Modern by Tradition: American Indian Painting in the Studio Style [Hardcover]

Bruce Bernstein (Author), W. Jackson Rushing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995

Kansas-born educator Dorothy Dunn established America's first Indian art school, thus ushering in the flat-art style by which Native American painters have been celebrated as the first modernists. Reproduced here are over ninety paintings by such prominent artists and former students as Pablita Velarde, Joe H Herrera, Allan Houser and Pop Chalee.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This jewel-like showcase of Native American paintings features works by students of Dorothy Dunn, Kansas-born schoolteacher and curator, who, though an outsider, absorbed Navajo and Pueblo ways and established the country's first Indian art school. At the Studio, the fine-arts program she founded in 1932 at the federal government's Santa Fe Indian School, Dunn promoted the "modern flat-art" style featuring clearly outlined, bright forms rhythmically linked in a seemingly dimensionless yet narrative space. Ranging in age from 11 to 21, her students drew on tribal symbolism, pottery motifs, rock art and wall-painting traditions to create pictures of great charm, intricate beauty and surprising power, whether depicting wild horses, a wedding, ritual dances, women stripping birch bark, or hunters. Dunn, who directed the Studio until 1937, encouraged her pupils to portray their lives authentically as members of specific cultures-Hopi, Kiowa, Apache, etc.-and many of them became prominent artists, including Joe H. Herrera, Geronima Cruz Montoya, Oscar Howe and Pablita Velarde. An exhibition of 98 paintings from the Dunn collection, which will travel nationally, was co-curated by Bernstein, chief curator at Santa Fe's Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Rushing is art history professor at the University of Missouri.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Fresh from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1932, Dorothy Dunn founded the Fine Art Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School. After five years and many bureaucratic struggles, she passed the leadership to Geronima Cruz Montoya, a former student, who continued the effort for another 25 years. Dunn encouraged her young students, mostly in their teens, to paint from everyday life with a keen awareness of the Southwest Native American past. Exposure to contemporary art and modern materials added to an eventual blend of old and new, a traditional modernism. Dunn's methods have been criticized as patronizing, despite worldwide acclaim for the work specifically and for former students who became professionals generally. Art lovers and historians can judge for themselves in this visually stunning book produced by art historian Rushing and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture assistant director Bernstein. Best suited for large public libraries and American art history collections.?Susan M. Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 166 pages
• Publisher: Museum of New Mexico Pr; First Edition edition (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0890132860
• ISBN-13: 978-0890132869
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 10.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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