Facing New Flows: Subjectivity and the Colonial Encounter in Plains Indian Art (original) (raw)
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Over the centuries Plains Indians of North America developed a version of biographical portraiture in which the face is notably absent. The total disregard of features and physical likeness of these autobiographical portraits painted on hide challenges commonly held ideas about the most effective visual languages that can transmit a person’s individual character and essence. Such representations elude western concerns with figurative realism, and direct correspondence between what is seen and what is represented. Plains Indian art’s strong emphasis on action, gesture, movement and agency show a preoccupation with doing rather than appearing. This fundamental difference between Plains Indian biographical art and Euro-American portraiture raises interesting questions about the socio-cultural and historical conditions that enable the emergence of realist-style paintings of the human face. An examination of Plains Indians’ biographical portraiture in historical perspective will advance new interpretations of this expressive form which appears to mutate after the earliest contacts with European style painting produced by artists such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer in the early 19th century.
Faithfully Rendered: Naturalism in Contemporary Native American Portrait Painting
First American Art Magazine, 2015
Mostly limited to ceramics, naturalistic portraiture was rare in the Americas prior to European and African contact. Despite widespread access to Western painting techniques today, figurative naturalism remains rare in Native American art. While use of historical photographs in Native painting is commonplace, only a small group of American Indians painters pursue mimesis as their goal. Studying technique on their own or through college, apprenticeships, and ateliers, these artists paint historical and living portrait subjects. This paper examines the diverse motivations of these contemporary Native American painters who knowingly defy expectations of both the Native and mainstream art worlds in pursuing naturalistic portraiture.
Sinice the ptublicatioIn of J J-Brody's 197 1 Ihdidln Paitnrs and 1lYtde Patrvon.s. a pioneering study on1 the rise of tw'entieth-centunr Native Amnerican)painting. critical perspectives on the originis of this mnm vement have focused almiiost exclusively on evaluating the primitivist beliefs of its patrons and their inmpact. otn works created in the Studio or Traditional style. With soime important exceptions discussed Ielow. elemnets of the subjectivity that the voun g Nativ e Amer icani artists who oricrinated this movement brought to thleir conii-positions remnain. beyond the breadth of these disculssions, acknowledged principallv throuigh scattered oibservations. While the literature that has followed Brodvys work has provided this area of stdx'v with an increasingly satis-fRinig level of theoretical and contextual richniess, an irmmer-sion in its discourses leaves the reader conIsciouis o' a greŽtt unspoken }divide that sela-rates those elenments of causation ancd ;ntentionalitv that theY do and do not address. Aspects of the content, st.ie. andt even the medciumii of the watercolor paintings produceci by Native painters in New Mlexico and Oklahomia during the early twsentiethi century are rarely addi-essed with regard to the incngenotis perspectives of the artists themselves. Instead, withinl a varicty of analytical framenworks thev are viewed as responses to their engagelment ith an assortment of well-intended but controlling patrons andl promoters. inclucdinig Inidian-Service teachers, anthropologists, and the prominlenlt artistic and literary figuLes of the Taos and Santa Fe art colonies. NVhile approaches that emphasize the importance of this relation offer valid paradigmiis for interpretation. the r-esultinig picttire is one-sided, imzplicitl y suggesting that the characteristics of this art were solelv determinedc by the nature of those interactiolls. Conspicuously missinig is an exploration of reflexivity as it Elizabeth A. Ne-sone is assistant professor of art hiistonr theory and criticism at the 1;nlversitx of California. San Diego.
The State of the Field: Contemporary Native American Art
In assessing the state of the field of contemporary American Indian art, the most astounding discovery I have made thus far is that it is not a “field” as far as “TheArt Bulletin” is concerned. There are four “Art Bulletin” categories into which contemporary American Indian art might fall: Art of the United States, Contemporary Art, Art of the Twentieth Century, and Native American Art. However, the only category that Art Bulletin seems comfortable placing contemporary American Indian art is Native American Art, even though the span of Native American art in total can be tens of thousands of years. This might lead one to assume that contemporary American Indian art is not a legitimate category that deserves its own space at all, but I will put forth that it is indeed, and one to which more than a dozen academics have been contributing solid material for over a decade. One possible reason for the ambiguity of this subject may be as simple as the broader field of art history not having created a space for it yet, and there are probably many reasons for not settling on a single category yet, which could possibly lie in our discomfort with where to place American Indians as persons. Nevertheless, I leave it to actual art historians to sort out the reasons for the omission. However, this difficulty is one that rests solely within the field of art history, and not with the authors who have been writing about the Native Americans who have been making contemporary art for quite some time now. It is my hope that this paper will not only assist in establishing a solid and clearly defined space in the field of art history for contemporary American Indian art, but will also provide a thorough overview as to the scholarship contained within the field.
Many Worlds Converge Here: Vision and Identity in American Indian Photography
Alicia Lynn Harris, 2013
Photographs of Native Americans taken by Frank A. Rinehart at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898 were then and continue to be part of the construction of indigenous identities, both by Anglo-Americans and Natives. This thesis analyzes the ramifications of Rinehart’s portraits and those of his peers as well as Native American artists in the 20th and 21st centuries who have sought to re-appropriate these images to make them empowering icons of individual or tribal identity rather than erasure of culture. This thesis comprises two sections. In the first section, the analysis is focused on the historical functioning of the Rinehart photographs taken at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in 1898. The second section turns to a contemporary reading of the Rinehart images and other images like them. This includes an analysis of the author’s relationship with the photograph of an ancestor who was present at the Exhibition, as well as an examination of a piece by the performance artist, James Luna. The latter section relies heavily on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, through which identity is formed by traumas inherited by succeeding generations, often through the vehicle of family portraits.
"The Native as Image: Art History, Nationalism, and Decolonizing Aesthetics."
This thesis examines various aesthetic strategies employed in the representation of Native Americans as part of the project of nation building. Whether these representational images are used in the ongoing production of the United States as a nation-state or as Native efforts toward decolonization, the discourses that contextualize the Native as image are constantly reconfigured. This research specifically investigates various methodologies of art history and anthropology—academic disciplines intimately involved in defining Native culture and subjectivity—in order to locate and analyze institutional sites where these discourses are produced, preserved, disseminated, and consumed, namely: the archive, the academy, and the museum. The dissertation focuses on case studies that illustrate various efforts by Native artists to decolonize these discourses. Ultimately, the work identifies approaches to reading the image of the Native body, with particular attention to self-portraiture, as instances in which the body is produced as a sovereign site.
Pamukkale University Journal of Social Sciences Institute, 2020
Paul Kane's Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America is a work in which Kane draws illustrative pictures of North American Indians and writes his experiences he had during the time span of a four year that he spent travelling among the Chippeways, Crees, Sioux and Blackfeet tribes of North American Indians. Though Kane's work reflects a European gaze on Indians which can be framed with the ideology of white supremacy, it is not grounded on hostile intentions for Indian people. Kane acknowledges Indian people's "wild nature", yet, contrary to the ideology of settler colonialism which is mainly based on the claim for land and gradual erasure of native agency, he mostly insists on the valuable aspects of native people's cultural life. Accordingly, this paper aims to show Paul Kane's awareness of this erasure, and his effort to catch the image of Indian as an Other that struggles to exist in his/her Self which will diminish in time.