A Question of Authenticity

38 min readApr 25, 2021

“Ponca Nation” Charcoal and Acrylic by Scott Burdick

A couple of years ago at the Prix de West show, I was chatting with Jeremy Lipking about which color of Gummy Bear is the most intellectual (according to him, it’s the blue ones, but I’m pretty sure it’s yellow) when another artist in the show (I’ll call him/her “M” to sound mysterious) came up to Jeremy and said, “I liked your painting where you dressed Logan up like a cowboy, but if you ever want to paint an authentic cowboy, I live on a ranch and could get you some great models.”

Jeremy looked a little confused at this comment — though it’s sometimes hard for me to read his expression, seeing as though he’s a giant, and decoding his facial contortions from such a low angle can be difficult for elevation-challenged humans like myself. From his lofty perch atop his lofty shoulders, Jeremy explained that he hadn’t dressed Logan up as a cowboy, but that he and Logan had been out painting landscapes in Arizona and Logan was already wearing a western hat and boots without having received any cowpoke sartorial advice from him. (Logan was probably dressed this way to keep hot girls from bothering him when he’s trying to paint, which is a real problem for Logan, especially in remote deserts.)

Jeremy told M that seeing an extremely hot Logan standing in front of that hot barbed wire fence with the hot Vermillion Cliffs in the distance inspired him to snap a photo for a later air-conditioned studio painting. Therefore, the scene was an “authentic” record of his personal experience of that time, place, and an artist he’s been friends with for many years (Logan and Jeremy refuse to discuss how they first met, and I’m not going to repeat all those rumors about an ill-fated possum-juggling bull-riding act).

When passing judgement on artists, I often find it useful to consult a higher authority. According to the all-knowing Google, Authentic (adjective) is defined as:

1. “Conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features.”

2. “True to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.”

After reading this, I realized that Jeremy was relying on definition #2 by defending his work as an authentic personal experience of the West as it exists now, while M was relying on definition #1 of “authentic,” which requires that paintings of people wearing cowboy hats should depict people who make their living ridding cows (I’m assuming that’s what “real cowboys” do?) so as to conform to an original authentic cowboy archetype.

As with so much in the modern world, language is the root of most conflict and will hopefully be banned someday. Just imagine how much more genial presidential debates would be without it, not to mention Thanksgiving!

M graciously accepted Jeremy’s linguistic-defense and apologized for implying he was a fraud by faking his Western painting by dressing up a model as a counterfeit cowboy. Jeremy appreciated this reprieve from being exposed as inauthentic (which was serious business, since it might have resulted in his artistic license being revoked in Western states).

Being a city-boy from Chicago, I was still a bit confused about the Western Art authenticity rules, and asked M, “Are you saying that it would have been wrong if Jeremy had dressed up a non-cowboy in a cowboy costume for a cowboy painting?”

“Personally, I do,” M said. “There are so many authentic Western models an artist can paint, why fake it? That just seems artistically lazy.”

I could see some merit in this argument, and the discussion probably would have ended right there if Frank hadn’t dug his claws into my shoulder and said, “Why don’t you ask this authenticity purist about Howard Terpning?”

You might be wondering how a lizard half the size of my hand can talk. I wondered the same thing myself when we first met at Burning Man a few years ago, especially when it became clear that only I could see and hear him. At first, I feared I was having a psychotic break from all that peyote and unrefrigerated mayonnaise, but quickly ruled that out, since none of the other symptoms were present — at least, no more than usual for an artist. Besides, Frank is always bringing up all sorts of obscure facts I’ve never heard before, which rules out my own mind as the source of his incessant prattle. My best guess is that Frank is an alien from a distant galaxy astral-projecting his consciousness across interstellar space-time using some sort of quantum entanglement device, though he denies this, of course. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all aliens are liars, since that would be bigotry, but all the one’s I’ve met thus far have been less than up-front with me.

Due to the fact that I’ve been highly susceptible to peer pressure from a young age, I followed Frank’s suggestion and said to M, “At the Autry show a few years ago, Howard Terpning told me that he often dresses his son up in Native American outfits and alters the facial features to look the part of whichever native tribe he’s painting. Are you saying that those paintings are inauthentic?”

In horror at being accused of throwing shade on the most famous living Western artist, M instantly declared there was nothing wrong with Howard T waving his magic paint-brush and transforming his pale son into a sun-bronzed Indian — pointing out that he painted historical paintings and those models aren’t around anymore, so dressing models up was necessary.

“But there are still Indians around that look more like those subjects than his son,” Frank pointed out, and I repeated his words to M.

M explained that Howard Terpning did lots of historical research to make sure his paintings were entirely “authentic.”

Frank said, “You humans are so intellectually self-serving.” Which struck me as a bit hypocritical coming from an alien pretending to be an invisible lizard.

As we dived down the rabbit hole of what made Western art “authentic,” M became increasingly uncomfortable with Frank’s questions. I’ve noticed that a lot of people get uncomfortable when I act as Frank’s mouthpiece in discussions. Frank is unusually direct and challenging with his reliance on the Socratic method, though it’s possible that the enormous amount of garlic I consume plays some part in people’s aversion from engaging in long discussions with me. Nailing down cause and effect can be difficult with multiple variables in play.

At one point, I whispered to Frank, “How do we know that Jeremy didn’t hire a real cowboy to pretend to be Logan pretending to be a real cowboy in some sort-of meta reductionist postmodern critique of the mythization of the authentic American West?”

Frank threw an eye-roll my way and said, “Can we give your conspiracy theory nonsense a break for one day, at least?”

After M left/fled in the face of Frank’s cross-examination, Jeremy and I returned to our Gummy Bear argument. Just as our debate escalated to dangerous levels, an older woman (and by older, I mean really old — older then twenty-three, at least) approached Jeremy and said, “I love that painting you did of Logan and was wondering if the barbed wire fence was authentic or if it’s something you made up when you did the painting?”

I couldn’t help laughing (partly because she pronounced “barbed wire” as “bobwaar”). But Jeremy didn’t laugh. He seemed startled by this new challenge to the authenticity of his painting — coming literally seconds after the first unprovoked broadside. Maybe Jeremy gets this so often because he’s from Los Angeles and everyone knows people from La La Land are hollowed out mannequins without a single authentic thought in their head.

You might assume that Jeremy’s brilliant paintings are proof that this isn’t the case, but I’ve long suspected that he keeps a contingent of genetically engineered spider monkeys in his basement to do his paintings. I mean, has anyone actually seen Jeremy do one of his masterpieces? Yeah, I know he has instructional videos and all that, but how do we know he doesn’t hire one of those special effects AIs that infest Los Angeles to digitally transform one of the genetically engineered spider monkeys into a CGI-Jeremy to make it look like he’s doing the painting? If you think this is far-fetched, you seriously need to go to the movies with your grandkids.

Jeremy said something like, “I painted it from a photo I took of Logan, and he was standing in front of a barbed wire fence.”

The woman said, “What I mean is, did you pay attention to exactly what kind of bobwaar it was, or did you just make random strokes to represent the bobs?”

Jeremy looked even more confused (possibly a side effect of injecting his entire body with Botox twice a week, but more likely because he had no idea if the monkeys had painted authentic barbed wire or made it up in their genetically-enhanced monkey imaginations). “I don’t know if I paid attention to copying the barbed wire exactly — ”

“I’m a docent at the museum here,” the ancient over-twenty-three-year-old woman said, “and we have a display that shows all the different types of bobwaar, along with their history.”

Frank rolled his eyes, which always creeps me out since each of his lizard-eyes move independently. “Of course they would have a museum exhibit on barbed wire!”

“We could take a look and see if your painting is accurate or not,” the old woman suggested.

“I’d love to see it,” Jeremy said — and actually seemed to mean it, which illustrates how good at lying people from L.A. are.

I wanted to go with them, but Frank reminded me that it was almost time for the drawing demonstration my wife, Susan, was doing for the museum. I was the self-appointed heckler, and didn’t want to be late.

After being kicked out of my wife’s demo only two minutes in, I found Jeremy at the newly installed Gummy Bear vending machine next to the over-life-sized bronze statue of John Wayne.

Frank looked up at the statue and said, “Did you know that John Wayne’s real name was Marion Mitchell Morrison, and that he grew up in Southern California, lost a football scholarship after a freak bodysurfing accident, and went into acting instead? I wonder if M is against a Western Museum displaying a sculpture of John Wayne dressed like a cowboy since he wasn’t actually one?”

I decided not to reply to Frank, since people generally frown on public conversations with invisible aliens pretending to be tiny lizards. Instead, I craned my neck painfully upward and asked Jeremy how the Bobwaar Inquisition had gone.

Jeremy gazed down at me from his great height of ten or twelve feet up and said that he was relieved to find that he (or the spider monkeys?) had accurately copied one specific type of barbed wire, to the docent’s delight and approval. He offered to take me to see the display, but I declined, since, like cows, I have a non-irrational fear of pointy metal wire.

That was the first time I thought all that much about authenticity in relation to Western painting. In this instance, the issue had focused solely on the authenticity of the model/subject of the painting itself. Little was I to suspect that this authenticity quagmire sprawled much farther than that!

* * *

Fast-forward a couple of years to a plein-air painting trip to China with a group of American artists (some American-born, and some Chinese-born who later became American citizens after immigrating to the US). We’d all been invited by a fancy museum in Qingdao to paint the area for a week and then have a show of our plein air studies and a few studio works brought from home. They even paid all our expenses!

Frank was against my inclusion in this group of famous artists, since he’s never been a fan of my work (Frank doesn’t much like humans, which is mainly what I paint).

“You should choose a more noble subject-matter, like nature, or maybe go abstract,” he’s always telling me.

When Frank noticed that four of the artists on the trip (Mian Situ, Ken Cadwallader, Jason Situ, and Howard Friedland) had each won the prestigious Oil Painters of America Gold Medal, he said, “They should have invited your wife, Susan Lyon, instead of a loser like you, since then they’d have five OPA Gold Medal winners.” (Susan had just won the Gold medal that year — including the $25,000 prize — and Frank was constantly reminding me of it.)

What Frank didn’t know was that the trip organizers had asked me if I thought Susan would be interested in joining us, but when I mentioned this to her she said there was no way she wanted to fly that far for such a short trip to paint outside in the hot sun for a week. (Sue considers herself a strictly fair-weather plein air painter). I wasn’t about to tell Frank that she’d been invited, but declined, since it would only give him more ammunition for his favorite pastime of mocking me and pointing out that Susan really could do a lot better in her choice of mate.

I first met Frank a few years ago on a trip home to visit my parents in Chicago for Christmas. I had followed the sound of someone shouting a barrage of insults and taunts. “Your mother was nothing but a disgusting ball of furry sh**!” And a lot worse.

A gang of angry feral cats had surrounded the diminutive lizard in an abandoned train yard. I rescued him moments before he was torn apart. Frank looked up at me with his bulging reptilian orbs and said, “I’d rather let those filthy felines eat me, than live with a loser like you.”

We’ve been friends ever since.

Frank had insisted on coming on the China trip, despite my worries that those high-tech airport scanners would discover him. But he slipped though without a problem and then forced me to watch Fifty Shades of Gray on the long flight over the Pacific. By the fourth viewing, I must admit it was growing on me.

While in China, I kept a journal of the heart-wrenching stories some of the artists told me about the horrors of living through the Cultural Revolution and finally escaping to the U.S. — but it’s quite long, so I’ll have to share that another time.

During a drive to a fishing village to paint the recently captured Chinese cousin of the Loch Ness Monster (Frank’s highlight of the trip), I told Mian Situ how much I loved his diversity of subjects from both China and the American West (though I’ve never seen him paint bobwaar, so it’s not clear how good he really is). Mian looked a bit sad as he said, “Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll ever really be accepted as a Western painter like Howard Terpning or many other American painters.”

Frank frowned at this statement. “Are all humans this irrational? I mean, several Western Art museums have his paintings in their permanent collection — unlike American-born you, for example, who has a total of zero paintings in zero museum collections.”

When I relayed Frank’s point, Mian said, “Those are all paintings I did of Chinese immigrants in the old West. When I paint scenes depicting cowboys or Indians, they rarely sell. I’ve been told that a painting by a Chinese-American of more traditional American Western scenes isn’t ‘authentic.’ ”

And there it was — that crazy A-word again! Could I not escape it even half-way around the globe?

Since people in China didn’t have any problem with me painting Chinese subjects and putting them in their museum, I wondered if Mian was imagining a bias toward him painting American subjects — he is, after all, an artist, and they tend to be nuttier than actors and psychiatrists combined. (I’m a rare exception to this, since I’m a very stable art-genius).

To keep from offending Mian by pointing out the clear fact that he was nuts, I changed the subject to Gummy Bears. Mian was adamant that purple Gummy Bears were the most intellectual, which confirmed that he was unable to look at evidence rationally.

Months later, back in my corn-syrup-fed homeland, I was having lunch with a Western Art gallery owner (let’s call him/her G). G said that he/she felt that Chinese artists painting Western Art wasn’t very “authentic.”

I was stunned.

Frank chuckled. “It seemed that Mian wasn’t as much of a paranoid nut-job as we both thought.”

Which made me suspicious that Mian might not actually be an artist at all. Had Jeremy rented him some of his spider monkeys in exchange for a kickback on his painting sales? If only I could get my hands on some of those monkeys!

Frank had me point out to G that Howard Terpning, Bill Anton, and my wife, Susan Lyon, were all born and raised in Oak Park on the outskirts of Chicago (just a couple miles from my neighborhood of Elmwood Park, and not far from where George Carlson grew up. Other artists in these Western shows grew up in New England, New York, and a whole mess of them were spawned in cities like L.A. (which may be geographically in the West, but basically exists in an entire alternate-reality as far as I can tell).

“Those artists were still born in this country, at least,” G said. “Anyone born in America has a Western heritage ethos built into their cultural DNA.”

I instantly realized that G was right! Heck, I grew up watching all those Hollywood Westerns with white actors in red-face playing barbarian Indians. I sometimes even painted my own face red and played Cowboys and Indians on paved-over dirt that might be a forgotten Native American burial ground from thousands of years ago. Half the streets of my neighborhood had stolen their names from native tribes, which must count for something.

The very word “Chicago” is the French bastardization of the Miami-Illinois tribe’s word shikaakwa, which means “stinky onion” (because lots of stinky onions used to grow along the Chicago River before being replaced by the even stinkier slaughter houses, which were then replaced by only slightly less stinky high-rise condos).

So, yes, I have every right to paint authentic scenes of the American West. It’s my cultural heritage!

Reading my mind (more proof that he’s an alien), Frank said, “Didn’t most of your ancestors immigrate from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and Italy long after white American’s brutally Manifest Destined the place from red Americans?”

Ignoring the lizard, I silently said, “How dare those Chinese artists with all their fancy painting skills come here and do better paintings than me and pretend that’s okay!” I considered lobbying the Western Art museums and galleries to exclude all Chinese artists from exhibiting in their shows (as well as any artist that cheats by using spider monkeys).

Just as my righteous indignation boiled over within my righteous American soul, Frank pointed out that G had mentioned earlier that one of his favorite Western artists was Mark Maggiori, who moved here from France a few years ago as an adult (decades after Mian Situ and Huihan Liu).

That threw me for a loop, since I also liked Mark’s work and had been in several shows with him. Dressed in his elaborate cowboy hat, boots, and western accoutrements, Mark reminded me of Erol Flynn in “Dodge City.” He was so much the picture of a dashing authentic Western artist/cowboy, I’d almost forgotten he was French!

When I pointed out this apparent contradiction to G, the gallery owner said, “That’s different, since Mark Maggiori grew up obsessed with American Western movies, so he’s always had a deep love for Western culture and subject matter.”

Frank scowled. “Hollywood Westerns are universally popular all over the world, not just in France.”

When I repeated Frank’s words, G went silent for a long, thoughtful moment, clearly flummoxed by this French/Chinese contradiction. “You know,” G said in a rather amazing display of reason that I’ve rarely witnessed in my fellow humans, “I guess there is no difference between Mark Maggiori painting cowboys and Indians and a Chinese-born artist doing the same.” He looked truly shocked at his epiphany. “As much as I hate to say it, there’s no escaping the fact of a subconscious racial bias.”

Which, if I’m being honest, kind of annoyed me since it was a major personal setback to my career. These foreign artists are so damn good that I knew my odds of ever winning one of these museums shows with them flinging their masterpieces all over the walls was about the same as my odds of winning the Miss America Pageant (because I’m over the age limit).

G went to the bathroom, and I looked at Frank as he munched on some scraps of Salmon left on my plate.

“Is it really a racial bias?” I asked, desperate to salvage some way of narrowing my competition. “Everyone knows the first cowboys were white.”

“Seriously?” Frank looked at me with his usual contempt. “You’ve got that book The Negro Cowboys lying on the floor next to your pathetic mountain of comic books.”

I avoided his gaze. “Um, well, my Father gave it to me for Christmas, but I’ve never opened it.”

“Yet, you’ve red all those comic books and dime westerns of yours at least two or three times, right?”

“Hey, there’s lots of history mixed into those — ”

“I hate to tell you this, but Wonder Woman and Wolverine never actually fought in World War II,” Frank scoffed. “If you’d read any real history, you’d know that more than half of the first explorers, trappers, mountain men, and cowboys had been Black people, Mexican Hispanics, and immigrants born in other countries. It was only after the permanent settlement of the West started, that the white-washing of the West began.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating a bit?” I asked. “It’s not like the government itself was — “

“In 1844, Oregon added a provision to its constitution that expelled all Negros and mulattoes, and turned away any new non-white arrivals that sought to homestead there. Similar strategies all over the West were used against the Chinese, Blacks, and Mexicans to keep them from starting businesses, prospecting for gold, homesteading — not to mention the reservation system that prohibited Native American’s from traveling freely off the reservation without written permission.”

“How do you cram that much information into your tiny lizard brain?”

“Bearded dragons are known for their intelligence,” he said.

Which made no sense, since he was an Elandsberg dwarf chameleon, despite the fact that he denies this. I once placed a mirror in front of him and then brought up a website with photographs of dwarf chameleons and bearded dragons side by side. I asked him which he resembled more. This set off an existential tantrum that was, frankly, pretty embarrassing. It was another reminder of how dangerous pointing out the truth can be — even when dealing with a highly intelligent lizard possessed by an alien.

“You’re saying that this myth of the exclusively white cowboy is why Mark Maggiori dressing in Western garb and painting Western scenes doesn’t trigger the same authenticity alarm bells as a non-white immigrant painting the same Western subject matter?”

Frank tracked a fly as it landed on my plate. “The myth of the white cowboy quickly replaced true history as an unchallenged fact in the American psyche.” Frank’s tongue launched outward, snagged the fly off the plate, then snapped back into his mouth.

When G returned from the bathroom break, I mentioned some of what Frank had said, and the gallery owner agreed with all of it, having read fewer comic books and more actual history than me. “Even though I see how unfair this is, I’m not sure pointing it out will overcome the unconscious bias in the minds of some collectors, who grew up watching Hollywood Westerns.”

G’s cellphone rang. “This is a collector interested in one of you floating frog paintings.” G walked away to take the call. I was sure hoping he had sold something for me.

Frank burped. “The myth of the dashing white cowboy is an extension of the Teutonic knight of European lore and is exactly what makes all those classic “Western” novels, illustrations, and Hollywood movies so popular with “white” Americans — even those who immigrated here long after the fact.”

“Jeremy Lipking’s grandmother is a full-blooded Indian. He even has an official tribal card in his wallet so it’s impossible for his paintings of Indians to be racist.”

“So, this ‘card-carrying’ Native American is three-fourth’s white?” Frank asked. “Does this mean he can dress like an Indian at Powwow without a backlash?”

“I suppose so, but it might look a bit odd since he doesn’t really look much like a Native American, especially when he lets his beard grow out.”

“What about someone who is one-eighth Native American, or one-sixty-fourth? What’s the cut-off for claiming to being an authentic Native American immune from native racial bias?”

“How do I know?” Life really was a lot simpler before I rescued Frank from those cats.

“Aside from Lipking and a few other Native American painters, Mian Situ and Huihan Liu are closer genetically to Native Americans than all you white painters, so maybe you’re the ones that should be barred from painting Native Americans.”

This was making me pretty nervous, what with all the paintings I’ve done on Indian reservations, not to mention all those paintings from my travels to India, Tibet, Nepal, Africa, China, Mexico, Guatemala, Turkey, Peru, etc. It was one thing to narrow the artistic playing field by banning Chinese artists, but this authenticity stuff was threatening to push me off the art-field as well!

“Are you saying that the only authentic paintings I can do are of grimy Chicago street scenes or portraits of people with the same pasty skin color as mine?”

“Here’s a thought experiment,” Frank said. “You see a painting of a group of Indians in a stunning Western landscape. You like this painting. Then someone tells you the artist is Jewish and grew up in Los Angeles. Does this change how you feel about the painting? What if you’re told the artist is a recent immigrant from China, a woman, a cowboy raised on a ranch, a full-blood Navajo, an African Bushman, or even a two-headed green alien from the Qvehralziuraxlxbla Nebula?”

“What was that about the Qvehralziuraxlxbla Nebula?” I asked. “Is that where you — “

The lizard cut me off and resumed his soliloquy. “In each case, the painting will not have changed, but only your perception of it in relation to your own race, gender, and planet of origin.”

“But if I’m not allowed to paint people who want to pose for me on the Navajo reservation in Arizona because I’m not Navaho, does this mean a Navajo artist isn’t allowed to paint scenes from Europe or Asia?”

“You’re missing the point,” Frank said like a teacher speaking to an especially slow student. “Great art is about painting a subject, any subject, with honesty and respect for the culture no matter your viewpoint as an outsider or insider. Both are “authentic” representations of someone’s unique view of the world. As long as they are not distorting the truth to demean someone else as a sort of hateful revisionist racist propaganda, there’s nothing wrong with a Native American or anyone else painting their impressions of another culture.”

“Like all the paintings and movies of Indian’s massacring white settlers and carrying off naked white women? But those things did happen, so they’re historically accurate.”

“Showing only the bad deeds of an oppressed minority and none of those of the vastly more powerful oppressors is dishonest, and thus, inauthentic,” Frank said. “Until the last couple of decades, there were almost no depictions of the horrible racism and systemic violence toward Asian immigrants, Native American’s, Black American’s, and other minorities despite how universally commonplace it was. Paintings, novels, films, and even the history books themselves created an overwhelming sense in white American’s minds of a mythic white morality embodied in gallant white soldiers and cowboys keeping the savages at bey. It has a lot to do with who was paying for the product.”

“I suppose if ‘Gone With the Wind’ had been told from the slaves’ points of view, it wouldn’t have sold nearly as many tickets, and possibly been banned from Southern movie theatres.”

Frank nodded. “Imagine a version of “How the West was Won” where the Indians discover a crashed alien spaceship and use the advanced technology to drive Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, and John Wayne back across the Atlantic, and maybe even invade and conquer Europe and banish white Europeans to desolate reservations that can’t even support farming.”

This got my attention! I’d long wondered if Frank wasn’t an advanced guard doing reconnaissance for an alien invasion. “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

“Here’s a newsflash for you,” Frank said. “The moon landings weren’t faked and no aliens crashed at Roswell.”

I was about to launch into all the evidence to the contrary, but realized the futility of trying to get an alien lizard to admit his real mission. So, I said, “Maybe as the ethnic makeup of the consumers of Western Art changes over time, the new generation of collectors, not raised on the earlier Hollywood version of the West, may be attracted to paintings, movies, and books that depict the more complex actual history.”

“When you look at the Western paintings of Thomas Blackshear, Dean Mitchell, Chinese-Americans, and Native-American artists at the Autry and Prix de West shows, it’s clearly already happening.”

Which was hopeful, though I was starting to wonder what right I had to paint the West at all. Were my depictions of the many cultures across the globe a form of cultural exploitation? Despite Frank’s reassurance of the authenticity of diverse points of view, was I disrespecting other cultures by painting all fifty shades of skin tones rather than sticking to my own?

It had been amusing when it was Jeremy’s painting on the chopping block at the Prix de West, but not so funny now when it was decades of my own work! It seemed that I not only had to worry about the authenticity of the model’s themselves, but whether or not I even had a right to paint the model in the first place.

G returned with a sour look on his face. “The good news is that the couple absolutely loved the floating frog painting.”

“That’s great!” I said.

“The bad news is that when I told them it was eighteen thousand dollars, the husband said they wanted to invest only in top quality artwork over a million dollars, so decided to invest in NFTs instead since their investment won’t take up any wall space and can’t get damaged.” He suddenly perked up. “Have you ever considered getting into NFTs?”

“I’m terrible at sports,” I said.

“You really are an idiot,” Frank said.

* * *

A few months later, during the Masters of the American West show at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, I went to a slide presentation by Kim Wiggins that took the discussion of authenticity in Western Art to a whole new level. It was titled “The New West.”

Susan had gone back to the hotel to digest all the barbecued cattle she’d ate beneath mural of cowboys herding cattle, so Frank and I made our way to the museum’s theatre early in order to secure the best seat in the back row where no one could see us.

As I sat down with Frank perched on my shoulder, the lizard’s gaze roamed the smattering of people who were already seated. “Do you think Logan will be here?”

Frank’s hero worship of Logan was annoying. I was the one who saved Frank’s life from those train-yard cats, but he didn’t treat me even slightly like a hero — the complete opposite in fact.

As if to prove my point, the acerbic lizard said, “I’m a bit surprised that such a successful artist as Logan would be friends with a washed-up hack like you whose paintings go for a fraction of his prices. Do you send him daily fruit baskets or something?”

“How would you like to be thrown across this auditorium?”

“I realize the truth is a sensitive subject for you.”

“What’s your obsession with how much a painting sells for? Van Gogh hardly sold anything while he was alive and now — ”

“Comparing ourselves to Van Gogh, are we?”

“I’m not — ”

“Shrewd of you to avoid the pitfall of success.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “By the way, when I posted our previous authenticity discussion on Facebook, Quang Ho suggested I ask you about an artist’s ‘motivation behind the painting’ as relating to the equation of authenticity.”

“How dare you mention me on an open global communication network without my permission!”

“You were sitting on my shoulder when I posted it.”

“I avoid reading your inane ravings on that digital cesspool.”

Was Frank afraid of being exposed as an alien spy? Or was he violating an alien version of the Star Trek Prime Directive that forbids interference in the natural development of a technologically primitive species? Was he worried that his presence might be discovered by lizard-aliens monitoring, or even controlling, Facebook?

To keep the outlaw lizard from launching into another of his tirades, I pulled a zip-lock bag from my pocket, removed a dazed cockroach from the peaceful family I’d captured that morning on the walk to the museum, and held it out to him.

Frank’s tongue shot from between his teeth like a cannonball, latched onto the squirming bug, and snapped back into his mouth.

To distract myself from the symphony of crunching, I asked, “Is it possible for a work of art to be truly ‘authentic’ if the motivation behind it is money, or fame, or a subject not born from the artist’s own passion to paint it?”

After swallowing the roach with a nauseating slurp, Frank asked, “Do you remember when we saw the Sistine Chapel on that tour of Vatican City Susan forced you to take her to?”

“What a masterpiece that was!” My heart beat faster at the memory of it. “It changed the course of Western Art itself.”

“And yet, when Pope Julius II chose Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of his personal chapel, the artist wanted nothing to do with it. He claimed his passion lay with sculpting and that he had no desire to learn the complicated process of producing a fresco. When the Pope forced him to do it anyway, Michelangelo wrote that, ‘I am not in the right place. I am not a painter.’ ”

“How do you even know all that Sistine Chapel trivial?”

“Weren’t you listening to the art historian that led the tour?”

“I tend to zone out when smart people tell me things, but you can’t possibly mean an artist’s motivation doesn’t matter at all?”

“It may matter to the artist themselves if they’re forced to paint things they don’t want to — as nearly all Chinese Artists were forced to do under the Communist State, or most artists during European domination by the Catholic Church for a thousand years with its threatened torture and death for any artist painting something they deemed “blasphemous. If a painting is emotionally profound to the viewer, what does it matter what caused the artist to produce it? If it moves someone deeply, it’s an authentic work of art.”

“You’re saying that even though Michelangelo had no personal desire to do the mural, he still turned it into an authentic personal artistic statement?”

“It’s what all the best artists do,” Frank said. “Think of the greatest of Sargent’s commissioned portraits, or Alphonse Mucha’s advertising posters, or of Mian Situ’s painting depicting Chinese immigrants dangling from a mountain cliff to build the first cross-continental railroad.”

“I love that painting!” I said. “But how does that relate to — ”

“The idea for that painting came from the man who ran the Masters of the American West show at the time. He invited Mian to exhibit in the show with the understanding that he paint the Chinese role in the early American West. They even brainstormed ideas together at Mian’s studio in a similar manner as Michelangelo and the Pope. Mian loved the idea and threw himself into the project. The cliff painting won the grand prize, and was bought by the museum for its permanent collection. Mian made no secret of this collaboration and publicly credited the show’s director on many occasions for the initial idea and his advice throughout the painting’s progress.”

I frowned. “That painting isn’t really fine art, but an art-directed illustration?”

“There you go again with your fuzzy labels!” Frank said. “Is the Sistine Chapel fine art or an illustration? Is Norman Rockwell, Dean Cornwell, or N.C. Wyeth less ‘authentic’ artists because they illustrated books or magazine covers rather than the lives of the aristocracy or scenes from the Bible like Sargent and Caravaggio?”

“You have a point, but it’s still a collaboration, rather than one person’s individual artistic vision.”

“Every work of art is a collaboration with an artist’s former teachers, the culture they’re raised in, the patrons that pay the bills, and all the artists of the past that inspire them.”

“But a direct collaboration isn’t a truly authentic — ”

Have you ever gotten a suggestion from Susan before starting a painting? Or even while doing a painting?”

My face grew warm. “Okay, I see your point.”

“You humans want to put everything into neat little boxes with no overlap between the contents of one box with another. Maybe that’s why you bulldoze forests and replace them with gridded streets and all those ugly concrete boxes you hibernate in. There’s plenty of artists that paint entirely on commission and are more ‘authentic’ to their personal vision than a lot of ‘important’ modern artists that will do anything with enough shock value to get them headlines and fame.”

“You act like there’s no difference between fine art and illustration at all.”

“Even a “fine artist” like you did a few illustrations for Dungeon and Dragon magazine when you need the cash during art school. Did you not enjoy painting those? And now you’re jumping on the Western Art bandwagon because of the success of Logan and Jerem — ”

“Hey, I’ve been painting Western scenes and people before Jeremy and Logan were out of middle-school!”

Matt Smith and Ralph Oberg glanced back at me with frowns. I raised a hand in apology for my outburst. They went back to their conversation, which likely consisted of stories of Mitch Baird and myself falling into various species of cacti (I still think Matt pushed me that time in the Superstition Mountains, but Frank claims he was a good twelve feet away, which suggests that Matt has some serious telekinesis training).

I placed a pair of I-phone earbuds in my ears (even though I don’t own an I-phone due to its secret NSA mind-control chip) so people would assume I was talking to an invisible human somewhere else in the world, rather than an invisible lizard on my shoulder.

Lowering my voice, I said, “I’ve painted Native Americans ever since I volunteered on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota during art school over thirty years ago. I stayed in the home of a native family for a week and gave them pastel portraits of all three generations as a gift.”

“A whole week!” Frank said with overflowing sarcasm. “Wow, you’re practically a member of the tribe. Did you go on a dream quest and puke in a sweat lodge? Is your spirit animal a slime mold or maybe a — ?”

“Since then,” I said, “Susan and I have taken dozens of trips out West to paint people and landscapes in the same way we travel to other countries to paint other native cultures.”

“Judging by that pile of unsold paintings stacked in your studio from all those Western Museum shows, you did a horrible job of selling out.”

“Hey, I usually sell one or two — ”

Just then, the light’s dimmed and Kim Wiggins took the podium. After an emotional thanks to the Autry Museum for acquiring his monumental painting “Lewis and Clark Among the Mandan,” he launched into his slideshow/lecture.

Frank crawled to the top of my head for a better view of the now-filled auditorium. “You said Logan would be here.”

“Get down from there.” I moved him back to my shoulder. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

“ — it’s a fast paced, edgy, experimental world,” Wiggins was saying. “We have to reach this new generation, and that’s why it’s so important for change to take place in art. Art is the soul of a society, and we have to figure out how to reach these young people and draw them into their culture, draw them into their history, draw them into museums like the Autry Museum. Draw them in to experience a part of their past.”

I was on the edge of my seat, desperate to join this exciting, fast paced, edgy, experimental type of art that was society’s soul!

“This ‘New West’,” Wiggins declared, “this new generation of Art that’s doing the cutting edge of work, that’s who we are, that’s what we’re trying to reach in this generation for art. We can’t just let things go the way they are! We have to keep reaching out for the younger generation to draw them in, pull them into things. It’s the only way we’ll get them in the doors of a museum is to use tools to draw them in, in a language they understand.”

I fidgeted in anticipation. What was this “exciting” “new” “cutting edge” artwork that would “break the mold” and speak to youth in their own “modern” language? I felt like someone at the first demonstration of electricity, or even more profound, the first person to taste a Gummy Bear!

Wiggins showed examples of this revolutionary “new” style of painting that he termed “The Momentum of Modernism” — Picasso, Cezanne, cubism, and the NY Armory show of 1913.

Frank turned a confused shade of puce. “Aren’t most human young people considerably less than a hundred years old? How is this new?”

“Quiet, I’m try to listen,” I mumbled.

Kim listed a few of artists that represented the “OLD traditional realism” — Howard Terpning, Mian Situ, Remington, and some others. Then he showed examples of the exciting “NEW Western Painting” — Logan Maxwell Hagege, Tony Abeyta, Eric Bowman, Billy Schenck, and Mark Maggiori, and of course, Kim Wiggins.

“I like artists from both groups,” I said. “Does this mean I lack proper art education?”

Once Kim finished proving that “OLD” Western Realism acted as youth repellant and that his “NEW Western Art” was the equivalent of pheromone infused Axe Body Spray, he threw a bone to all those ‘OLD’ realists in the theatre. “I do want to say that, although it’s changing the face of Western art, it doesn’t take away from the other schools of art out there. There’s some incredible artists that are here today.”

“Talk about trying to eat your cake and have it too,” Frank said. “Claiming his type of work is new and innovative — while copying styles from a century earlier — then claiming that ‘old’ realism is literally driving kids away from museums by their refusal to ‘innovate’ — then claiming that he’s not denigrating the traditional realist artists in the show — that takes balls, or incredible blindness — or incredibly blind balls.”

Wiggins offered this thought-experiment as a final proof that Western Art would be seen as the capstone of American Art by future generations: “Could Western Art ever be confused with another culture? Even five hundred years from now?”

“I guess he’s never seen a Spaghetti Western by Sergio Leone,” Frank said.

Then, Kim moved on to an even more profound aspect of all American Western Art.

“For a moment, I want to talk about Western Art and how it relates to art of the ancient cultures,” Kim said with a professorial gravitas. “This is so important, and I hope you really focus on what I’m fixin’ to say here. Why do you think I paint Western Art? Why would I spend my entire career focused on Western Art? You’ll know when we get through right here. All great cultures of the past are identified with primarily through the art. That’s because art is the soul of the society.”

“Western Art is the soul of American society?” Frank said with a lopsided roll of his eyes. “This foundation myth of the white cowboy battling to impose his chivalric code of Christian morality, freedom, and self-reliance on a barbaric untamed wilderness inhabited by heathen savages through genocidal conquest? A myth solidified by the likes of Frederick Remington (a self-avowed racist), dime novel writers, Buffalo Bill’s cartoonish Wild West Show, and then Hollywoodization? A foundational genesis tale specifically tailored to what the audience of city-dwelling Anglo-American whites wanted to believe the “authentic” West was really like?”

“Remington wasn’t a racist,” I whispered to the invisible lizard.

“To quote Remington’s letter to a friend: ‘I’ve got some Winchesters, and when the massacring begins which you speak of, I can get my share of ’em and what’s more I will. Jews — Injuns — Chinamen — Italians — Huns, the rubbish of the earth I hate.’ ”

“Damn,” I said. “But not all Western artists are like that. Think of all the paintings and stories of Indian’s depicted as wise and in touch with nature.”

“The ‘noble savage’ image only arose once the local tribes had been conquered and the few survivors corralled in prison-like reservations. But that didn’t alter the whitewashing of the valiant knight-errant Anglo cowboy myth that served as a national emblem — at least for the still-dominant white ruling class. Telling the lies people want to hear is far more profitable than telling the truths they need to hear. Truth is the most dangerous thing around, as Socrates learned the hard way.”

Frank gasped for breath from his extended anti-American screed.

There are times I wonder if Frank’s planet is run by a bunch of rabid freedom-hating Commies.

Kim followed up with slides of historical artworks supporting his thesis. With each new slide of artwork on the mega-screen of the darkened theatre, he asked the audience to name which ancient culture had produced it. Like a congregation reciting a refrain, we all displayed our artistic acumen and chimed, “China, Egypt, Mayan, Rome.”

Kim pointed out that no one in the audience had any difficulty identifying which great society had produced which work of great art. “America one day will be just like these cultures,” he declared. “It will be a society that has had its zenith — that is come and gone. And what I’m going to ask you today is: What type of Art will define our culture? I really don’t believe it’s going to be abstract art. I really don’t. I believe abstract art — and my wife and I collect abstract art, we love abstract art — but I believe that abstract art relates to so many different societies that it will be a difficult task for anyone to determine what society created the abstract art. I believe it’s going to be Western Art!”

“What a surprise,” Frank said.

Wiggins offered this final proof that Western Art would be seen as the capstone of American Art by future generations: “Could Western Art ever be confused with another culture? Even five hundred years from now?”

Frank said, “To sum up so far, Kim Wiggins paints Western Art because of his fervent desire to save America with his ‘cutting edge’ paintings that copy the styles of European modernist painters from a century ago like Picasso — and because he believes that the most important goal for an art is that the national origin of the artist be instantly recognizable even after that nation has fallen into ruin because artists stopped innovating and copied the art of the past, as he admits to doing himself.”

“In my mind,” Wiggins continued, “Western Art stands alone as the very soul and emblem of America. Most artwork — pay attention to this — most artwork being created today falls into a global society. Much of it can be confused with many different societies from around the world due to cross-pollination via the internet. Every single artist out there today — just about — is on their phone looking at images from every single other artist that is out there today.” Kim shook his head sadly to convey his disapproval of such artistic infidelity.

Guilt boiled up within me as I realized I was one of those artists betraying my culture by looking at non-American paintings on my phone, computer, and — I’m ashamed to admit this — even traveling to other countries to paint with foreign artists corrupted by un-American ideas and subject matter. After the robot-apocalypse, how would most of my paintings of Tibet, Africa, Peru, and all the rest be recognized as done by an American? It was tragic.

Reading my mind, Frank said, “Can’t you recognize a false analogy when it kicks you in the crotch?”

“How can you deny his evidence?” I shot back at the anti-American alien lizard.

“Art as a personal expression of the artist is something those ancient cultures he mentions would have found unimaginable, which is probably why none of those examples Wiggins showed were even signed by the artists that created them. They were all anonymous and interchangeable over thousands of years. The highest goal of art is no longer tied to nationalism, or a particular national subject matter. It’s about an honest personal viewpoint of an individual.”

You see what I mean about Frank being way too intellectual to be a creation of my subconscious brain?

“Is that Logan?” Frank asked as Logan’s silhouette crossed in front of the screen and sat down. “Let’s go sit next to him. I’d like to hear what he thinks about all this.”

“We will have plenty of time to hang out with Logan after — ”

Frank lapsed into a silent pout, which suited me fine.

“After I broke into the art world,” Kim said from the podium, “I determined to move to Roswell to raise my family — that’s where I’d grown up — but also to maintain a uniqueness to my work, much like a scientist would that tries to keep his experiments pure . . .”

“Holy crap!” I sat bolt upright. “Do you think he could have been fathered by an alien that escaped from that crashed flying saucer in 1947?”

“No,” Frank said.

The great wildlife sculptor, Walter Matia, glanced back and put a finger to his lips to remind me to be quiet during the talk.

“ . . . without destroying the work by being polluted from other contaminants from without,” Kim continued. “And so, my work is different from other artists for that reason.”

I felt anxiety skitter through my nerve endings. Was it too late for me to unpollute my work after wallowing so long in “global society” and contaminated its authentic purity by looking at un-American art on my cellphone?

Not able to maintain his silence, Frank said, “How does this square with his self-proclaimed study of European Modernists like Picasso, Cezanne, Goggin and those from the Armory show in 1913?”

I was barely listening to Frank any more, since I was so excited at finally finding a clear set of rules to achieve authenticity in my paintings.

Kim laid his final claim to authentic artistic high ground as a Western artist. “Now, I’m different than many of the artists here today. I paint MY heritage. I paint my story, my family’s story. We grew up — my parents on both sides of my family were ranchers.”

At this, Frank began laughing. “Did you get that? When he says, he’s ‘different than many of the artist here today,’ what he’s really saying is that he’s more ‘authentic’! He’s extending that bias against Chinese artists painting the West to anyone not born on a ranch. What a perfect finale!”

After the art sermon ended, I made my way back to the hotel bar in search of a life-sized Gummy-Bear Glen Dean had told me about, and found myself surrounded by angry artists.

One artist said, “Wiggins’ overt minimization of realism as old and unexciting, as well as implying that any influence from artists working in other parts of the world somehow “pollutes” American artists, is not only self-serving BS, but insulting.”

Another artist said, “That bit about ‘I’m different than many of the artists here today’ and painting “MY heritage” was disgusting.”

Frank said, “Didn’t that artist once say he resented all these Chinese artists coming here and painting Western subjects? I guess Karma’s a Witch. That is the right phrase, isn’t it?”

As the drinks flowed at the bar, the mood turned jolly. “It was skillful the way he gradually whittled the definition of great American art to a narrow closet that only he could fit into by himself.”

I found it sad that painters react so poorly to valuable advice on how to improve their boring old-fashioned paintings that are driving kids away from museums.

On the flight home, I was profoundly depressed. What if Kim Wiggins was right? Had the lottery of birth dictated that I could never truly be an “authentic” artist if I continued painting the West and all the foreign cultures I loved to paint across the globe?

Frank sighed. “I think it’s time I tell you about a frog named Elvis I knew when I was young.”

This peaked my interest, since he’d always refused to speak of his life before I found him in that train yard.

Frank cleared his throat and began his story. “When Elvis the Frog graduated from tadpole to full-grown frog, his elders told him the depressing fact that he had only four months to find a mate, reproduce, and then die. Instead of conforming to expectations, Elvis decided to go in search of the meaning of life. He scaled the banks of the small pond and found himself in a strange world devoid of frogs.

“The first creature he met was an inchworm. Elvis asked it what the point of life was. The inchworm admitted that it didn’t know, but suggested he try the falcon living at the top of the mountain, since it traveled far and wide. Each animal Elvis met on the long journey up the mountain told him the same thing — they had no idea what the meaning of life was, but that the falcon must know.

“It took the frog four months of grueling effort to reach the cliffs where the wise old falcon lived.

“‘Oh, great and wise Falcon,’ Elvis said, ‘it has taken my entire life to travel here in the hope of learning the meaning of life from you.’

“The falcon looked at the little frog in amazement. ‘You spent your entire life searching for the meaning of life when you could have been living life instead?’

“ ‘I suppose so,’ the frog said.

“ ‘Then you wasted your life,’ the falcon said, and snapped Elvis up in a single bite, then fed him to his hatchlings. ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ the wise old falcon said to its three chicks. ‘The meaning of life is living. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.’ ”

Frank fell silent.

“You expect me to believe you actually knew this frog?”

“It’s called a parable, you idiot.”

“I don’t see the — ”

“The point is, you only get one shot at living, so don’t waste it looking for other people to tell you how you should live it.”

I considered this for a moment. “You’re saying that consciously trying to follow someone else’s arbitrary rules of what is considered “authentic” art is the surest way of rendering your art inauthentic?”

“I’m saying — be authentically you. Every viewpoint is a one-of-a kind no matter where or what they paint — if they allow themselves to express it honestly.”

“Kim Wiggins was wrong?”

“Every artist chooses the subjects and style they believe is the best. Most have inflated views of their work’s importance to society, though few actually say it aloud in a room filled with artists who have a different viewpoint.”

“I would never publicly put down another artist’s work,” I said.

“What about your ‘Banishment of Beauty” lecture?”

“I was merely defending the validity of beauty as serious subject matter against the Art Establishment’s discrimina — ”

“Who’s decieving themselves now?”

I averted my eyes from his sharp gaze. “Okay, maybe I was making fun of some of it, but how can you not mock a canvas painted all blue hanging in a museum?”

“There’s nothing wrong with revealing your irrational blue bigotry,” Frank said, “just as there was nothing wrong with Kim Wiggins expressing his view that his art is the pinnacle of American Art, just as there’s nothing wrong with other artists pointing out the contradictions of his rationale.”

“But what if I get a backlash from the museum or other artists that agree with him?”

“If you’re too afraid to honestly express your views because other people might not like them, you’re never going to say or paint anything worth painting. At least Kim Wiggins was expressing his true beliefs. That took guts.”

“Is it even possible to be truly authentic when painting historical scenes we haven’t seen with our own eyes?”

“Even when painting a contemporary scene, you will paint it through your mind’s unique filter. It’s one mind communicating its viewpoint to another. That’s what art is.”

I looked at Frank long and hard. “How do I know you’re not a hallucination created by my subconscious?”

Franked grinned. “What a coincidence, I was just this moment wondering the same thing about you.”

You can watch Kim Wiggins’ entire presentation at the Autry Museum through this link: