 Not too long ago I stumbled into the National Museum of the American Indian to escape the blustery rain pelting me on my ramble through Battery Park. I knew it was warm inside. As it turned out there were few people in the museum’s halls. I like it like that; it makes for contemplative viewing. First I wandered through the “Identity by Design: Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses” exhibition that is on view until September 2009. I was struck by the somber chipperness of the exhibition. The curator didn’t mess around with this one, and neither did the ladies who took part in assembling the different dresses and regalia created for the museum.
I hate to use the word ‘stoic’ but it was to the degree required for display of ceremonial regalia. Pride of tribe, and pride in being an Indian woman in the 21st Century who knows her way around a bugle bead, was also evident.
In direct opposition to this overt display of Indigenous pride was the Fritz Scholder exhibition located on the other side of the gallery. Scholder was a classically trained abstract expressionist painter before he ever painted an Indian for which he is most (in) famous. He is an enrolled member of the Luiseno Tribe of California Mission Indians, but has claimed to not be an Indian specifically because he is only one quarter on his father’s side making him more White than not. On the other hand, he claimed to be proud of his Indian heritage. He claimed to be a “non Indian Indian.”
He also claimed he would never teach for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as his father had before him, but when invited to teach painting at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe (funded by the BIA) he leapt at the opportunity. There he would “borrow” from his Indian students co-opting their subject matter transforming him from ‘abstract expressionist’ to ‘figurative abstractionist.’ By putting “The Indian” of the Southwest (and sometimes Plains) front and center he would go on to fame and riches complaining about pigeonholes on the way to the bank. The man was the living embodiment of his favorite word “paradox” of which one can be sure was lived so by design. The man knew how to get his hustle on, and hustle Whitey (his main patrons) he did. On the other hand, he died in relative obscurity making it plain that he might have, in the end, hustled only himself.
Incidentally, Scholder has been credited with "redefining Native American Art." But that's a misleading presumption considering it has yet to be defined. And if it has been defined I'm certain it wasn't an Indian who had the distinction of doing so. Certainly, it wasn't Scholder because he's not an Indian. On the other hand, there is little doubt he was a painter of remarkable skill. And, though he borrowed the "Indian" as subject it was in his hands that "The Indian" in modern painting took shape. Ironically, the more he painted the Indian the more he was forced to assume the identity of "Indian artist." A fate he found, ultimately, inescapable for, unlike so many of his Indian contemporaries today, Scholder hated that label. The question is why? To offer insight I turned to the co-curator of the dual exhibitions Paul Chaat Smith. He was able to shed light on an otherwise myopic career. And maybe, just maybe, he may provide the definitive definition of Native American Art!
[Listen to the interview to find out.]
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Images courtesy: Smithsonian’s’ National Museum of the American Indian. To view both exhibitions and purchase the companion catalog go to: http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/scholder/index.html.
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