FRANCIS RUYTER dude
Dude girls on a corral fence, Quarter Circle U roundup, Montana —Arthur Rothstein, 1939
Francis Ruyter’s recent paintings seem aligned with familiar forms of abstraction strategies, and they continue to support his investigation into forms of representation and the life and death of photographs. “Dudes (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men)” is another installment of Ruyter’s project using the very Famous archive of depression-era photographs collected under the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information and currently housed at The Library of Congress in Washington DC. This archive plays a pivotal role in the development of American Identity.
Cowboys have been linked through art, cinema and advertising to romanticized versions of these American identities, as well as certain ideas of masculinity. The images found in this documentation of America in the 30’s and 40’s using the search words like ‘cowboy’ ‘cattle hand’ ‘dude’ turn up images that are a bit more culturally and gender diverse than the heroic, white and male than what has become familiar. Sometimes they are a little sad.