First, we think that these two artists, Alexander Calder and Thaddeus Mosley, could not possibly be more dissimilar in this new iteration of the Calder donation curated by Catherina Manchanda. “Following Space,” the title of their joint exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, captures the central feeling of the exhibition. As we walk through the galleries, we do indeed feel we are following the spaces that both of these artists carve and cut and slice in their sculptures. But how different they are!
Calder’s mobiles are light and constantly moving with many small pieces of metal hanging from fragile wires. Mosley’s work is heavy, made of chiseled tree trunks. Calder uses industrial materials like sheet metal, Mosley uses only wood, Calder emphasizes lines created by wire and light shapes of metal, Mosley chisels carefully on solid shapes.
Thaddeus Mosley, Following Space, 2016. Cherry. Overall: 117×28×28in.
But we must look again at this provocative pairing. In the first gallery we see White Panel 1936 by Alexander Calder and First Port, 2008, by Mosley. Calder’s work descends from on high, while Mosley’s work reaches up. The carefully chiseled wood creates a sense of liberating the wood from itself. Following Space, 2016 in the center of the gallery, gives the exhibition its title, and is even more clearly rising up from its base.
Mosley works with wood that he finds in the forest, cherry and walnut. The wood is chiseled carefully to highlight the given shape of the log, then he connects separate pieces by inserting it into a notch or large hole in the wood. This use of notches means that the pieces balance with no outside support, unlike Calder’s mobiles which balance with carefully calculated lengths of wire and the weight of the small pieces of metal. Calder’s mobiles seem to almost flutter like clouds sometimes.
Mosley is entirely self- taught, his rhythms drawn from jazz seen in the abstraction of his shapes. But he has also looked at African sculpture from Dogon, Senufo, Banum and Mossi. He has his own collection of African sculpture. The African artists also carved wood with many different results. Often they were figurative, but also they sometimes allowed the shape of the wood to speak on its own, making an abstract shape. Mosley also learned from looking at Giacometti and Brancusi who work in bronze and stone. Mosley’s work brings together these inspirations in an original composition in wood.
Some of Mosley’s pieces seem to sit solidly on the ground, like Oval Continuity, 2017 that appears to be a carefully cut large oval ball. But the more we look at it, the more we feel it is about to burst forth into some magnificent vertical shape. Next to Mosley’s Oval Continuity is Calder’s Bougainvillea, 1947. It has a base on the ground, but it bursts forth in delicate flowers in all directions.
Other examples of pieces that appear to be grounded, but also rise up are Little Escalation, 2018 and Bended, 2018 (center and right in picture). They are single pieces of wood, with no insertions or extensions, but they too seem to be straining upward with an accordion pleat or a twist.
Mosley is 99 years old! He has been making sculpture since the 1950s. But only in the last few years has he achieved real recognition. He readily admits that is because he is Black. The current situation for artists of color is more open and accepting. But if we were to see one of these muscular sculptures without knowing the artist, we would still be overwhelmed by their beauty: the artist’s respect for wood as a material shines through as we look at his careful chisel marks and his surprising shapes and juxtapositions. It is sometimes tempting to anthropomorphize his shapes, an animal, a bird, a face, but look again and it is gone.
Fortunately, you have time to see this show, (it ends on June 1) but don’t put it off. I have been three times and each time I experienced it entirely differently. Hats off to Catharina Manchanda for this wonderful idea.
This entry was posted on February 3, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Raven, the creator in the Tlingit mythology, rescued humans from darkness by stealing the sun.
“He was a white bird and the world was in Darkness. Raven decides he will try and do something about the darkness, for himself and for the world. As he follows the Nass River, he encounters the Fishermen of the Nights … They tell Yeil ( as Raven was then called) that Nass Shaak Arankaawu ( the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) has many treasures in his Naa Kanidi ( Clan House)including beautifully carved boxes that house the light,” So Raven having disguised himself as a human baby, took the moon and the sun out of their boxes and liberated them.
Preston Singletary wondered what Raven has been doing since mythic times, so in his new series of glass works he brings Raven back, he wakes him up to our disastrous world. This exhibition (which unfortunately closed on June 1 but there is a free catalog you can get ) includes many versions of Raven as well as a new story about Raven written by collaborator Garth Stine:
“I Dream Therefore I am Raven.”
The exhibition is contained in the smaller room at Trevor Gallery, a low lighted space with a large photo of the forest at one end. Interspersed throughout the room are the new Raven sculptures, it feels like we are walking into the forest with Raven all around us.
Just outside the entrance is “Blue Light Spirit Mobile” suggesting blue spiritual light floating in the air. On the other side is “Communicating with the Spirits” two children riding on a composite bird/animal who seem to be joining us. So, the stage is set for a special event.
At the entrance a sign says, “Please Feed the Raven.” In these stories Raven is constantly in pursuit of food, as he realizes how degraded the salmon and berries he is given have become.
We see a white Raven. Raven was originally white, but when he rescued the sun, the Chief was so angry that he threw ashes at him and turned him black. But after sleeping for such a long time Raven grew new feathers and turned white again. As he arrives among people all glittering and white, they stare at him, so he decides to rub himself with ashes and turn black again so no one will notice him.
Preston Singletary’s “Ashes from the Fire,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
Preston: “In my interpretation of what is happening now I want to believe that Raven is battling climate change, protecting the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, or helping discover the Boarding School grave sites.
So the first story tells us about Raven’s Dreams of the World Before with clear skies, clean water, uncorrupted animals, “magnificent salmon, berries ripe to bursting, and roe hurling themselves up river to spawn. “Before the world turned on itself with contempt and tore itself apart.”
Altogether there are sixteen pieces that reference Raven’s efforts to heal the world, each accompanied by a story written by Garth Stein.
They include Raven using ashes from the fire to change himself back to black from white. Crying to unfreeze the frozen river, and purify the water to liberate the fish there, protecting the children who have died at boarding schools, and taking on a fog hat and a fighting hat. The final piece is “Wolf sitting on a Rock “observant, cunning, ruthless, merciful, the spirit he would need to lead People into the Future World.”
Preston Singletary’s “Frozen River,” 2024, blown and sand carved glass.
It is hard to overstate how creative this collaboration is between Stein and Singletary. The sculptures each convey the poignancy of the stories. They are all subtly colored, red, yellow, blue and created with blown and sand carved glass compressed within a larger shape and the form lines of traditional Tlingit sculpture, Stein’s stories seamlessly bring together the mythic and the contemporary in narratives that both tell us of the degraded state of the world, and the possibilities for healing it.
Yet in the end we see how much must be done.
For a brief moment the lush landscape turns brown
How ironic that white colonial settlers tried so hard to obliterate native culture, but now we increasingly realize that Indigenous knowledge may be the only way forward for our planet.
This entry was posted on January 27, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish!
Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum in 1999, an article published in Art Papers Magazine and my book, Art and Politics Now.
Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People:
In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home.
These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life.
~ Lillian Pitt
As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form, lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn.
On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title.
Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots, has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works.
The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher, with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating.
One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world. Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home (1999):
One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian.
This entry was posted on January 24, 2025 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue, Seattle, 98101 Runs until January 19, 2025.
Joyce J. Scott, Joyce’s Necklace, ca. 1978-1985. Rotasa Collection. Thread, beads, silver, enamel, metal, horn, stones, ivory, charms. 21 × 16 × 1 in. (53.3 × 40.6 × 2.5 cm.)
“I want to be amazed when I’m working. I want to confound myself. I want to tell a new story each time. I want to see the poetry in it. I want to see the labor in it. It is a kind of sacred embrace. That’s the part you use to create. That’s the part that others may not know or see.”
Joyce Scott is not afraid to be in your face. It has helped in her expressive journey that she learned about the peyote stitch in 1976 from Native American artist Sandy Fife Wilson. The peyote stitch is created off a loom allowing much more freedom for the artist than simply attaching her chosen medium, beads, to a flat surface. We see it used throughout the works in the exhibition.
Let us start where the exhibition begins with her sense of connectivity through generations of her family in art making. We first see a large construction made of fabric, with quilts on the walls outside. Inside beaded “quilts” hang on the walls of a “living room” setting complete with a comfortable sofa, sculpture, books, and art works from many cultures.
Scott titles this work The Threads That Unite My Seat to Knowledge, 2024. It brings together quilts by her mother (Elizabeth Talford Scott (Fifty Year Quilt, 1930–80); maternal grandmother, Mary Jane Caldwell; maternal grandfather, Samuel Caldwell; and godmother, Lucille Foster Brown. Inside is a quilt by her paternal grandmother.
This connection across generations is accompanied by sculpture in the same gallery that suggest three powerful images of black womanhood: the birth of a baby, the birth of a dead baby
and the selling of white body parts by a black woman (called Dead Albino Boy for Sale from the Series Flayed Tanzanian Albinos, 2021-2022).
An early group of works titled Mammie Wadi 1979-1981 (Mother Water) refers to black people who are now in the ocean and have transformed into semi aquatic forms or goddesses. “I’m a water sign. I also have always lived near water. Many religions see underwater as where a lot of the powerful Orishas or gods are. Bones are at the bottom, people who jumped off slave ships or who were thrown off. Ships that went down, planes that drop.”
Look closely at the dresses and many necklaces throughout the exhibition that contain small souvenirs from other cultures, reflecting Scott’s own life experiences.
Each gallery has a theme,
For example there is the Black Nanny series,
The Racist Stereotypes,
Messing with Stereotypes, (in collaboration in one work Donald Byrd of Spectrum Dance ).
Mammy/Penis From the series Still Funny,
2011
Her fearless confrontation with stereotypes like the hypermasculinity of black men is seen in her works like Cuddly Black Dick from 1995-7
In the same section she sends up Aunt Jemima, watermelons and most shockingly, Baby Bait a pair of earrings that refer to a practice celebrated by Southern racists, to feed black baby children to alligators.
On a more cheerful note her delightful Thunder Thigh Review, 1975-1990, flows with her sense of humor and irony. The theme of celebrating the magnificent posteriors of black woman in contrast to the skinny white body was hugely entertaining as well as sending up traditional concepts of beauty.
Scott’s frequently intersects with African sculpture as in Birth of Mammi (Anansi), in which the artist has added complex bead work to an African carving to suggest the birth of Anansi, a spider who is a mythical African trickster.
Note this installation carefully
Lynched Tree, 2011/2024
We see an upside down white person made of beads.
Second image shows rubbish pouring from inside her
Third image is her lower half
Final image is the rest
According to the artist:
A pale-pink beaded figure hangs by her feet, her body open on the ground below. An accumulation of broken glass and discarded things, her insides pour forth from her abdomen and chest cavity. She personifies for Scott “the immature feelings we have as a young, slowly evolving species. The work addresses what we refuse to embrace because, if we accept the truth, then we must change or be proven wrong.”
Other section titles are Making A Way When there is no Way, (sexual and physical violence)
and Ancestor and Progeny.
the figure on the left has procelain 18th century dolls’ arms and legs, on the right are African sculpture on a white figure
In the beginnintg of the exhibition are a series of works incorporating African sculptures. to the right is trickster savior of African Albinos, and to the right SHHH,
At the end of the exhibition with “Turning the Tables”, we are given an opportunity to join in communal weaving, the yarn is supplied as is the frame. It returns to the theme at the beginning of the exhibition, of her powerful intergenerational experience and inspiration, only now we are also part of it as well:
As Joyce Scott put it at the end of the show: “I am a sharer. I don’t sit on my knowledge. When I go over, I want to leave a cadre of people who are like, “That Joyce” taught me this stitch. Watch me write a whole new book with that stitch. That is a kind of legacy.”
What a treat to talk with Patti Warashina, the legendary Seattle-based ceramic sculptor. Warashina has been creating wildly original artworks for decades. Based on her own invented figural form, a detailed face, hands and feet , uninhibited by anatomy, they perform incredible acrobatic feats. She wants her figures to represent humanity in general rather than a specific person.
The big exception to that point of view is her 1986 Procession the Seattle Art Scene with 72 artists, driving and dancing over a Ming style semicircular bridge. Warashina took multiple polaroids of each person and then created recognizable faces. Not only that the figures also have props, such as a real pencil or brush (perhaps scaled down for the sculpture). Procession celebrates the artists and the lively art scene.
Warashina first emerged as part of an informal group of ceramic artists in the Northwest who were moving beyond the vessel tradition in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The “ Poke in the Eye” exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum is a refreshing look at this quirky art of the Northwest and California that continued into the 1980s. These artists rejected both the abstract expressionist obsession with inner drives as well as the slick surfaces of New York Pop. Peter Voulkos pioneered clay as sculpture with huge slabs that he pierced in various ways. Artists such as Robert Arneson and Howard Kottner created ceramic sculpture filled with humor, irony and even cynicism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Patti Warashina’s works in the show like Airstream Turkey are classic examples of funk art.
At the time she went to undergrad and grad school in the early 60s, there was a turn away from figure drawing and sculpture, as a rejection of classical approaches. But as an undergraduate she took one drawing course as an elective ( her parents wanted her to be a dental hygienist), and was hooked on art. Then she happened to see people making hand built clay pots with slabs of clay, So she turned to clay, first punching, and coiling, then using the wheel and painting and drawing on the pots.
When she was hired to teach at UW in 1973, her colleague Harold Kottler was already working with a funk attitude and she joined him. Thus from accidentally moving toward clay, she became part of pioneering changes to clay tradition. But as she was immersed in a male dominated scene, she decided to branch out into her own sense of humor and aesthetic
One of my favorite themes from this era is the Kiln Series. It was inspired, the artist explained, by the constant kiln talk among “the guys” including a cart loading technique for the kiln. Warashina’s wonderful take on the idea, turning the cart into an actual model of a car: as it drives into the kiln it becomes a brick car. Warashina made a series of kiln sculptures between 68 and 72, then car sculptures starting in 79 that continued into the late 80s.
Cats became another theme of her work, based on a Japanese cat (nekko.) She was asked to do one and then she made a whole series starting in 2013. These were seen in a major exhibition at the Bellevue Art Museum.
As she explained, there is a lot of serendipity as she changed from one theme to another, pyramids, cats, cups. Her role as a foundational part of the funk movement in the NW ceramics world is only part of her story. Her work has many layers: sophisticated firing techniques, drawing, subtle statements on the state of the world, as well as absurdity.
Many of them present us with empowered women.
Patti Warashina’s recent exhibition, “The World Upside Down,” at the Travor Gallery, spoke to our immediate moment.
The figures escape a trouble filled globe, climbing away from it.
Just to give one example, in Double Trouble, two of her characteristic figures are back to back, the lower one on a bright red globe with indications of flames. Under that figure and the red globe is a base depicting the solar system with representations of the sun, and planets, but we also see in another strip of detailed drawing, specific references to salmon, guns, nationalism and other intense topics.
The figures themselves, partly covered in black paint to suggest a mask on the face and tight leggings, fling their arms out and pump their legs uselessly in mid air. They want to escape but seem to be only flailing. The top figure spears somewhere between joyful and anxious. She immobilizes the figure under her.
There is nothing funk about this series of works. The artist said she was storytelling, although she does not write the stories. These figures have four or five glazes fired at different temperatures. They include detailed painting and drawing. They are sophisticated examples of what ceramics can do in the hands of a master artist. They are also clearly referring to the current state of the world.
This entry was posted on November 26, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
A contribution to my blog by art historian Pamela Allara
Heidi Mielke is a visual artist who is the education manager at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg. In the” Sentinels” series of Vandyke prints on cloth, she addresses the concept of the female nude in art from a political/activist perspective. The prints are life size, all posed by the artist.
When one brings to mind the image of the female nude in Western art history, for instance from Titian to Manet, one sees a reclining figure, often on a bed, gazing alluringly out at the viewer, ready to be mounted. Although feminist artists challenged that ‘one-dimensional’ portrayal of the female nude by presenting more realistic, less idealized images from the 1970s on, often these ‘naked’ nudes remain prone or seated. I am thinking in particular of Alice Neel’s portrait nudes, including her own from 1980. Of her many nudes, only her 1934 portrait of her naked 10-year-old daughter Isabetta is standing. But there is one exception: the well-known South African artist Marlene Dumas, whose standing nudes, either in ink or oil paint, are unabashed in their nakedness—indeed they appear to celebrate it. I assume that Mielke knows the work; certainly, she appears to be building on it. Nonetheless, I did not have Dumas in mind when I saw Miele’s images in her talk. It was my own long-standing expectations of the female nude that caused me to be taken aback by Mielke’s “Sentinels Project”. The nudes are standing! In that posture they become confrontational, but what precisely may that mean?
Mielke describes the project in detail on her website, https://heidimielke.com, I will summarize some of her main points. In her prints and paintings, the artist uses her own body to perform. She present us with examples of violence against women, which, she argues, still predominatein the ‘new’ South Africa. She began the series in 2013 after learning of the violent rape and murder of a 17-year-old woman, Amene Booysen, who was disemboweled in the process. That horrific event propelled her toward an activist art.
Mielke continued the series in 2016 during the perpetrator’s trial. Her aim has in general been to provide a heightened consciousness of social justice issues in a patriarchal country that has failed to overcome the discrimination and victimization of women. After her masters exhibit in the Women’s Jail at the Constitutional Court in 2015, she began to incorporate newspaper clippings and drawings on the women’s bodies transforming them into landscapes of violence. Should such violence simply be accepted? “Over my dead body!” she exclaims in her exhibition of that title.
When displayed, the “Sentinels” must be seen one at a time as they are life-sized. All are self-portraits of the artist. The figures appear to be standing, but their feet are crossed, so they must be either hanging or lying down. The dark ground suggests to me that they are lying on a slab, but overall, their ambivalent position suggests the figures are being raised from the dead. They were murdered, but here they are given a voice. And through the objects that they carry and the words that are written across and around them, they speak.. We cannot claim to know or understand these violent acts, but with careful viewing we are forced to confront the ways in which the artist presents violence.
In response to my query, the artist replied that in some of the images, “I am holding pieces of dead livestock, such as a pig’s head, a cow’s tongue, and a bull’s heart” which create a comparison between the slaughter of livestock and that of the victims. (email, October 7, 2024). In violent death, the distinction between human and animal is in some sense obliterated. Mielke added that some objects refer to the objects used to perpetuate the murders. For example, in a case from 2013 as reported in IOL news, Duduzile Zozo, who was lesbian, had a toilet brush shoved up her vagina as a sort of corrective rape.
Surprisingly, despite the horrific circumstances of their demise, the victims, as represented by Mielke’s self-portraits, are not as disturbing as one might expect. The bodies suspended before us are upright and do not appear at all to be in pain. Instead, they are performing as sentinels, by keeping watch, impassively, calmly, and continuously. They do not permit us to forget or to turn away. In Mielke’s words, they are like superheroes that guard us from being overwhelmed and fearful of confronting violent death. Through collaborating with artists both locally and internationally, she hopes to create an army of sentinels creating awareness of gender-based violence. I look forward to seeing how this important and moving project continues.
This entry was posted on November 24, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Jaune Quick To See Smith (center)and her Son Neal Ambrose-Smith with Whitney Curator Laura Phipps at “Memory Map,” exhibition in Seattle Art Museum, in front of Gifts for Trading Lands With White People
Jo Harjo reading her poem “Running” from her book An American Sunrise
During one amazing week in March in Seattle Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) and Joy Harjo ( Mvskoke Nation) were both in Seattle. Jaune was here to open her one person exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum and Joy Harjo did a reading at our local “Town Hall” a cultural center.
Above you see Jaune and her son Neil with whom she collaborates, at the opening ,in front of Gifts for Trading Land with White People
Joy did a poetry reading and presentation, I only took a video of her. which I have’t figured out how to post it.
The correspondence between the two artists is extraordinary. Jaune is 11 years older, but they speak in the same voice, one in poetry, the other in painting. of the oppressions of colonialism. Jaune is also poetic and Harjo painterly ( she started as a painter)
Neither of them were subjected to the boarding school experience, one because her father was a horse trader who moved from place to place, the other because she was school age when this was not an automatic policy of the US government. But both knew people who were. It began in 1869 and continued to the 1960s. Joy’s autobiography CrazyBrave tells us of her deeply painful childhood and teen years.
Jaune helped develop the Institute of American Indian Arts which has been instrumental in the flowering of contemporary Native artists.
Joy attended that school as a student and it was there she decided to switch from painting to poetry.
Both speak of the native experience. In Joy’s case she is the great great granddaughter of a famous warrior Monahwee, who resisted Andrew Jackson’s removal order in the 1830s. In Jaune’s case her experience of moving consantly and living with different Native groups gave her an unusual education into shared Native experiences .
Joy’s poetry emphasizes the experience of removal as a point of departure. She provides a map of her own people’ s ( the Muscogee Creek removal from Alabama to Oklahoma) she points out
” There were many trails of tears of tribal nations all over North America of indigenous people who were forcibly removed from their homelands by government forces. The indigenous peoples who are making their way up from the Southern Hemisphere are a continuation of the Trail of Tears.” ( emphasis added)
As we listened to her presentation and then her poetry we heard her compelling voice speak of the native perspective on the earth as part of us, not as a source of money. “Respect the giving and give back, do not be complacent, stories tap on our shoulders, .. every one has a story.. one person may be many generations. Stories have layers, you get there by listening, take time.”
Meanwhile Jaune spoke in her exhibition of her art as a type of trade
she emphasizes trade canoes, with eight all together in the exhibition, each with a different theme. But just outside the exhibition was a drawing of coyote, the trickster creator, as a prelude to all that comes after. Placing him at the beginning suggests that the artist also sees herself as a trickster.
The first work we see inside the exhibition is 40,000 years of American painting that reminds us how short is the time of colonialism, the English language in North Americam as well as the art conventions brought in from Europe and called American after a Spanish explorer.
The stupendous paintings layer many realities. In addition to canoes, her major framing images are maps, clothing, horses, buffaloes, animals and figures.
But in each case the image is filled with many references to myths and history: Who Leads Who Follows for example has the overall motif of a traditional dress, marching around the entire edge of the dress are stick figures,On the chest area is a raven/human and not far away is a buffalo. two outlined hands fold across the abdomen. Many signfiers , and what does it say?
We can read fragmentation and survival.
The theme of the Native American survival in spite of so many efforts to obliterate them is at the core of both Harjo’s poetry and Jaune’s painting,.
To elaborate on Jaune’s exhibition:
Trade canoes are a major theme. In this exhibition we have eight, two actually built of pinewood lath with her son Neal Ambrose-Smith. On one we see a carved white buffalo. The white buffalo has great significance to Lakota and Plains Indians. On June 4, 2024, a white buffalo calf was born in Yellowstone National Park Lakota Sioux chief Arvol Looking Horse said in an interview “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,”
As an object in itself a canoe can simply refer to a means of transportation and community connection. The cultural significance and challenges of canoe journeys are now familiar to us. Revived in 1989, this year hundreds of canoes from all over the Northwest came to Alki Beach where the Denny party landed in 1851 greeted by Chief Seattle.
The artist states:
“Remember when the trade canoes came up river, they would be piled with bags of moldy flour, wormy beef, whiskey laced with lead and blankets smeared with smallpox” (p. 21 Memory Map, interview with Lowery Stokes Sims
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith began depicting canoes at the time of the 1992 celebration of Columbus’ arrival in 1492. Needless to say, the arrival of Columbus was no cause for celebration among Indigenous peoples. So this first canoe called Trade Gifts for Trading Lands with White People is full of amusing details, such as the “gifts” strung across the top of the painting are Indian themed kitsch. The canoe is empty unlike her subsequent canoes.
The trade canoes in the exhibition are full to capacity with people, animals, trees, and imaginary creatures. They are often surrounded by a sea of collage that speaks to the abuses and contradictions of native life. But one of Smith’s amazing talents is taking the dreadful and making it amusing even as we don’t lose sight of the horrors. I think this is called Indian humor.
Tongass Trade Canoe 1996, a blockbuster painting, refers to the attempt to bring oil drilling to the fragile Tongass National Forest, the calving land of the Caribou, whom we see galloping across the top of the painting. Above are real laundry baskets suggesting a commodity that comes from oil drilling. The Tongass, after a decade of fighting, was finally protected in 2023 from development (we hope).
Smith’s takes on famous white artists and, in my opinion, outdoes them by adding much more meaning. The maps in the exhibition were initially inspired by Jasper Johns but look where the artist goes with them.
In Homeland, the focal point of the radiating lines is Montana in the upper left where the artist was born. There is a US map underneath, but the radiating lines and colors create an entirely new dynamic. Smith dismisses the traditional lines of US maps, the states, as arbitrarily cutting across Indian lands and tribes.
Other repeated icons in her work, horses and buffalo and food and General Custer in deep trouble.
What the artist cares most about is the land and the deep connection of all Indigenous people to their land in spite of the ravages of the White greed for oil, gas, and other sources of “energy’.
In 2023 she curated a major exhibition at the National Gallery called: The Land Carries Our Ancestors, Contemporary Art by Native Americans that demonstrated that this theme pervades contemporary native art. It included fifty Native artists and essays like “Sky as Place, Land as Body, Landscape as Spiritual Compass,” by heather ahtone and “Land/Landbase/Landscape” by Smith. Creating this exhibition simultaneously with her own retrospective speaks to her deep connection to her community.
“Memory Map” is an outstanding exhibition by one of the most creative thinkers working today.
Jo Harjo’s poetry gives us a day to day reminder of her brilliance:
You can buy the book or listen to a poem a day. Here is a description of the book.”A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land.”
What’s so wonderful is that her poetry is so understandable. And Jaune’s painting is accessible to all of us.
This entry was posted on August 7, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Pamela Allara is an art historian and critic who lives in Boston.
Salvador Dali, Disruption and Devotion
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
July 6-December 1, 2024
If someone had told me in the 1970s that someday that I would write that Salvador Dali is not only an outstanding painter but occasionally even profound, I would have laughed in your face. That self-promoter? Interested only in how much he could earn from paintings of his that were sold? I argued then that his paintings are superficial and he is the least important member of the Surrealist movement, wondering if he should be included at all. After all, he was characterized as a showman and cast out of the Surrealist movement by Andre Breton in 1939. Never chastened, he declared “I believe I am the savior of modern art,” in 1963, a date when one might argue that modernism was already at its end. In 1971 Dali showed up for an interview on the Dick Cavett show with an anteater on a leash. He remained a showman until his death in 1989.Yet, the work remains well worth viewing. I have revised my long-held negative assessment of this artist.
Dalí: Disruption and Devotion
Dalí: Disruption and Devotion
“Salvador Dali, Disruption and Devotion” at the MFA Boston charts the seemingly contradictory paths of his career, from an artist calling for overturning the status quo in art to creating devotional panels testifying to his Catholic faith. Curated by Frederick Ilchman, Chair of European Paintings at the museum, it consists of 30 paintings from the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
To repeat, despite Dali’s bombast, the exhibit contains excellent work that revives his artistic reputation. In 1949, he met with Pope Pius XII, and renewed his interest in the Catholic faith, and in 1951 traveled across the U.S. lecturing on nuclear mysticism, whatever that may mean.
The Ecumenical Council
The largest painting in the current exhibition is “The Ecumenical Council,” from 1960, which includes a naked God, a ‘nuclear’ Virgin Mary, and wife Gala leading the viewer into this strange paradise. Dali is in the left-hand corner recording the whole scene of course. It is the worst painting in the otherwise excellent exhibition. Judge for yourself, it can also be found on the MFA’s website Of course, it earned the most selfies.
fig 1The Disintegration of the Persistance of Memory
But the smaller paintings can truly disrupt and disturb. The exhibit begins with “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,” from 1952-4, fig. 1. (His most famous painting, MoMA’s “The Persistence of Memory” is not included in the exhibit). Here is the familiar vast landscape and the melting watches from the original, but it is a more mechanized landscape, with what look like missiles shooting toward the horizon. This work is less about memory than a contemporary apocalypse.
fig 2 Eggs on the Plate Without the Plate
In “Eggs on the Plate Without the Plate,” fig. 2, the egg becomes a hanging figure, at once pitiful and ridiculous, and finally hanging in one’s mind as an image of contemporary violence and crime.
How these paintings work with the larger theme escapes me. The exhibit’s aim is to show how he engaged with the past, and throughout the installation individual works are paired with old masters. There is justification for this approach. In 1919 Dali wrote essays on Durer, Michelangelo and others and urged artists to “Begin by drawing and painting like the old masters.” (An early self-portrait from 1918 was painted in a Fauvist style, although the Fauves were hardly old masters at that point).
A pairing of a bust of a woman seen from the back paired with a Velasquez self-portrait only makes clear that very few artists can stand up to Velasquez. Still, technically, Dali does have incredible skill, which does indicate he tutored himself in that way.
Dalí: Disruption and Devotion
However, perhaps due to lack of patience, I could not see how many of the older works chimed with Dali’s.
One of the few exceptions was an amazing anonymous engraving, “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” f from 1556, with a severed head topped by a gutted fish, and with a diminutive St. Anthony cowering and praying in the corner. It was truly Surreal! In addition, the “Seven Deadly Sins” mid-16th century portfolio of engravings by Pieter van der Hayden was certainly Surrealist before the fact.
fig 3 Morphological Echo
Again, one major take-away for me was the impressive level of Dali’s technical skill that made mundane seeming paintings memorable. In “Morphological Echo,” from 1936, tiny images of highly detailed landscapes and sculptures float up from a table—a still life that is not still at all. A small painting of a piano on a beach from 1934 looks almost silly, again until viewed closely and in conjunction with its bizarre title, “Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano.”
Dali claimed early on that “The world needs more fantasy.” In the age of the internet, that fantasy has often become misinformation and we hardly need more of it. But the imagination to re-think and re-see? That Dali can offer us.
List of Figures—all images by Dali unless otherwise noted
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,1952-54
Oil on canvas
* Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse
* Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“I am for an art that kicks my soul in the ass. And if we do not have souls, I am for an art that makes me feel like I have a soul, and that it has just been kicked in the ass.”
John Feodorov is always provocative and outspoken on the subject of racism and colonialism, but he mixes it with humor to lighten the blow. He has also used animals frequently as a stand in for white people’s differences from Native beliefs. We make toys of them, while Native people see them as spiritual, creative and embedded in life.
His recent exhibition at 4 Culture “Assimilations” explores the idea of his own mixed background, which he has done indirectly before in other work, but now he foregrounds himself and his family. His mother, a Navajo (Diné) converted to Jehovah’s Witness. “Assimilations” ( I feel there should be double quotes there, as title of show and the fact that he is showing its complexities). He is saying that assimilation
” forces an inherent contradiction within the colonized. Not unlike what Franz Fanon wrote about in Black Skin, White Masks. At least that has been my experience. Some embrace assimilation, while others, like me, cannot make our peace with it. It’s always about not being enough. In my case, not Navajo enough, and certainly not white enough.”
He calls himself a suburban Indian. Buried within his paintings are photographs of boring suburbs in Whittier, California where he grew up. He had two types of contact with Native culture, going back to see his grandparents on the reservation, and the kitsch Indian depictions that American culture spews out as comics, tv shows, movies and documents. In addition to these references, he buries in his paintings, pages from a bible given to him by his mother, the Jehovah’s Witness as well as a Pentecostal hymnals that his mother gave him.
John gave up on organized religion in his twenties, but now he feels that the colonizing of religion still exists inside him. He sees himself as a hybrid.
The paintings are actually a dramatic departure for him, featuring large blocks of bright color that make it hard to see the photographs and other images hat he has pasted on the painting. He told me he had recently become interested in De Kooning, who, of course, is part of the colonization of white culture, the great Abstract Expressionists in the 1950s.
But his interest is obviously about the juicy color that swirls around De Kooning’s subjects, almost absorbing them. I can also think of Hans Hofmann with his big blocks of color, but in Hofmann’s case there is rarely any figurative reference. He told me he also looks at Mondrian, Guston, Jaune Quick to See Smith, and Rick Bartow.
Feodorov was moving in the direction of abstraction in the Desecration series, that addressed uranium mining, oil pipelines and coal fracking on Native land. Yellow becomes uranium.
But in “Assimilations” Feodorov’s main point, as it emerges in the color fields, is his own feeling that the Diné beliefs and the white American perceptions of Indians both still exist inside him.
So as we look closely as this dense colorful paintings, we see strange Indian caricatures, “dictionaries” of Indian languages,; a photograph of his mother wearing a Navajo blanket and what appears to be a kitsch headdress, his elementary school class where he is caricatured with a big “Indian” head and much more. The fact that he has closed off the depth with the color squares, is a metaphor for closing off these elements he carries inside himself.
He alternates these paintings with prints based on photographs that juxtapose stills from Wild West movies of cowboys and members of his family on horses in a series called Ambivalence.
This exhibition includes a work that links to his earlier, more figurative approach My life as a Suburban Ind’n
We see the actual reference points of his early years, especially tv shows and movies caricaturing Indians. The traditional pot with a lace doily on top of the tv epitomizes the contradictions.
The rest of the Assimilations follow the format of large squares of color with racist images just visible. The domination of the color squares over these small Indian caricatures and oddball references speaks to the difficulty of escaping white culture and its caricatures.
John and Nicole Feodorov in front of his large triptych Memories of a Suburban Ind’n no 1. John Feodorov always seems to be smiling at a private joke, in his art and in his natural disposition, but the joke is actually a very serious awareness on his part that he is never going to escape the colonization of his culture or his own complex position within two cultures. .
This entry was posted on June 12, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
Raven, the creator in the Tlingit mythology, rescued humans from darkness by stealing the sun.
“He was a white bird and the world was in Darkness. Raven decides he will try and do something about the darkness, for himself and for the world. As he follows the Nass River, he encounters the Fishermen of the Nights … They tell Yeil ( as Raven was then called) that Nass Shaak Arankaawu ( the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) has many treasures in his Naa Kanidi ( Clan House)including beautifully carved boxes that house the light,” So Raven having disguised himself as a seed swallowed by a princess who gave birth to a human baby, enchanted her grandfather and then took the stars, and moon out of their boxes and liberated them. He transformed back into a Raven and flew away to liberate the sun ( see my blog post about Preston’s show in Tacoma on this story)
Preston Singletary wondered what Raven has been doing since mythic times, so in his new series of glass works he brings Raven back, he wakes him up to our disastrous world. This exhibition (which unfortunately closed on June 1 but there is a free catalog) includes Raven responding to the damaged world, as well as new stories “New Takes on Traditional Stories” written by collaborator Garth Stein. His texts are written on the wall above the Raven sculptures tell of the challenges Raven faces as he emerges in the world of today.
“I Dream Therefore I am Raven”
Most of the exhibition is contained in the smaller room at Trevor Gallery, a low lighted space with a large photo of the forest at one end. Interspersed throughout the room are the new Raven sculptures: it feels like we are walking into the forest with Raven all around us joining him in his challenges.
Just outside the entrance is a green blue glass piece Raven’s Dream. Raven dreams of the World Before with clear skies, clean water, uncorrupted animals, “magnificent salmon, bellies ripe to bursting with roe hurling themselves up river to spawn. …Before the world turned on itself with contempt and tore itself apart.” The blue glass raven, as all the ravens in the exhibition, is created by first blowing the glass in a kiln, letting it cool, then carving (sandblasting) the designs that he wants. His images are based on traditional Tlingit form lines, but they are directly related to the stories of Raven’s adventures.
To the right of the entrance is “Blue Light Spirit Mobile” suggesting blue spiritual light floating in the air. Nearby is “Communicating with the Spirits” two children riding on a composite bird/animal that is a shaman’s stick. These works set the stage for our entrance into Raven’s experiences.
In the narrow entrance signs say “Have you fed the Raven today” and “Please Feed the Raven.” In the stories Raven is constantly in pursuit of food, as he realizes how degraded the salmon and berries he is given have become.
Just as he is waking up from the lush unspoiled world, he sees skyscrapers, but only for the blink of an eye. A large photograph of the forest at the end of the room briefly transforms into a scene of tall skyscrapers , then returns to the forest.
Near the entrance we see two white Ravens, one atop a globe and one on a stick. Raven was originally white, but when he stole and released the stars, moon and sun, the Chief was so angry that he threw ashes at him and turned him black. But after sleeping for such a long time Raven grew new feathers and turned white again. As he arrives among people all glittering and white, they stare at him, so he decides to rub himself with ashes and turn black again so no one will notice him.
Preston: “In my interpretation of what is happening now I want to believe that Raven is battling climate change, protecting the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, or helping discover the Boarding School grave sites.”
His first stop is for food, and although he is welcomed, the food he is given does not satisfy him at all, so he seeks the salmon in the river.
The Salmon King sculpture is orange glass as befits a salmon, and he advises Raven on how to bring the salmon to him by expressing gratitude.
The blue glass “Yeti” box called Weird Adventure. Yeti refers to a type of fancy contemporary cooler. The pattern on the box is based on those of traditional bentwood boxes.
Raven opens the box and finds it empty so he crawls in and closes it, then is swept out to sea. He does battle with evil spirits, then through his magical talents creates a way out.
Raven through a hole in the ocean represents his escape as he emerges.
Raven cries to purify the water and to melt the frozen river to liberate the fish there.
Raven visits the grave sites of the children who have died at boarding school; he comforts them with a fog hat which he has taken from a Petrel by trickery.
Raven Protects the Children with faces of children between his wings is one of the most touching in the exhibition. It underscores the extent to which Singletary transforms the traditional vocabulary of Haida sculpture while still staying true to its aesthetic.
The final event is Wolf sitting on a Rock “observant, cunning, ruthless, merciful, the spirit he would need to lead People into the Future World.”
It is hard to overstate how creative this collaboration is between Stein and Singletary. The sculptures each convey the poignancy of the stories. They are all subtly colored, red, yellow, blue and created with blown and sand carved glass compressed within a larger shape and the form lines of traditional Tlingit sculpture.
Stein’s stories seamlessly bring together the mythic and the contemporary in narratives that both tell us of the degraded state of the world, and the possibilities for healing it.
Yet we see how much must be done. That is why Raven in the end dons a warrior hat
and seeks the help of other animals and birds in his quest.
These hypnotic stories and sculptures give us a deep sense of the quest we must all pursue.
This entry was posted on June 8, 2024 and is filed under Uncategorized.
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