Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives (2012)
Arnold Shives has obsessively hiked, climbed and depicted British Columbia’s mountains since the early 1960s. The fiftieth anniversary of his first extended mountaineering expedition seems an apposite moment to reconsider his work and life in the range of contexts that he himself created through the two activities that have been the focus of his practice: mountain climbing and mountain picturing. This book is the result of that reconsideration.
—Foreword
Arnold Shives is one of the most creative and probing mountain artists on the West Coast, and Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives ably and amply illustrates why this is the obvious case. The compact hardbound edition of Alpine Anatomy brings together, from a variety of informative sources, essays about Shives from such artistic and mountain worthies as John Grande, Bill Jeffries, Edward Lucie-Smith, Darrin Martens, Toni Onley and Glenn Wordsworth---it, also, is a superb survey of Shives’ outdoors and mountain art work from 1961-2010. There are many fine photographs of Shives at different mountain locations in the book that track and trace his mountain journey from the late 1950s to the present.
The publication of Alpine Anatomy was a joint effort by Burnaby Art Gallery, Simon Fraser University Gallery and Tricouni Press. The book opens with a classic black-white photo of Shives on the ‘true summit of the Black Tusk’ in 1961 with a rope dangling over the rocks and into the empty space and void below. Frank de Bruyn (who tragically was killed in a climbing accident in the early 1960s) took the photo of Shives on Black Tusk.
Those who take the time to slowly read the various essays and meditatively ponder the enticing mountain artwork of Shives cannot help but be drawn into a unique and evocative read of the mountains both on the West Coast and beyond. There is no doubt that Shives has a distinctive outdoors and mountain style, and it is this compelling artistic vision that cannot be missed in Alpine Anatomy. The title for the book is, indeed, wisely chosen for the simple reason that Shives’ artwork deals, mostly, with the Alpine region and does so in a way that is anatomical. This is not mountain art as is often depicted in a realistic fashion----Shives, in fact, interprets the deeper anatomy, the lines and structures of the mountains in an uncanny manner. The curious cannot but be drawn into Shives artistic vision, mountains and the anatomy of them.
Alpine Anatomy begins, after a few essays about Shives, with ‘Bare Trees and Mountain’ (1961), leads the reader through a variety of artistic styles and forms in the book, and concludes with ‘Homage To Riopelle XX’ (2010). There is a broad range of artistic styles in Alpine Anatomy that reflect and embody Shives’ ongoing attempt to read and interpret the message of the Alpine. Such an approach is neither realism nor impressionism---the incisive mountain and outdoor vision is much more complex than either ways of depicting outdoor and mountain life.
I was quite fortunate that Arnold did sketches for two of my books: Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades and Mountaineering and the Humanities---Shives’ contribution to both missives merely scratched the surface of his much grander mountain project and artistic vision. Alpine Anatomy highlights what such a vision is, and it brings together, in an exquisite manner, some of the finest of Shives’ artwork with essays that reflect in a meaningful manner on Shives artistic pilgrimage ---this distinctive combination makes this a must purchase book for those interested in both art and mountaineering culture.
Piz Gloria
Ron dart
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