Victory Dance
Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota, 1915-1983)
Watercolor on paper
1954
Philbrook Museum
Over the decades, academic world required indigenous artists to follow the standards, which included drawing techniques and a use of media. Otherwise, the art piece would not be recognized as Native American art. Oscar Howe, born in a reservation in South Dakota as a Yanktonai Sioux Indian, was the first Native American artist who broke those standards.[1] In 1958, the Philibrook Museum of Art committee excluded Howe’s submission, Umine Wacipe: War and Peace Dance, from the judge of the award. A curator claimed that his piece got too much influence from cubism and therefore was not recognized as Native American art.[2] Howe criticized that scholars never studied the true tradition of Native American art, and how Native American artists' rights for individualism have been ignored. A curator in South Dakota Art Museum, Jodi Lundgren argues that geometric shapes have been a important tradition in Dakota art, and Howe’s use of vibrant colors may be influenced by the women's bead works and porcupine quilt.[3]
[1] St. Rosemary Education Institution, “Oscar Howe: Biography & Artist,” http://schoolworkhelper.net/oscar-howe-biography-artist/ (accessed May 19, 2016).
[2] “Oscar Howe and the Philbrook Museum of Art, 1958,” Out of Many Religious Pluralism in America, in The Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture and Newberry Library, http://publications.newberry.org/outofmany/exhibits/show/creating-the-other/oscar-howe-and-the-philbrook-m (accessed 13 May 2016).
[3] Lance Nixon, “Dakota Life: Oscar Howe’s works still enchant,” Capital Journal, 17 Dec. 2015, http://www.capjournal.com/news/dakota-life-oscar-howe-s-works-still-enchant/article_e8ac5a58-a53f-11e5-a552-dbd9d937bd9f.html (accessed 13 May 2016).
Quote from Oscar Howe’s letter written in 1958:
“Whoever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian art indeed … Every bit in my paintings is a true studied fact of Indian paintings. Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian always has been, put on reservations and treated as a child, and only the White Man knows what is best for him? Now, even in Art, ‘You little child do what we think is best for you, nothing different.” Well, I am not going to stand for it. Indian Art can compete with any Art in the world, but not as a suppressed Art. I see so much of the mismanagement and treatment of my people. It makes me cry inside to look at these poor people. My father died there about three years ago in a little shack, my two brothers still living there in shacks, never enough to eat, never enough clothing, treated as second class citizens. This is one of the reasons I have tried to keep the fine ways and culture of my forefathers alive … I only hope the Art World will not be one more contributor to holding us in chains.” (Oscar Howe, Letter to Philbrook Indian Art Annuals Jurors)