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Engaging with Nature: American
and Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004)
May 16, 2010 - September 25, 2011
The Montclair Art
Museum (MAM) is presenting Engaging with Nature: American and Native
American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004), an exhibition that 
explores a vast range of the Museum's permanent collection.
It is the first exhibition ever presented by the Museum to integrate American
and Native American art from the collection from all time periods and around
a central theme. More than half of the nearly 40 works have never or rarely
been displayed. The show opened May 16, 2010, and will remain on view through
September 25, 2011. (right Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935), Night,
1994, Acrylic, wax, copper and oil on canvas diptych. Museum purchase; funds
provided by Alberta Stout. Montclair Art Museum, 2000.10)
The works in the exhibition encompass an astonishing variety
of art and artifacts, from prehistoric Native American ceramics to historical
19th-century landscape paintings to contemporary staged photographs, suggesting
various conceptions of landscape and nature.
America's diverse geography is evoked in western landscapes
by Thomas Moran, Philip Pearlstein, Charles Simonds, and Albert Lorey Groll,
while New Jersey and the East are subjects of works by Charles Warren Eaton,
Charles Burchfield, Dennis Oppenheim, and Montclair-born Lois Dodd. Also
included are Native American works created from the land and plants that
are often depicted in landscapes. Ancient vessels from the Puebloan cultures
in the Southwest offer fine examples of prehistoric ceramics made for everyday
use.
Imaginary landscapes are prevalent in the show, beginning
with the expressive, dreamlike works of Ralph Albert Blakelock and James
Lavadour, who, like George Inness, believed that nature was imbued with
the mystical presence of divine forces. Imaginative, spiritual interpretations
of nature are also evident in the work of Oscar Bluemner, Charles Burchfield,
Dan Namingha, Kenzo Okada, Steve Grapber, and Emmi Whitehorse. Nature as
a vehicle for exploring ancient, universal themes of ritual, magic, myth,
and the origins of life fascinated Mark Rothko, Harry Fonseca, Tony Abeyta,
and Kay WalkingStick.
Contemporary landscapes often challenge earlier, more literal
or romanticized concepts of nature. In the 1970s, pioneering Earthwork artist
Oppenheim created ephemeral manipulations of nature that exist only in the
form of photo-documentations. More recently, Louise Lawler, Hiroshige Sugimoto,
and Justine Kurland use photography as a medium to explore ideas of reality
and illusion.
Wall labels from the exhibition
- Roberts Gallery - Landscape/Seasons/Nature/ Spirituality
-
- Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
- Scene on the Snake River,
ca. 1879
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William W. Skinner
- 1961.2
-
- In 1871 Thomas Moran, an urban artist who had never even
ridden a horse, was a guest on Dr. Francis V. Hayden's government survey
of the Yellowstone area. This trip launched his career as a romantic painter
of the expansive, unsullied West. Scene on the Snake River captures
the grandeur of the Teton Mountains in Northwestern Wyoming through soft,
brilliant color and loose, exuberant brushwork. It is similar to Moran's
large panoramas of the Grand Canyon and other sites by which the American
public became familiar with the broad vistas and vast space of the American
West. As in much of Moran's work, the figure is absent in this romanticized
depiction of an unthreatening and beautiful wilderness.
-
-
- Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919)
- Silvery Moonlight, ca. 1880-1895
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of William T. Evans
- 1915.4
-
- Initially working in a more literal manner, Blakelock
turned away from realism during the 1870s as he embraced the influence
of the 19th century French Barbizon School painters, who created broadly
brushed landscapes based on personal interpretations of nature. From 1879
until his placement in a sanitarium for the insane in 1899, Blakelock's
landscapes were not based on a specific site but rather on an imaginary
place. He created some of his finest works, such as Silvery Moonlight,
during this time of extreme instability for himself and his desperately
impoverished family. He employed layers of swirling, expressive brush strokes
with no defined edges to convey a recurring theme in his work -- the mystical
glimmering of moonlight through a screen of leafy trees. The simplified
forms, low horizon line, and sublime, dreamlike quality indicate that this
work was created during Blakelock's late period when he, like George Inness,
was influenced by the teachings of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg.
This painting was donated by the museum's co-founder William T. Evans and
was one of the first works to enter the collection.
-
-
- Charles Warren Eaton (1857-1937)
- The Strip of Pines, 1908
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of William T. Evans
- 1915.20
-
- Like many American artists of his generation, Eaton traveled
to France, where he was introduced firsthand to 19th century French Barbizon
painting, which exalted personal, broadly rendered interpretations of rural
landscape. In 1889 he was discovered by George Inness -- not in New Jersey,
where they both lived, but in their main studios in New York. Inness encouraged
the younger artist's reverence for nature. Around a year earlier, Eaton
had moved to Bloomfield from New York, seeing tranquility in suburbia.
He observed," I seek the quietest possible places. Even a cow disturbs
me." This attitude is reflected in his painting of a group of pine
trees silhouetted against the sky, which emits a heavenly, golden glow.
During his lifetime, Eaton was acclaimed for this type of Tonalist landscape,
in which harmonious values of a single color prevail. This painting was
donated by the museum's co-founder William T. Evans and was one of the
earliest works to enter the collection.
-
-
- Leon Dabo (1867-1960)
- Sun and Mist, 1909
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of William T. Evans
- 1915.12
-
- An emigré from France, the Tonalist landscape
painter Dabo closely aligned himself with James McNeill Whistler, working
in the master's London studio in 1888. Sun and Mist demonstrates
Dabo's masterful adaptation of the austere, subtle tonalities and vertical
formats of Whistler's vertical Thames River nocturnes. This painting was
donated by the museum's co-founder William T. Evans and was one of the
earliest works to enter the collection.
-
-
- Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938)
- Lent Evening , 1932-33
- Oil on board
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Miller
- 1971.73
-
- Initially an architect from Chicago, Bluemner decided
to become a painter after seeing Cézanne's one-man show at Alfred
Stieglitz's gallery "291" in New York in 1911. Bluemner felt
a profound empathy with Cézanne's constant struggle to harmonize
all pictorial elements into "the artistic whole." In Lent
Evening, precise, simplified architectural forms indicative of Bluemner's
exposure to the geometric shapes of the modern art movement known as Cubism
are integrated into an unpopulated landscape. These constricted, overlapping
forms are rendered in bold, non-naturalistic colors that suggest Bluemner's
appreciation of the work of the Russian-born modern artist Wassily Kandinsky.
This painting was created during the artist's residence in South Braintree,
Massachusetts. Its title refers to Lent, the period of fasting and penitence
from Ash Wednesday to Easter. It evokes the spiritual basis of Bluemner's
abstract art, which he defined as "a new subjective reality of beauty
and expression" that speaks "to the soul like a poem or music."
-
-
- Albert Lorey Groll (1866-1952)
- Laguna River, New Mexico,
n.d.
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of William T. Evans
- 1915.23
-
- Albert Lorey Groll was born and raised in New York City,
but spent several years in Europe studying art. He painted the landscape
of the Atlantic coast and then headed west to Arizona in 1904 with ethnologist
Professor Stuart Culin, who went west to write a paper about Indian games.
While on this trip Groll was introduced to Lorenzo Hubbell, an Indian dealer
who owned the Ganado Trading Post. One of the scenes Groll painted on that
trip won a gold medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1906.
After winning this award he wrote to Hubbell saying his western paintings,
"have made a decided hit, both artistically and financially; in fact,
my visit to the Southwest has been my lucky stars." In 1906, Groll
visited New Mexico. The paintings done at the Laguna Pueblo of the vast
landscape and towering clouds impressed the Indians so much that they called
Groll Chief Bald-Head-Eagle Eye. He became known for his oil paintings
that were sometimes abstract and sometimes mixed media with crayon and
scuffed on to make a more textured surface. Although he maintained his
studio in New York City and was well-known in the East, he frequently went
painting out west to give his collectors the desert subject matter that
was much sought after. His work was included in the San Francisco Panama-Pacific
Exhibition in 1915. This painting was donated by the museum's co-founder
William T. Evans and was one of the first works to enter the collection.
-
-
- Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)
- Day in Midwinter, 1945
- Gouache on paper
- Museum purchase; Lang Acquisition Fund
- 1953.10
-
- Charles Burchfield was an innovative watercolorist best
known for his imaginative, emotionally charged landscapes. Like Thoreau,
whose writings inspired him, Burchfield saw nature as a source of spirituality,
and was especially awed by the changing of the seasons. This watercolor
is a view across the backyards from his studio in Gardenville, New York.
Fresh snow dusts the tops of the wire fence and fenceposts, the rooftops,
and the tree branches. The artist's lively brushwork animates the bare
branches, making them seem alive, even in the dead of winter. Footprints
in the snow and suggestions of blue shadows and yellow light also animate
the composition.
-
- Burchfield often recorded his emotional responses to
the seasons:
-
- I suddenly realized that today was a perfect ideal
winter's day. The bright golden sunshine reflected in the glare of the
snow covered fields, the calm cold air...and the silence of things -- all
these consummated a perfect harmony of nature.
-
-
- Hans Hofmann (1880-1966)
- Early Fall, 1945
- Oil, ink, and gouache on paper
- Museum purchase; prior bequests of Marie T. Reisweber,
Florence O.R. Lang, and Mrs. Frank L. Babbott
- 1988.137
-
- The German-born abstract painter Hans Hofmann was one
of the greatest art teachers of the twentieth century. After a prolonged
stay in Paris, where he met Matisse, Picasso, and other modern artists,
Hofmann established the first school of modern artin Muncih in 1915. He
settled in America in 1932, teaching at the Art Students League and founding
his own school in New York the following year. The title of this work,
Early Fall, is a poetic reference to the artist's experience of
nature, always the starting point for Hofmann's art. The push and pull
of the various forms and colors create a vibrant, energetic surface evocative
of the hues and rhythms of autumn. Hofmann's pioneering use of a spontaneous
drip technique stems from his experiments with poured paint since 1939.
His use of the technique, employed by the Surrealists to express the impulses
of the subconscious mind, may have influenced young Jackson Pollock.
-
-
- Mark Rothko (1903-1970)
- Implements of Magic, ca.
1945
- Watercolor on paper
- Museum purchase; partial gift of Jeannette and Charles
Gehrie and Acquisition Fund
- 1986.139
-
- Like many other members of the burgeoning New York School,
Mark Rothko shared Adolph Gottlieb's interest in Surrealism and mythic
imagery during the 1940s. Rothko adopted the Surrealist technique of automatic
drawing which allows the artist to freely express ideas as they emerge
from his subconscious mind, often as biomorphic shapes and pictographic
symbols. Implements of Magic is one of a series of mid-1940s watercolors
exploring universal themes of ritual, magic, myth, and sacrifice. Abstracted,
primitive-looking organisms appear to float amidst geological strata indicated
by three earth-colored, horizontal bands suggesting a landscape. Evoking
Native American and African culture, these primeval elements convey the
artist's fascination with the origins of life. Not tied to any specific
mythology, this watercolor suggests Rothko's interest in the timeless spirit
of myth, and the universal, spiritual power of tribal art.
-
-
- B.J.O Nordfeldt, (1878-1955)
- Flight, 1949
- Oil on canvas
- Museum Purchase; Blanche R. Pleasants Fund
- 1964.86
-
- The Swedish-born Expressionist B.J.O. Nordfeldt was one
of the first American artists to adapt the Post-Impressionist style of
Paul Cézanne. Nordfeldt's expressive use of color with the structural
formations and angular brushwork learned through the study and admiration
of Cézanne is evident even in this late work created during his
residence in Lambertville, New Jersey. In the latter half of Nordfeldt's
well-traveled career, the artist began to strip down his style to more
basic forms and placed emphasis on the repetitive elements of natural patterns.
This can particularly be noted in Nordfeldt's marine paintings, which had
been a staple of the artist's career. Nordfeldt explained his interest
in the sea stating that he was "interested in the nature of water
its fluidity, its weight and strength". While Nordfeldt had
continually attempted to depict these ideas, there is a sense of loneliness
and depth that can also be attributed to the artist's longing for a solitary
lifestyle while at his New Jersey farm. The vigorously painted Flight
conveys Nordfeldt's overarching desire to express the powerful forces
of nature and culture that can be felt from coast to coast. It was likely
inspired by the rugged coast north of San Francisco and exemplifies the
artist's keen powers of observation and vivid imagination.
-
-
- Kenzo Okada (1902-1982)
- Moon is Down, 1950
- Oil on canvas
- Museum purchase; Mr. and Mrs. S. Barksdale Penick, Jr.
Fund
- 1976.9
-
- Born in Yokohama, Japan, Kenzo Okada moved to New York
in 1950 where he was closely associated with Abstract Expressionism, a
movement that stressed the physical act of non-representational painting
as a means of personal expression. This frequently overlooked artist painted
intuitively, using meditation to invite creativity directly from his subconscious.
In Moon is Down, Okada blended Eastern and Western techniques, revealing
the poetic essence of the natural world through painterly abstraction.
He incorporates the suggestion of a flowering branch reaching into the
picture, a popular theme in Asian nature painting. The flattened space,
subtle colors, and emphasis on brushwork characteristic of Abstract Expressionism
had long been present in Japanese art. Okada bridged both traditions, applying
the larger format, abstracted forms, and energized surfaces of Abstract
Expressionism to his evocative and moody subject matter.
-
-
- Dennis Oppenheim (b. 1938)
- Identity Stretch, 1970-75
- One-panel photo documentation, photo reproduction and
collage elements
- Gift of Dennis Oppenheim
- 1996.53.2
-
- Dennis Oppenheim emerged as a pioneer of Earth art in
the counter-culture of the late 1960s. He has observed that this movement
affected the art system by questioning the physicality and collectability
of a work_as artists sought to demystify art by removing it from gallery
and museum contexts and embedding it in the environment. The ephemerality
of Earth art was unconventional, as was Oppenheim's reliance on photography
as the only means of documenting his artistic acts. Identity Stretch
documents an earthwork created for ArtPark in Lewiston, New York. It consisted
of two gigantic, overlapping and elongated thumbprints etched in tar upon
a large, barren field. Although the fingerprints, shown in aerial views,
resemble an anonymous map, they were actually the marks of Oppenheim and
his son Erik. They have thus been interpreted as the artist's transcendent
attempt to genetically project himself through time and space with his
child's fingerprint as an agent of immortality. The enlarged scale of the
fingerprints literally evokes the idea of the artist and his son making
their marks on the world.
-
-
- Lois Dodd (b. 1927)
- Broken Window, New Jersey,
1975
- Oil on canvas
- Museum purchase; prior gifts of Ethan D. Alyea, Mrs.
George Welwood Murray, Joseph Van Vleck and Acquisition Fund
- 1996.31
-
- Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Lois Dodd lives and works
primarily in Cushing, Maine. She is known for her unique fusion of abstraction
and figuration in paintings, such as this work which combines her favorite
themes -- landscape and the window as an abstract framing device. Dodd
created this painting near Blairstown, New Jersey where she formerly owned
a home. She has recalled that the window "was in a small cottage slated
for removal by the Park Service as part of the project clearing the land
to establish the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area." She
found this vandalized cottage in the fall and used to store her painting
in it while she was working on it. At one point she let the door slam,
the glass broke, and she had to prop up the pane that fell out -- as if
making her own still life. Dodd was fascinated with the interplay of reality
(the New Jersey landscape) and illusion (the reflections of it).
-
-
- Philip Pearlstein (b. 1924)
- Mummy Cave, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1978
- Sepia wash on paper
- Gift of Philip Pearlstein
- 2009.1
-
- From the 1950s onward, rock, mountainsides, stone ruins,
and hillside towns fascinated Philip Pearlstein, better known for his paintings
of cropped nudes. Starting in 1975, with a commission from the U.S. Department
of the Interior, Pearlstein traveled to the Southwest to make art celebrating
the upcoming Bicentennial. The dramatic sheer wall of the Mummy Cave, Canyon
de Chelly, Arizona, is one of the most sacred sites of the Navajo nation,
which covers territory in the states of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
Pearlstein's carefully executed, cropped view is rendered in sepia (a pigment
made from "ink" sacs of cuttlefish), with a brownish tone appropriate
for a desert scene and ancient, timeless structures. The earliest ruins
in the caves in the side of this canyon date from 300-400 CE, while the
remaining structures seen in this drawing's two hollows were built in the
13th century, when the Anasazi people constructed their elaborate Cliffside
dwellings. The ruins were given their present name from two mummified bodies,
still wrapped in fiber made from the yucca plant, that were found by an
archeological expedition in 1882. Pearlstein has noted that the overall
composition, while a landscape, takes on the appearance of a mask: a head
with a fringe of hair at the top, two dark eyes (where the ruins cluster),
and intimations of a nose and mouth at the center.
-
-
- Louise Lawler (b. 1947)
- 16, 1985
- Cibachrome print on museum mount
- Museum purchase; Acquisition Fund
- 2000.7
-
- Louise Lawler's photographs explore how the meaning of
a work of art is shaped by the context in which it is presented. As she
explains, "My pictures present information about the reception of
artworks." In 16, Lawler features an Andy Warhol painting of
1962 from his paint-by-number series Do It Yourself (Landscape),
which hangs in the Museum Ludwig in Koln, Germany. Warhol's Pop art series
was symbolic of mechanical performance and mass culture, suggesting that
the creation of a landscape or any kind of painting is as easy as coloring
in the numbered areas. Lawler takes this idea one step further by making
her artwork a photograph of Warhol's work. Only a portion of the painting
is visible, as Lawler gives nearly equal weight to the painted wall on
which it is hung and its accompanying label--all elements imposed on an
artwork after it leaves the artist's studio. The label is centered prominently,
reminding us that what is written about a work of art often colors our
perception of that work.
-
-
- Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948)
- Gorilla, 1994
- Gelatin silver print
- Museum purchase; prior bequests of Fred E. Munchenheim
and Mary Drake Peters and Acquisition Fund
- 1998.31
-
- Japanese-born Hiroshi Sugimoto is a conceptual artist
who uses black and white photography to explore ideas of time and space,
reality and illusion. Using lengthy exposures and meticulous printing techniques,
Sugimoto creates high-quality photographs that are often more complex than
they first appear. Initially startling, Gorilla invites the viewer
to question the plausibility of the scene. How did the photographer get
so close to such a dramatic and dangerous subject? The vines and foliage
seem to grow out of nowhere and the mountain looks like a movie backdrop.
This picture is in fact a photograph of a diorama, taken at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. By making the fake/artificial appear
so real, Sugimoto challenges the viewer's concept of what is real and what
is an illusion.
-
-
- Charles Simonds (b. 1945)
- Abandoned Ritual Place, 2001
- Clay, plaster, and wood
- Museum purchase; Acquisition Fund
- 2008.1
-
- Charles Simonds's meticulous clay constructions are rooted
in Simonds's fascination with the architecture and rituals of Pueblo Indians
encountered on childhood trips to New Mexico. From 1969 to 1983 he returned
to this area and witnessed the Shalako dances of the Zuni Indians. Simonds's
interests in archaeology and Body and Earth Art converged in his sculpture,
and he developed a reputation for his ephemeral, archaeologically inspired
"Dwellings" placed in the walls, nooks, and crannies of dilapidated
buildings in New York City.
-
- Simonds refers to the former inhabitants of these empty,
abandoned dwellings as an imaginary group of migrating "Little People."
The world of the "Little People" is "a peaceful world without
constraint.... Each Dwelling is a different scene from [their] lives. They
have particular beliefs which form, or inform, that space." Carefully
built brick by brick with small chambers and towers, Simonds's sculptures
engage the child in everyone.
-
-
- Steve Graber (b. 1950)
- Pelagia, 2003
- Charcoal and watercolor on paper
- Gift of Io and George Gaitanaris
- 2004.4
-
- Based on a farm in Baldwin City, Kansas, Steve Graber
creates sublime imaginary landscapes that make viewers wonder about the
location and circumstances of the places he depicts. Educated as a historian,
the self-taught Graber served in the United States Navy before beginning
his art career at age 32. He has a pilot's license and incorporates aerial
perspectives into his works on paper which often feature sensuous cloud
formations, as in Pelagia. The title of this work and the landscape
are both invented:
-
- It's all out of my head...the titles are the product
of free association. I was in an Italian mood and invented that title.
My goal is to convey a sense of timelessness and peace. There is always
an interaction of atmosphere and earth, where worlds meet spiritually as
well as geographically. This particular work is the first I ever did in
a square format; it just evolved that way naturally and I have continued
to work with it.
-
- Early on the 19th century American landscape painter
George Inness was an inspiration for Graber: "That one room in the
Art Institute of Chicago, I practically pitched a tent in there. Inness
was an important guide for me -- his use of light more than anything."
The work of the Tonalist and Inness follower Dwight Tryon (in MAM's collection
as well) was also influential.
-
-
- Justine Kurland (b. 1969)
- Peach Tree, 2002
- Chromogenic print
- Edition 4/8
- Gift of Patricia A. Bell
- 2004.17.2
-
- A resident of New York City, Justine Kurland received
a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University, where she studied with photographers
Gregory Crewsden and Philip Lorca di Corcia. Kurland's works are based
on her travels to isolated rural communities across America, including
communes out west and in Florida. In these works she explores fundamental
dichotomies of humanity vs. nature, the individual vs. community, private
vs. public. According to Kurland:
-
- The naked figures in the color photographs have willingly
undressed. They represent perfect beings heroically occupying their Edens,
or else gardeners after the Fall, lost and exposed to both the elements
and the lens.... In [some] cases the subjects perform quasi-biblical narratives
or ritual acts as they elaborate fantasies of communal living and communion
with nature. And sometimes it is the natural landscape that dominates,
swelling to engulf the figures who inhabit it. The photographs are shared
acts of faith, romantic gestures impelling us towards a transcendental
experience of being human in the world.
-
-
- Justine Kurland (b. 1969)
- Battlefield, 2001
- Satin-finished UV-laminated C-print
- Gift of Patricia A. Bell
- 2005.6
- A resident of New York City, Justine Kurland received
a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts and a Masters of Fine Art from
Yale University, where she studied with photographers Gregory Crewsden
and Philip Lorca di Corcia. Her staged photographs of carefully posed figures
are based on travels to isolated rural communities across America. Clothed
rather than nude as in many of Kurland's works, the prone figures in Battlefield
evoke a universal horror of war that has been the subject of many important
works of art throughout history. Without the title to suggest this interpretation,
however, they might also evoke a state of meditation and communion with
nature.
-
-
-
- NATIVE AMERICAN WORKS
-
- Harry Fonseca (1946-2006)
- Nisenan, Maidu, Hawaiian, Portuguese
- Maidu Creation Story, 1998
- Acrylic on canvas
- Museum purchase; Acquisition Fund
- 2007.25
-
- Harry Fonseca has always explored a diverse imagery from
tribal myths to rock art, the figure of Coyote, the trickster in Maidu
stories, to St. Francis. Fonseca, a renowned painter, explores the conceptual
and painterly qualities of Abstract Expressionism in his work. Maidu
Creation Story is the visual image of the oral history of the Maidu
people as told by his uncle, Henry Azbill. Using petroglyphic images reminiscent
of the ancient rock art found in Cosco Mountain Range in the high desert
country in California, Fonseca gives visual form to myth as he explores
his connection between the past and the present. This is the illustrated
story of Helinmaideh, the Big Man or God, who, according to Maidu myth,
was responsible for creating the world and all of its inhabitants.
-
-
- Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935)
- Cherokee
- Night, 1991
- Acrylic, wax, copper and oil on canvas
- Museum purchase; funds provided by Alberta Stout
- 2000.10
-
- Kay WalkingStick is of Native American ancestry- Cherokee
and Winnebago. She was born in Syracuse, New York, and earned a BFA degree
at Beaver College and an MFA at Pratt Institute. Much of her work deals
with the duality in contemporary Native American life. She often uses diptychs
as a way of unifying this duality. In Night, the two portions represent
two kinds of knowledge of the earth. One is visual, a memory of a streambed
near Tucson, Arizona, and the other is more spiritual. This painting is
not a literal landscape, but the artist's view of the earth and its sacred
quality. The inclusion of copper in the mythic or spiritual side relates
to the copper lodes in the mountains that were invaded by miners, who had
a negative impact on the lives and land of the native peoples.
-
-
-
- Dan Namingha, (b. 1950)
- Southwest, Tewa-Hopi
- Passage Series II, 1997
- Oil, sand, and collage elements on canvas
- Museum purchase; prior gifts of Catherine W. Faucon and
Mr. and Mrs. Willard Church
- 1997.17
-
- Dan Namingha is an American abstract artist who draws
deeply on his Tewa-Hopi heritage for references, often focusing on the
ceremonies, architecture, and landscape of the Hopi culture. Namingha was
born on the Hopi reservation and raised in the village of Polacca. His
great-great-grandmother was the famed potter Nampeyo, who revived the Hopi
pottery tradition by adapting ancient designs known as Sityatki. In Passage
Series II Namingha exhibits his knowledge of traditional culture combined
with a profound knowledge of traditional culture combined with a profound
understanding of modern art. Concerned with the ideas of duality and fragmentation,
this work represents a window of passageway from the physical world into
the spiritual world of the Hopi, reflecting both the ancient Hopi world
and contemporary society.
-
- In this work, images of sacred messengers, known as "katsinas,"
and other sacred symbols are suspended within the passageway and act as
intermediaries between the spiritual and physical worlds. The fragmented
katsina images give the viewer only a glimpse into the sacred world. The
image on the left is a partial representation of Palhik Mana, or the Butterfly
Maiden. Her headdress, or tablita, represents the clouds. To the right
of this image is a black dot with a white border which represents the eye
of another katsina. The black-and-white vertical line represents rain;
the horizontal black line represents another version of a katsina's eye.
The black slender contour-line figure and the white curved image in the
center of the painting is another version of the Butterfly Maiden. The
red spirals represent migration, or the center of the world. The outside
border of the painting consists of sand, which reflects the idea of the
physical homeland of the Hopi.
-
-
- James Lavadour (b. 1951)
- Plateau, Walla Walla
- Hunter, 2004
- Oil on wood
- Museum purchase; Acquisition Fund
- 2007.24
-
- James Lavadour is a self-taught artist. Growing up on
the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeastern Oregon, he learned to draw
from his mother and developed a passion for nature from time spent in the
wilderness with his father and uncle. Together these influences have weighed
heavily on the style and development of Lavadour as a painter. While his
work has been compared to landscape painters of the nineteenth century,
with their thickly layered, sublime scenes, Lavadour prefers to liken his
works to "elements of nature, vessels for the human experience, and
art as a spirit of light that can help bring illumination to the community."
Lavadour says he "is not concerned about what a painting means, I
only care about what it does and how it does it." These statements
reflect his view that the act of creating and the act of walking on the
earth are sacred, organic forces. He believes that just as nature is endowed
with life and energy, the same is true for what we know about art, regardless
of form.
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- Tony Abeyta (b. 1965)
- Southwest, Navajo
- Hunters' Procession, 1995
- Oil and sand on canvas
- Museum purchase; prior gifts of Russel T. Mount, E. and
A. Silberman, Mrs. Charles C. Griswold, and Acquisition Fund
- 1996.10 A-B
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- Tony Abeyta's work celebrates the richness and beauty
found in Native American myth and religion. He often mixes sand in his
oils, and builds up the paint on the canvas in a richly textured mass.
His use of bold color and gilt gives a sculptural quality to the work and
captures the landscape of the Southwest. According to Abeyta, "If
the paintings are successful, they should communicate a powerful force,
a feeling that is contained in all of us." This work deals with some
of the rituals and beliefs that surround the hunt in native cultures.
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