Overview

Between 1940 and 1960, many Native American artists made bold departures from what was considered the traditional style of Indian painting. They drew on European and other non-Native American aesthetic innovations to create hybrid works that complicated notions of identity, authenticity, and tradition. This richly illustrated volume focuses on the work of these pioneering Native artists, including Pueblo painters Jose Lente and Jimmy Byrnes, Ojibwe painters Patrick DesJarlait and George Morrison, Cheyenne painter Dick West, and Dakota painter Oscar Howe. Bill Anthes argues for recognizing the transformative work of these Native American artists as distinctly modern, and he explains how bringing Native American modernism to the foreground rewrites the broader canon of American modernism. In the mid-twentieth century, Native artists began to produce work that reflected the accelerating integration of Indian communities into the national mainstream as well as, in many instances, their own experiences beyond Indian reservations as soldiers or students. During this period, a dynamic exchange among Native and non-Native collectors, artists, and writers emerged. Anthes describes the roles of several anthropologists in promoting modern Native art, the treatment of Native American ""Primitivism"" in the writing of the Jewish American critic and painter Barnett Newman, and the painter Yeffe Kimball's brazen appropriation of a Native identity. While much attention has been paid to the inspiration Native American culture provided to non-Native modern artists, Anthes reveals a mutual cross-cultural exchange that enriched and transformed the art of both Natives and non-Natives.

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9780822338666

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Reviews

"""Fluid, clear, and engaging, Native Moderns is a superb and innovative contribution to Native American art history and modern art's varied histories."" Janet Berlo, co-author of Native North American Art ""Native Moderns is an outstanding intervention into our understanding of both Native art in the twentieth century and the received history of modernism.""--W. Jackson Rushing, author of Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde"

Native Moderns is a fascinating study of the changing nature and reception of modern American Indian art in relation to the history of modern art, American society and government policy. Herein Bill Anthes significantly expands the canon of modern art history while exploring the all important notion of identity and authenticity in terms of how particular artists, from both within the Indian community and without, have been inspired by native American heritages. This always lucid book will be of tremendous value to art historians and anthropologists... -- Jonathan Zilberg, Leonardo Anthes offers a conceptual discourse rather than an encyclopedic history of American Indian painting. He presents an overview of the era, including the range of changes experienced by native painters within the context of political, economic, and social history. He examines thought-provoking issues that are significant to understanding native modernist painting: the importance of place, cultural appropriation, reconstruction, and individual innovation. -- Patricia Coronel, Journal of American Ethnic History In focussing on just twenty years of American Indian painting Bill Anthes has chosen what seems at first to be quite a restricted field, but his nuanced and careful account succeeds in opening up almost all of the key issues which still dominate Native American art and its reception today. In its balanced account of a range of several lesser-known painters it adds real depth and texture to the standard narratives, and the well-documented account is supported by excellent colour reproductions of thirty-four relevant paintings... [A] rich and rewarding study. -- David Murray, Journal of American Studies Native Moderns is an outstanding intervention into our understanding of both Native art in the twentieth century and the received history of modernism. -W. Jackson Rushing, author of Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde Fluid, clear, and engaging, Native Moderns is a superb and innovative contribution to Native American art history and modern art's varied histories. -Janet Berlo, coauthor of Native North American Art

""Fluid, clear, and engaging, Native Moderns is a superb and innovative contribution to Native American art history and modern art's varied histories."" Janet Berlo, co-author of Native North American Art ""Native Moderns is an outstanding intervention into our understanding of both Native art in the twentieth century and the received history of modernism.""--W. Jackson Rushing, author of Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde

Fluid, clear, and engaging, Native Moderns is a superb and innovative contribution to Native American art history and modern art's varied histories. Janet Berlo, co-author of Native North American Art Native Moderns is an outstanding intervention into our understanding of both Native art in the twentieth century and the received history of modernism. --W. Jackson Rushing, author of Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde

Author Information

Bill Anthes is Assistant Professor of Art History at Pitzer College.

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