Oscar Howe and His 1958 Philbrook Art Competition Umine Wacipe War and Peace Dance
Oscar Howe, Cubism, and Traditional Native American Fine art
March 23, 2012 by Notch Code
Oscar Howe works on slice, 1960
Nearing the completion of processing photographs from the Oscar Howe Collection, I came across the above photo and became curious about how Howe'south interactions with Native American and European artistic traditions impacted his work. The athwart planes, geometry, and abstraction that announced in Howe's art take led many critics to claim European Modernism (specifically Cubism), was Howe's prime artistic influence. For instance, Bea Medicine and J.J. Brody both described Howe equally a "neo" or "post-Cubist." In agreement, John Anson Warner wrote, "Oscar Howe brought into his painting new forms hitherto unknown in North American Indian art…Howe dramatically changed his art after experiencing such Modernist paradigms as Cubist and Abstruse-expressionism. During Globe War Ii, he spent three and one-half years in the Regular army; while in Europe, he was exposed to the Cubist art of Matisse, Picasso, and Braque" (Warner 13).
Throughout his career, Howe encountered similar readings of his work. In 1958, the jurors of the Philbrook Indian Fine art Annuals rejected Howe's painting, Umine Wacipe: War and Peace Trip the light fantastic toe, from their annual competition on the basis that information technology did non suit to the Studio style, the widely agreed upon style of traditional Native American art that was popular during the early on 20th Century. According to Bill Anthes, the Studio mode, "emphasized flat, linear patterns, and unmodulated globe colors uncontaminated by Western pictorial techniques such equally shading and perspective…Further, authentic Indian painting was to be illustrational and ethnographically correct: artists were simply to correspond members of their ain tribes or regions…The organizers of the Philbrook almanac believed that the standards that enforced these essential traits guaranteed the authenticity and value of Native American painting at a fourth dimension when they feared that Indian cultures were disappearing" (Anthes 142). As Anthes notes, what troubled Howe and other Native American artists of his generation about the Studio style was not merely that it was aesthetically restrictive, only also that it was developed to please White patrons and failed to represent the modernistic lived experiences of Native American tribes and individuals. "Many artists began to see the apartment, pastel illustrations of traditional life as an imposed aesthetic that simply catered to non-Native audience's want for untroubled images of traditional Indian cultures…The Studio style was seen as a simplistic stereotype that elided tribal differences, repressed individual expression, and was out of touch with contemporary Native lives, which by now encompassed military service, urban wage labor, mainstream educational activity, and increasing activism" (Anthes 143). Howe'southward response to the rejection became like a manifesto for Native American artists frustrated past the constraints of the Studio fashion:
Who ever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian manner has poor noesis of Indian art indeed. In that location is much more than to Indian Art than pretty, stylized pictures. At that place was also power and strength and individualism (emotional and intellectual insight ) in the onetime Indian paintings. Every bit in my paintings is a true, studied fact of Indian paintings. Are we to be held dorsum forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and merely the White Man knows what is best for him? Now, even in Art, 'Yous little child practise what we recall is all-time for you, nothing different." Well, I am not going to correspond information technology. Indian Art tin compete with any Fine art in the globe, only not every bit a suppressed Fine art….–Oscar Howe, Letter to Philbrook Indian Art Annuals Jurors equally quoted by Jeanne Snodgrass King in "The Preeminence of Oscar Howe," 17
Rejection on the basis that his art was somehow not-traditional or inauthentic must accept been particularly painful for Howe; he considered his work wholly derivative of Native American (specifically Dakota) creative traditions. For instance, the jagged shapes and abstractions that critics often read as Cubist were actually "a continuation of geometrical indicate-and-line compositional device that he (Howe) referred to equally tahokmu, or the 'spiderweb,' in which designs are generated by a web-like network of points…Howe explained that traditional designs were 'diamond shaped with one deer hoof track pattern at each end, that is left and correct horizontally symmetrical. From this blueprint comes all geometric designs…'" (Anthes 166). Furthermore, Howe not only used this pattern in its original form, but also adjusted and visually manipulated information technology to convey greater emotional dynamism in his piece of work. Howe also contended that his artistic process was in stride with the formal painting anniversary of the Sioux, during which a group of initiates witnessed a painter translate the words of a storyteller into visual symbols. For Howe, who explained that his process was also a response to Dakota language and storytelling, the main difference between his work and the traditional painting ceremony was that his symbols and abstractions were individualistic reactions to contemporary Native life. "Howe argued that Indian artists were accepted and integrated members of Native societies and understood as members of the community who shared the community'due south values and whose art represented those values. Even if the artist developed a personal, individualistic, innovative art…it was still perceived as an expression of the artist's individual culture." (Anthes 165). It was in this mode that Howe saw himself, not necessarily as a creator of a new style of art, but every bit an artist and innovator who contributed to the continuation and farther development of traditional Native American art that would take occurred had information technology non been for stagnating effects of the Studio fashion.
The Dakota art of painting-its medium technique, procedure, subject thing, and its qualitative aspects-has given me direction, purpose, substance, and fine art, an art which is still in its original form, originality unblemished and unquestionably a truthful reflection of civilisation, not a bastardly exploitation. Being a Dakota with a background of Dakota civilisation I felt I should go along the art. To utilize the ways and ways of Dakota art for continuity and notwithstanding keep the essence of Indian art was paramount in my quest for expression. In order to stabilize and validate this information technology must piece of work with or from the traditions and conventions. Its components remain Dakota to the core regardless of individualization of art (Howe 76-77).
To learn more nearly Oscar Howe or to view some of his works, please visit the Oscar Howe Gallery at the University of Southward Dakota.
Oscar Howe composing a painting in his studio, 1960's
–Information gathered from: Anthes, Pecker. Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940-1960. Durham: Duke Academy Printing, 2006. 142-166. Print; Brody, Jerome. Indian Painters & White Patrons. Albuquerque: Academy of New Mexico Press, 1971. 172. Print; Howe, Oscar. "Theories and Beliefs–Dakota." South Dakota Review. 2.2 (1969): 76-77. Impress;Medicine, Bea. "Oscar Howe and the Sioux." Oscar Howe: A Retrospective Exhibition, Catalogue Raisonne. Ed. Dockstader, Fredrick J. Tulsa: Thomas Gilcrease Museum Association, 1982. 15-16. Print; Snodgrass-King, Jeanne. "The Preeminence of Oscar Howe." Oscar Howe: A Retrospective Exhibition, Catalogue Raisonne. Ed. Dockstader, Fredrick J. Tulsa: Thomas Gilcrease Museum Association, 1982. 17-19. Warner, John Anson. "The Sociological Art of Oscar Howe." Oscar Howe: A Retrospective Exhibition, Catalogue Raisonne. Ed. Dockstader, Fredrick J. Tulsa: Thomas Gilcrease Museum Association, 1982. 13-fourteen
–Photographs: The Oscar Howe Drove, Richardson Collection, USD Athenaeum and Special Collections
Source: https://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/oscar-howe-cubism-and-traditional-native-american-art/
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