ONE OF NORTH AMERICA’S MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING ARTISTS STAKES A NEW CLAIM “Monkman beats Western history “SURE TO ALARM “Heady and intense... painting at its own game.” AND EDUCATE” Monkman excels at layering (The Globe and Mail) (The Observer) the present onto the past and vice versa.” (ARTnews) “Isn’t a time-traveling, gender-fluid, “Works that do nothing less Indigenous sex goddess exactly than turn conventional Western what art needs right about now?” art history on its head.” “STUPENDOUS” (New York Magazine | Vulture) (artnet News) (New York Times) Kent Monkman Welcoming the Newcomers 2019 Acrylic on canvas 335.3 x 670.6 cm Kent Monkman Resurgence of the People 2019 Acrylic on canvas 335.3 x 670.6 cm A new publication from the Art Canada Institute KENT MONKMAN REVISION and RESISTANCE mistikôsiwak (WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE) at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM of ART This book explores mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) by the internationally renowned artist Kent Monkman. Commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the epic diptych exhibited in The Met’s Great Hall revisits iconic works of art, notably the famed painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. Monkman—featured in mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) as his time-travelling, shape-shifting, gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle—reverses the colonial gaze of American and European art history through an Indigenous lens to present a powerful vision for the future. Featuring commentaries by Sasha Suda, director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada; art historian Ruth B. Phillips and historian Mark Salber Phillips; Jami C. Powell, associate curator of Native American Art at the Hood Museum; Shirley Madill, executive director at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and Nick Estes, assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, Revision and Resistance: mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the definitive documentation on Monkman, his practice, and two of the most important paintings of our times. HIGHLIGHTS • ISBN 9781487102258 | 9.5" x 11.875" | 130 pages • Retail price: $50 • Over 150 full colour photographs and paintings • Two photo essays: one of the making of the painting, one of its installation at The Met For more information contact: • Die-cut dust jacket over hardcover laminated case • Two gatefolds of Kent Monkman’s diptych paintings Welcoming the Newcomers and Stephanie Burdzy Canadian Manada Group Resurgence of the People Senior Operations Executive [email protected] • Two sewn-in booklets featuring indexes of historical artworks referenced by Art Canada Institute (416) 516-0911 Kent Monkman in mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) [email protected] Photo: Paul Weeks Photo: Paul Weeks Photo: Paul Weeks SAMPLE PAGES from REVISION and RESISTANCE mistikôsiwak (WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE) at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART This book was made possible thanks to the generous support of its benefactors REVISION Claudine and Stephen Bronfman and Family Foundation Kiki and Ian Delaney RES I S TANCE Rosamond Ivey Hal Jackman Foundation mistikôsiwak ( WOODEN BOAT PEOPLE) at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM of ART KENT MONKMAN 8 INTRODUCTIONTABLE of from the METROPOLITANCONTENTS MUSEUM of ART Introduction from The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Randall Griffey 12 Introduction from the Art Canada Institute by Sara Angel 14 section one origins Introducing Miss Chief Eagle Testickle by Shirley Madill 18 section two resistance in the making Kent Monkman’s is one in a new series sculptures in The Met’s collection, not only offers a sweep- mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) mistikôsiwak of contemporary art interventions and commissions in non-traditional ing rumination on the lives,Inside experiences, Kent Monkman’s and fates Studioof Indigenous North by Jami C. Powell settings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, inaugurated by American cultures, but also highlights the museum itself as both byproduct 30 Max Hollein, Director, and initiated and led by Sheena Wagstaff, Leonard and beneficiary of colonizing forces, a place that, typical of encyclopedic A. Lauder Chairman, Modern and Contemporary Art. It was my pleasure art museums, tends to perpetuatesection settler perspectives three of history. Indeed, to nominate and, subsequently, to work with the artist and his studio for The Met is situated in Lenapehoking,revisioning the homeland history of Lenape peoples the initial new commission for the Great Hall. and other nations, and many of the works of art on view in its galleries, Comprised of two monumental paintings, such as Eugène Delacroix’sRevisioning History: and An Augustus Index, Part Saint-Gaudens’s i Welcoming the Newcomers by RuthThe B. Phillips Natchez and Mark Salber Phillips and , is the culmination of a relation- , uphold the historical trope of the so-called vanishing race. For Resurgence of the People mistikôsiwak Hiawatha 59 ship that has developed gradually between Monkman and the museum The Met’s commission, Monkman, in keeping with his creative modus and an outcome of multiple institutional initiatives in recent years. In 2018, operandi, has appropriatedWelcoming and reinvented the Newcomers: these sources Decolonizing (among others), the artist (as his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle) contributed his voice so that mistikôsiwak profoundlyHistory Painting, reverses Revisioning the colonizing History gaze, but in a to a project called Native Perspectives, commentary provided by Indig- manner that seems uniquelyby Ruth B.site-specific. Phillips and ForMark certain, Salber the Phillips commission’s enous artists and historians in response to eighteenth- and nineteenth- intertwined themes of arrival, migration, and68 difference will resonate with century Euro-American works on view. Native Perspectives accompanied the more than seven million international visitors who cross the symbolic the opening of and physical threshold ofRevisioning the Great Hall—a History: portal An Index, to the Part museum’s ii expan- Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collec- by Sasha Suda , which showcases Indigenous American art in the museum’s American sive collections, where they encounter and are exposed to diverse cultures. tion 83 Wing for the first time, signaling The Met’s priority to provide its visitors mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) would not have been possible with a more complete account of American art and culture. The museum’s without the critical supportA Practice of Met donors.of Recovery: The mistikôsiwak museum is tremendously announcement of new contemporary commissions followed quickly in the grateful to Marilyn and Charles(Wooden Baillie and Boat to People) Rosamond Ivey for their wake of my visit to Monkman’s Toronto studio in summer 2018, so the early and enthusiastic commitmentby to Sasha this ambitiousSuda project. The Hal timing was opportune to consider him—one of North America’s leading Jackman Foundation and the Director’s Fund92 provided additional support Indigenous artists—for this series. for this groundbreaking commission. It opened to the public on December section four Assured of Monkman’s ability to produce new work on such a large 19, 2019, and will remain on view through April 9, 2020. a vision for the future scale, the museum also recognized his distinctive and incisive engagement with art history as an opportunity to extend the occasional precedent of Waves of History displaying historical art in the Great Hall—an imposing space that endows by Nick Estes the objects placed in its midst with a conspicuous aura of cultural author- 104 ity and achievement. The walls on which Monkman’s paintings hang have Randall Griffey previously showcased fine European tapestries, Salon-style European curator, modern and contemporaryContributors and art Credits 124 historical and allegorical paintings, and, on rare occasion, contemporary the metropolitan museum of art American artists such as John Baldessari and Robert Longo. Viewed in this context, Monkman’s decolonizing project registers as a kind of displacement, perhaps even a stealthy insurrection. Teeming with identifiable references to American and European paintings and 1012 13 6 7 previous spread: Kent Monkman, Being Legendary, 2018, kent monkman is a visual storyteller. For more than two acrylic on canvas, 121.9 × 182.9 cm, private collection. decades he has subverted art history’s established canon through the opposite: Still from Kent Monkman, Dance to Miss Chief appropriation of works that tell stories of European domination and (detail), 2010, DigiBeta, 4:49 min. the obliteration of North American Indigenous cultures. Monkman challenges the accuracy of such representations by repopulating and SHIRLEY MADILL bottom left: Monkman at age four, with his parents and siblings, photographer unknown. correcting settler landscapes in a transgressive manner. He reimagines well-known paintings in order to provide a contemporary, critical point bottom right: Clarence Tillenius, Bison Diorama (detail), of view—and often his agent of disruption and change is one Miss Chief taxidermy and mixed media, 8.7 m (width) × 7.5 m (depth), Orientation Gallery, Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg. Eagle Testickle (originally called Miss Chief Share Eagle Testickle), or Miss Chief for short. Miss Chief ’s name is a play on the words “mischief ” and “egotistical,” and in its early use also incorporated “Cher” as a way to perform a reimag- 1Monkman notes that “Cher had her half-breed phase, which ining of the 1970s pop diva.1 Today, she is known as Monkman’s alter was glamorous and it was gender bending at the same time.” ego, living and taking part in art history. In the tradition of Indigenous See Jonathan D. Katz, “Miss Chief is always interested in the latest European fashions,” in Interpellations: Three Essays on storytelling, she embodies the mythological trickster and takes the form Kent Monkman, ed. Michèle Thériault (Montreal: Leonard & of a two-spirit, third gender, supernatural character who exhibits a great Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, 2012), 19. degree of intellect and knowledge when she is present in a work of art. Monkman uses her to help guide viewers to see new truths.
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