Description
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.
A study of Native American art and artists that represent a crucial and formative, though rarely recognized, aspect of American modernism.
About the Author
Bill Anthes is Assistant Professor of Art History at Pitzer College.
Reviews
"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
"Native Moderns addresses an area of Native American art that deserves more attention than it has received. . . . [A] worthwhile addition to art history. . . ." -- Edward J. Rielly * Journal of American Culture *
"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 Reviews *
"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 *
Book Information
ISBN 9780822338666
Author Bill Anthes
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 912g
