HUNTS MESA BY ARTHUR WESLEY DOW

ARTHUR WESLEY DOW (1857-1922)

Hunts Mesa (1,942 m - 6,370 ft)

United State of America (Arizona)

In The Enchanted Mesa, 1913

The mountain 

Hunts Mesa (1,942 m - 6,370 ft) is a rock formation located in Monument Valley, south of the border between Utah and Arizona in the United States and west of the border between Arizona's Navajo County and Apache County. It is one of two popular interior destinations in the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park for tourists to experience panoramic views of the popular sandstone formations from a distance. The other is Mystery Valley. A Navajo guide is required to hike to either.

Hunts Mesa forms the southeastern edge of Monument Valley and the northern edge of Little Capitan Valley. Access to Hunts Mesa is not through the general entrance of the park but rather through the sand dunes northeast of the town of Kayenta, Arizona.

On October 16, 1984, a United States Air Force B-52G bomber crashed on Hunts Mesa, killing two of the seven crewmen.

The painter 

Arthur Wesley Dow was an American painter, printmaker, photographer and influential arts educator.
Dow taught at three major American arts training institutions over the course of his career beginning with the Pratt Institute from 1896-1903 and the New York Art Students League from 1898-1903; then, in 1900, he founded and served as the director of the Ipswich Summer School of Art in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and from 1904 to 1922, he was a professor of fine arts at Columbia University Teachers College. His ideas were quite revolutionary for the period; he taught that rather than copying nature, art should be created by elements of the composition, like line, mass and color.  He wanted leaders of the public to see art is a living force in everyday life for all, not a sort of traditional ornament for the few. Dow suggested this lack of interest would improve if the way art was presented would permit self-expression and include personal experience in creating art. His ideas on Art were published in the 1899 book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. The following extracts are from the prefatory chapter "Beginnings" to the second edition of this book (1912) : " Composition ... expresses the idea upon which the method here presented is founded - the "putting together" of lines, masses and colors to make a harmony. ... Composition, building up of harmony, is the fundamental process in all the fine arts. ... A natural method is of exercises in progressive order, first building up very simple harmonies ... Such a method of study includes all kinds of drawing, design and painting. It offers a means of training for the creative artist, the teacher or one who studies art for the sake of culture."