Maynard Dixon: To The Desert Again

One hundred years ago, a solitary figure roamed the desert seeking to capture the endless sky and towering mesas in paint and poetry. His vision of the West was matchless.

Maynard Dixon survived the destruction of San Francisco city by earthquake and fire, the Great Depression and the civilizing of the West. He spent over two decades sketching it for western novels, and then decades more on a quest to find and portray it: the "real" West-the vast space, intense silence, and profound spirit of the land and people of the American Desert.

KUED-Channel 7 profiles the life and art of Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), one of the most influential, yet lesser known, western artists of the early 20th century, in Maynard Dixon: To the Desert Again," airing November 22 at 8:00 p.m.

"No painter has ever quite understood the light, the distances, the aboriginal ghostliness of the American West as well as Maynard Dixon," says Thomas McGuane. "The great mood of his work is solitude, the effect of land and space on people. While his work stands perfectly well on its claim to beauty, it offers a spiritual view of the West, indispensable to anyone who would understand it."

Dixon's long, productive life was, in itself, a work of art, according to producer Nancy Green. "From the beginning, Dixon was different: an authentic, iconoclastic, self-created individual," she says. "He refused to join any one school of art; instead, he created his own distinctive style."

Dixon spent months roaming the western mesas, plains and deserts. Yet he created deep friendships with fellow dignitaries such as Ansel Adams. Primarily known for his landscape paintings, Dixon also was an outspoken social critic. With his wife Dorothea Lange, the famous Depression-era photographer, he chronicled victims of the Depression and the social unrest of the times. He felt an affinity with Native Americans, creating powerful portraits reflecting their spiritual nature.

Art curator Will South, who is interviewed in the film, notes, "Dixon was a man of the West, not because he painted Western scenes, but because he embraces what the West was and represented: mobility, freedom, possibility and the sense of the infinite."

The film also includes interviews with Donald J. Hagarty, who wrote the definitive Dixon biography; art dealer Paul Bingham, founder of the Thunderbird Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of Maynard Dixon's legacy and his Mt. Carmel, Utah home; and Daniel Dixon, the son of Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange.

Green and associate producer Joe Prokop traveled to California, New Mexico and Arizona, using high-definition video to show the play of light on the land -- the colors and formations that Dixon brilliantly manipulated to compose his paintings. These images are combined with interviews, archival footage, stylized recreations and Dixon's own art, poetry and writing to bring to life the spirit of Maynard Dixon. The sounds and images of Southwest come to life through videographer Gary Turnier and audio engineers Kevin Sweet and William Montoya.

Maynard Dixon: To The Desert Again is funded in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund, the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, the Dr. Charles .Bieber Family Trust, Terence K. Stephens, Grant and Betty Hagestad, the Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts, the Lawrence T. Dee - Janet T. Dee Foundation, the C. Comstock Clayton Foundation, and the contributing members of KUED.

Upcoming episodes:

Maynard Dixon: to the Desert Again

This episode is airing in KUED's schedule...

One hundred years ago, a solitary figure roamed the desert seeking to capture the endless sky and towering mesas in paint and poetry. His vision of the West was matchless. Maynard Dixon survived the destruction of San Francisco city by earthquake and fire, the Great Depression and the civilizing of the West. He spent over two decades sketching it for western novels, and then decades more on a quest to find and portray it: the "real" West-the vast space, intense silence, and profound spirit of the land and people of the American Desert.

Friday June 21st, 2013 @ 7:00 pm on KUED World Channel 7.2
Friday June 21st, 2013 @ 11:00 pm on KUED World Channel 7.2

"Maynard Dixon: To The Desert Again" sponsors:

Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund
Dr. Charles Bieber Family Trust