New Frontiers (Frieze)

A recent piece for Frieze on Meek's Cutoff, Manifest Destiny, the West, the Western, Jon Raymond's writing, Richard Prince and the endless war (or some such like).

Kelly Reichardt’s recent film Meek’s Cutoff (2011) has been described as a Western, sometimes as a post-Western or a new Western. Whatever it might be, its view of the West is greater when taken alongside the director’s two preceding movies, Old Joy(2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008). All three were written in collaboration with the Oregon-based novelist Jon Raymond (and, in the case of the earlier two films, based on his short stories), and together they work as a triptych of sorts about American values – a revisionist take on the West and the Western. (Continue reading at Frieze).