Exhibition Of Indian Space Painters At Crystal Bridges Museum Of American Art

Indian space painters were not Indians. They were a group of short-lived white painters working in New York in the late 1940s. However, they were influenced by the cultural heritage of Native Americans in their attempt to create a “new American art” detached from European precedents.

“Indian space” was flat in perspective. The group's paintings were further identified by compositions throughout that borrow abstract design ideas from Pueblo pottery, Navajo textiles, and clothing from the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast as three examples. Indian space painters were familiar with these patterns from textbooks and visits to museums, notably the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

“Indian Space showed me how to fuse (indigenous) and Western art together,” Indian Space Painters member Will Barnet (1911-2012) explained about the movement. “He took me beyond cubism to the search for American values.”

Coming from a place of cultural reverence, not cultural appropriation, the short existence and lasting influence of the Indian Space Painters are examined for the first time by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR during the exhibition “Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art,” will be on view until September 30, 2024.

“No one has ever heard of this and that was one of the reasons why we felt it was an opportunity to try and try to find a way to tell this story in a way that is relevant and appropriate for deeper cultural understanding,” Crystal said. Bridges Chief Curator Austen Barron Bailly told Forbes.com. “They are extraordinary examples of modern American art that people haven't seen, a real achievement worth recognizing, but not in isolation.”

“Space Makers” showcases outstanding examples of Indian space painters alongside historic items produced by Native Americans, the continent's earliest abstract artists, and contemporary Native American art. What emerges is a surprising but undeniable network of relationships that stretches from the Art Students League of New York to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, a network that is only now recognized for its seminal influence. in modern and contemporary art in America.

At the center of this network was Seymour Tubis (1919-1993).

Seymour Tubis

During the first half of the 20^th century, The Art Students League of New York was the preeminent art school in the country with a roster of students and instructors including Norman Rockwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder and Mark Rothko.

And Seymour Tubis, who studied there after his service in World War II and taught there in the 1950s. His study and instruction coincided with the Indian Space Painters, students and teachers of the school such as Barnet, who taught there from the 1930s to the 1970s.

In 1963, Tubis took his extensive knowledge of modern art and headed west to the newly formed Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Founded in 1962, IAIA has always focused on the creation of contemporary Native American art.

“The future of Indian art is in the future, not the past,” said IAIA Director Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee; 1916-2002).

New encouraged students to draw from their cultural heritage when creating, but not to conform to conventional ways of doing things.

Who better to help students put this mandate into practice than Tubis, an Oriental trained in New York and Philadelphia and Paris and Florence with a reverence for indigenous art and culture who had already studied and instructed numerous leading modern artists of the country. Tubis, who taught painting and design at the IAIA from 1963 to 1980, is a critical link in the chain connecting the early 20th century.^th century Modern Art in America, New York and The Art Students League, with the IAIA and the impressive success it would have in shaping contemporary Native art.

Such success came almost immediately from artists such as TC Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo; 1946–1978) and Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw; b. 1947), two of the school's earliest students. Its prominence continues to this day with people like Cara Romero (Chemehuevi; b. 1977) and Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo; b. 1983), two of the most sought-after contemporary artists in the world.

“Linda had Seymour as an instructor, as a mentor and as someone who really influenced her artistic output,” Bailly said.

The same goes for Benjamin Harjo Jr. Both have strikingly contemporary artworks rooted in indigenous cultural heritage that can be seen in “Space Makers.”

“From my reading of Ben Harjo's work in particular, (Tubis) turned his attention to what these aesthetics of your indigenous heritage are and how that might enter into this conversation about modernism,” Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa), Curator of Native Art. at Crystal Bridges, he told Forbes.com. “I see that presence. You see a Seminole mosaic and we see Southeast pottery coming in, and it's figurative, but it's also this commentary on historical works produced in the late 1800s.”

Both/And, Neither/O

In contrast to the IAIA's most famous early instructors, Fritz Scholder, Allan Houser, and Charles Loloma, arguably the greatest Native American painter, sculptor, and jewelry maker of all time, Tubis was white.

“Seymour Tubis is an outlier as an instructor, but I think in the best way, and his influence is certainly felt,” said Poorman Cocker. “People fall into the trap of creating this false dichotomy between Indigenous artists and non-Indigenous artists, and there's this hard line. One thing that's really easy to do is fall into this binary way of thinking that communities are clearly separate.” .

A binary “Space Makers” defeat.

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) – and there is a Pollock painting included in the exhibition – was influenced by Navajo sand paintings. He collected books on Native American art and culture. He was friends with the Indian space painter Peter Busa (1914–1985) and studied with other members at The Art Students League.

The famous American modernist Stuart Davis (1892–1964) taught at The Art Students League. In 1923 he visited New Mexico where he would surely have been exposed to Pueblo pottery and culture. The aesthetic is impossible to believe was not somehow passed on to his students, who included Pollock, Busa and Barnet. Davis had a great influence on the Indian space painters.

On the other hand, Cannon was influenced by Van Gogh, and New, along with the other native instructors at the IAIA, encouraged their students to become familiar with and incorporate modern art methods from Europe and the coast East.

Busa and George Morrison (Ojibwe; 1919–2008), the most accomplished Native abstract expressionist painter, were friends who connected through The Art Students League. Morrison studied with Barnet. Morrison's artistic creation confounds simple categorization as “native” as profoundly as any other.

Lomahaftewa, who advised the exhibition, taught at the IAIA from the mid-1970s until 2017, passing on lessons learned from Tubis and Scholder.

From Will Barnet to Seymour Tubis to Linda Lomahaftewa, nearly a century of artistic transfer connecting The Art Students League to the Institute of American Indian Arts, an endless sphere of influence touching hundreds of American artists leaders, native and non-native, along the way.

“It's important to recognize how critical it is that we understand the influence of these schools, these teachers, these artists, on American art in general,” Bailly said. “There are incredible and fertile ways of understanding, new ways of understanding, American art because those connections haven't been identified and articulated as explicitly (as in 'Space Makers').”