Lloyd Moylan: The Evolution of Gallup’s Principal New Deal Artist
Western American Subjects
Experimentation with Intention
The landscapes of the American West were Lloyd Moylan’s artistic playground. In the farms, mountains, and fields of New Mexico, Moylan sought opportunities to expand his stylistic repertoire and delighted in finding synergy between form and content.
Lloyd Moylan
Rural Rococo
1941
Tempera, pencil, and ink on masonite
18⅛” W x 23⅛” H
Look Closely
What is your first reaction to this painting?
Rural Rococo is stylistically unlike any other easel painting by Lloyd Moylan in Gallup’s collection. Its globular, popcorn-like clouds, undulating forms, ornamental linework, and pastel color palette capture the exuberance, playfulness, and drama of the rococo aesthetic.
Moylan liked to experiment, and he called a consistent artistic style “that deadly menace.” “The creative painter, ” he wrote, “must have opportunities to develop. That is possible only if many works are accomplished… if enough is done and freedom is granted. “1 Rural Rococo exemplifies Moylan’s commitment to wholesale experimentation.
Explore more of Moylan's Western American ART
Discussion
When it came to Western American landscapes and farm scenes, Lloyd Moylan tried out many different styles, from 18th-century European rococo to cubism to early modernism and abstraction to American Regionalism.
While Moylan was “all over the place” when it came to style, his approach to Western scenes and landscapes was not entirely random. He worked hard to match style with subject matter. The crooked trunk of a dead cottonwood lends itself to rococo twists and turns in Rural Rococo (above). The carved mountains and plateaus of the Southwestern landscape are aptly captured through a cubist lens in Rain on the Reservation (top left). A swirl of galloping horses organically becomes simplified blocks of movement and color in Approaching Storm (middle left). The no-frills, rugged nature of rural American life is mirrored in the bold lines, exaggerated forms, and essential patterns of Untitled (Dinnertime) (bottom left).
Even though he wrote in opposition to “-isms,” Moylan took full advantage of the variability of Western subjects to experiment artistically and to develop an understanding of how form can bring out the essential nature of a subject.
