.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
A fierce activist, impassioned speaker, and deeply evocative artist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith bears her heart and zealous spirit onto each canvas she paints. With a strong foundation in Native American arts, Smith embraces the more mainstream modes and forms of the contemporary art world, bringing her cultural heritage into a space where it has been all too frequently ignored. Gifts of Red Cloth takes on this dichotomy in vivid color, drawing on the legacies of 20th century powerhouses like Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, while remaining grounded in Native American experience. Brimming with color and a sensation of vitality, this expansive work is an amalgam of culture, exemplifying Smith’s lifelong commitment to the bolstering of indigenous communities in the contemporary era.
A flood of crimson red envelopes one’s field of vision with the first look at Smith’s commanding 72-inch square canvas. Richly layered with a seemingly never ending index of scarlet hues, Gifts of Red Cloth draws the viewer in close, encouraging an exploration of the innumerable shades hidden within. These intricately converging reds are paired with linear forms of dusty gray and sandy taupe, themselves speckled with the lingering bits of salmon and electric turquoise peering out from underneath. Expertly juxtaposing vibrant and neutral tones, Smith crafts a poignant feeling of tension in her color: her frenetic cherry brushstrokes pushing to the forefront of the canvas against their bold, dark hued counterparts. Amidst this cacophony of painterly fervor, Smith incorporates several pictorial representations – a horse, a flower, a vase – as touchstones, harkening back to a shared reality between her and the viewer outside the abstract space of the canvas.
This ability to entangle disparate identities – artist and viewer, abstract and pictorial, vibrant and achromatic – is precisely what has propelled Smith into such a prolific career as an activist for Native American communities. The artist, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has often lamented the struggle faced by indigenous artists to establish significant reputations within an artworld where contemporary native voices go unheard. For many in the art community, Smith claims, indigenous art is only valued for its history; relics of the past are seen through a lens of awe and exoticism as defining features of indigenous life even today, relegating modern Native Americans to a niche artistic culture that can only be understood within itself. Painfully cognizant of the position this rigid definition of her culture has put her in as a contemporary artist, Smith has worked tirelessly to carve out a space within the present art world for herself while elevating the voices of her community. Her work can be understood not simply as a piece of Native American art, but as a nuanced exploration of modern identity, rooted in but not solely defined by her indigenous heritage. Interweaving novel artistic styles, contemporary human sentiment, and indigenous motifs throughout her career, Smith begs for an understanding of Native American art as a valid and widely inclusive point of view offering so much more in the present day than just its past.
Currently the subject of her first major New York retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smith is finally, at age 83, able to enjoy the soaring reputation her stunning and emotive works should have earned her long before now. The Whitney’s Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will continue through August 13th, 2023, exhibiting works spanning more than four decades of her career and cementing her standing as a powerful figure in the contemporary space. In her constant endeavor to push Native American culture into the popular vernacular, Smith has been the subject of over 80 solo shows and her work can be found in numerous prestigious institutions, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. On top of these artistic engagements, Smith is also a fervent educator, frequently traveling to schools and universities to lecture on indigenous culture and encourage young Native Americans to enter the art space, however difficult that may be, with passion and resolve.
Throughout Smith’s oeuvre and life the value that she places on balancing her indigenous identity with her identity as a contemporary artist and leader is incredibly clear. Despite her numerous public undertakings, Smith consistently finds time to return to her reservation and engage with the community through the cultural practices that keep her firmly grounded in tradition. Her explorations of contemporary art through abstraction, painterly technique, and stunning emphasis on color are elevated when accompanied by her reflections on Native American life, its frustrations, and its beautiful intricacies. Gifts of Red Cloth is a captivating meditation on these identities, merging abstract form and color with the deep rooted symbolism of red in Native American culture, the tension between light and dark, and a depiction of her beloved horse, Cheyanne, who makes his way into so much of her work. This piece, Smith’s life, and the rest of her encompassing body of work truly paint the picture of an artist passionately building a space for her people in the modern era, who’s art is not limited to her culture but enhanced by it.
A flood of crimson red envelopes one’s field of vision with the first look at Smith’s commanding 72-inch square canvas. Richly layered with a seemingly never ending index of scarlet hues, Gifts of Red Cloth draws the viewer in close, encouraging an exploration of the innumerable shades hidden within. These intricately converging reds are paired with linear forms of dusty gray and sandy taupe, themselves speckled with the lingering bits of salmon and electric turquoise peering out from underneath. Expertly juxtaposing vibrant and neutral tones, Smith crafts a poignant feeling of tension in her color: her frenetic cherry brushstrokes pushing to the forefront of the canvas against their bold, dark hued counterparts. Amidst this cacophony of painterly fervor, Smith incorporates several pictorial representations – a horse, a flower, a vase – as touchstones, harkening back to a shared reality between her and the viewer outside the abstract space of the canvas.
This ability to entangle disparate identities – artist and viewer, abstract and pictorial, vibrant and achromatic – is precisely what has propelled Smith into such a prolific career as an activist for Native American communities. The artist, a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, has often lamented the struggle faced by indigenous artists to establish significant reputations within an artworld where contemporary native voices go unheard. For many in the art community, Smith claims, indigenous art is only valued for its history; relics of the past are seen through a lens of awe and exoticism as defining features of indigenous life even today, relegating modern Native Americans to a niche artistic culture that can only be understood within itself. Painfully cognizant of the position this rigid definition of her culture has put her in as a contemporary artist, Smith has worked tirelessly to carve out a space within the present art world for herself while elevating the voices of her community. Her work can be understood not simply as a piece of Native American art, but as a nuanced exploration of modern identity, rooted in but not solely defined by her indigenous heritage. Interweaving novel artistic styles, contemporary human sentiment, and indigenous motifs throughout her career, Smith begs for an understanding of Native American art as a valid and widely inclusive point of view offering so much more in the present day than just its past.
Currently the subject of her first major New York retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smith is finally, at age 83, able to enjoy the soaring reputation her stunning and emotive works should have earned her long before now. The Whitney’s Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will continue through August 13th, 2023, exhibiting works spanning more than four decades of her career and cementing her standing as a powerful figure in the contemporary space. In her constant endeavor to push Native American culture into the popular vernacular, Smith has been the subject of over 80 solo shows and her work can be found in numerous prestigious institutions, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. On top of these artistic engagements, Smith is also a fervent educator, frequently traveling to schools and universities to lecture on indigenous culture and encourage young Native Americans to enter the art space, however difficult that may be, with passion and resolve.
Throughout Smith’s oeuvre and life the value that she places on balancing her indigenous identity with her identity as a contemporary artist and leader is incredibly clear. Despite her numerous public undertakings, Smith consistently finds time to return to her reservation and engage with the community through the cultural practices that keep her firmly grounded in tradition. Her explorations of contemporary art through abstraction, painterly technique, and stunning emphasis on color are elevated when accompanied by her reflections on Native American life, its frustrations, and its beautiful intricacies. Gifts of Red Cloth is a captivating meditation on these identities, merging abstract form and color with the deep rooted symbolism of red in Native American culture, the tension between light and dark, and a depiction of her beloved horse, Cheyanne, who makes his way into so much of her work. This piece, Smith’s life, and the rest of her encompassing body of work truly paint the picture of an artist passionately building a space for her people in the modern era, who’s art is not limited to her culture but enhanced by it.