FRITZ SCHOLDER re-evaluated

by Paul Henrickson, Ph.D. tm. © 2012

I remember vividly the first time Fritz and Ramona Scholder and I met...most particularly the bodies in space and somewhat less clearly the immediate social environment which was a crowd of people on a dance floor and the link between Fritz and myself was Ramona, leaning like a reaching lover, smiling and explaining that Scholder was like what’s below our heads but without a “U”.

A visiting artist and gentle gadfly, Elizabeth Stephenson, created several portraits of those whom she felt were socially eminent. The above is her interpretation of Fritz and Ramona Scholder.

Now, nearly a half century later, and rereading a published interview and very much long after Ramona had initially hoped I would write something about Fritz...not because he really knew anything about what I thought, or how clearly I thought about art and its production, but simply because she was fully aware that publicity, good or bad, was useful. As a psychologist she was quite

well aware of how ideas might be manipulated to effect, but then she is also a woman and more than aware of being that has its own special characteristics which are often skilfully employed.

Any way there has always been an aloofness between Fritz and myself that had never been formed between Ramona and myself. Anyway, that dance, itself, was moderately successful in providing the opportunity for all the individuals involved to,... to, one extent or another,... display themselves not unlike a cat stretching out its front legs and looking up at you for approval.

I will state, at the outset, that I have always had the lingering suspicion that being known as an Indian, although, I understand, from somewhere he had only 1/16, but ¼ seems more frequently mentioned, Indian blood which was, I believe , a higher percentage cut-off point than used by Hitler in deciding whether a person might still be a Jew. In the Nazi case it made me wonder whether they, the Nazis, were not basically admitting that Jewish genes were more powerful determinants of whatever characteristic was in question than any of those the Goyim had to offer.

Then, of course, next in line for consideration was the Joseph Smith claim that the American Indian constituted the lost tribe of Israel. Then later on, rather much later on, I wondered whether the Vikings could ever have played a role in this well-behaved triumvirate of Ramona, Fritz and myself.

In any event in regard to the interview with Fritz; the author was Nicole Plett and she was writing for the October 1983 issue of “The New Mexican”. It is not, I think, entirely the responsibility of the writer that the entire interview carries the tone of gentle politesse. It seems to me to be a distinctive Indian characteristic, at least in relating to non-Indians, is not to be contentious and to be truthful at least parenthetically and metaphorically. There was, in my experience, only one instance of socially inappropriate behaviour performed by an Indian and that was performed by an Indian from South Dakota hired by the then Major of Santa Fe Deborah Jaramillo to appear at a public meeting she had organized in order to dramatically bring to the attention of the largely Anglo-fifty –plus audience of how badly the Anglos behave toward other races...but it was this Indian from South Dakota who suggested he might flash “my [his] brown arse” ...as he looked straight at me.

The incident having been contrived by a mayor who would later be quoted by a California reporter as having predicted that it would be only a matter of time before Anglo homes would be burned seemed more to be an expression originating in the minds of Deborah, who had been a guest in my house, and this South Dakotan. In any event the arse in question wasn’t nearly as attractive as the one that had been my model.

Now what this anecdote and the interview by Plett reveal are two very different realities. One where the Indian is adored, admired and romanticised (which he almost always has been in American painting

and literature) and the well known incidents of “Wounded Knee” and the gift of the U.S.Army to the Indians of the southwest of smallpox infected blankets.

Now, to the art of the Indian:

Harrison Begay was certainly one of the first relatively celebrated American Indian artists. However, there is lingering about his reputation, and those of others of the period, some element of patronism which, perhaps, is one outgrowth of conscience.

Painting by Harrison Begay (b.1914) “Begay returned to the Navajo reservation in 1947, and has made his living as a painter ever since. Begay has continued to paint in the Dorothy Dunn "Studio style" throughout his long career – he was still painting in 2004, at age 90.”

I am unable to comment on what Dorothy Dunn may have thought of her teaching methods or philosophy but 7 years after Begay returned to the reservation I was teaching at a very small art school in Santa Fe called The Hill and Canyon School of the Arts. One of my students there was a Navajo who was adept at this Dunn Style.

Earlier on, as a preadolescent, I had become familiar with the style for it was included in the samples provided with commercially produce wooden trays for home decoration and arts and crafts experiences. However, it was not until very recently had it been possible for me to attach a name to the style. I still do not know whether these examples share the same originating source or not, but I suspect they do.

In so far as my Navajo student is concerned, the one who had enrolled at The Hill and Canyon School of the arts, I was sufficiently perplexed as to how to proceed with him, as his teacher, without doing him injury by abruptly disengaging him from this “flat style” and forcing him, as the authority of a teacher can do, to behave in a manner different from what seemed, at the moment at least, normal . In short, it is an offense to disrespect the message because the language differs.

I told him this and since, like many Indians, he remained silent and did not respond I have little idea of how he interpreted my concern. Had I understood that what appeared to me to be a normal Indian style of perception was one that had been imposed by Dorothy Dunn I may have proceeded differently.

While some commentators credit Fritz Scholder with having broken away from the, by now, accepted American Indian style after about a half century of its imposition I have serious questions as to whether, or not, the problem has yet been correctly described.

If all that we think we know today rests on what seems to be Dorothy Dunn’s , possibly inadequate understanding , then subsequent conclusions regarding American Indian creative thought are inappropriate.

What one can say is that given Dunn’s pervasive influence and her reputation as a style implanter Oscar Howe has advanced the Indian graphic perception in a manner consistent with that style and

has, consequently, moved graphic expression from the narrative to the aesthetic non-objective.

Oscar Howe

When, at one time, his work had been rejected from an exhibition on the grounds it was inconsistent with Indian style he wrote: "Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting that is the most common way? Are we to be herded like a bunch of sheep, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child and only the White Man know what is best for him... but one could easily turn to become a social protest painter. I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains."

This anecdote makes a sad commentary on the processes of judgment to say nothing of the politics of annually selecting the state’s most creative individuals.

“Possession With Cloud” does sem to be an important break through from the major thesis of this essay...a truly dramatic work.

paintings by Fritz Scholder

Grey Cohoe

The half dozen Scholders shown here together with the Grey Cohoe are consistent with what may appear to be but may, as well, not really be, an ethnic characteristic, but which, seriously considering, may be the result of a political imposition...such as being conquered, and humiliated. Their concern for the flat distribution of shapes on a flat surface has its own challenges and opportunities in the area of graphic expression and may not need to be explained as a consequence of sociological influences. There may be instances of a three-dimensional build up, however modest and hesitant, from a flat shape outwardly toward the observer, but an absolute minimum of indication of a space behind a major figure.

The T.C.Cannon “Portrait of a Hopi Woman” uses space-denying devices ,repeating horizontal lines and vertical columns and horizontal rows of geometric figures most emphatically and to the extent that not only is there no interest in

exploring the space behind a figure , as in da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but to do so is forbidden.

It is very difficult for me to admit the legitimacy of the argument that for the American Indian the physically-based technical ability of dealing with the reality- ignoring interest in representing spatial distances on a flat surface did not exist. I am, therefore, left with one of two, possibly both, alternatives. The physical structure of the optic nerves and brainal components for optical translation do not in the Indian exist, or that the social prohibitions against behaviors are so fierce that even the enculturated native lacks the necessary will to overcome them.

There is the work of only one, among the several Indian artists whose work I have seen, which departs, more in degree than in difference, from the aesthetic limitation I have been discussing. That artist is Grey Cohoe. Even he, however, manages to obscure the prohibition of not abusing the nature of a flat surface by penetrating it, not unlike Alice walking through the looking glass

In reference to his work "Yei Bi Chei," he is quoted as saying, "I can't say I'm glad to have had to live through all that [acculturation] to be where I am today. [White] People know Indians as people who have lost their culture in most cases. Some walk around like urban drunks, dyeing their hair yellow to get away from their background. In my work, I'm saying 'Ha. I'm making it'. . . in my work, I'm offering people a party they're never going to forget."

Paintings By T.C.Cannon

Hieronymus by A.Durer. After comparing the approaches to representation of these two groups, it seems fair to state that the Indian eschews the representation of a physical appearance and substitutes, in terms of narrative details, a collection of symbolic marks whether or not these marks suggest real objects, such as the slices of watermelon or decorative elements of merely stripes, colours, shapes, or anomalous collection of costumed clown with horns or a win peaked hat in striped garments eating watermelon beneath a rainbow. There does seem to be a strong element of symbolic profile, metaphoric and socially anecdotal quality to these otherwise anomalous inclusions

I have tried to clarify for one correspondent the questions which arise in my mind as to the source of the acceptance or the rejection of a graphic narrative solution. It is obvious from the two sets of examples above that the emphasis in one case, that is the European, is a detailed concentration on the structure and the texture of the object depicted. In the instances of the American Indian only the

barest reference to the physical nature of the object is made, only enough, it seems that allows us to identify it as what it purports to be. The rest of the composition is mainly made up of non-objective formal elements such as colour, shapes and graphic marks and these are minimally associated with objects.

In the case of the African hunter when shown a drawing of a man in the foreground and an elephant off in the distance pronounced the drawing as incorrect and explaining that a man is not larger than an elephant. So, it seems apparent from this anecdote that the native could accept the concept of the, still arbitrary, flat piece of paper as representing an acceptable universe, but was unable, or unwilling, to elaborate the hypothesis by accepting the notion that the flat piece of paper had a depth reality if one accepts the illusion of space. The thought process may be similar to that of a cat or a humming bird looking behind a reflecting surface to see what might be going on.

The African may not have known about the concept of perspective, or may not have found it pertinent, but rather had accepted as primary the essential qualities of the flat surface which ought not to be violated.

When a veteran of the Vietnam war from the Pueblo of San Ildefonso explained to me why he was devoted to alcohol he included the idea that one social injunction in his community was that one should not enquire about what might be going on... on the other side of the mountain and that the abrupt and traumatic replacement of that taught ethic was uprooted from the desert of New Mexico flown across the Pacific Ocean and ordered to kill people he didn’t know.

By way of contrast the European has not such collection of prohibitions. He will go anywhere and kill anyone if it is thought convenient for his agenda. I asked my correspondent if he thought there might be a correlation between the violation of the two-dimensional surface and the indifference to other people’s homeland. Well, he had no answer, nor had I really expected one. I merely wanted the opportunity to put the thought into words.

A question related to that perhaps, may be how one might try to rationalize the modern European artist such as Picasso, Braque , Duchamp and Miro who may appear to have arrived at a similar solution to representation as has the American Indian.

I suspect that this very question raises yet another which asks are solutions that are similar the same if the problems which gave rise to them are different? In other words, because Picasso, et al, and the Native American Indian both deal with a flattened pictorial space is the observer justified in assuming that the intent, motivation and purposes are the same?

Although they appear to be similar I am unable to accept the proposition that they are similar at all, similar in their origins, that is. There is, to be sure, a reduction of the representation of space in these works but not as a result of not knowing that the space is, in fact, there. I do not assume the Indian fails to know this but that his respect for the quality of the flat surface of the canvas is greater than that of the Europe and. In point of fact there are still remnants of space even in some works by others.

Ramona Scholder recounts and event where at some Pueblo tribal dance a Buffalo Dancer, taking time off to refresh himself was seen seated and holding a double dip ice cream cone where what such a dancer might normally have been holding would have been a dance rattle. The juxtaposition of the unexpected with the expected is an aspect of Indian humor which they seem, characteristically, to apply to many, if not all situations. Here. to the left Bob Hazous has placed himself for this promotional in front of what appears to be a carefully constructed wire form vaguely reminiscent of a donut but here, as used, is clearly a reference to a western iconographic symbol for a halo...thus sanctifying himself while raising questions about the western man’s logical structure...or structure of logic I think it safe to conclude that the Indian enjoys playing visual puns.

Marsden Hartley “Man in Swim Suit” Caravaggio.”Crucifiction of St. Peter”. It may seem outrageous to some when I draw distinctions in aesthetic motivations or the degrees of emphasis one artist may place on the emblematic solution, or satisfaction, of erotic interests as opposed to the degree the artist has chosen to exercise his academic training. In one important sense this observation also draws the distinction between art production as a device to solve psychic concerns and art as an exercise of one’s trained distinction such as one can see

dramatically achieved in Albrecht Durer’s “Hare”.

While as admiral as this work is it remains impossible for us to accept this technical goal as an ultimate and singular goal...there are other achievements possible.

wood block print by Gustav Bauman

A landscape, water color, Paul Cezanne

I have been urged by my own need of reflection to state that while I have a definable confidence in my efforts I hold in reserve the idea that nothing is unequivocal and that, quite possibly all our understandings and our decisions are momentary acts appropriately applicable for that moment. That having been said, it does not also mean that the momentary decision is wrong. Perhaps it might be compared to the hand railing along a staircase. Once one has reached the top the railing is no longer of importance, but it was certainly helpful along the way.

Gustav Bauman, along with Durer, perhaps because they share some of the same ethnic social interests are both highly disciplined technicians in respect t established traditions. Cezanne, on the other hand, was a miserable failure when it came to behaving well as a traditional artist.

Only later was he able, and I am certain much to his own dismay, to shed these imposed traditional expectations for a respect for the more remote felt intuitions . It is only reasonable, I believe, to ask the question: why is it the creative solutions so often arise out of a failure, or reluctance, to follow rules?

My only excuse for this wide diversion from the main topic which was supposed to be that of Fritz Scholder probably has everything to do with the fact that I remain puzzled as to whether the flat style of representation is culturally theirs, physiologically theirs or theirs as a result of the expectation of theirs and of “others” that that is the “Indian style”...or all of these. Another way to phrase the question would be to ask what determining evidences are there that the American Indian has the technical ability and the interest to blend their perceptions with those of the Western European? Or. We might ask, is the style we see the result of a determination to remain aloof and distinct? Even with that as a possibility it might be argued that this resistance to be “like the other” since 1850, would actually make him a part of the same family...for to be distinctly “different” has been one of the more striking characteristics of art in the West.

I have been urged by my own need of reflection to state that while I have a definable confidence in my efforts I hold in reserve the idea that nothing is unequivocal and that, quite possibly all our understandings and our decisions are momentary acts appropriately applicable for that moment. That having been said, it does not also mean that the momentary decision is wrong. Perhaps it might be compared to the hand railing along a staircase. Once one has reached the top the railing is no longer of importance, but it was certainly helpful along the way.

I believe one of the lessons to be learned through the studies of individual efforts to push one’s boundaries of perception beyond the moment is often defeated by popular approval. Contrary to the conclusions resulting from some of the creativity studies conducted at Harvard creative solutions are rarely found through cooperative efforts.

In general, I believe it must be acknowledged that there are elements of racism and nationalism in some discussions of why within certain groups of works there are identifiable characteristics not generally associated, perhaps, with other groups, that is, for example to select two examples from the 19th century the French painters painted female flesh and the Americans painted the wild west.

These disparate examples have one thing in common and that is they illustrate the mental focus of the society at that period. The subject matter and the particular treatment of the subject matter was more a function of the current and fashionable and social interest at the time than it was an inherently creative, or aesthetic, concern. So, in short, it is appropriate for the critic to draw a distinction between how the artist goes about the making of a work and what that work may depict. One may be in response to a market and the other to hope one might achieve a particular aesthetic result.

In Scholder’s case there does seem to be some evidence that he was not entirely comfortable with the market’s having emphasized the percentage of his Indianness which he may have correctly felt was a real imposition on how he was expected to behave...almost as though the other 3/4ths of his being had no aesthetic value at all. It might be said that his Indianness” was more an artifact of commercially interested public relations efforts.

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