The Bomb & the Bohemians

Course Description:

This course will maximize the setting of northern New Mexico to illustrate two entwined cultural histories of the region: the successive waves of countercultural populations attracted to Taos, and the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. The course foci will be organized into three sections: First we will focus on the collection of bohemian artists who gathered in the region in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Then we will turn our attention to Los Alamos, and finally we will consider the counterculture artists of the 1960s, how their art differs from their predecessors who lived in a pre-bomb world, and their legacy in the region.

     We will begin our two-week study with a tour of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House—the epicenter of countercultural art in Taos for both of our bohemian eras—and we will read selections from Mabel Dodge Luhan, D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, and more. We will also visit local galleries and historic sights associated with this era of counterculture in Taos. Of particular interest will be an outing to the Taos Plaza to view D.H. Lawrence’s “forbidden art” at the Hotel La Fonda, and a visit to Taos pueblo, paired with readings from Carl Jung, who visited the pueblo during the same time. The week will culminate in a day trip to Ghost Ranch to take an O’Keeffe tour. Primary readings and field trips in this section will be augmented by secondary readings from Rednick’s, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture.

The fulcrum of the class is attention to the development of the bomb at Los Alamos. After concluding our section on the Mabel Dodge Luhan era bohemians, we will visit Los Alamos and take a museum tour. We will also screen Christopher Nolan’s recent film, Oppenheimer. We will augment this field trip and film with readings from Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Cynthia Kelly’s The Manhattan Project anthology. This section of the course will be shorter in length—just a few days—but will impact our thinking on the later countercultural artists and the world against which they were reacting.

     Attention to Los Alamos and the development of the bomb will provide pivotal context for the second half of the course, focusing on the counterculture of the 1960s and its legacy in the area. Through juxtaposing primary and secondary readings of this era with the pre-bomb bohemians, we will explore how the advent of atomic energy impacted the values and aesthetics of the bohemian world. We will screen Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, and pair it with secondary readings on Hopper’s time at the “mud palace” and its impact on the Taos community. We will read selections from Hopper’s visitors as well, including Allen Ginsberg and Alan Watts, and listen to the music of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Though the iconic New Buffalo and Hog Farm communes of the area are long gone, we will read selections from Arthur Kopecky’s New Buffalo Journals and Iris Ketlz’s, Scrapbook of a Taos Hippie. We will visit the earth ships and consider what impact the bomb might have had on the development of their small, self-sustaining communities in the Taos area. Finally, we will take a trip to Santa Fe to visit the Museum of the Sixties. If possible, we will have a conversation with Lisa Law, founding member of the Hog Farm commune, museum curator, and famed sixties photographer. We will visit Meow Wolf’s experiential art exhibit to survey the impact that countercultural values continue to have on the northern New Mexico art scene.