of the American West in February, one piece of art stood out for the artists, the collectors and the museum staff. It was George Carlson’s Mayday!, a painting of a dead coyote speared to the top of a fence post, its mouth agape and yawning silently into the sky.
The image was at once horrifying and oddly beautiful, and guests couldn’t take their eyes off it. It would go on to win both the Thomas Moran Memorial Award for Painting and the Masters Best of Show Award. But then the piece didn’t sell at the show, which caused confusion for its many fans. Some collectors said privately that the work was stunning, but didn’t belong in their collections, and others found it too disturbing for daily viewing.
George Carlson, Mayday!, oil on linen, 36 x 36”
When the Masters exhibition closed in March, the work was going to be sent back to Carlson, if not for a dedicated group of collectors who chipped in to buy the painting—and then they promptly donated it to the Autry Museum.
“What was so remarkable about it was how it could generate a conversation among anyone who looked at it,” says Jodie Rea, president of the board of trustees at the museum. “We had school children who would come in quite frequently, and they would just gravitate right to it. It really made people think.”
“One of Carlson’s most important works to date, Mayday! exudes both the painterly virtuosity and artistic daring for which the artist is known. Carlson encountered this scene while driving near his home in Idaho. Deeply disturbed by the animal’s mangled carcass, he became determined to paint this difficult scene,” writes Autry curator Amy Scott. “The resultant work, titled Mayday!, depicts a dead coyote impaled on a barbed-wire fence, its mouth wired open in a forever howl. Although the subject is both gruesome and cruel, Carlson’s sensitive handling and careful composition—a landscape partitioned by barbed wire underneath a cloudy sky—makes for a work that is both visually stunning and a rare comment on the conflicts between nature and culture constantly unfolding across the West today. These include the impact of ranching and farming on wildlife, the increasing visibility of coyotes and other predators in rural and urban settings…and the divergent approaches that we as a society often take to living alongside them.”
The work is now on view at the Los Angeles museum. —
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Calling all Western art museums! Have a recently acquired painting or sculpture? Email the details to mclawson@westernartcollector.com.
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