 | ||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
Arthur Amiotte Retrospective: Continuity and DiversityAugust 18 - December 31, 2002
From August 18 through December 31, 2002 visitors to the Historical Center had such an opportunity when they viewed Arthur Amiotte Retrospective: Continuity and Diversity. Arthur Amiotte, Oglala Lakota, considers himself a multidisciplinary person in studio arts, art education and art history. He believes that as a teacher, artist and art historian, he should be a master of many artistic mediums in order to encourage students and other artists to understand Native American cultural traditions. Amiotte was born in 1942 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. His early years were divided between his maternal grandparent's home on the reservation and the home of his mother, Olive Earring, in Custer, South Dakota. While a college student in 1961, Amiotte attended a summer workshop with Lakota modernist Oscar Howe, where he learned that it was possible for an Indian person to be a professional artist, and to utilize his own cultural experiences by putting Native content in his art. In 1964, Amiotte graduated from Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota with a Bachelor's Degree in Art and Art Education. He was awarded the Bush Leadership Fellowship in 1980 to study Northern Plains art collections in the United States and Europe at the University of Montana, Missoula; where he received the Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies in 1983. In 1985, after many years of teaching in public schools and universities, Amiotte decided to devote all of his time to art. He established his studio in Custer, South Dakota in 1986. In 1997, he was awarded the Arts International Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Artists at Giverny Fellowship at Claude Monet's home in Giverny, France. Amiotte has continued to make art, research art history, lecture, and consult on numerous projects. In addition to his formal educational experiences, Amiotte is strongly influenced by a traditional Lakota artistic and spiritual legacy. His mentors have included Pete Catches, Lakota Sun Dance priest, and Christina Standing Bear, his grandmother, who passed down the family history from Amiotte's great-grandfather, Standing Bear, who also figures prominently in his personal iconography. Standing Bear (1859-1933) participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn, traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Europe, and also illustrated the well-known book, Black Elk Speaks, by John Neihardt. While touring with the Wild West show in Vienna in 1889, Standing Bear was forced to leave due to an injury. He then met and married Louisa Renwick, an Austrian woman. In 1891, after receiving word of the Wounded Knee Massacre, Standing Bear, Louisa, and her parents, moved to Pine Ridge. It was here that they built a home and raised their family, intermixing Lakota and Viennese standards and traditions. "Great-grandfather and other local Sioux people from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota who had performed in Europe told many stories of having been guests of Europeans who saw the Wild West show performances and invited Indians to their homes. Sometimes, they traveled long distances from major cities where performances took place. Indian people were thus able to experience European cities and countrysides while traveling by carriage and by train. These tribal elders (by the time my generation would hear these accounts) told of the wonders they saw - palaces, castles, cathedrals, gardens, villages, rivers, and bridges - and of the spectacle of performing before royalty, including Queen Victoria in London." 2 After experimenting with a range of painting styles as well as working in fiber, hide and beads, Amiotte took off in a dramatic new direction. In 1988, he started a collage series, a genre in which he explores autobiographical issues, as well as larger themes in Lakota history and art history. "I purposefully decided to treat Sioux life from the periods of approximately 1880 to 1930, a period when culture change and adaptation were drastically taking place in the areas of technology; printed media and language; fashion; social and sacred traditions; education; and, for Sioux people, an entirely different world view," states Amiotte.3 Amiotte consciously incorporates specific elements of the past into his work, using not only his family's history but also Lakota history, putting all in the context of a general, historical past. In his collages, Amiotte incorporates the travels and adventures of his great-grandfather, and other Lakota peoples, throughout Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West; while also depicting the contrast of the early decades on the Pine Ridge Reservation when the Lakota endeavored to persist as Indians, despite facing great cultural, economic, linguistic, and religious changes. The material culture of the Lakota was changing drastically at this time, as people were now incorporating more and more manufactured goods - from cloth to cars - into their lives. Automobiles, which are a major theme in the collage series, became a quintessential symbol and force of modernity for Indian peoples, replacing horses and wagons and requiring the purchase of fuel and specialized parts for maintenance. Amiotte asserts, "I remembered that the old fashioned automobile that appears in so many of my collages, sometimes anachronistically, is really a symbol of modernity - both technological and social - into which my people have been thrust and expected to master as modern citizens of the United States. The automobile is the symbolic vehicle of social and cultural change my people have had to ride in order to survive in a world order driven by change and progress. Since our white contact, it is impossible to be Noble Redmen or any other stereotypical American Indian."4 Throughout his career, and indeed throughout his life, Arthur Amiotte has sought information and inspiration for his work as an artist, teacher of tradition, and as a Lakota individual from formal education, scholarly research, apprenticeship with knowledgeable elders, and his own memories of life on the reservation. His work is based upon his experiences as a child growing up with his grandparents on Pine Ridge where he was encouraged to be aware of and interact with the natural and cultural world around him. He was taught to engage all his senses in his daily chores and creative activities, from milking cows and sorting beads by color and size, to drawing pictures in the dirt, building a tree house, and creating miniature houses decorated with cutout ads from magazines and catalogs. Such deep and thoughtful work could only come from someone who posses both extensive and intimate knowledge of the past: his own, his family's, and his people's. Amiotte uses this knowledge to inform and inspire his artwork and his audience.5 Arthur Amiotte Retrospective: Continuity and Diversity takes us as fellow travelers down the road that Amiotte has followed in his artistic journey through life. SponsorshipThis exhibition is sponsored by: The Akta Lakota Museum, St. Joseph's Indian School, Chamberlain, SD; The Heritage Center, Inc., Red Cloud Indian School, Pine Ridge, SD; The Journey Museum, Rapid City, SD; Northern Galleries, Northern State University, Aberdeen, SD; The South Dakota Arts Council; The South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD; The University Art Galleries, The University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD; The Visual Arts Center, Sioux Falls, SD. With grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and The South Dakota Arts Council. References 1. Foreword, Arthur Amiotte Retrospective Exhibition
Continuity and Diversity, exhibition catalogue, The Heritage Center,
Inc. Red Cloud Indian School, Pine Ridge, SD, 2001. |
Arthur Amiotte
Wounded Knee, 1969
Mystical Duet, 1973
Standing Bear, Rose Two Bonnets, Lula Two Bonnets, and Louisa Standing Bear, 1919.
Arthur and Mother Olive, 1943
Arthur Amiotte (b. 1942). Banner, 1972. Appliquéd wool, satin, bells, disks, leather, felt. 52 x 27 in.
Arthur Amiotte (b. 1942). The Visit, 1995. Acrylic and collage. Gift of Mrs. C. V. Whitney. |
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
| 720 Sheridan Avenue Cody, WY 82414 |
Phone: 307/587-4771 |
© Buffalo Bill Historical Center 2000-2008. Interested in Reproducing Our Images? |