Review of Imprisoned Art, Complex Patronage: Plains Drawings by Howling Wolf and Zotom at the Autry National Center by Joyce M. Szabo (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012
Imprisoned Art adds to its author\u27s growing list of impressive publications that consider the so-called ledger drawings created by Plains Indian warriors incarcerated, as prisoners of the Southern Plains wars, at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, between 1875 and 1879. It focuses on what were once two fully intact books of drawings, one by Zotom (Kiowa), the other by Howling Wolf (Cheyenne). Treated earlier in Dorothy Dunn\u27s 1877: Plains Indian Sketch Books of Zo-Tom and Howling Wolf (1969), and, with respect to Howling Wolf, in Szabo\u27s Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger Art (1994), the books receive here a comprehensive analysis that considers not only the artists and their drawings, but, most significantly, their patron
Art, Artists, Form and Function, Chapter 11 of a Book by the Author
Art, Artists, Form and Function, 2020
In the introduction to the book Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, a record of the exhibition of global feminisms organized by the Brooklyn Museum March 23 to July 1, 2007, remarks that "the year 2007 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Women Artists at the Brooklyn Museum. From its inception, Global Feminisms has defined itself in counterpoint to the pioneering exhibition called Women Artists 1550-1950 organized in 1976 by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, which presented a historical survey of women artists from the Renaissance to the modern era. Women Artists opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in December 1976 and ended its four-venue tour at the Brooklyn Museum in November 1977. Unlike Women Artists, which has the specific goal of reclaiming women lost from the Western historical canon, Global Feminisms aims to present a multitude of feminist voices from across cultures. In doing so, the exhibition challenges the often exclusionary discourse of contemporary art, which assumes that the West is the center and relegates all else to the periphery" (15). Interpretation through the vision of feminism establishes my view of the Pocahontas Archive. My paradigm for feminist practice beyond the Pocahontas Archive is to evaluate current works in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in Brooklyn, New York, as well as works collected in the volume titled Art and Feminism (Themes and Movements) (2001), edited by Helena Reckitt and Peggy Phelan; and Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (2007), edited by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin. "Feminist Practice in the Art of Pocahontas Viewed Through Feminist Art Theory" reveals curtains surrounding stereotypes, gender status and power in our postcolonial era; the level and substance of most passion for [Native American women] … has been selective, stereotyped, and damaging (Green). By infusing ideas about Pocahontas's Native American identity through art historiography, I study her assimilation in mythic terms appropriate for feminist practices, and then extend my inquisition to feminist art theory present in the study of Disney's first eco-feminist heroine. As we explore the art of Pocahontas in the light of critical race theory, which has its roots in the more established fields of anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, and politics, we see that the notions of social construction and reality of race and discrimination are ever present in the writings of known contemporary critical race theorists such as Derrick Bell, Mari Matsuda, Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and William Tate, as well as pioneers in the field, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Max Weber. This field has its roots firmly planted in American soil, mainly due to the racial makeup of our country.
The art of Indigenous Americans and American art history: a century of exhibitions
Perspective, 2015
The indigenous arts of the United States have long stood in a vexed relationship with the canons of American art history. 1 This brief essay covers only the highlights of this relationship, by considering some major exhibits and installations of Native art in American art museums (and, occasionally, in other exhibition spaces) during the past century. I make these comments as an art historian who has for more than three decades focused on Native American art, with some contributions to others areas of American art history as well. 2 In the last two decades, some scholars of American art have sought to incorporate Indigenous art's history into their courses; the two major textbooks in the field provide creditable coverage of such topics, 3 and the principal journals of American art published in the United States provide at least occasional coverage of Native themes and topics. 4 Many important museums in the United States have a far longer history of collecting Native art than is often recognized. Yet as I will show, most continue to ghettoize Native American art, despite demonstrable efforts to include African-American, Asian-American, and Latino arts into their narratives of the history of visual art of the United States. In this essay, I divide a century of Native art history into three broad periods, in order to demonstrate how major art-historical trends were manifested in exhibitionary practice. Native American Art in American Art Museums in the early twentieth century In the wake of the First World War, and in the shadow of the Second, one way the United States claimed its artistic independence and affirmed its indigenous roots was through its celebration of Native art. Assertions of Indian art as essentially "American" fill the The art of Indigenous Americans and American art history: a century of exhibi...
Table of Contents for A Companion to American Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
Description A Companion to American Art presents 35 newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars that explore the methodology, historiography, and current state of the field of American art history. • Features contributions from a balance of established and emerging scholars, art and architectural historians, and other specialists • Includes several paired essays to emphasize dialogue and debate between scholars on important contemporary issues in American art history • Examines topics such as the methodological stakes in the writing of American art history, changing ideas about what constitutes “Americanness,” and the relationship of art to public culture • Offers a fascinating portrait of the evolution and current state of the field of American art history and suggests future directions of scholarship • Author Information John Davis is Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College. His most recent book (co-authored with Sarah Burns) is American Art to 1900: A Documentary History (2009). Jennifer A. Greenhill is Associate Professor of Art History, Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (2012). Jason D. LaFountain is Instructor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.