Modern totems

all images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy the author

I was in Washington in mid-July to participate on an NEA panel (doing "the people's work," as Kevin says), and had the chance to see lots of art in different museums. New Orleans artist Ron Bechet and I got our exercise by running to and from the Mall every day at lunch, seeing the National Gallery West, the National Museum of African Arts and the Hirshhorn Museum. It was great to share the pleasure of being in big buildings full of cultural richness from around the world.

On Friday, after the panel, I walked to the National Museum of American Indian that featured an exhibition of the artist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). I'm not a fan of Scholder's work--although much of what I read makes me understand how his work broke through the cliches of "native" art--but I was struck by his obelisk from 1987, somewhat hidden in the garden outside the museum.

This work seemed to throw out a real challenge to the culture that has suppressed Native peoples in the US, represented by the thrusting Washington Monument nearby. (Begun in 1848, the Washington Monument was intended to be the largest structure on earth. Construction halted during the Civil War, but was finally completed in 1885.) That Americans would commemorate their new republic with a cultural form borrowed from an ancient, "pagan" culture is interesting--why not borrow the indigenous American form of a totem?












































Fritz Scholder Obelisk, 1987, bronze, detail bottom

Unfortunately, however, Scholder's obelisk also looks Egyptian, influenced, no doubt, by the time he spent in Egypt. I never found a didactic panel that explained the work. The Museum missed the opportunity to toss out a social bomb in the form of an art object, but they are right to avoid the kind of controversies caused when Museums look at history through different eyes.

The Native American artist who does artistically bridge the death-defying gap between white and Native cultures is Brad Kahlhamer. His obelisk, Waqui Totem, 2007, below, is sharp edged, sarcastic and penetrating. Kahlhamer embraces and challenges both Western and indigenous artistic forms, creating vibrant, sex-death-and-rock 'n roll odes to finding identity and spirituality in contemporary America.












































images courtesy of Brad Kahlhamer

Kahlhamer's totem was built of cardboard then cast in that uber-art material bronze. It's a bird of prey / nightmare head, tree limbs stripped of leaves by rapacious industry and a provisional base suggestive of the persistence of the ancient myths of Native spiritual systems.

Kahlhamer's totem would be a spectacular apparition on the mall in honor of the millions of Native peoples who lived in North America upon first contact. His work reclaims not only the physical shape of Native American art, but some of its psychic space, too. This work would be a testament to the persistence of indigenous peoples and their evolving cultures long lain dormant underneath the self-aggrandizing myths of the American conquest of a wild but empty paradise.

I think the issue of internal diaspora or exile is a compelling and urgent one for Native artists, and deserves much broader discussion in the art world.

The American West

White House ruins, Canyon de Chelly, Navajo Nation, Arizona

Kevin and I went up to Canyon de Chelly last weekend, a dream of mine since I took a history of photography class from Tom Southall at the University of Kansas many moons ago.

His wasn't the only class that described my dreams to me: my class in Greek & Roman art propelled me to Athens one summer, and Marilyn Stockstad's medieval art class drove me to see the Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, where I spent one New Year's eve, age 21, at a small b & b, sticking my head out of the round window carved out of the one foot thick walls, looking for the fireworks below.

I found my calling sitting in those darkened art history classes, which are a glorious admixture of politics, history and pretty pictures--what more could you want?

This makes me think about the defunding of arts classes in schools. This punitive action (art is too girly? Not enough chances to monetize / control the market? Questions authority?) suggests that the American compulsion to put value on everything devalues all those kids who want to play, sing, dance, write, shoot and look. And as we know, idle hands are the devil's work--it's critical that we allow kids the widest range of experiences so that they become productive, smart citizens. New industries don't erupt only from the sciences, they come from creative innovators in the arts as well.

(I was so distressed in the late 1980s at the idea that a minority of voices could try to excise arts funding (Culture Wars) from our Social Contract (i.e. taxes) that I called Hans Haacke to see if it was possible to do a survey of arts people, give them a list of tax programs their taxes go towards, and allow them to individually reapportion their tax dollars. While it's a great idea, he said, that's a complex sociological / statistical process that was beyond his capacity. Fair enough. Anyone else who wants to do this, break a leg!)

Back to Canyon de Chelly: Of course my photo history class showed me black & white prints, and the Canyon and its people are in living color. Those early photographs of the American West gave face to the myths of the West, myths that washed over the harsh imperialist realities of Manifest Destiny.

















Monument Valley, Navajo Nation, Arizona / Utah

What struck me is how our perceptions of the West have changed since the 1970s. The American Indian Movement drew attention to the treatment of indigenous peoples across this continent (and to oppressed indigenous peoples around the globe as well). Writers as diverse as Rebecca Solnit and Tony Hillerman have given us vivid portraits of the First Nations peoples who numbered between 20 and 35 million at first recorded contact (Columbus, not the Vikings). Historians like Patty Limerick and Lawrence Culver (up-coming book "The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America") are re-writing these myths of the West, allowing us to re-think how we function as a country.

And at this tipping point in our history--economic collapse, environmental degradation, population explosion--this re-evaluation is critical to remaking the American Dream. And I got there via art history.

What a valuable education.