ebooks True Acting Tips: A Path to Aliveness; Freedom; Passion; and Vitality by Larry Silverberg in Arts-Photography

Review

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Water SerpentsBy Kevin KillianAs an American boy growing up in rural France; I rarely saw an American Indian; except in the dubbed westerns that showed up in our local cinema ("Un autre homme; une autre chance" or "Serenade a Texas"). I had no idea that a vigorous postmodern painting revolution was shaking up the West seventy years after the death of Sitting Bull. Bill Anthes jumps in with both feet into a hotly contested area of debate; the state of American Indian painting during the period of American domination of the arts; World War II and the years leading up to Kennedys inauguration in 1960. It was a time when; backed by the State Department; US art took the world by storm and the previous capitals; Paris; London; Rome; bowed to US supremacy and the apparent vitality of our modernist movement. Meanwhile even in the desert Southwest a handful of American Indian painters were getting tired of having to paint the prescriptive ways--deer as mascots in every painting--especially when the direct wisdom of the ancestors was becoming more and more a thing of the distant past; becoming only a shadowy memory and; some said; not a real thing at all but something dreamed up to please or put off the conquering white race.The relation between Native American art and modernism has been a tortured one. In a race to shake up the very concepts of art; Picasso; Braque and others ahd turned to African art; to realign themselves with the primitive before completing cubist operations. It didnt take modern artist long to latch on to Native art; so long as it embodied apparently traditional and ceremonial subjects. In this; the young contemporary Indians were encouraged by the white-run state schools; which thought that pandemic unemployment among the tribes might be alleviated if enough of them started producing old-fashioned artworks for the booming tourist market.In addition; curious white patrons offered to underwrite the artistic careers of certain young painters if the latter would sneak into shamanic ceremonies forbidden to whites; and later recreate the wall paintings and other magical art works produced in times of high ceremony.Without these recreations; of course; we wouldnt have half the knowledge we have today; for the works themselves would have been lost to time; and yet there was still an element of cultural tourism when white money invaded the humble world of the reservation and the desert. As Anthes paraphrases; "many white-directed efforts on behalf of Native cultures were caught up in a funk of what anthropologist Renato Rosalda has described as imperialist nostalgia."Meanwhile young Indians painters caught up in abstract expressionism or whatever modern movement were told sternly that their work was "not Indian enough" and their funding or scholarships were withdrawn; back to drawing primitive deer with all four feet flying!And there was another strain of illusion; embodied beautifully in Anthes account of the career of the artist Yeffe Kimball; who was white but just told everyone she was an Indian because it was chic. Kendall claimed Osage ancestry and began painting white buffalo. "Has Kimball actually been a Native American artist;" Anthes tells us disarmingly; "she would have been a truly groundbreaking figure." Even as a liar; or self-inventor; he has decided; she was a pioneer of sorts in an "era of male privilege" which saw even as well-connected a painter as Lenore Krasner resort to calling herself "the more embiguous Lee" while signing her paintings with "gender-neutral initials." Anthes cleverly re-situates Kendall in the general population of "counterfeit Indians"--men and women so fascinated by Indian alterity that they took the low road to arrive there; like the fellow who wrote THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE.I dont have the time to praise this book as much as it deserves. Anthes seems to survey his subject from every imaginable angle and; just when you think there cant be anything left to surprise or illuminate; he stuns again.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Very few actual imagesBy Georgetown Peabody LibraryI confess that I havent read the text of this book; which may be extraordinary. However; I wanted to point out that there are only 34 small images in the entire work. Readers looking to actually SEE a survey of contemporary Native American artwork will have to look elsewhere.