Post War and Contemporary Art

Provenance:

Cordier & Ekstrom, New York

Private Collection

Sold: Sotheby's New York, Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art, February 23-25, 1993, Lot 262

Riva Yares Gallery, Scottsdale

Nedra Matteucci Galleries, Santa Fe

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited:

New York, New York, Cordier & Ekstrom, Fritz Scholder, January 8 - February 9, 1974

Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937-2005) pushed boundaries and critically challenged existing traditions, working to shift Native American art from an overly idealized category plucked from nineteenth-century stereotypes to a thriving part of the contemporary art world. His paintings defy classification—transcending the categories of traditional, modern, Pop, Indian, not Indian—and continue to provoke intrigue through these contradictions. This is clear in Insane Indian no. 25, where a Native American illustrated in Pop aesthetics undermines preexisting expectations and is thus able to attain a greater degree of his own agency.

Scholder, of part Native American and part European ancestry, often said he was "not Indian" in the traditional sense, which gave him a unique, often controversial lens on Native identity. Inspired by his own experiences, he began painting Native Americans in ways that directly confronted and shattered long-standing depictions. As he explained, ‘“I vowed to myself that I would not paint Indians. Then I saw the numerous over-romanticized paintings of the ‘noble savage’ . . . and decided that someone should paint the Indian in a different context.” Rather than stoic warriors or mystical figures, his subjects were modern, complex, and often subversive: Native Americans awash in bright colors drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, eating ice cream cones, or draped in the American flag.

Insane Indian no. 25 (1972) illustrates a man in three quarter profile on a deep red ground balanced in simplified geometry. The composition emphasizes solidity—the man’s oval head, predominately in black, with white nose, feather, and highlights, mirrors the white arch of his chest. The alternating blacks and whites that define his chest and shoulders grounds his head, while accents of red, green, and peach weave through the figure in increasingly abstracted strokes. The title Insane Indian confuses.

The American West’s mythology of its relationship to indigenous cultures might anticipate an ‘insane Indian’ more in the realm of a berserker, a fierce opponent, a foil. Yet, Scholder’s depiction is the picture of equanimity. The expected cultural connotation is denied by the man’s apparent stability. Should the man be disturbed or in some way distressed, it is internal. But, his eyes, defined only in abstract swipes, negate a means for the viewer to truly interrogate this internality. The man’s complex inner life remains his alone, afforded a greater capacity of emotional depth than the Native American of American fiction.

This provocative painting by Scholder thus reflects the heart of his practice of depicting indigenous culture. While including some traditional trappings in some ways expected of Native Americans in painting such as feathered garments, Scholder digs deeper, resulting in a quiet yet captivating portrait of a man’s emotional life.