Retrospective
Exhibit of Rick Bartow art at IAIA
The art of Rick Bartow reconciles a multiplicity of selves: Native American, European American, veteran, musician, recovering alcoholic, husband and father.
One-third of the contemporary Native American art trailblazing triad that also included Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon, the Pacific Northwest painter died in April. The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts is offering “Rick Bartow: Things You Know But Cannot Explain, A Retrospective Exhibition,” with more than 120 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints spanning 40 years. The show is a traveling exhibition organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon.
Born in Oregon, Bartow was a member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot Indians in California. His father’s family was of Wiyot heritage; his mother was non-Indian. He graduated with a degree in art education, then shipped out to Vietnam in 1969. He served as a teletype operator and musician serenading military hospital patients. Although he was awarded the Bronze Star, he carried guilt about surviving when so many others emerged disfigured, dismembered or dead.
As Bartow struggled to return to some semblance of normalcy, art became his therapy, Institute of American Indian Arts curator Manuela Well-Off-Man said.
Often infused with rabid brushstrokes and relentless energy, his paintings and sculptures capture transformations of humans into animals dancing with drama, joy and wit. Bartow traveled extensively, specifically to New Zealand and Japan, incorporating Maori influences and working with a master Japanese printmaker. The distorted raw ambiguity of some of his portraits cross the sensibility of the British figurative painter Francis Bacon with Scholder’s explosive
brushwork.
“Self-portraiture is one of the key themes he explored throughout his career,” Well-Off-Man said.
The pastel and colored pencil work of his“CS Indian” (2014) mirrors his Vietnam experience in its grotesque features, multiple eyes and text.
Bears, crows and deer emerge in his mythologies and artwork. The transformation of humans into animals unfolds, blurring the lines between both. Coyotes and ravens become tricksters. The tale of the bear lover, in which a woman takes a bear as her partner and ultimately turns into the animal, recurs, as bears represent healing medicine. The bear also acts as a role model by raising its cubs.
“I’m just an artist that thinks that people and animals share the same bed,” Bartow said in an interview. “If the bed isn’t comfortable for (the animals), it’s not going to be comfortable for us for long.”
“Deer Spirit for Frank LaPena” (1999) reveals his reverence for transformation and honors another visionary Native American artist.
“He expresses how the natural world and spiritual world connect and balance one another,” Well-Off-Man said. “He explores the profound relationship between the human and animal realm.”
Splashes of bold color permeate his works, as do stretches of white canvas.
“There are so many areas he left blank,” Well-Off-Man said. “His use of white space is absolutely stunning. It’s part of the dramatic composition.”
Bartow’s work hangs in more than 60 public institutions, including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. In 2012, he created “We Were Always Here,” a monumental pair of cedar sculptures 20 feet high, commissioned by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and installed on the National Mall. Until his death, Bartow sang and played lead guitar with The Backseat Drivers every week in Newport, Ore.