More than any other state, Oklahoma is associated with Native American culture. In spite of this, for many Oklahomans, Native art has been reduced to a string of clichés — Navajo rugs, totem poles, idealized paintings of nature and so forth.
On Saturday, OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art will open its new, 27,480-square-foot Stuart Wing to the public. The Stuart Wing will house Native art installations of various genres, as well as collections of non-Native art pieces.
“You’ll see work that is typically identified as Native American because it has been reproduced and distributed in such a way that people identify it as such,” curator Mark White said. “There’s also a lot of work that one would not typically identify as Native American because of style and subject matter ... You’ll see there is an incredible amount of diversity in what we call ‘Native American art.’”
Several artists of particular local significance will include Kiowa painters Stephen Mopope and Monroe Tsatoke, who studied and painted at OU during the school’s first few decades of existence. Mopope and Tsatoke worked in a traditionally Native idiom.
Work by Swedish-Cherokee painter America Meredith also will be featured. Meredith’s art combines traditional and non-traditional iconography and aesthetics in ways that dramatically transgress the boundaries of what is conventionally considered Native American art.
“I tend to paint specific individuals and historical incidents because understanding of Native American cultures is thwarted by the proliferation of grotesque generalities,” Meredith wrote to introduce a series of paintings that juxtapose cartoon characters such as Bambi and Rocky the Flying Squirrel with Native figures and settings.
Alongside the work of Meredith will be that of Sioux artist Oscar Howe. Howe, who painted in a semi-abstract style, sometimes was criticized for his failure to adhere to the norms of stereotypical Native art. In 1958, a painting of Howe’s was rejected for a Native American-themed art exhibition as “not Indian.”
“There is much more to Indian Art than pretty, stylized pictures,” American Indian Art Magazine quoted Howe as saying in response to the snub. “Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian always has been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and only the white man knows what is best for him?”
Zac Smith is a journalism junior.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
ahalenia 7 months, 1 week ago
Thanks for the kind praise in this article; however, dismissing either Navajo weaving or Northwestern totem pole carving as "clichés" is a mistake. Both of these media are vibrant and evolving. Check out Melissa Cody's weavings and Tommy Joseph's totem poles to see how alive and rich these artistic traditions are today.