While visiting from New York, activist artist Robert Henri painted vivid, Expressionist portraits of Native Americans from a pueblo near Santa Fe. "Portrait of Dieguito Roybal, San Ildefonso Pueblo,” 1916, reflects Henri's respect for the strength, dignity and traditions of indigenous people. The artist persuaded several of his "independent” colleagues, including George Bellows, Randall Davey and John Sloan, to visit Santa Fe.
:Few states have attracted more important artists per capita than New Mexico. Drawn by volatile history and diverse cultures, indigenous crafts and people and warm climate and exotic scenery, painters and sculptors have flocked to the Southwestern state for more than 125 years.
Moreover, the state has offered an ambience in which Hispanic, Native American and European aesthetic conventions have become interconnected. Out of these cultural interactions an unpredictable, often contradictory unity has evolved in "The Land of Enchantment."
That, at least, is the theme of a grand exhibition, "How the West Is One: The Art of New Mexico," on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art through April 20, 2010. Organized by Joseph Traugott, the museum's curator of Twentieth Century art, it comprises 47 paintings and a score of other artwork drawn from the museum's permanent collection.
The art exhibited represents objects that exemplify shifting aesthetic traditions in Southwestern art. Rather than separating the work of Native Americans, Hispanics and European Americans, the exhibition presents the art of the region as a single, unified chronology. As museum director Marsha C. Bol puts it, "New Mexico's relative riches from its many eras and multiple cultures have forged an intricate web of relationships between artists, art subjects and art appreciators."
Traugott suggests that groundwork for New Mexico's art was laid by "multiple 'discoveries' by nomadic Native Americans, Spanish colonists and missionaries, United States geological expeditions, anthropological research teams and, finally, by individual travelers making their own personal discovery of the landscapes and peoples of the region." Thereafter, completion of the transcontinental railway through New Mexico in 1880 marked the end of the Spanish Colonial tradition.
Georgia O'Keeffe, who first visited New Mexico in 1929, often painted abstract views of the landscape, such as "Bear Lake (Desert Abstraction),” 1931. Set on the Taos pueblo, this ambiguous image may show the thin line of a lake or be simply a product of the artist's imagination.
In the "culture rush" that followed, European American scholars and documentary artists descended on the region to observe indigenous groups and collect artifacts. Early illustrators and photographers and later artists and social scientists believed that Indians were noble savages living in harmony with nature; at the same time, they feared that Native cultures would be altered and eventually disappear as they came in increasing contact with mainstream America.
The Museum of New Mexico Art Gallery was launched in 1917 under the directorship of Edgar L. Hewett, who championed the state's fine arts and recognized their role in promoting tourism and economic development. Housed in a new building of Pueblo Spanish Revival architecture on the town plaza, the museum quickly became the centerpiece of efforts to promote Native crafts and art of the region.
Thanks to the advocacy of painter/activist Robert Henri, a longtime summer resident of Santa Fe, the museum adopted an "open door" policy that allowed any artist working in New Mexico to exhibit in the museum. Included in the museum's initial exhibition: Henri's powerful "Portrait of Dieguito Roybal, San Ildefonso," 1916, a 651/8-by-487/8-inch likeness emphasizing the character and spiritual focus of a well-known local figure.
Displayed in the first exhibition and ever since is Gerald Cassady's compelling "Cui Bono" (Latin for Who Benefits?), circa 1911. It depicts the striking figure of a dark Native American, swathed in a traditional white robe, looking directly at the viewer — a hint of his modernity. The ancient pueblo and venerable Taos Mountains behind him suggest the historic past from which he is taking a hesitant step into the Twentieth Century.
Traugott posits that the painting poses questions about Manifest Destiny — the belief that God sanctioned federal government domination of land from coast to coast — and the White Man's Burden — the conviction that Christians had a moral obligation to convert Native Americans to Christianity. Traugott suggests Cassady's image, in the context of widely supported efforts to acculturate Indians, poses the question about both Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden: Who benefits?
