Indian with Feather

Item number 71.134.2 from the Brooklyn Museum.

Public

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Credit Line

Bristol-Myers Fund

Label

What is Native American art and who is a Native American artist? The artist Fritz Scholder referred to himself as a non-Indian Indian, someone who never felt the pull of two different cultures. With this lithograph series he challenges popular stereotypical depictions of Indians as stoic, noble, pure, and the embodiment of wisdom. Instead, he offers an amorphous human form, showing only a scruffy face with an open mouth, though the hint of a warrior breastplate, the wrapped braids, and the sharply angled feather suggest a Native American identity. The figure’s tightly wrapped blanket and his turned pose seem to reject empathy from the viewer.