Photo:
The art of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
By
Alec Clayton
Published in
the Weekly Volcano, April 18, 2019
"The Swamp," oil on canvas by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, courtesy of the Accola Griefen Gallery |
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s In the Footsteps of My Ancestors at Tacoma Art Museum is a knockout
punch to the emotions. Paintings and prints on display range from the 1970s to
2017, and from the earliest to the latest they are expressive and exciting.
Upon stepping into the gallery, I immediately thought of Willem de Kooning,
Robert Rauschenberg and Jean Michel Basquiat, although her work is much more
narrative and symbolic then the former two. And then I saw hints of Phillip
Guston in “The Vanishing American” and of course Jasper Johns in Smith’s
paintings of maps and flags.
Like Pablo Picasso, Smith is a great
eclectic. And yet her work is truly and uniquely unlike that of any other
artist. She is Native American, raised on the Salish Kootenai reservation in
Montana, and the myths and stories of her people are referenced in all of her work, along with commentary on war and
peace and environmental destruction and her love of animals — particularly
horses.
She was influenced by native art and by such modernists as
Rauschenberg and Georgia O’Keefe, to whom she pays homage
in the painting “Georgia on my Mind” (no, the title does not come from the
song).
Her drawing ranges from childlike and primitivist to
delicate and highly sophisticated, and her painting style has the drip-slash
power of abstract expressionism. Her pictures are crowded with images from
Indian legends, tribal life, art history and pop culture. Visitors will see
Disney cartoon figures, skeletons, the devil, figures copied from other artists, and a rabbit call Nanabozho who is a trickster in
Ojibway and Cree culture.
Typically, Smith’s paintings have one large central
figure, be it a map, a person or an animal, often drawn with heavy black
outlines and surrounded by drips and splashes of color and a cluster of the figures
and objects of her large imagery repertoire — the meanings of which are obvious
in some instances and hidden or twisted in others. When she uses words
(hand-printed or collaged) they are often humorously biting, or they are sly
puns.
“Trade Canoe: Don Quixote in Sumeria” is a painting about
war in the Middle East and an homage to Picasso’s “Guernica.” It is a monstrous
painting, 60 by 200 inches. The central element is a canoe stuffed with skulls and the screaming woman from “Guernica.” Riding in air above the
canoe is a skeleton man on a skeleton horse recognizable as a ubiquitous figure
from Day of the Dead observances.
The first painting to greet visitors when stepping inside
the gallery, “The Swamp,” sucker-punched me with
its de Kooning-like color, paint handling and composition. The central figure,
a woman with the head of a deer, stands in water surrounded by a tornado of
eyes, a snake, feathers, hands and Nanabozho the trickster.
“Celebrate, 40,000 years of American Art” pictures a happy
dancing rabbit with the title scrawled by hand to remind us that while American
art goes back only a few hundred years according to European-American
tradition, it really goes back much farther if you look at the true American
artists.
Seeing this show should be
mandatory for every student in Western Washington, from kindergarten through
graduate school and all the people who cannot be in school at
all but are thirsty for beauty and learning.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, 10 a.m.
to 5 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday, through June 30, $15 adults, $13 students and
seniors, free for military and children 5 and younger, free Third Thursday from
5-8 p.m., Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, 253.272.4258,
www.tacomaartmuseum.org.
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