Fritz Scholder: From the Indian to the Mythic

FRITZ SCHOLDER

FROM THE INDIAN TO THE MYTHIC

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Fritz Scholder From the Indian to the Mythic

August 30 - October 19, 2019

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Purgatory (detail), 1996, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches

Fritz Scholder: From the Indian to the Mythic Painting is a magical act. In today’s world, love, art and magic are greatly needed.

Fritz Scholder Fritz Scholder is a leading figure in American art history credited with – and perhaps best known for – his ground-breaking reinvention of the portrayal of Native Americans in contemporary fine art. But there came a critical point in his career when he determined to move away from that subject matter and begin what would be a wide-ranging and enormously imaginative exploration of subjects that lay mainly beyond those that could be observed: imagined figures from mythological beliefs and the archetypes they contained, as well as ideas about the occult, death and the afterlife.

Although this aspect of Scholder’s artistic practice may at first seem in stark contrast with his extensive body of portrayals of Native Americans, it is, in reality, quite understandable as a logical extension of that Indian work. It becomes clearer when one considers both interests the artist developed at a young age and the connections between his approach to the Native American subject and his subsequent investigations of the broader realms of mystery, mythology, and other deeply imaginative subject matter.

Scholder always thought of painting as magic. He loved mystery and his favorite word was paradox. He saw the act of painting as itself paradoxical.

As a boy growing up on the lonely plains of the Dakotas, Scholder had little stimulation other than to use his imagination about the superheroes he heard portrayed on the radio, and read about other peoples’ belief systems, religions, and art history. He developed a deep and abiding interest in the myths and art of ancient Egypt, an interest he would express years later in his own art. (He was especially fascinated by Egyptian culture’s glorification of animals as gods and the glittering beauty of Egyptian altars and reliefs; Scholder even considered a career as an Egyptologist.) From an early age he invented his own imaginary worlds.

Scholder’s college education in Arizona in the early 1960s inspired an interest in learning about Mexican and pre-Columbian cultures of that region. When he moved in 1964 to Santa Fe to teach at the Institute of American Indian Arts, he immersed himself in Native American culture and collecting Indian artifacts.

Being one-quarter Luiseño Indian, Scholder had a personal affinity for this subject and the more he learned about it, the more he rebelled against what he regarded as the naive, clichéd, and stereotypical way that Native Americans had been presented in American art: as “noble savages” and “brute warriors.”

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He was inspired by his students to paint a new conception of contemporary Native American art. He had originally vowed never to paint Indian subjects, repeatedly expressing his desire to be seen as an artist, and not pigeonholed as just an indigenous artist. Over the ensuing decade, however, Scholder became known as the avant-garde pioneer who “broke the mold” for his de-romanticized, expressive paintings of the contemporary reality of indigenous people in the United States. His work was an truthful if startling acknowledgement that Native Americans in cowboy hats, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, were more accurate portrayals of the reality of Indian life in the late 20th century than mythic depictions as chiefs in war bonnets.

Scholder also became a master of distorted figuration which he used to great effect to convey the sense of “otherness” and suffering that befell Native Americans at the hands of the European settlers of America.

Scholder’s determination to “paint the Indian real, not red” was controversial, but earned him worldwide acclaim and made him famous and financially successful. One curator of an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian that included Scholder’s work said of the artist: “I believe we have to look at Scholder as a vehicle to look at the complexities of our condition of indigeneity today.”

By 1982, however, Scholder felt he had shown in his Indian paintings that he could depart radically from norms and traditional modes of artistic expression. In his Indian series, he had established the non-naturalistic, warped portrayal of the figure—inspired by the art of his heroes, Frances Bacon, Edvard Munch, and Nathan Oliveira—as a central touchstone in his exploration of themes of identity and psychology. It was not such a huge leap, therefore, in deciding to engage his more expansive range of interests in subjects like magic, good and evil, Egyptian mystical thinking, the afterlife, spirituality, and much more. These were subjects that could not be seen but only imagined—subjects such as the mythical, the occult, the supernatural and others. In this new direction, figural distortion became a means of highly personal aesthetic and spiritual disruption—rather than sociological and political disruption characterizing the Indian series.

In this new quest for meaning, Scholder could be confident in his use of figural distortion as a fitting way for delving beyond appearances and towards deeper mysteries of the psyche. Critics believe that Scholder’s pursuit of those new directions in the 1980s sprang from a desire to tell deeper, richer stories redolent with meaning and that reached beyond the artistic classifications that had been imposed upon him previously. In 1982, Scholder declared, “I had made my statement on the Indian as a subject, and was 3

ready to move in a more universal and mystical arena.”

Scholder, like many people, had a deep fascination with death and the afterlife. Indeed, he viewed painting as his opportunity to “defy death.” It was natural, therefore, that this became a major theme in his exploration of non-objective subjects, a theme he engaged with the same sense of open curiosity and bold expression in his art that characterized his approach to the world at large.

The impetus to wonder about the afterlife has long animated man’s imagination. The conceptions of heaven and hell are at least as old as the ancient Greeks and the advent of recorded history. Homer wrote about Elysium which he described as the afterlife paradise and Hades as the underworld, a “cold, dingy, and mouldering” place souls go after death. The idea of purgatory is a later Christian concept, arising in the 12th century to represent an intermediate state between hell and heaven in which sins might be expiated in order to allow admission to heaven.

Much of Scholder’s exploration of these subjects can be thought of as a personal journey of discovery and learning, much the way the Greeks conceived of it in the great myths of ancient times. In Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey—composed in the 8th century BC and considered the second oldest piece of Western literature—Odysseus visits the underworld and only there is it possible for him to learn what is needed to complete his long journey of return to his kingdom of Ithaca. In the Aeneid, written in the first century BC, Virgil famously recounts Aeneas’ visit to the underworld in order to learn what must be done for the founding of Rome. And of course, Dante’s Divine Comedy provides vivid illustration of how the journey through hell is necessary in order to discover the vital wisdom needed to find paradise.

These myths have been at the center of man’s cultural DNA since the beginning of recorded time. The works included in this exhibition can be seen as the exteriorizations of Scholder’s own explorations in his search to plumb unfamiliar depths of the self, and discover meaning and truth in the unknown, insight from the magical, knowledge from suffering, and transcendence from the journey.

It is also important to note that much of Scholder’s inspiration was a product of his wide ranging and travels. Of this he said, “My life and work are inseparable. My ideas come from living, traveling and collecting. In a statement for a 1985 exhibition of new work, Scholder wrote, “For me the work is autobiographical. It is an activity that is personal and private. The results are recorded gestures and marks pertaining to the mystery around us.” Scholder always worked in series. He said that his work always 4

reflected what was of interest to him at the time. “I never know when a series will begin or end. I like the surprise.”

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory The three major paintings entitled Heaven, Hell and Purgatory (1996) provide a kind of visual headline for his response to this subject and act as a synopsis for his conception of the afterlife. They are arresting personifications of what he called the “spirit realm” and express Scholder’s complex sensations derived from his own personal journey. He described them as “self-portraits” suggesting his own complex struggle for self-identity and the conflicting feelings he had in particular about being or not being a Native person. It is interesting to note that Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, provided a startling centerpiece in the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian as part of the unprecedented two-city retrospective exhibition of Scholder’s work in 2008-2009.

The other mysterious, phantasmagoric paintings and works on paper included in From the Indian to the Mythic illustrate a number of the more specific subject areas that Scholder explored in his journey into the unknown. In all of them, Scholder allowed his active curiosity and unbridled imagination to point the way as he sought to explore the deeper personal conflicts and paradoxes of his life and transform them into his art. Some examples are noted below. In one way or another, each is a part of Scholder’s determination to engage with what he characterized as his themes as an artist: “birth and death, life and myth.”

Mystery Women His works in the 1980s are subtle and dreamlike. These include his Mystery Women series, in which he plumbs the elusive subject of the woman and sexuality that both fascinated and perplexed him in his personal life. Works in this exhibition include Sleepwalker #2 (1991), Mystery Woman and Shower Curtain #1 (1987), and Woman with Mask in each of which the female figure is shown from the back or otherwise with her face obscured. The anonymity suggested by this portrayal parallels Scholder’s own difficulty in finding clarity about what it means to truly know another person. About his passion to discover transformative self-understanding in the realm of the mysteries posed by women, Scholder said “Throughout the years, my passion for women has been a major source of inspiration and energy in my work. At times the subject is very personal. Other times it is fantasy.” This series illustrates Scholder’s remarkable ability to explore the vast mysteries of the human psyche by the use of imaginative, often surreal, portrays of the feminine form.

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Dream Series Scholder’s Dream series is represented in this exhibition by Dream #2 (1981), Dream #20 (1982) and First Dream (1981). These works feature effulgently colored images of two figures melding into one, their passionate embrace existing on a precipice between dream and nightmare. Scholder described these works as his “most personal imagery.” They bring to mind comparisons to The Kiss and Vampire paintings by Edvard Munch who noted critic Edward Lucie-Smith called Scholder’s “soulmate.” The images implicate questions about intimacy versus violence and the blurred lines that create profound paradox in relationships.

Shaman Series In his Shaman series, Scholder finally took on the mantle himself as a practitioner of magic. These are among the more introspective works in the exhibition, depicting solitary figures posed amongst ambiguous, swirling backgrounds. Pulitzer Prize winning indigenous writer N. Scott Momaday wrote, “In Scholder’s paintings… there is the energy of a shaman, and a shaman is what Fritz was and will always be in his art.” In this series, Scholder found himself taking stock of his identity as an artist, but also of his own extraordinary powers as a conjuror, as a conduit between worlds. In works such as Summer Shaman (1987), Scholder portrays himself as a communicator between the ordinary and the otherworldly, between an inner world and the world around him.

Fallen Angel and Lilith Series From his consideration of the afterlife, Scholder evolved a series of creatures he called Fallen Angels that in his view straddled the line between good and evil. The icon of the fallen angel proved to be an especially powerful touchstone for Scholder, embodying simultaneously the divine, the earthly, and the unholy. His paintings of androgynous, winged creatures grew from his exploration of the myths of medieval Christianity, in which fallen angels symbolized wrath, evil, or hatred, but also possessed the capacity for love and the sacred due to their divine heritage. The apparitions of fallen angels are particularly significant examples of Scholder’s appropriation of spiritual or mythic icons as metaphors for inner conflict.

Lilith, the Biblical first wife of Adam, is portrayed by Scholder as a fallen angel, and in works like Lilith #3 (1992), he paints her within a boldly colored, primordial background as if summoning a spectral presence from another realm. He says of these works that “Each of us has two sides at war in our dreams and days. Which side will win?”

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Egypt Scholder traveled extensively and wherever he went, he collected artifacts of people and their cultures from all over the world representing myriads of subjects. He described this bent as “one of the great thrills of living.” He thought of them as magic objects and noted that “Any man-made object, even one whose meaning is obvious, embodies the beliefs of the maker’s culture.” These artifacts provided powerful inspiration and energy animating many of the artworks made by Scholder during his journey to know the unknown.

Scholder traveled many times to Egypt, whose ancient pyramids and gods provided him with powerful connection to the Egyptian creation myths and origins of the human story. He was particularly impressed with Egyptian ideas of the after-life, and in his collection of artifacts was a sarcophagus that he used as inspiration for a variety of works on canvas and paper. These include the large-scale American Portrait #30 (1981), where the head of a sarcophagus resembles a silhouette of Scholder himself, and the Sphinx that projects a frontal view of the famous mythical creature that is the body of a lion and head of a man. Scholder wrote that “Egypt had fascinated me from childhood. It was important for me to go there, sit in the searing sun in front of the remaining wonders of the world and make my marks about what I saw first-hand.” Scholder’s extensive collection of artifacts were his tangible connections to the past, to the imagined, the interior of those subject which had no exterior.

Like a shaman – which he came to view himself as being – he saw many of these objects as possessing magical powers from which he could draw diverse creative energies.

Man-Bull Throughout his career, Scholder treated animals as magically endowed beings; too, he’d often depict half-human, half-animal creatures that seem to straddle the edge of deific knowledge or power. These figures, often with a human torso and the head of a bull, directly reference the Greek myth of the Minotaur (and, in turn, Picasso’s own autobiographical Minotaur imagery). As stand-ins for Scholder, the bull figures such as the one in Portrait with Moon (1983) and Man Bull #2 (1983) possess power and supernatural abilities that enable Scholder to, as art historian Paul Karlstrom writes, “experience a far greater range of sensation and identity than would be available to him if he stayed within his own skin.”

Skulls and Memento Mori The image of the skull fascinated Scholder and became an iconic element in his exploration of the afterlife. He acquired a huge collection of all manner of skulls which inspired his creative spirit as 7

he engaged artistically with death and what might happen thereafter. He saw them as “the ultimate memento mori and symbols of mortality that were both artifacts of life and also of death.” In this exhibition, the skull appears in Anpao Suite – Death, Possession Head #2 (1989), and Possession with Square #2 (1989).

Superhero The imagination of the superhero was inspired early in Scholder’s life. As a child, radio dramas and afternoon movie matinees formed much of Scholder’s worldview. He notes that he was born in the same year as Superman and was fascinated by Captain Marvel and Batman. In his words, “Isolation forced me to be productive . . . imagination rules.” Superheroes had powers that overcame mortality and idealized the possibility of attainment beyond the ordinary, a concept that helped drive Scholder to levels of achievement that truly were extraordinary. The painting Strongman is a wonderful image of the sort of superhero that always resided in Scholder’s vivid imagination and in his aspirational concept of self.

Conclusion In these works, Scholder exteriorized a vast inner realm of dreams, passions, fears and psychic tension, turning to spiritual and religious archetypes, myths, and magic, as he grappled with issues relating to fame, love, sexuality, death and mortality. By invoking these kinds of archetypal stories and arresting figures in his paintings, Scholder takes on the character of a shaman himself. Scholder wrote that “At times painting is a type of exorcism.” In the words of N. Scott Momaday, “[Scholder] did not lift the spirits, he awoke them.”

Through these works created over more than two decades of his career, Scholder thought deeply about the great unknown, the numerous mysteries and paradoxes that fascinated him and the myths and magic rituals he hoped might contain the truths he sought to discover. He notes about his journey into the unknown that “I cannot rest from the unknown portrait of paradox which is myself.” So he seeks and he puts onto canvases, etchings and sculptures the extraordinary images that burst forth from the tempestuous inner world of his imagination. These were his discoveries, his own artifacts of meaning, from his very personal journey through the domain of the unknown. These are the most poignant artifacts of all. At the end he asks, “What is it that will last? Will death be a new beginning?”

Kenneth R. Marvel 8

Strongman, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 9

Bicentennial Indian, 1975, lithograph, 22.38 x 29.75 inches 10

American Indian #4, 1972 lithograph, 30 x 22 inches 11

Wild Indian, 1971 lithograph, 30 x 22 inches 12

Buffalo Dancer, 1971, lithograph, 12 x 12 inches 13

Indian at the Circus, 1970, lithograph, 30 x 22 inches

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Feather Headdress, 1973, oil on canvas, 64 x 54 inches 15

Portrait with Moon, 1983, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches

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Portrait of a Man Bull, 1981 lithograph, 30 x 22 inches

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Mystery Woman at Night, 1978, lithograph, 21.38 x 16.88 inches 18

Sleepwalker #2, 1991, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches 19

Woman with Mask, monotype, 27.5 x 17.5 inches

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Mystery Woman and Shower Curtain #1, 1987, monotype, 29.75 x 22.25 inches 21

Dream #2, 1981, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 22

Dream #20, 1982, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches 23

Dionysus, 1989, acrylic on paper, 41 x 31 inches 24

First Dream, 1981, lithograph, 26 x 18 inches 25

Summer Shaman, 1987, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 26

Untitled (Shaman), 1986, lithograph, 40.5 x 29.5 inches 27

Fallen Angel #3, 1994, acrylic on paper, 40.5 x 31 inches

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Red Fallen Angel, 1997, acrylic on paper, 40.75 x 31.75 inches

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American Portrait #30, 1981, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 30

Sphinx, acrylic on board, 5.5 x 4 inches 31

Possession Head #2, 1989, monotype, 23.5 x 17.5 inches 32

Possession with Square #2, 1989, monotype, 23.5 x 17.38 inches 33

Hell, 1996, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches

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Heaven, 1996, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches

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Lilith #20, 1993, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 36

Lilith #3, 1992, oil on canvas, 80 x 68 inches 37

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Possession on the Beach, 1989, oil on canvas (triptych), 80 x 204 inches

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ANPAO SUITE - Death, 1976-77, lithograph, 22.5 x 15.13 inches 40

ANPAO SUITE - Buffalo, 1976-77, lithograph, 22.5 x 15.13 inches 41

ANPAO SUITE - Owl, 1976-77, lithograph, 22.5 x 15.13 inches 42

ANPAO SUITE - Bat, 1976-77, lithograph, 22.5 x 15.13 inches 43

Another Carnival, 1988, bronze, 84 x 34.5 x 34 inches 44

Another Carnival, Man and Lion, 1988, lithograph, 30 x 22 inches 45

Man Bull #2, 1983, monotype, 11.5 x 9 inches 46

Owl Skull, bronze, 8.75 x 3.5 x 2.75 inches 47

Together, bronze, 8 x 3 3.5 inches

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The Last Portrait, 1980, bronze, 5.88 x 6.75 x 10.25 inches

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Another Devil Horse, 1990, bronze, 15 x 8 x 7 inches

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Dream Horse, bronze, 19 x 23 x 7 inches

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Indian at the Bar, 1972 lithograph, 30 x 22 inches 52

Fritz Scholder

(1937 - 2005)

EDUCATION 1960 BA, Sacramento State College, Sacramento, CA 1964 MFA, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ SELECTED SOLO PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS 2015 Super Indian, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO 2013 Fritz Scholder: The Third Chapter, Harwood

Museum of Art, Taos, NM 2008-09 Indian/Not Indian, Smithsonian Museum of the

American Indian, Washington, DC; Smithsonian

Museum of the American Indian, New York City, NY 2001 Last Portraits, Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN 1999 Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, AZ

Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, IN 1997 Vampires & Fallen Angels, The South Dakota Art

Museum, Brookings, SD 1995-97 Icons and Apparitions, Scottsdale Center for the

Arts, Scottsdale, AZ 1995 The Private Work of Fritz Scholder, Phoenix Art

Museum, Phoenix, AZ 1994 Dreaming with Open Eyes, Arizona State University

Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ 1982 Monotype, El Paso Art Museum, El Paso, TX 1981 The Retrospective: 1960-1981, Tucson Museum of

Art, Tucson, AZ 1980 Monotypes, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX 1979 Indian Kitsch, Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ

Paintings and Prints, 1966-1978, Boise Gallery of

Art, Boise, ID. Touring, exhibition organized by the

Boise Gallery of Art: Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake

City, UT; Missoula Museum of the Arts, Missoula,

MT; Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum, Spokane, WA 1977 Indian Images, Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA

A Selection of Paintings, Prints and Sculpture, Saginaw

Art Museum, Saginaw, MI

Fritz Scholder Major Indian Paintings 1967-1977,

Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, NM 1973 Fritz Scholder – Indians, Hayden Gallery,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

Fritz Scholder Paintings and Lithographs, Yellowstone

Art Center, Billings, MT

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SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS Alaska State Museum, Juneau, AK Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington, DC Centre Culturel Américain, Paris, France Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX Denver Art Museum, Denver CO El Paso Museum of Fine Arts, El Paso, TX Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA Grand Palais, Paris, France Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA Musée des Beaux Arts, Montreal, Canada Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and New York City, NY National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, CA Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Š 2019 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 56 Artwork Š Estate of Fritz Scholder