Indigenous artists shine at AMFA REVIEW/OPINION
Innovative art on display in ‘Action/Abstraction Redefined’
So this is what happens when a group of creative, fearless Native American artists absorb modern-art movements like abstract expressionism, color field and hard-edge painting.
We are talking, of course, about “Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s to 1970s,” the engrossing, revelatory new exhibit at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts that will be up through May 26. The traveling show is made up of 52 works by 36 artists and is drawn from the collection of the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.
Founded as a high school in 1962, the institute embraced a revolutionary approach to art education, encouraging students to experiment and take artistic risks. The artists included in “Action/Abstraction Redefined” — Harvey Herman, George Morrison, T.C. (Tommy Wayne) Cannon, Earl Eder, Larry Littlebird and Linda Lomahaftewa among them — challenged what was expected of Native American artists and took inspiration from midcentury modern art pioneers like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, combining these influences with their own cultural heritage and experiences.
Yanktonai Lakota artist Oscar Howe is quoted from 1958 in text accompanying the exhibit:
“Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? Are we to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child and only the White Man know what is best for him … but one could easily turn to become a social protest painter. I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains.”
Displayed in the Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries, the exhibit is largely made up of paintings along with several interesting pieces of sculpture, stoneware, pottery and woodblock prints. A piece by Eder, a member of the American Indian in
stitute’s inaugural graduating class, is one of the first to greet viewers. “Forms in Beadwork,” made up of yellow ochres, umbers and black and white oil paint applied with a pallet knife, is a captivating piece of abstraction that looks like a landscape of sorts viewed from above. Eder has said it was one of the first times he used a palette knife, and his thick marks are applied with confidence and freedom.
Speaking of which — and jumping ahead in the exhibit’s layout — two works by Morrison, an Ojibwe artist who died at age 80 in 2000, are sumptuous examples of painting. “White Environ VI” and “White Painting No. 1” are created with thickly impastoed oil paint piled onto the canvas like cake frosting. Both are best viewed close up (just not too close. I was leaning in for a better view of the tasty swirls of color when a museum worker firmly requested that I remain at least 2 feet from the paintings). I saw a photo of “White Environ VI” when working on a preview of the show and it didn’t make much of an impression with its pale color, but looking at its textured strokes and subtle, cubist grid in person is a joy.
Texture also plays a role in “Life Within,” an energetic oil on canvas by Phyllis Fife, who uses abstraction to depict the natural world.
Cannon attended the institute in the mid-’60s and his pop-art portraits would inspire his teacher, Fritz Scholder. The two exhibited together, and both are represented here. Cannon’s early painting, “Firelights,” is about as close to a figurative image as these abstract paintings get. Made of oranges and blacks, the work has a timeless, hypnotic feel; it’s as if ancient figures are lost in themselves as they dance around a fire. The haunting, black and white “Trail of Tears,” also by Cannon, who was just 31 when he died in 1978, is like trying to glimpse daylight through a tangle of thick branches and vines.
Scholder’s color field-inspired “New Mexico #40” is made up of stacked bands of warm colors and blue that create an unforgiving yet beautiful landscape.
Neil Parsons was another institute teacher and painter. His acrylic on canvas “Pueblo Forms #1” and “Pueblo Forms #2,” feature hard, straight edges and blocks of colors. This rigidity is brilliantly offset by a small dab of loosely applied paint that adds another element to the works. And his palette is sublime; he combines areas of tan and black in “#1” with thin lines of rust, teal and blue. In “#2” he again uses a large black space with cooler greens and blues with a curious, perfectly placed spot of yellow.
There are several excellent works on paper including “Beast Series,” a dynamic watercolor by George Burdeau, Kevin Red Star’s gestural oil and turpentine “Drawing,” and “Untitled (Abstract Print),” a small, intriguing woodcut by Edna Massey.
There is plenty more, of course, and no real missteps in the entire exhibit, which opens a whole new world for the viewer interested in the expanse of the American abstract movement and its fruitful impact on Native American art.