A CLOSER LOOK AT LANE TWITCHELL’S MOUNTAIN MEADOW’S MYSTERIES OR THE EVENING REDNESS IN THE WEST
Emily Lodish
From a distance, Lane Twitchell’s painting Mountain Meadow’s Mysteries or the Evening Redness in the West (featured on cover) appears as a bleeding sunset. Broad strokes of orangey-red billow out from a fiery center against a cool, blue, electric sky. Upon closer study, though, the piece is rife with violent images of “people getting their throats cut and mothers getting their babies ripped away,” according to Twitchell. Figures appear frozen in frenzied motion, eternally flung about though never consumed by angry flames. Twitchell paints a furiously riveting and brutal scene, one that is hard to look at and nearly impossible to digest but disquietly mesmerizing all the same.
Twitchell grounds Mountain Meadow’s in a parking lot, located in the lower lefthand corner of the 72” by 72” canvas. From here, he takes viewers up and out through layers of bold color and lively imagery that tell the story of the historical events leading up to and comprising the Mountain Meadows’ Massacre. He finally releases the blaze in curlicues of smoke the shape of question marks, demanding viewers engage before we are even sure what it is we have seen. Also central to the piece is the all-knowing eye of God, hovering over the tilted scene.
Having grown up Mormon in Utah, Twitchell pulls many of his shapes from a lexicon of iconography that refers to Mormonism and the Old West. With the title, Mountain Meadow’s Mysteries or the Evening Redness in the West, Twitchell frames the viewing experience between two specific reference points—one religious, one secular—both evoking extreme violence relating to American westward expansion. The first half of the title refers to the Mountain Meadows’ Massacre, a controversial episode in Mormon history marked by the slaughter of over one hundred, disarmed, Arkansan emigrants at the hands of the Mormons. The second half of the title could, of course, refer to a sunset (Evening Redness in the West), but it is also the subtitle of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. McCarthy’s novel charts the journey of a young boy along the TexasMexico border, amidst the vigilante culture of the 1850’s. From all sides then, we are mired in bloodshed.
Twitchell links past to present in his title, highlighting the tragic, selfperpetuating cycle of violence and history. He draws upon a shared vocabulary of images in the consciousness of his viewers, raising questions of historical accuracy and further implicating us all in a universal quest for accountability.
Twitchell moved to New York City in the mid-1990s, and remembers his perspective widening soon thereafter. “Out in Utah, Mormons are raised in a magical bubble,” and he had simply never thought outside his faith until achieving some physical distance. According to Twitchell, Mormonism sustains a particularly strong grasp over its adherents. “Mormonism is religion as extended family; you can’t kick me out. You’re not lapsed, no one is lapsed.” Still, he now considers himself a “Jack Mormon” which he defines as meaning loyally lapsed, and he describes his Mormon world as having “ended with a whimper, not a bang. It’s been ending for the last fifteen years.”
The push and pull of bond and estrangement creates a kinetic atmosphere from which Twitchell draws inspiration. One year ago, Twitchell spoke of his Mormonism with gracious affection. He acknowledged the appeal of the Mormon lifestyle (“It’s just a great way to live. Mormonism works. Go to Utah, everyone’s happy.”), and discussed his Mormonism in terms of inspiration (“There is a buzz about following this one thing. That’s what inspiration is.”) Writer Brian Evenson, (also featured in this magazine), was raised Mormon and, like Twitchell, engages with feelings of distance and separation from his faith. He elaborates in a discussion with Twitchell published in The Brooklyn Rail (February, 2004): “I find that sense of outsidedness and alienation (coupled with that sense that you can never completely escape your roots) quite productive for my writing.”
Twitchell felt confined by the literalist basis of Mormonism, and betrayed by the inconsistencies therein. “Angels actually touched Joseph Smith’s head,” Twitchell insists, “angels that have bodies in the same way that Thomas Jefferson has a body. It’s not a metaphor.” With the meaning so close to the words, there is only room for one story. “My work has a lot to do with controlling the narrative. It has become clouded. The church has gotten so good at controlling its story. It’s gotten so the only story that’s released is one-sided.” He remembers a group of black kids he met on a bus platform while he was serving his mission (a full time, volunteer commitment of two years to spread the word of Jesus Christ) in Fairfax, Virginia. “I never told the truth . . . to the degree that they called attention to Mormonism’s racist doctrine as a 17th century puritanical justification for slavery . . . [how] those ideas might still be perfectly germane.” Now Twitchell wants to know, “When do I get to ask God, ‘Hey, I think that was bullshit. Hey, maybe we should apologize for, own up to, our mistakes?’”
Twitchell blames the church for glossing over history out of self-interest. According to Twitchell, Mormons are raised with the perspective that “Joseph Smith did just stop the world,” which leads to the perspective that “we can just forget history and that’s okay.” He stresses that this notion is by no means unique to Mormonism, but rather one of the many troubling aspects of the religion he finds emblematic of America (“I mean, I genuinely believe that George W. wants Iraq to be a more pleasant country.”) The lack of accountability with which Mormons approached the Mountain Meadows’ Massacre for so long is a symptom of this problematic attitude toward history. “Ask Hinckley [the current living prophet] about Mountain Meadows’: ‘What? Oh, that was probably the Indians.’”
Twitchell indicts this attitude in his work, beginning from a single sheet of paper which he sees as a metaphor for the “interconnectedness of history.” He folds the sheet, and carves finely detailed shapes into it. Once unfurled, the images repeat themselves around the sheet, forming interlocking patterns that resemble lace-making. At this stage, Twitchell applies paint to the cut paper as well as behind it, allowing the colors to bob and weave amidst one another. One icon is bound to the next—like cause, outcome, and implication of an event—in what is literally a seamless fabric. Moreover, the symmetrical replications of the same image suggest the dangerously recurring nature of history.
Acknowledging and responding to the past are important themes for Twitchell, pertaining not only to religious and political events, but also to a canon of artistic tradition. Twitchell sees his work as a reaction to artists, like Donald Judd, whose material-oriented conceptualism suggested the point of view that it is possible to make a full break with the past. Judd is known for his large, freestanding, geometric sculptures made of industrial materials, as well as for his belief that art should not represent anything, but rather should stand on its own and simply exist. Judd, according to Twitchell, was primarily interested in exploiting materials for their material properties. He wanted to use materials that had not existed before his day to make things only they could make, and in this sense he viewed art as secluded from the interconnectedness that Twitchell holds dear.
In choosing the images and shapes he works with, Twitchell is adamant about sticking to what he calls “historical factualism.” His aim is to combine familiar objects in such a way that a great number of people are able to read them and connect them back to a shared set of data. “I really try to remain grounded in the world of fact,” he says, “When I make a picture it’s based on some sort of empirical data. It’s not just Lane’s cosmic symbol system.”
While striving for historical accuracy and holding to a standard of fact is admirable, to be sure, it is also no easy task. The precise details of Mountain Meadows’ remain controversial, and there is much that will never be known. On the morning of September 11, 1857, Mormon settlers in southern Utah painted themselves to look like the Paiute Indians whose help they had enlisted to aid in the killing. In his recent book Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer describes the moment of attack: “Painted Saints and Paiutes rushed upon these victims with guns and knives and began shooting and bludgeoning them to death and slashing their throats.” The only lives spared at the scene of Mountain Meadows’ were children under the age of five, deemed too young to remember enough to bear witness. The documents and diaries of most of the participants were destroyed. Mounting historical facts scatter in the wind of uncertainty, and Twitchell leaves us with question marks made of smoke.
Historical context is crucial to Twitchell’s understanding of the events at Mountain Meadows’; he claims not to be horrified by the killings because “violence was everywhere” at that time. Richard and Joan Ostling emphasize the hysteria of the time in their book Mormon America, and though Krakauer maintains that Mountain Meadows was “one of the most chilling episodes in the history of the American West,” he too refers to the “explosive atmosphere” heightened by inflammatory speeches given by spiritual leaders such as Brigham Young. In Twitchell’s version, “Religious fanatics just went crazy in the heat. They had seen Joseph Smith get killed and they felt cornered like a rattle snake. They bit back.” It would certainly be amiss to ignore the historical moment, but Twitchell’s focus on context looms dangerously close to justification. It is true: we cannot know precisely what happened, but neither can we chock it up to the historical context.
It is with striking ease that Twitchell detaches from the violence he portrays, dismissing any in-depth conversation on the subject. He is adamant about not claiming ownership to any knowledge of violence. His only relevant sensory memory is from when he witnessed a sheep slaughter as a small child. “It’s just not something that we’re acquainted with in the day to day. I don’t have any reference point for that kind of bloodshed . . . What do I really know of human carnage?” In the summer of 2004, Twitchell and his wife drove through Utah to the site of the Mountain Meadows’ Massacre and he had no emotional reaction. “Yeah, they slaughtered all these people . . . That’s just what happened.” Twitchell views others generously in terms of their historical moment, as too submerged to see or act differently. It is appropriate that Twitchell, too, is submerged—in apathy.
Though interconnectedness is the pervasive theme, and Twitchell openly indicts the Mormon Church for its lack of accountability, he now defiantly maintains that there is a “maelstrom of emotions related to an event that ultimately I don’t have to answer for.” It is jarring. There is nothing subtle about Twitchell’s sizable piece, the bold colors and wild images, yet he appears unable to begin the conversation. Why does Twitchell seem to be dodging his own questions of accountability? Perhaps he does not want to infect the viewer’s experience with preconceived notions, though that runs contrary to his groundwork of tangible, shared symbols. Perhaps he is frustrated because, as he says, it is not meant to be a realistic representation of violence in the same way that Goya depicted war. Or maybe, on an ideological level, Twitchell does not feel that the artist need be accountable to the viewer.
Twitchell is interested in presenting his piece and not in answering for it, ironically echoing Judd’s mission on this front. In Twitchell’s words, “As an artist, you need to invest the work so that people can continue to discuss your work without you there.” Twitchell has an alternative narrative to each of his paintings that he says is “completely different from whatever people see in them.” He finds freedom in the gap between artist’s intention and audience impression. The reason he chose McCarthy’s title for Mountain Meadow’s has to do with one of his less fruitful exhibitions. After the show, a friend gave Twitchell a copy of Blood Meridian and told him not to worry, that nobody bought it or understood it in the beginning either, all that came later. That the piece will be about different things to different people, even with an array of common reference points, is part of what makes the work exceptionally graceful. The piece remains alive and dynamic due to this simultaneous openness and variance. Because the picture is not about any one thing, there can be no single expected explanation, and Twitchell finds this liberating. He wants to step back, and let the work stand. “The picture’s in the world,” he says, “we’ll see where it goes.”
Twitchell’s blasé attitude may also be due in part to his medium, which he finds has an anesthetic effect on his subject matter. “Somehow the cut paper tends to neutralize any threat of violence. Askewing fashionable hyper violence. I make a silhouette, then the silhouette repeats like a grandmother’s doily . . . Does it add up?” In The Brooklyn Rail, he said “Perhaps what I’m really interested in is expansion, duplication, and growth . . . the idea of replication . . . the media obsesses over violent stories to the point that they enter an echo chamber of meaninglessness. One of the things I’ve noticed about my work is how the subject matter is rendered weightless and silly by cutting it into paper. I predict that no matter how gruesome I will try to make something it will always come out sterilized.” There is something cartoon-like about the frozen figures, but whether it undermines or highlights the intensity of violence is debatable. Evenson wonders “if there’s not a way to work with that flatness and weightlessness so as to allow a kind of relation of violence and American culture to come in through the back door with a lot of power.”
Blood Meridian is unquestionably a presentation of violence, and like Twitchell’s Mountain Meadow’s, is based on events that actually happened, in this case the murderous exploits of the Glanton gang. Steeped in killing throughout the book, the protagonist of Blood Meridian, simply named ‘the kid,’ is unable to process the senseless and sickening violence that surrounds him. He reacts without thinking, cramming the jagged remnant of a broken whiskey bottle into a barman’s eye. He stumbles upon the mutilated bodies of two lost scouts hanging from a tree, “sliced open with flints until the entrails hung down on their chests,” and rides on, unable to reflect upon what he has seen. Moments of humanity, as when the kid stands by his injured companion, appear vulnerable against the backdrop of ceaseless killing. Thanks to McCarthy’s artistry and to Twitchell’s, however, it is impossible to turn away from either work, as one undoubtedly would from a barrage of violence. The reason is that neither work is simply a barrage. “None of its carnage is gratuitous or redundant,” Harold Bloom writes of Blood Meridian in the introduction to the Modern American Library edition, and the work “at last transcends the violence, and converts goriness into art.” Blood Meridian is a work of violence, but it is also a work of violence as regeneration, and, though it leaves remarkable destruction in its wake, is ultimately productive.
Twitchell never finished Blood Meridian. He admits that he “truthfully, wasn’t all that crazy about it. I could only read about half because it turned my stomach— which is exactly what Cormac McCarthy wants.” Rather than aiming to turn our stomachs, I think Cormac McCarthy is challenging us to look at violence for what it is, history for what is, and to think beyond ways we have thought in the past. Whether he acknowledges it or not, it appears that Twitchell is interested in the same thing. Twitchell presents the violence (without excuse or explanation, for the most part) and allows it to enter the world on its own terms for discussion, dissection, and overhaul.
Mountain Meadow’s Mysteries is Twitchell’s creation, and yet he transfers all accountability into the viewer’s eye. He views his role as the provoker of thought, and not the bearer of easy answers. Twitchell steers the conversation away from a “sensationalist depiction of brutality,” and toward the broad, philosophical questions he finds most comfortable and compelling: “Why did they do it and who are we to judge what they did and do we create conditions that perpetuate that kind of behavior?” He gravitates toward the expansive; “From a distance it’s a just a general organization of shapes. Distance as abstractions.” Twitchell seems dedicated to viewing his piece from a distance, where one sees first and foremost its beauty. At the end of our meeting he wants to talk about his painting as a sunset again: “Fleeting and delicate, like light being prismed through water vapor . . . They’re characters, but they’re also clouds. History is fleeting. Comes together for a minute and then it just fades away. But it flares up every night over this little bucolic town. No one ever talks about it, but it kind of looms over this tiny city.”
The beauty of a sunset is easy and passing, it is a sweetness short-lived. The canvas will not allow viewers to remain far-away and disinterested, nor does it let us turn away. Though the artist’s view may be both distanced and distancing, the piece calls us in, begging questions that are uncomfortable, allencompassing, and absolutely essential—and thankfully, for it is up close that Twitchell’s majestic piece achieves the lasting impact that makes it great art.