The Modern View

During the past 50 years, Yellowstone National Park has undergone dramatic changes. Although tourism sagged between 1943 and 1945, Americans returned to national parks in record numbers following the end of World War II. In recent decades, Yellowstone has been significantly impacted by pollution from automobiles, motorboats, trail bikes, and snowmobiles. Other ongoing threats to the park’s delicate environment include geothermal power interests, oil and gas prospectors, and illegal hunting practices.

Artistic responses to modern Yellowstone have varied. Although painterly attention to Yellowstone declined in the 1950s and 1960s, in more recent years several programs have helped revive artistic interest in the Western landscape. “Art for the Parks” encourages a traditional approach to landscape, in which the tourist presence is often ignored. Other artists make humorous comments on the troubled relationship between visitors and wildlife, especially Yellowstone’s famous bears. Still others look at Yellowstone in abstract terms, working to capture the land’s essential qualities through the color and texture of their materials.

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Although painterly attention to Yellowstone declined in the 1950s and 1960s, in more recent years several programs have helped revive artistic interest in the Western landscape. “Art for the Parks” encourages a traditional approach to landscape, in which the tourist presence is often ignored. Other artists make humorous comments on the troubled relationship between visitors and wildlife, especially Yellowstone’s famous bears.

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Thomas Moran painted a Yellowstone shaped primarily by geological forces, but contemporary artists are working with a landscape irrevocably changed by decades of human use. Whether drawn to Yellowstone as an icon of wilderness or by its newer role as a mass destination, today’s artists affirm the power of its scenery as well as its ongoing hold on the American imagination.