© 2008 National Museum of the American Ind ian, Smithsonian Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922190 Institution. Compilation © 2008 NMAI, Sm ithsonian Institution. ISBN 978-3-7913-5111-7 (trade hardcover) © 2008 Prestel Verlag. All rights reserved under internationa l copy­ ISBN 978-3-7913-6340-o (museum paperback) right conventions. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, British Lib rary Cataloguing-in-Publica tion Data: a catalog including photography, recordi ng, or any information storage and for this book is ava ilab le from the British Lib rary. The Oeu ret rieval system without written permission from the publisher. Bibli othek ho lds a record of this publication in th e Deu sc albibliografie; detailed bibliographical data can be found Seco nd printing 2011 http://dnb .ddb.de.

Artworks by Fritz Scholder © Estate of Fritz Scholder The paper used in this publication meets the minimum re me n ts of the American National Standard fo r Permanenci fo r Pri nted Library Materials 239.48-1984. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian, open ing concurrently at the Smithsonian's Nationa l Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. , The National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonia and at t he George Gustav Heye Center in New York City in tion, is dedicated to working in collaboration with the ind November 2008. peoples of the Americas to foster and protect Native cultl throughout the Western Hemi sphere. The museum's pub gram seeks to augment awareness of Native American be Nat ional Museum of the American Indian lifeways and to educate the public about the history and Project Director: Terence Winch, Head of Publications of Native cu ltures. Editor: Elizabeth Kennedy Gische Designer: Steve Bell For inform ation about the National Museum of the meri please visit the NMAI website at www.Americanlnd,a .! Co lor sepa rations by Robe rt J. Hennessey Photography become a member, please visit www.Americanlndian.s·, or ca ll 1-800-242-NMAI (6624). Printed by Longo AG, Balzano, Italy

Cover: Fritz Scholder, Four Indian Riders, 1967. Oi on ca Prestel, a member ofVerlagsgruppe Random House GmbH x 182.9 cm. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. William e ca•.

Prestel Verlag Back cover: Fr itz Scholder, New Mexico No. 1, 196 __ Oil Neumarkter Strasse 28, 81673 152-4 x 152.4 cm. Collection of the Esta e of fr"·z Sc o c Tel. +49 (o) 89-4136-0 Fax +49 (o) 89-4136-2335 p. 1: Fritz Scholder, Indian with Flog, 1970. cm. Collection of Romon a Scholder. Prestel Pub li shing Ltd. 4, Bloomsbury Place, WC1A 2QA p. 2: Fr itz Sch old er, American Indian, ;i. Tel. +44 (020) 7323-5004 76.2 cm. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Fax +44 (020) 7636-8004 Norman. Purchase, Richard H. ana 1996, 1996.017.132. Prestel Publishing 900 Broadway, Suite 603 New York, NY 10003 Tel. +1 (212) 995-2720 Fax +1 (212) 995-2733 p. 4: Fritz Scholder, SelfPortra ·t • 2-. ! www.prestel.com 40.6 x 40 .6 cm. Collection of e E:s•a•e Scholder's Figurati

LOWERY STOKES SI MS

Fritz Scheider once observed, "Artistic freedom is color­ blind." 1 He would discover that the world was not. Given the political and social context in which he emerged in the at mid twentieth century, he, his art, and his career would be inevitably defined by his Native American heritage.

This was the consequence of how the art world came to grapple with iss ues of diversity, inclusion, and identity as black and Native Americans and Latinos in particular esca­ lated their demands fo r social, economic, poli tical, and cultural enfranchisement. In the process, the long-standing dominance of exclusively Eurocentric va lues in the visual arts wou Id be chall enged and the character of the postmodern landscape in the art world as of the 1980s would be determined. Scholder considered himself to be at once Indian and not Indian. As Paul Chaat Smith noted, he recognized the paradoxical aspects of his life. 2 But how did his work demonstrate that paradox? It was demonstrated by the fact he was as adept in creat- ing an abstracted landscape as he was in painting an image of a Native American; in rendering a flora l still life or a fe male fig ure charged with erotic or occult energy as in capturing the psychological condition of Native Americans. It is also demonstrated by the fact that even after he professionall y acknowledged his Native heritage, he would continue to emphasize his German heritage and somewhat disingenuously declare that he was not Indian. Scholder continually thrust the "paradox" of hi s life situation into the critique of his work by the art world. By differentiating between his heritage and his experi ence/upbringing, he referenced the ubiquitous conundrum of "nature versus nurture." Does one's environment or one's biology determine the d irection and condi­ tion of one's li fe? The particul ar character of Scholder's work reflected the fact that he belonged to a generation of American artists who bridged the abstract expressionist movement of the 1950s and the pop art/minimali st/color field movements of the 1960s. Painterly fi gura­ tion provided a means by which they could mediate cu ltu re, identity, and art. Their work also problematized the usual presentation of modernism as a linear, cumulative (reductive) progression, and demonstrated how the canonica l story of modernism was actually a complex interaction and coincid ence of different tendencies. Two strains of that painterly figuration emerged from abstract expressionism in the United States in the mid to late 1950s and ea rly 1960s. On the East Coast, this impulse in the work of a ounger generation of artists that included Larry Rivers, Alfred Leslie, and Alex Katz pa ra lleled the anachronistic figural elements that reemerged in the early 1950s in the work of the main figures of the abs tract expressioni st movement, pat'ticularly Willem Andy Warhol (American, 1928- 1987), Dick Tracy, 1960. Casein and crayon on canvas, 121.9 x 86 cm. © 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, NY.

Larry Rive rs (American , 1923- 2002), Dutch Masters and Cigars, 1982. Lithograph, 70.2 x 100.3 cm . Collection of the Sam ue l Dorsky Museum of Art, Sta te University of New York-New Pa ltz. Gift of t he Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, 2002.031.005. Art © Estate of Larry Rivers/Licensed by VAG A, New York, NY.

I

78 LOWERY STOKES SIMS de Koon ing and Jackson Pollock. Ri vers, Leslie, and Katz coul d also find a comparable purpose in the work of Fairfield Porter and Elaine de Kooning, who had persisted in representational genres, bringing their own combination of impressionistic color and brushwork to their figuration. Scholder matured artisti call y on the West Coast in the 1950s where artists-espe- ia ll y those based in the Bay area-established an artistic direction d isti nct from that of New York City. Although Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko-key fi gures in the New York School-taught at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the California School of Fine Arts) in the 1940s, by the mid 1950s, as Peter Plagens writes, artists in the area gravitated to fi guration, "frustrated" as they were "by endless encoun­ ters with 'nothingness' and 'spontaneity'" in the abstract expressionist genre. 3 Dav id Park, Richard D iebenkorn, and Nathan Oliveira in particular would find themselves involved in how to "di scover a language that dealt with the fi gure and also recognizing the contemporary concerns about Abstract Expressionism ." 4 Tbis figural impulse­ dubbed Bay Area figuration-was characterized by the use of "direct, thick, viscous impasto swatches to bui ld ... standing and seated figures" that were "radically general­ ized" in "a few short, rough, curling ... strokes." 5 Thi s gestural and textural technique would persist even in the first intimations of pop art-as seen in Andy Warhol's early reworking and appropriation of canonical renderings of popular comic icons (such as Dick Tracy)-there is a brushy, tentative pa int surface and open-ended fig ure/back­ ground relationship. With its new subject matter that was informed by popular media and consumerist aesthetics, pop art wou ld be one of the major influences on the gen­ eration of artists and students who gathered at the Institute of American Indian Arts in the early 1960s, committed to the conceptualization of a new Indian art. It was in that context that Scholder fo und his own signature style. It is clear that Scholder's "paradoxical" life situation allowed him to start out in the art world with few if any cultural inflections placed upon his work and the perception of him as an artist. His talent, obvious from childhood, was recognized in high school as he was "voted Best Boy Artist and President of the Art Camp" 6 when he attended the Midwestern Music and Art Camp at the in 1955. At his high chool in Pierre, South Dakota, the art teacher was Yanktonai Sioux artist Oscar Howe. Scholder always identified Howe as an important ea rl y influence. After graduation from Ashland High School in (after his family had moved from Pierre), he spent his first year in college at Wisconsin State Coll ege-Superior (now University of Wisconsin-S uperior), studying with, among others, Arthur Kruk, who singled him out as an outstanding student. In 1957, Scholder moved w ith his fa mily to Sacramento, Cal­ ifornia, where he enroll ed at Sacramento City College (1957-59). One of Scholder's instructors at Sacramento Cit y College was , who would emerge as a key fi gure in West Coast fi guration. While this artist and this move­ ment have always been cited as key and formative influences on Scholder, it should be noted that Sacramento was outside the epicenter of the Bay Area fig uration move­ ment- San Francisco- and the chronology of Thiebaud's own career revea ls that he himself had only a passing acquaintance w ith the Sa n Francisco artists until well into the 1960s. But the influence of Bay Area figuration would have been pervasive, and interested artists could have kept abreast of developments in the Bay Area through exhibitions such as the 1957 exhibition organized at the Oakland Museum of Art, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, which codified this regional movement. In any case, Thiebaud's work in the 1950s did reflect the abstracted fi gura l tendencies in Cali fornian an at that time, as seen in Ribbon Store of 1957 where a window display of an accessories shop emerges from what seems to be an explosion of thickly applied, uni­ form brushstrokes of fully saturated color. 7

SCHOLDER ' S FIGURATION Wayne Th ieba ud (Amer ican, b. 1920) , Ribbon Store, 195 7. Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 78.7 cm . Th iebaud Family Collection. Art © Wayne Thi ebaud / Licen sed by VAGA , New York, NY.

Tarmo Pasto (American, 1906- 1986), Lauttasaare by Moon­ light, 195 5. Oi l on ca nvas, 55.9 x 81.3 cm. Co llect ion of the Midjo-Pa sto Gallery.

Scholder's Sacramento yea rs were particularly successful. He had hi s first one- man ex hibitions at Sacramento City Coll ege and at the . He was among the eighteen artists- including Thi ebaud, Mel Ramos, Greg Kondos and Peter Vandenberg- who inaugurated the city's first Artists' Collaborative Ga ll ery in 1958. 8 It was undoubtedly modeled on the now-legendary Hansa and Green ga ll erie in New York City that Thiebaud would have visited during his 1956-57 sabbatical year in New York. Scholder earned his Associate of Arts degree from Sacramento City College and then transferred to Sacramento State Coll ege to complete his Bachelor of Arts. There he studied with Ray mond Witt and Tarmo Pasto. 9 Scholder found in Witt another prac­ titioner of a gestural abstracted figural style, and in Tarmo Pasto, a type of fl at, fluid

Bo LOWERY STOKES SIMS approach to form rendered in colors that are reminiscent of the light and color of the Fritz Sc holde r, Land Barrie West and Southwest, alternating between the subtle and the dramatic. 10 Upon gradu­ 1960. Oil on board, 88.3 ating from college, however, Scholder fo und his own artistic statement in large-scale cm. Collection unknown_ canvases of black imagery that existed in chat liminal space between abstraction and figuration. Works from the late 1950s and ea rly '60s also show fragmented, crystalline, cubistic structures as seen in Bottles on Land (1957- 58); painterly figuration in The Meet­ ing (p. 59); and stratified, tex cu ral landscapes such as Land Barriers (above) chat exposed process in the cultivation of drips and runs of paint, and bristled, stippled dubs of pig­ ment. This genre would occupy Scholder through the early 1960s. As noted by Leslie Wasserberger, in a 1982 monograph Scholder enumerated his "favorite artists" and the aspects of their work that particularly attracted him: "Goya (the aquacints), Von Stuck (the imagery), Matisse (early works), Monet (Giverny years), Bonnard (the color), Picasso ( years), Munch (the intensity), and O'Keeffe 11 12 (the person ) ." Among the contemporary artists he mentions are Bay Area artists Di ebenkorn, Thiebaud, and Oliveira, and he singles out the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and the British painter Francis Bacon. 13 Des pite this rich menu of stylistic influ­ ences, however, it is imposs ible to ignore the societal forces that swept Scholder up into the arena of what was then known as Native American art in the 1960s, and how the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)-where Scholder joined the faculty in 1964, two years after it first opened its doors-attempted to change this art. As Richard Hill describes in his essay in this volume, official policy-whether governmental or art world- prese nted specifi c challenges to a new generation of Native Americans in the arts who were determined to forge their own paths in the world and the world of art.

SCHOLDER'S FIGURATION Fritz Scholder, Life Image , 1963. Oil on canvas, 168.9 x 212.1 cm. Collection of the Arizona State University Art Museum.Gift of Mr. Kel ley Rollings.

Fritz Scho ld er, After the Rain, 1962. Oi l on canvas, 77.5 x 52 cm. Col lection un known.

The pedagogical approach at the IAIA was as much a "cul tural experiment" as that developed in the early 1930s by Dorothy Dunn at the Painting Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School. A generic Indian style emerged from this program that featured "traditional ceremonial and community-based scenes ' of Native life, primarily rendered in tempera paint in a "fl at, decorative, linear style." 14 It reflected more an outsider's idea of what Indian painting would look like for "there was little precedent for Indian painting produced for its own sake, as a fine art, and apart from ceremonial and social purposes." 15 The groundwork in developing a modern Native American style was laid by (Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994), Oscar Howe (Ya nktonai Sioux, 1915-1983), and George Morrison (Grand Portage Band of Chippewa, 1919-2000) in the 1930s through the 1960s. Although these artists were a generation older than Scholder, they correlated, inter­ faced, and coincided with his development and career in many ways. As previou ly noted, Scholder's encounter with Howe occurred when he was a high school student in Pierre, South Dakota, in the 1950s. Howe participated in the Painting Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School and had an opportunity to go to Europe in the 1940s. By the 1950s, he had developed an abstracted style that might be characterized as "cubistic," marked by bright color, dynamic motion, and pristine line, which he described

82 LOWERY STOKES SIMS Allan Houser (Wa rm Springs Chiricahua Apache, 1914- 1994), Reverie, 1981. Bronze, 63.5 x 58.4 x 33 cm . Collection of the Nat ional Museum of the Amer ican Indian, Smithson ian Institution, 25/7238.

Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Sioux, 1915-1983), Indian Mather and Child, 1972. Case in on paper, 62.2 x 48.9 cm. Collection of the Center for Western Stud­ ies, Augustana College, Siou x Falls, So uth Dakota.

George Morrison (G rand Por­ tage Band of Chippewa, 1919- 2000), Trifarum , 1964. Oil on ca nvas, 142.2 x 179.1 cm. Col­ lection of Dr. Constantine and Aka Pereyma.

SCHOLDER'S FIGURATION 8 3 as derived from Sioux culture and philosophy. 16 Morrison settled in New York City to study and work at the Art Students League in the mid 1940 during the semin al years of abstract expressionism. By the late 1950s, he had fully developed his own abstract expres ionist style, becoming the first Native American artist to be recogni zed in that context. 17 Morrison's application of paint "directly from the tube usi ng a brush or pal­ ette knife ' was in the spontaneous method associated w ith the abstract expre sionist movement. 18 This was the very same moment that Scheider was creating his aforemen­ tioned landscape paintings in Sacramento. Scholder would encounter Allan Houser when they both served on the faculty of the IAIA. As Houser emerged from Indian boarding schools and the Santa Fe Indian School Studio in the mid 1930s he eventu­ ally found a formal vocabulary that revealed the synthes is of traditional cultures of the Americas, the Pacific, and Africa by modernist sculptors. 19 As Ri chard Hill and Leslie Wasserberger note in their essays in this volume, Houser, Scholder, and fellow facu lty members and the students who gathered at the IAIA in the early 1960s were united by the sin gular purpose to forge new forms of expression in the vis ual arts. The impetus for their efforts came out of the Southwest Indian Art Project in which Scholder had participated in 1961. This was the moment in which Scholder began the transition that took him from California to the Southwest, and to an acknowledgment of his Indian heritage. 20 After winning first prize at the Tenth Southwestern Painters Festival Show at the Tucson Art Center in 1960, he received a full scholarship to participate in the Rockefell er Foundation-sponsored Southwes t Indian Art Project at the in 1961. 21 He taught at the project the follow­ ing summer and that sa me year, 1962 moved to Tucson to study for his master's degree at the University of Arizona. After he received his degree in 1964, he was hired at the IAIA to teach "advanced painting and contemporary art history." 22 Scholder himself does not provide details about the transition in bi s work at chis time. When he arrived at the IAIA, he was still painting his abstracted landscapes such as Bands ofLand (p. 85 ) and Land Seed (1963). That work had served him well , not

Fritz Scholder on Utah mesa, ca. 1970s.

LOWERY STOKES SIMS Fritz Scholde r, The Paradox, 1961. Oil on canvas, 179.1 x 154 cm. The Museum of Fin e Arts, Houston. Gift of the Ford Foundation.

Fritz Scho lder, Bonds of land (land Bonds), 1961. Oil on canvas , 129.5 x 121.9 cm. Co l­ lection of t he Estate of Fr itz Scholder.

Fr itz Scholder, New Mexico No. 1 , 19 64. Oi l on canvas, 152-4 x 15 2.4 cm. Collection of the Estate of Fri tz Sc holder.

SC H OL DER' S FIGURATION 85 Fritz Scho lder, Super Pueblo, 1968. Acrylic on canvas, 185.4 x 210.8 cm. Collection of t he Bureau of Indian Affairs Museu m Program.

86 LOWERY STOKES SIMS Fritz Scho lder, Four Indian Riders, 1967. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 182.9 cm. Co llection of Mr. and Mrs. William Metcalf.

SCHOLDER " S FIGURAT ION 87 only garnering the prize at the aforementioned Southwestern Painters Festival Show in 1960, but al o a John H ay Whitney Opportunity Fellow hip and the Ford Foundation Purchase Prize at the Houston Museum of Fine Art in 1962. He also won first prize in national painting at the 1963 West Virginia Centennial Exhibitio11 organized by the Hun­ tington Art Museum which was juried by noted New York curator and muse um direc­ tor James Johnson Sweeney. By 1964, Scholder's landscapes become more minimal in character, featuring stripes, 23 which George Bu rdeau-one of the earl y students at the !AJA-likens to "Chi­ mayo rugs,' 24 and Robert Ewing describes as "evok[ing] the stratification of the land." Ewing continues: "The colors were vibrant, the technique innovative. Splatters of color, or of curpencine, softened the divisio ns and produced glowing passages of pure paint." 15 Scholder s transition from stripes to Indian subject matter might be glimp ed in a painting in the IAIA collection that shows "a red stripe fi ll in g two-thirds of the canvas and an eighteen-in ch Indian in the fi eld of the stripe." 26 In the meanwhile, a se ries of butterfly paintings appear circa 1966 that all ow him to mediate the relationship between the background and the foreground with fi gural elements that are indetermi­ nate and interchangeable. When Scholder fin ally painted Indian No. 1 in 1967 (pp. 36 and 43), it was a dra­ matic reversal of hi s strongly held-and vehemently asserted-conviction that Native artists should not pursue Native images in their art. Hill and Wasserberger document how the story of Scholder's transition to Indian subject matter is cast in controversy. 27 By his own admission, Scholder watched as IAIA students, in particular T. C. Cannon (Caddo/Kiowa), Bi ll Soza Warsoldier (Cahuil la/Apache), and Alfred Young Man {Cree), created inventive painted figural depictions of Native Americans. They were inspired by the information about new art movements that wa made available through the per­ sonal experience of professors such as Scheider, publication , film , telev ision, etc., and drew freely on historical photographs of Native Americans, which Hill notes were pro­ vided by the Smithsonian Institution for their reference. Given this ambiance of interchange, fermentation, and experimentation at the IAIA, it is no surprise that an innovative manner of depicting Native Americans would emerge. Andy Warhol's portraits, with their bas is in photography, in particular demon­ strated the possibi litie of a new incarnation of the historical photographs. Wasserberg­ er details the common elements in the work of Cannon, Warsoldier, Young Man, and Scholder: referencing histori cal and contemporary photographs; the use of a non-per­ spectival system; fl attened urfaces; li vely color; and the introduction of words, letter­ ing, collaged elements, and so on. Many of these elements could be seen in Scholder's landscape and butterfl y paintings, and, in the long run, it was his exceptional ski ll and experience with paint, and familiarity with the protocol and workings of the art market, that all owed him to take the Indian theme that emerged from the IAIA and crea te a body of work of great painterly interest as well as anecdotal appeal. Through the 1970s, Scholder's Native Americans are imposing presences, in direct, ye t defiant confrontations with the viewer. They stand as powerful indictments of a ravaged history, of habitual neglect by policy and exploitation that provide a strik- ing contrast with the as pirations for the art move ment that engendered their creation. Although Scholder continues to evoke his association with Wayne Thiebaud when ta lk­ ing about his art, these depictions are a far cry from Thiebaud's signature painterly pop images, although the two artists clearl y share a love of paint texture. In addition to Bacon's work (which Scholder saw during a visit to London in 1969), we can see rela­ tionships to the work of Nathan Oliveira and Edvard Munch in terms of how he defines the phys ical character of the figures by means of the application of paint on the canvas. If Bacon's brutal, blurring distortion of the phys iognomy is ca ptured in the face of

88 LOWERY STOKES SIMS Fr itz Scheider, Drunk Indian Scholder's Indian with Beer Can (pp. 31 and 46), the particular flourish of the form that Na . 2, 1972. Acrylic on canvas, simulates hair/s hadow unfurling off the fi gure of the woman in Oliveira's Seated Figure 101.6 x 76 .2 cm. Collection of with Pink Background (above right) is comparable to that emerging from the woman in the Estate of Fr itz Scheid er. Scholder's Drunk Indian No. 2 (above left) or the figure in Portrait ofa Massacred Indian (p. 91), both of 1972, or the mangled form-barely human- in Massacre at Wounded Nathan Olive ira (Ame ric an, b. Kn ee No. 1 of 1970 (p. 91). Where this flouri sh in the Oliveira recalls astral projections 1928) , Seated Figure with Pink Background, 1960. of body/soul /shadow elements, in these three paintings by Scholder it describes a literal Oi l on canvas, 208-3 x 157.5 as well as existential state of torment and death that justifi es comparisons with the Nor­ cm. Co llection of Anonymous. wegian symbolist painter Edvard Munch. And while Olive ira tends to obscure the race or skin color of the individual, Scholder provides enough of an identifying element­ whether through hairstyle, clothing, or simply the title-to decl are the fi gure's Nati ve American identity. This exploration of painterl y fi gural conventions-with psychological and emo­ tional content expressed through form and color, and technique and process-had its ori gins in various expressionist tendencies in modern art at the beginning of the twentieth century. But in the post-World War II era, those conventions refl ected a vogue fo r primitiv ism with its conventions of "exoticism," that implied "an admiration of. .. the uninhibited, dynamic and free character of non-Western cultures ." This was perceived as an antidote to "the modern [i.e., Western] world's self-control, di scipline and shame," 28 and expressions of a more psychic primitivism resounded in the post­ war landscape of Europe. In that context, Schold er's connection to the work of Baco n

90 LOWERY STOKE S SIMS 1.' I

I'•

Fr itz Scholder, Massacre at Wounded Knee No. 1, 1970. Oil on canvas, 177.8 x 147.3 cm. Collection of the Estate of Fritz Scholder. Fritz Scho lder, Portrait af a Massacred Indian , 1972. Oil on canvas, 182.9 x 132.1 cm. Collection of Dea ne and Susa n Penn .

Fritz Scholder, Dying Indian, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 68.6 x 101.6 cm. Co llection of Romona Scholder.

SCHOLOER ' S F I GURATION 91 Fritz Scholder, After the Mas­ sacre, 1972. Oil on canvas, 180.3 x 172.7 cm . Collection of Romona Scholder.

Fritz Scholder, Dead Indians in a Wagon, 1970. Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 106.7 cm. Private collection.

92 LOWERY STOKES SIMS Fritz Scholder, Indian in Car, Fr itz Scholder, Massacred 1969. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x Indian No. 4, 1979. Watercolor 101.6 cm. Collection of and oil on paper, 76.2 x 55.2 St!phane)anssen. cm. Co urtesy of the Picker Art Gallery, Colgate Uni versity, 1992.90.

,.,,· • -<

Fritz Scho lder, stu dy for Indian in Car, 19 69. Ink on paper, 24.1 x 18.4 cm. Collection of Romona Sc holder.

SCHOLDE R'S f GU'IATIO 93 brings the primitivist dialogue between the "West and the rest" full circle. He obviously recogni zed in the work of the British arti t a stylistic as well a psycho­ logical means to express not onl y i sues of identity and culture but also the psychic pai n and d isori entation of the Native American as opposed to a more polemical and dogmati c approach. That di sorientation is replete in every stroke, swirl, and accumulation of pigment on hi s canvase . Scholder and the IAIA students were not alone in their explorations of contemporary fi gural idioms in conjunction with cultural content and iss ues of iden­ tity. The African American arti ts Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) and Norman Lewis (1909-1979) also adapt­ ed the gestu ral language of abstract ex pressionism to construct compositions that incorporated hieroglyphs and sy mbolic glyphs that referenced black cultural ele­ ments. Contemporaries of Oscar Howe, Allan Houser, and George Morrison, these two artists emerged as pioneer of modernism in the African America n com­ munity and posited as unique a contribution to the character of moderni m as the Native America n artists. Woodruff's work featured elements inspi red by Egy p­ tian and ub-Sa haran African art. In one painting, those signs even became as specific as the head of the Great Sphinx (which also appears on the opening page of Scholder's website, referencing his 1974 visit to ). Lewis invented a fi gural style of glyphic element , which in the 1960s were featu red in severa l searing composi­ tions dealing with racism and the civil ri ghts move- ment. 29 The ability of these artists to modify the tropes Hale Woodruff (A meri can , of abstract expressioni m-gesture, stroke, spontaneity, process, texture-and allow 1900-1980), Africa and the fi gurati ve elements to appea r indicates the emergence of what Kobena Mercer would Bull, n.d. Oil on ca nvas, 112 .4 describe as "d iscrepant abstraction" where "difference" and "cultura l referents" modi fy x 134 cm. Co llec ti on of The the canonical nuances of modernist abstraction. 30 Stud io Muse um in Harl em . Gift of E. Th omas Williams and While Woodruff and Lewis maintained a primaril y abstract quality to their work, Audlyn Higgin s Williams, New another African American artist, Bob Thompson (1937-1966), developed a painte rly York . fi gural style through his encounter w ith the work of Jan Mul ler (1922-1958) when he visited the art colony in Province town, , in the um mer of 1959. Among Norman Lew is (A merican, the fri endships he made at this time was one with Larry Rivers, who was just begin­ 1909- 1979), America the ning to ex hibit his fi gura l work with its painterl y quali ties that ofte n fea tured witty Beautiful, 1960. Oil on canvas, and provocative reworkings of European mas terpieces. Thompson followed a similar 127 x 162.6 cm. Private trategy of appropriation, to which he marri ed personal symbols-such as the anony­ co llec tion . mous hatted man- in his compositions, where fi gures and forms were defin ed by fluid outlines and textural surfaces . His use of non-referential multicolors for hi s fi gures not only provided a means by which to approach the compos itions abstractl y-i. e., as color areas defining the whole-but also to "play on the word 'color' " while re jecting "racial coding." 31 Thompson's work, in particular, provides a comparison with w hich to con­ sider Scholder's own signature style, both in terms of technique and approach, and ex is­ tential implications, as well as reli ance on existing imagery as a source fo r hi work. Another West Coast artist, San Francisco-based Robert Colescott (b. 1925)-who fini shed graduate school and initiated his artistic career in the midst of Bay Area figura-

94 L O WERY ST O K ES SIMS tion in the 1950s-was experiencing his own cultural epiphanies in Egypt (1964- 67) and France (1967-70) as Scholder was find in g his style and su bj ect matter. Cole­ scott's work at that time showed an abstracted fi gura­ tion rendered in increasingly bright colors. By the 1970s the shapes coalesced into more recogni zable forms as seen in Havana Corona (below ri ght). Colescott would progress through the 1970s into a tighter style that refer­ enced counterculture comic art (especially strong in Sa n 32 Francisco where he was working ) and popular culture and media as he engaged ethnic, racial, and gender sub­ jects. Colescott's art became a potent manifestation of his own ambivalent, even defensive, attitude toward the societal and political iss ues he had to contend with as a black male in America n society. Whereas Colescott would continue to push the boundaries of good taste, propriety, and political cor­ rectness to its limits through the 1970s, and indicate the path of what John Russell called the "bad manners" of postmodernism, Scholder's subjects exude an expres­ sionistic ex istential angs t that is very much part of the postwar ze itgeist of the 1950s and '60s. Despite the fact that he became irrevocably associated with Indian sub­ Fri tz Sc ho lder, White Girl with Cherokee Pendant, 1970. Oil on ject matter, he persistently sought to tread lightly with canva s, 147.3 x 114.3 cm. Co llection of Romona Scholder. regard to the implications of that ethnic association. In that he is closer in spirit to Bob Thompson, who obscured any political or social commentary in his pro­ vocati ve use of non-referential coloring fo r his figures. One Scholder work of 1970, White Girl with CherolwePen­ dant (above ri ght), in particular does approximate Cole­ scott's own sardonic view of white privilege, thoughtless cultural appropriation, and blatant ex hi bitionism, and Indian in Gallup of the same yea r displays skeletal fea­ tures that contrast di sconcertingly with his casual gait and posture. Scholder's own attitude toward his subject matter seems to be a complicated m ixture of ambivalence, pride, recuperation, and, fina ll y, ennui. While originall y positioned by him as a counter to kitschy, romantic images of Ind ians by outsiders seeking to stereotype them within controll able notions of the "other" in postcolonial discourse, his purported "realism" would have functioned in an anomalous way with how Native Americans would have preferred to depict themselves . Photography in particular was an especia lly accessible and effecti ve way for Native Americans to make image of themse lves . As Lesli e Wasserberger expertly chroni­ cl es in her essay, historical photographs of Nati ve Ameri­ ca ns by non-Natives were an important source for the Rob ert Co lesco tt (A merican, b. 1925), Havana Corona , 1970. Acrylic students at the IAIA and Scholder as he began to pa int on ca nva s, 199.4 x 149.9 cm. Co llection of t he Broo klyn Mu seum. Indian subj ect matter. Gift of Bro oke and Carolyn Alexander, 1991.270. © Robe rt Co lescott.

SC HO L DER' S FIG U RATION 95 Horace Poolaw (K iowa, 1906-1984), Gro up on horseback , ca. 1928. Pawnee Bill's Wil d West Show, Pawnee, Oklahoma. Black-and-white photograph. P26505.

Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenn e, b. 1954), Native Hosts , 1988. Instal­ lat ion of 12 aluminum signs in City Hall Park in New York City t hat conceptually recla imed Native land and alerted non-Native visitors and residents of their rightful hosts.

James Lun a (Lui seiio, b. 1950) performed The Artifact Piece, a groundbreakin g wo rk he created in 1987, at the Stud io Museum in Harlem in 1990 as part of Th e Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s.

Ri chard Ray Whitman (Euchee/ "I was a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1968- Muscogee Nation, b. 1949), 70 and studied drawing and art history in Fritz Scholder's classes," Street Chief #1 , 1985 . Black­ Whitman recalls. "Showing us slides of contemporary artwork, Fritz and -white photograph, 25.4 x introduced us to new possibilities in composition, us ing color, tex­ 33 cm. Collection of the artist. ture, co llage, text, and subject matter.

In March 2005, a friend called from Santa Fe to tell me about the memorial for Fritz Scholder she'd just attended at IA/A, and it was good to hear the names of many of my old friends, teachers, and colleagues who'd spoken. In his eu logy, James McGrath, a founding faculty member of IA/A, sa id, 'T. C. Can nan, Billy Soza [Warso ldier}, and Richard Whitman already had their voices when they came to IA/A, but, oh, did Fritz make them stronger.'"

LO WERY S TOKES S I M S Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee, b. 1935), Where Are the Gen­ erations?, 1991. Oil on canvas (r ight sid e) and ac ryl ic and wax with copper on canvas (left side), 71.1 x 143.5 cm. Collec­ tion of Mr. and Mrs. James B. Straw. © Kay Wa lkingStick.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Enrolled Flathead Salish, Membe r of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, b. 1940), Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992. Oil and mixed media on canvas, 152-4 x 431.8 cm. Co llection of the Chrysler Museum of Art. © Jaune Quick­ to -See Smith.

The irony of their usi ng images that strained the limits of authenticity and were often composed in the studio has not been lost on Wasserberger. Paul Chaat Smith has observed that, nonetheless, these photographs were an important reference for Native Americans, especiall y for a generation whose connection with their past had been severely compromised during the period of assimilation foisted on Native populations through government poli cies. 33 Scholder's non-apologetic depictions can be seen along- ide the work of Native photographers working in the 1920s and '30s such as Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906-1984), and found parallels in the work of Scholder's younger contemporaries Richard W. Hill, Sr. (Tuscarora, b. 1950) and Richard Ray Whitman (Euchee/Muscogee Nation, b. 1949) in the 1970s and '80s. 34 These photographers also ought to deconstruct for the rest of us our romantic illusions and at the sa me time illu­ minate the actuality of Native existence in the modern world. In 1982, Scholder decided to establi sh a more ongoing presence in New York City. Although he had been exhibiting in the city w ith different gall eries through the 1970s, this was the moment when he ev id ently hoped to move past his Indian imagery. When Scholder decided to engage the New York art world in the 1980s, it was the era of postmodern id entity politics, and hi s work would have been seen alongsi de that of a number of Native artists who were achi ev ing recognition within that art world. The work of artists such as Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne, 6. 1954), Jimmie Durham (6. 1940), and James Luna (Lu isefio, b. 1950) demonstrates how Native artists were now engagin g media such as install ation and performance art. On the other hand, two artists w ho were close in age to Scholder- Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee, b. 1935) and Jaune Quick-to-See Sm ith (Flathead Salish/member of the Confederated Salish and

SCHOLDER'S FI G UR ATION 97 Ko otenai ation of Montana, b. 1940)-created alternative approache to ative figu­ ra tion that mediate iss ues of identity, mixed ancestry, and style that were more in step with the sensibility of the 1980s than Scholder's abstrac ted fi gural style. Paradoxically, at the very moment Scholder wanted to move past associations with his Native heri­ tage, these and other Native artists were embracing theirs in step with the proliferation of identity-based arr in the postmodern context. Like Scholder, WalkingStick was raised outside the culture of her Nati ve American father. As she notes , however, her mother encouraged her to be proud of her Indian heritage. 35 She emerged in the New York arc world in the earl y 1970s in the context of minimalism, which she inA ected with fe minist content, creating Aat, unmodulated, de-culturalized female shapes arranged a inter-fit ting elements on the canvas . These images, as she noted, transcended iss ues of race or nationality to express "our shared humanity." 36 Her subsequent reckoning with her Nati ve heritage produced schematic elements that imbued her minimal compositions with cultura l all usions: the outline of a tipi, an apron, arcs (bows), and as ertive slashes. In the 198 0s, landscape vignettes of rocks, crevice , waterfa ll s and mountains formed diptychs with symbols such as ova ls, lozenges, circles, and crosses chat can be seen as referencing concepts such as the four directions. With the death of her hu band in 1989, she created a di ptyc h with a self-. portrait and, as she notes, began to realize that the landscape elements in her work were surrogates fo r her own body. An Italian sojourn in the lacer 1990s produced the reintro­ duction of female fo rms in "display" poses or a dancing silhouettes superimposed over the landscape elements of the d iptyc hs. During the 1950s, Jaune Quick-to-See Sm ith worked and raised her children while attending college at ni ght. 37 In graduate school at the Unive rsity of New Mex ico in the mid 1970s, she evoked the look and texture of treated buffalo hides (her Ronan Robe se ri es) by cutting canvases into eccentric shapes, applying beeswax and paint to the surface , and smoking them over fire. About the same time, an encounter in New York with the work of the Pari sian-born Venezuelan artist Marisol, associated with the pop art group, res ulted in mixed-media fi gural sculptures of women, which she cre­ ated along with drawings and collages from photographs of Native women artists. By the mid 1980s, Smith bega n paintings and drawings of larger animals and fi gures that moved "between pictograms and .. . more realisti c outlined shapes, aU incorporated into an abstract landscape." The marks referred to watering holes, insects, trac ks of birds, arrows, and various decorati ve lines that encapsul ated her se nse of movement ac ross the landscape. Her evol ving fi gural style was reminiscent of schematic render­ ings in ancient Native cave paintings or ledger draw in gs and the beading traditions of her ow n Pl ains heritage. Her incorporation of collage, newsprint, labels from various forms of produce, and renderings of commercial line dravvings in her work point to a "pop art ' sensibility comparabl e to ch at of the new Nati ve style tl1 at emerged at the IAIA in the earl y co mid 1960s. The strong cha rcoal outlines of horses bison, women's dresses, men's vests, and canoes that often are the fo cus of these compositions are all "iconographic" elements that can be found in the beaded flat bags made on her reserva­ tion. They became powerfu l vehicles fo r Smith's wry commentary on stereotypes and archetypes. By contras t, then, Scholder's work would have seemed out of date in the context of this postmodern infa tuation w ith the media and recuperations of cultural elements. His ex istential approach seemed more in step with the 1950s and '60s and hi s abstract expressionist roots. His New York engagement did not have the impact he hoped, and hi s last exhibition there was in 1991 with Alexander Gall ery. Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian now provides an opportunity to reevalu ate his legacy, however disputed and va rious it might be. It is clear ch at he not only revolutionized the possibi li ties of self­ depiction and presentation of Nati ve Americans out in the world but also indicated the

LOWERY STOKES SIMS Fr itz Sc holder, Galisteo, New Mexico, 1973.

potential arc and expanse of a career in the arts for Native Americans. His work dem­ onstrated the power of the culturalized figure to not only convey but also encapsulate the ex istential condition of that culturalized situation. By deli berately deconstructing the romanticized or kitsch stereotypes of Native Americans, he paradoxicall y human­ ized them and made them more "real" than they had ever been in the prolific encyclo­ pedia of Native images. As he deconstructed habitual and official notions of Native American art, Scholder also anticipated what has coalesced into the postmodern moment where the pas t con­ tinues to be the source of contemporary critique, but where the reins of the conversa­ tions around culture, race, and identity have now been seized by artists embedded in those communities once plundered in the modernist enterprise. Not only returning the

SCH O LDE R' S F IGURATION 99 favor, they have recla imed their images, materials, and ritual and symbolic content to present powerful new expressions of contemporary Native American, Latino, African American, Asian American, and dias poric experiences. While hi s personal predilec­ tions and hi generational orientation did not allow for a more consciously political agenda for his art, the impact of Scholder's work was nonetheless palpable and endur­ ing. He also asserted the right for that community of artists of color to be recognized for work that spoke to their individual predil ections.

Notes 1 Frit z Scheider, Scho/der/lndians, Introduction by Adelyn D. Breeskin, Co mm entary by Rudy H. Turk (Fl agstaff, AZ: Northland Press, 1972), 34. 2 See Paul Chaat Smith's essay in this volume for a discussion of the paradoxes that framed Scholder's life. 3 Pete r Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast (New York: Praeger, 1974), 41. 4 Nathan Oliveira, quoted in Caro line Jones, Bay Area Figurative Art: 1950- 1965, ex h. ca t. (Berke ley and London: Un iversity of California Press, 1989), 102. 5 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 59 . 6 See http://www.scholder.com/ scholder_bio.html. All information th at follows in this paragraph has been taken from the Scheider website. 7 Karen Tsu jimoto relates this morphologica l cha ra cter in Thiebaud's work to th e pa intings of I Mac­ ciaioli, an Italian school that flourished between 1853 and 1862. See Karen Ts ujimoto, Wayne Thie· baud, exh. cat. (San Francisco : San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in association with University of Wash ington Press, 1985), 30. 8 The Artists' Co llaborative Gallery opened in Sacra men to on April 18, 1958. See John Oglesby, " Coop· erative Ga llery Ha s Stimu la ting First Show," Sacramento Bee (May 3, 1958). 9 By co in ci den ce , Pasto, who had a joint appointment in the psychology and art departments at Sacramento State, became an advocate for the we ll-known self-taught artist Martin Ramirez. See http://www. p hy l lis kin dga llery. com / self· taught/ a rtb rut/ m r/. 10 See http://www.mi djo-pasto-gallery.com. 11 In an interview posted on the we bsite of the Academy of Achievement, dated June 29 , 1996, conducted in Sun Va lley, Idaho, Scheider recounts his meeting Georgia O'Kee ffe in Abiqu iu, an d recalls how he spent many afternoons with her. While he doesn't indicate the date of thi s meeting, he contextualizes by noting this happened when he was "a you ng painter" who had "just come to New Mexico," which wou ld ind icate that t his was in 1964. See http:// www.achievement.org/ autodoc/ page / sch1int-1. 12 Fritz Scheider, "Introduction," in Fritz Scho/de r, texts by Jos hua C. Taylor, William Peterson, R. An­ drew Maass, Rudy H. Turk (New York: Ri zzo li, 198 2), 24. 13 Ibid. 14 Truman T. Lowe, ed., Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser (Seattle: Uni­ versity of Washington Press in association with the National Museum of the Am erican Indian, 2004), 13. One of the websites where one can find informat ion on Oscar Ho we notes that this style was also known as the "D isney" style because its flat, decorative stylizations rese mb le d the cartoon im age ry then being deve loped by Walt Di sney and co mpany. 15 Barbara H. Per lman , Allan Houser (Bo ston: Dav id R. Godine, 1987), quoted in Lo we, Native Modern­ ism, 14. 16 Howe has described his wo rk as " my version of Indian trad itions to make it individualistic in my own way, but every part comes from Indian and now wh ite cu lture .... The basic design is Tohokmu (sp ider web) . From an al l-Indian background I developed my own style." See http://www.usd.edu/ whover/ oscarhowe. ht ml. 17 Lowe, Native Modernism, 15. 18 Ib id ., 21. 19 Like his contemporary the African American sc ulptor Eli za beth Cat lett (b. 1915), He user's "cultural modernism" derived from a global Native sensibility, as hers did from African and pre-Co lumbian art, and flew in the face of outside perc eptions of what Native or African American art should be. As the Santa Fe School pres um ed , so the Harmon Foundation pres umed to dictate what was ap prop ri ate art to be made by African American artists. Such prescriptions frequen tly centered on whether a figural or abstract style was more appropri ate to the social, political, and, of course, economic needs of t he bl ack community. See Elsa Fine Honig, Afro-American Artists: A Search for Identity (New York: Holt, Rineha rt an d Winston, 1973). 20 "Ch ronology," in Fritz Scholder, 277. 21 According to Paul Cha at Smith , Scheider came to the attention of the Rockefeller project because his father had placed him on th e Lu iseiio tribal rolls. Lowery Stokes Sims telephone conve rsa ti on with Paul Chaat Smith, March 12, 2007.

1 0 0 LO WERY STOKES S I MS 22 Pau l Karlstrom, interview with Fr itz Scho lder, 1995, Archives of America n Art, Sm ithsonian In stitution. 23 Eda Gordon, su mm ary of interview with IAIA archivist Chuck Dailey, October 24, 2006, Santa Fe, NM, su bmitted to Paul Chaat Smith on November 1, 2006; su mm ary of interview with former IAI A student Lind a Lomahaftewa, January 2, 2007, Santa Fe, NM. 24 Eda Gordon, summary of interview with former IAIA student George Burdeau, December 16, 2006, Santa Fe, NM. 25 Ade lyn D. Breeskin, Two American Pointers: Fritz Scholderand T. C. Cannon, exh. cat. (Washin gton D.C.: Sm ithson ian Institution Press for the National Co llection of Fine Arts, 1972), 13. 26 Eda Go rdon , summary of interview with Chuck Dailey. 27 Lesl ie Wasserberger, "The Demystification of Fr itz Scholder," Master's thesis, San Francisco State Uni versity, 1987, 17-51; Richard W. Hill, Sr., "The Institute of American Indian Arts: Pride or Preju­ dice," unpublished manuscript, 1991 (revised 1999), n.p. These manuscripts have formed the basis of their essays in this vo lume. 28 Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism (New Yo rk: Oxford University Press, 1998), 25. 29 Both Le wis and Woodruff we re contemporaries of the abst ract expressionists, and both worked to make the transition from the more clo istered contexts (Atlanta and Harlem, respectively) wit hin wh ich they matured to establish their relationship to the mainstream art world. Lewis exh ibited with the Willard Gallery and participated in the famed closed session at Studio 35 (April 21-23, 1950) t hat marked th e definition of abstract expression ism as a movement. Woodruff, then a professor of art at New York University, maintain ed th e ongoing discussions and workshops initiated by the Stud io 35 group. 30 Kobena Mercer, "Introduction," in Kobena Mercer, ed., Discrepant Abstraction, with contributions by Dav id Craven, Stanley K. Abe, David Clarke, lftikhar Dadi, Mark A. Cheetham, Angeline Morrison , Kellie Jones, and Nathan iel Mackey (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; London : inl VA, 2006), 6-27. 31 Thelma Golden, Bob Thompson, ex h. cat., with essay by Judith Wilson and commentaries by Sham im Momin (New Yo rk: Wh itney Museum of American Art in association with Un iversity of Californ ia Press, 1998), 22. 32 Plagens, Sunshine Muse, 94. 33 Lowery Stokes Sims telephone conversation with Paul Chaat Smith, Marc h 12, 2007. 34 See Lucy R. Li ppard, ed., Partial Recall: Photographs of Native North Americans (New York: New Press, 1992). 35 Kay WalkingStick, ema il to Lo wery Stokes Sims, July 18, 2007. Also see Margaret Archuleta, "Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee)," in Pathbreokers: The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2003, ex h. cat., Introduction by Lucy R. Lippard (Indianapolis: Eiteljorg Museum of Ame ri can Indians and Western Art in association with Un ivers ity of Washington Press, 2003), 13-29. 36 WalkingStick, email. 37 Jaune Qu ick-to-See Smith, telephone conve rsation with Lowery Stokes Sims, Ap ril 21, 2007, and ema il of Ju ly 17, 2007, to Sims . All information on Smith's fo rm ative yea rs that follows, unless other­ wise indicated, is based on th is conversation and email.

SCHOLDER ' S F I GURATION 101