Billy Schenck’s West: A Retrospective

Exhibition Website

Apr 1 2016 - Sep 18 2016

Drawn from the artist’s personal collection, this retrospective examines Schenck’s ongoing artistic interaction with the American West. From the cowboy to Native Americans, Schenck’s playful images encourage us to reexamine the archetypes of the West and to consider how they continue to dominate our culture today.

Schenck’s subjects span genres from western landscape to cowboy pop. Rather than mix or blend his colors, Schenck lays them down next to one another in clearly-delineated areas to create his distinctly crisp, vivid paintings, a process he calls “the paint by number” technique.

Channeling the bright colors and ironic undertones of such Pop artists as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Billy Schenck synthesizes a variety of stylistic and cultural influences, from film still to pulp novel covers, to simultaneously celebrate and critique iconic western imagery.

Whether you go or not,  Schenck in the 21st Century: The Myth of the Hero and the Truth of America, is a comprehensive catalog raisonne and biography covering Schenck's paintings, photographs, and serigraphs since the turn of the millennium. Written by noted art historian, Amy Abrams, this is the most authoritative source on Schenck's current work and philosophy of life, art, and "the way it ought to be". 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Painting
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Western
  • Billy Schenck

Exhibition Venues & Dates