An Argument Against the 'Pulp' West
By Chadd Scott on
Wherever I go, there’s David Yarrow.
Santa Fe. David Yarrow.
Cherry Creek, CO. David Yarrow.
Even New York. David Yarrow.
I first came across the contemporary photographer’s work at C. Anthony Gallery in Beaver Creek, CO looking for my favorite artist Earl Biss. The gallery represents them both. The gallerist on site was nearly levitating at the enormous – some five and six feet across – black-and-white Yarrow photographs recently received and their popularity with customers.
Good commission days. The pictures were selling for several thousand dollars, well over $10,000 for the big, framed ones.
Yarrow’s carefully choreographed, cinematic, narrative images portray a “pulp” version of the West. A gonzo, crazy, over-the-top version dripping with violence and sex. Six-gun toting models in bikinis standing in the snow. He regularly works with supermodel Cindy Crawford.
Think “Pulp Fiction” (1994), the Quentin Tarantino movie. All Quentin Tarantino movies. Orgies of stylized graphic violence. While Yarrow’s photographs don’t reach a Tarantino level of pulp excess, they are of the same line, a line begun with the wildly popular pulp magazines from early 20th century America.
I am not a fan.
I find Western pulp art – and there are practitioners other than Yarrow – reductive. Limiting. The story of the West as a story of gunfighters, prostitutes, and card players. Absurdly narrow. Lacking any and all nuance, a hallmark of the best fine art painting, sculpture, and photography.
Western pulp art is almost uniformly un-diverse. A genre cast of white people with the possible exception of a savage Indian or two. Mexicans, the Chinese, Japanese Americans, and African Americans are rarely included. Their exclusion perpetuates stereotypes about the West as of, by and for white people. The most interesting Western art I see adds diverse voices to the storytelling.
I find it fetishizing. The gun. The woman. The wolf. The bear. The buffalo.
An unreality masquerading as authentic.
Gratuitous. Cheap and easy.
Hyper-masculine. The West as seen through the gaze of toxic masculinity: violence as a solution to all problems, women as objects, land as possession.
Ironically, much of the Western pulp art I see in galleries derives from one of my favorite movies – not just Western movies – “Tombstone” (1993). “Tombstone’s” dialogue, casting, costuming, and cinematography stylized the West, particularly Western violence, at a level never before achieved. It was so damn cool! Especially Val Kilmer’s Doc Holiday, a devil-may-care, alcoholic, piano playing, wise cracking, ladies’ man, gun fighter with ice water in his veins.
Takeoffs on Kilmer’s pulp Holiday are commonplace in Western art galleries and they’re almost uniformly terrible, lacking any originality, simply reproducing the character he created for sales.
Call it hypocrisy, it may be, but Western pulp movies don’t bother me the way Western pulp fine art does. Film is stylized from the jump. An unreality from the word go. I love “Young Guns” (1988), another Western that could be categorized as pulp. I find fantasy and escape inherent in the movie-watching experience. Not so with fine art. With fine art, I want authenticity. Humanity. Honesty. Legitimacy. I want the unvarnished truth. I want depth. I want diversity. I want meaning, not a show.
I want art that makes me think. Often, I want movies that help me forget.
I’m not saying Western pulp fine art shouldn’t be made or even shouldn’t purchased – you do you as an artist or a consumer. What I’m saying is that among the vast ocean of Western fine art available, its pulp genre represents its least substantial. I hit puberty in the 1980s, Cindy Crawford means a lot to me, but I don’t need a photograph of Cindy Crawford driving a vintage Mustang through Monument Valley with a wolf in the passenger seat as Western art.
David Yarrow photograph print featuring Cindy Crawford and a wolf from author's home. Photo by Chadd Scott.
My wife and I disagree on this. Yarrow is one of the few artists we occupy opposing camps over. There’s a Yarrow photograph and book in my house.
As an antidote to Yarrow’s pulp Western photography, I recently came across the work of Louis Carlos Bernal (1941–1993). Bernal was raised in Phoenix’s Mexican American community and after graduating from Arizona State University in 1972 with a master’s degree in fine arts, he began his career capturing the resilience and cultural richness of Mexican Americans in the barrios of Tucson and the American Southwest.
The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson celebrates his legacy during “Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva,” the artist’s first major career retrospective, on view through March 15, 2025. More than a straightforward visual record, his photographs, often portraying individuals and families in intimate settings, resonate with a profound connection to his subjects and their surroundings.
Empathy. Understanding. Caring. Emotional depth and richness.
The best of fine art.
An authentic story of the American West.
All attributes lacking in Western pulp art.
