Gustave Baumann

GUSTAVE BAUMANN

Acording to Wikipedia: In Santa Fe, Baumann became known as a master of woodcuts and marionette-making, also producing oils and sculpture. His work depicted southwestern landscapes, ancient Indian petroglyphs, scenes of Pueblo life, and gardens and orchards. He remained in Santa Fe for more than fifty years until his death in 1971.[5]. I am unable to disagree with this statementfor it, is in my direct experiebce, absolutely true, but there is a great deal more and since it is my belief, that an artist is unable to perform an action or make a mark without revealing who he is. Even if the actor is acting like someone else he is, in effect, revealing himself. The numerous copyists the world has known may think, and those whom he has deceived, may believe that he is someone else the ultimate score goes down in the identification column as a fake. Now, some are better fakes than others of course, or, moe morally coprrectly mststaed the person is a more

convincing fake as a opposed to “better”. Altogether I knew the Baumanns as a couple for twenty years and Jane, who ,llived across the street from me for several more before she slipped on a patch of ice, broke ker hip, was placed in a nursing home where she died. The world was not kind to my relationship with Jane. At her instigation we cooked supper for each other and enjoyed crating pithy conclusions about people and events, nothing of which we took seriously except on the level of word and image cleverness, but the way the world saw it was that I was a forty year-old enterprising seducer who was out to abscond with Gustave’s entire output and leave the widow without recourse. Even their daughter believed these tales as judged by the self-righteous tone of voice she used in our one telelphone conversation. I didn’t have the heart to retribute by reminding her that she was not particularly favored by her mother, so I suffered in silence the belief that I was a reprobate.In no what would it have been possible for anyone to have deceived Jane Baumann as Alice King the wife of the several times State Governor Bruce King might testafy. As a craftsman, Baumann was a careful worker, intent upon controlled aesthetic imagination and a moral desire, bolstered by the Quaker philosophy to which he adhered,and structured, as well, I suspect, by the traditions encourged by the Magdeburg Laws which orignated from his home town. He was content to represent the world “as it was” with only the barest hint of what it sometimes promised to become. H e was a reassuring, if silently demanding, man to be around when I was twenty and when I was forty Jane was a delightful and witty observer who commented one time when I had baked chicken with raisens that I had included the desert with the main course. The above comments might serve as an adequate introduction to Gustave |Baumann’s work.