What counts as "Indian art"?

A posting reprinted on Racialicious asks the question What Counts as “Indian Art”? Here are the key points from the original posting by Gwen:What Strickland, Archuleta, and Howe (as well as other contributors to Shared Visions) are discussing is the pressure American Indian artists have often faced to create a certain type of art. This pressure may come from other Indians or from non-Indians. Non-Indians have often had significant power over Indian artists because of their role as benefactors (providing money for artists to attend The Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School, for instance) and because non-Indians are the majority of buyers of art created by American Indian artists. And benefactors and art collectors often have a certain idea of what “Indian art” is, which includes assumptions about both themes and styles. Specifically, they want “traditional” images that depict Native Americans in a pre-modern world, often including images of animals.Gwen posts some images from a travel guide and observes:What struck me was just the homogeneity of the images found in the guide (I lost the front cover somewhere along the way so I don’t know the name of it), which seemed to more or less fit the mold of the stereotypical idea of “Indian art.” It brings up the question: what is Indian art? Is it any art made by an American Indian? Or does it only count if it fits in with non-Indians’ preferences for what Indian art should look like? What if a White person, say, masters the “traditional” style–is it Indian art then? Over the years a number of American Indian artists have created art to intentionally challenge the idea of the romanticized 19th-century Indian as well as what Indian art can be.Some examples of nontraditional Indian art:



Osage with Van Gogh by T.C. Cannon



Indian Wrapped in Flag by Fritz Scholder



Victory Dance by Oscar Howe



When Coyote Leaves The Reservation (a portrait of the artist as a young Coyote) by Harry Fonseca

Gwen's conclusion:So are those pieces Indian art? Does it count as “Indian art” only if it contains specific styles and themes? In which case, does it remain a sub-genre of art–part of “ethnic” art, as opposed to the neutral, non-marked mainstream art world? Are Indians who paint or sculpt or play music in ways that don’t fit the existing idea of Indian art not “authentic” Indian artists? If we accept that premise, “Indian art” is, as Howe said, “held back forever,” with themes and styles frozen in time and artists discouraged from experimenting or innovating in their work, as Howe learned so clearly. This tendency is apparent in other elements of U.S. culture, of course: movies like “Dances with Wolves,” books about “noble savages,” and conflicts over what types of technologies American Indians can use when spear fishing (with non-Indians arguing Indians should only be able to use the methods that their tribes used in the 1800s) all indicate a wider perception that “authentic” Indians should inhabit a time-warp universe in which their cultures and lifestyles have remained basically unchanged since the late 1800s or early 1900s, a requirement we don’t ask of other groups.Comment:  I tend to like more traditional Indian art myself. But not because I think Indians are or should be frozen in time. I tend to like more traditional, representational art by all artists, not just Indian artists.

Actually, my ideal is probably a piece that puts a modern spin on a traditional image. Which is what Allan Houser has done in much of his work. This art is neither too old-fashioned to be boring nor too avant-garde to be off-putting.

Anyway, I'd count the above pieces as "Indian art." I wouldn't necessarily want to live with them, but they'd be nice to visit in a museum or gallery. They're good because they challenge our ideas about Indian art and about Indians.

For more on the subject, see Modern Indian Art and Battling Through the Arts.

P.S. This is a good place to mention that "Oscar Howe, a renowned South Dakota artist and former professor of art at The University of South Dakota in Vermillion, was honored recently with the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Allan Houser Legacy Award." (Source: Argus Leader)