Gift of Adelaide Goan

Gift of Ingeborg de Beausacq

Osuitok Ipeelee created this lively print of four musk oxen racing across the frozen tundra. It was part of the first graphics collection produced by Cape Dorset Graphics of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, an organization started by James Houston (an artist and Northern Services Officer of the Canadian government) in 1959 to secure recognition of Inuit artists and economic opportunities for Native people. The prints of the collection were produced by an Inuit committee from drawings submitted by Native men and women. The first exhibition of thirty-nine prints toured Canada and the United States to great critical acclaim, leading to a continuation of the printmaking program, which is still active today.

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.

Fritz Scholder’s imagery in paintings and prints frequently explores the cultural contradictions of late twentieth-century Native American life. He often shows harsh realities but sometimes presents a humorous view, as in this lithograph, in which warriors on horseback carry non-native, innocuously jaunty umbrellas. This seemingly improbable scene is actually taken from real life; umbrellas have been used by both men and women as protection from the hot sun on the Plains since the late nineteenth century.

Fritz Scholder, ambivalent about identifying himself as a Native American artist, often chose an objective stance in portraying Native subjects. This lithograph belongs to a series in which he challenged stereotypical perceptions of the Indian as noble, pure, and a symbol of wisdom. Standing inert with an indecipherable expression, the figure nevertheless exudes a strange power, waiting for something the viewer can only guess.

Fritz Scholder’s imagery in paintings and prints frequently explores atypical views of Native American life. Most depictions of this subject feature the vibrant colors of the regalia and the swirling action of the Buffalo dancers, performing in celebration of their past. Instead, Scholder offers a somber depiction of the haunted soul of a man with hollow eyes. His vacant stare implies that the past is dead, the present is empty, and the future cannot be envisioned.

Signed and dated top left: "CHAVEZ/MORADO/49"

Kananginak, son of Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, made this print from a drawing by his father. The subject alludes to Inuit knowledge of the interconnected workings of their environment. This print was included in the first graphics collection produced by Cape Dorset Graphics of the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, an organization created to promote Inuit art. An exhibition of the first thirty-nine prints toured Canada and the United States to great critical acclaim in 1959, leading to a continuation of the printmaking program, which is still active today.

Bequest of Richard J. Kempe