Artist Fritz Scholder Redefined Native American Art

By Lauren Monsen

Perhaps no contemporary artist of Native American heritage has been as enigmatic, influential or provocative as the late Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), who almost single-handedly demolished some of the most persistent clichés about the nature of American Indian identity.

Now, three years after Scholder's death, his prolific output - including paintings, sculptures and lithographs - is the subject of a major new exhibition staged by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Titled Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian, the two-part exhibition opened simultaneously at the museum's Washington and New York locations on November 1. Most of the artwork can be seen in Washington, with a smaller selection of Scholder's later works on display at NMAI's New York branch.

Co-curated by Truman T. Lowe (of the Ho-Chunk tribe) and Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), the show is the largest retrospective of Scholder's career ever mounted. In a recent interview with America.gov, Lowe explained that while Scholder is best known for his unconventional paintings of Indians, the artist refused to be confined to any particular category - especially the category of "Indian artist," which he felt was too limiting. "His favorite word was 'paradox,' and he liked to say: 'I am one-quarter Indian, and my paintings are one-quarter Indian,'" Lowe recalled.

Since his father was half-Luiseño Indian and half-German, and his mother was of French extraction, Scholder had little use for tribal militancy - and he was not inclined to perpetuate the romantic myth of the so-called "noble savage," an Indian stereotype that first gained currency in the 19th century. "I've never called myself an Indian artist. Everyone else has," Scholder once said. In his 1979 publication Indian Kitsch, Scholder described himself as "a non-Indian Indian," adding: "I do not feel the pull of the dichotomy of two cultures. However, I am aware of the incongruous nature" of those cultures.

THE POST-MODERN INDIAN

By his own account, Scholder began drawing at an early age, and he apparently never doubted his artistic vocation. Born in Minnesota, he grew up in the Great Plains region, where his father worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Despite his father's occupation, Scholder and his family did not live on a tribal reservation and had little exposure to Native American culture. During his college years, Scholder studied with pop artist Wayne Thiebaud, and in 1964, he received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona. Soon afterward, he was invited to teach at the fledgling Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and his experience there would prove decisive.

Initially, Scholder said he would "never" paint Indians, but his interaction with Native American artists and art students in Santa Fe prompted a change of heart. His modernist and post-modernist training, however, dictated a significant departure from the prevailing - and, to Scholder's thinking, rather primitive - approach to depicting Native Americans.

Since the 1930s, many artists in Santa Fe had been painting nostalgic scenes of Indian village life that reinforced common assumptions about Native American societies. Most of these images had a flat, one-dimensional aspect that came to be known as a hallmark of the "Studio Style" pictorial school, which dominated the Santa Fe art scene for decades. Scholder's decision to paint Indians "as they truly are" would soon relegate the Studio Style to the artistic dustbin.

He set about "re-imagining" the Indian for a contemporary audience, using loose brushstrokes to outline his figures in electric hues. Contrasting colors provided the only backdrop; no explanatory context was offered. Unlike their quaint Studio Style predecessors, Scholder's Indians confronted the viewer head-on - and the overall effect was vivid, edgy and distinctly unsettling. Although some of these portraits were based on famous photographs of Native Americans, Scholder imbued his works with a sense of irony that suggested multiple interpretations of an iconic symbol.

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES

Scholder's innovations brought him critical acclaim almost immediately, and ensured a lucrative market for his work. His undated oil painting American Indian, with its shadowy image of an Indian chief starkly imposed against a shocking-pink sky, was hailed as a triumph. Scholder's works from his "Indian" series typically met with that reaction - until he unveiled Indian with Beer Can (1969), which sparked howls of outrage from Native Americans and art critics alike. The painting, centered on a male Indian figure seated at a bar or table, with a Coors beer can in front of him, addressed the problem of Indian alcoholism, a sensitive subject that few artists were willing to tackle.

According to Lowe, Indian with Beer Can "held a mirror up to the Native community." The painting, he said, "played on the stereotype of the drunken Indian, but it forced the Native community to take a close look at tough issues."

Scholder produced other works that examined taboo themes, such as Indian poverty and the long history of injustice suffered by Indian populations. His unsentimental treatment of controversial topics often shocked his audience, yet it opened the door to a more honest appraisal of acute social problems and uncomfortable truths. In his painting American Portrait with Flag (1979), Scholder's depiction of a Native American wrapped in the U.S. flag reflects the tensions between an indigenous culture and the larger society that has subsumed it.

At the same time, Scholder was eager to pursue universal themes that made no reference to his, or anyone's, ethnicity. Although he still occasionally returned to Indian motifs, his last two decades were primarily devoted to moody works that explored the complexities of male/female relations (a 1986 painting, Monster Love No. 1, shows a couple locked in a fierce embrace) and a growing awareness of his own mortality (a 2001 self-portrait, Artist's Skull, consists of a ghostly black-and-white photograph of Scholder's head layered over an X-ray of his skull). In fact, skulls appear with some frequency in these later works, along with supernatural figures (vampires, angels) and emblems of Native American spiritualism (shamans).

The meaning of Scholder's legacy is hotly debated, but his influence has been - and remains - profound. Thanks to Scholder, "a barrier has been smashed," Lowe said. "He broke the mold of Studio Style art," and he demonstrated that Indian art stretches well beyond the boundaries of traditional craft objects like textiles, baskets or jewelry. Scholder was a trailblazer who made it easier for today's young Indian artists - "who have their own stories to tell, their own interpretations of Native history" - to find an audience, Lowe added. "The irony, of course, is that Scholder said he was never going to paint Indians, but that's what established him as an important artist."

Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian will be open through May 17, 2009. For more information about the exhibition ( http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=exhibitions&second=dc&third=current ), visit the NMAI's Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State

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