August 4, 2024 • 23 mins
In this episode, we also explore the life and work of Oscar Howe, a pioneering Yanktoni Dakota artist known for his modernistic approach to Native American art. Howe's innovative style and vibrant paintings have left a lasting impact, challenging stereotypes and inspiring future generations of Native artists.
Our visit to the Oscar Howe Art Gallery at the University of South Dakota and the Carnegie Library of Mitchell SD reveals more about this remarkable artist's journey, his struggles, and his contributions to contemporary Native American art. Through interviews and personal anecdotes, we gain insight into Howe's legacy and his unique vision that bridged traditional and contemporary art forms.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:15):
I was one of the Native American children, adopted at birth and removed from
our country's Indian reservation system.
I was raised in a small middle-class farming community, but was never told of.
Music.
My true American Indian heritage.
It was still taboo back in those early days.
The years passed, and in 1987 I lost both parents.
(00:37):
While going through their personal belongings, My wife discovered my adoption
papers and she began a search.
Five years later, I was reunited with my biological Lakota family living on
the Lower Brule Sioux Indian Reservation of South Dakota.
I am a son of two mothers and a product of two worlds that had collided.
(00:58):
But I have an equal amount of love and pride for both.
I'm Paul LaRouche, and the stories you are about to see are an attempt to share
this true American story of a hidden heritage.
Oscar Howe was a pioneering American Indian artist of Yanktoni,
Dakota descent, renowned for his innovative contributions to Native American art.
(01:21):
Breaking away from traditional styles, he developed a unique modernistic approach
that blended indigenous themes with abstract influences.
His work vividly portrays the culture's history and spirituality of his people,
earning him recognition as a trailblazer in contemporary Native American art.
(01:42):
Through his vibrant paintings, Howe not only challenged stereotypes,
but also inspired future generations of Native artists to explore new creative horizons.
We recently paid a visit to the Oscar Howe Art Gallery, located in the University
of South Dakota, to learn a little bit more about this acclaimed late American Indian artist.
(02:04):
Here's the interview. Well, I first met Oscar in the early 70s.
He had come to the university in 1957 and had a variety of hats that he wore.
Partially, he was with the art department, but mostly he was with the museum,
W.H. Holver Museum, as an assistant director, and with the Institute for Indian
(02:27):
Studies, and also taught courses. He was a professor.
The primary teacher for the fine arts, the department at that time was small,
and its emphasis was on commercial art on one hand and art education on the other.
And in between that, those two or three faculty would teach a few painting courses,
(02:50):
et cetera, but they weren't what you would consider to be intense fine arts courses.
And so Oscar was brought in to the university to establish a core for the fine arts.
Things were changing in the late 50s and the early 60s. We were leaving behind
emphasis on, you know, kind of applied arts and moving into fine arts all across the nation.
(03:16):
And so Oscar was brought in to start that. And that was a pretty lonely existence
for him because at that point in time, you know, he didn't fit the department
because the other several faculty people were by and large,
you know, they didn't know what to do with a real fine artist and particularly
somebody as abstract and modern as Oscar Howe was.
(03:40):
And so he that started a fairly lengthy
experience which is a story all in
itself as to how he how he fit into
not only the fine arts but the university as a whole and there are a lot of
different stories with that but I met him in the early 70s on a number of occasions
I came down once because I was interested in seeing the department and meeting
(04:04):
some of the faculty at that point he was over in Old Main.
He also came to Mount Marty where I was teaching and gave a lecture and we had
a small exhibit of his works so I had a chance to talk to him.
I was quite struck by him but then when I started teaching
part-time here I had a little bit more contact with him and it became when I
(04:25):
became chair then he was one of my faculty and so I worked as a chair should
with trying to understand what the faculty's own personal professional goals were.
And so I spent a lot of time talking to him. And I found that Oscar Howe.
Have been caught in a seam again in terms of the development of the art department,
(04:47):
because by the time I came, it was like the third iteration of the art department's self-identity.
When he first came, it was art education and commercial art.
Then a whole bunch of, I can't call them anything else but hippies, came in to replace that.
(05:07):
They only lasted about a year, but they revolutionized everything.
That was a point in time when higher education was in deep flux.
And Oscar was really excited about these people coming in because they were
all really fine artists.
But again, they didn't know what to do with him because they were very,
very pop artists, you know, very, very, very cutting-edge contemporary art.
(05:31):
And while Oscar's art was modern and, you know, kind of and highly abstract,
it was, from their point of view, fairly conventional. And they had no background
in terms of the Indian subject matter that he was using, etc.
So they didn't know exactly how to do it. And there was a great age discrepancy there.
Oscar was older than these people who saw themselves pretty much as radicals,
(05:54):
redefining, you know, what art education was, which needed to happen.
But so he found himself kind of outside of that.
And then once those people left, they brought in a kind of more mainstream group
of modern artists and things kind of settled down with that,
with the faculty at that point.
There were people who really understood Oscar and appreciated Oscar,
(06:17):
but at that point, I think Oscar was old enough and had been through the wars
as it was enough that he wasn't going to reach out to these people in any great effort.
And he had really good working relationships with a lot of people across campus,
but I don't think the same can be said.
(06:38):
With the art department. So when I became chair, I decided that I was going
to cut through this estrangement.
We were going to take advantage of one Oscar Howe's reputation and bring him
into the art department so the art department understood what they had.
And they were receptive to this, and they worked with that.
(07:00):
By that time, there was an Oscar Howe gallery on campus, And we kind of worked to mainstream that.
Unfortunately then, and this was basically, you know, 76, et cetera,
when I took over as chair of the department, I also took over as director of the Oscar Howe Gallery.
(07:21):
And so I got intimately involved in helping to select the works,
which we selected like four or five pieces each year.
In compensation for some extra salary that he received as artist-in-residence.
And so I would talk to he and the family, particularly Heidi,
(07:42):
about the works that we'd bring in.
And that kind of hooked me into deciding this was a really, really,
really special man who needed and deserved a lot more attention from the university, from his peers.
He may have had an international reputation at that point, And he certainly
got lots of press in South Dakota, but I don't think there was a real understanding
(08:05):
of what it is that Oscar Howe, what it was that made Oscar Howe unique.
And so I set about to kind of preserve as much as we could and promote as much
as we could in the future Oscar Howe's legacy.
Music.
(08:42):
We took over this building seven years ago. The city gave it to us for a $1
payment, and we have been working on the building ever since.
We have put over about $200,000 into it, trying to restore it.
Our pride and joy is the dome, and the dome was painted in 1940 by Oscar Howe.
(09:06):
At that time, he was not a noted Indian artist, but a young,
struggling artist trying to make a nickel here and there.
And for his work, he received a grand sum of $65.
This was a WPA project, Work in Progress outfit, and they were finding jobs
(09:27):
for people, and Oscar took this job.
And it's interesting in that when he started painting, he got it all laid out,
and as you can see, it's quite an intricate design, but as he got it laid out,
he had to come back and start over again.
He started using egg temper-based paint and painted his first bit.
(09:49):
He had to paint at night because daytime, it was too hot.
And when he come back the next day to start again, the paint had baked off.
So he had to clean it all up and start all over again.
The painting stood as it was until 1977. 1977, Oscar had just retired down at
the University of South Dakota, and his successor was Dr. John Day.
(10:12):
Dr. Day brought his students up, and they, along with Oscar being present part
of the time, restored the mural to its original beauty.
And in 89, it was touched up just slightly again, but since then,
it's not been touched, and it's still in excellent condition. We have Dr.
Day come up and inspect the thing to make sure that if there's something going
(10:33):
on that we should know about, we can take care of it.
Oscar was born in 1950.
He was born on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation right outside of Pierre,
which I believe was established in, you know, the 60s, like 1863.
And it was one of those things that was created after they started dividing
(10:56):
the Great Sioux Reservation.
And this was, to a certain extent, I think it was established in response to
the Sioux uprising in Minnesota in 62.
1962, and so they brought about a bunch of people out here to this area near
here, and most of those people are Dakota people.
(11:20):
Oscar was born a Nakota speaker, and it was his first language until he got
sent to boarding school.
And he was born at Joe Creek on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation,
which is, even by, I think, reservation standards at the time,
really out of the way, relatively small community,
(11:40):
you know, that stuck way back.
And so he grew up in a very, very traditional community where everybody spoke Nakota.
And he basically was with a generation,
including his grandmother and many older relatives who had known life on the
(12:06):
plains when it was uninhibited,
when the Great Sioux Reservation took everything from the river all the way out.
So it was not much of a change in the terms of the way that people lived.
So if you consider that the extermination of the buffalo was done by 1890 and
(12:26):
started in the 70s and they killed 30 million buffalo.
Oscar was only born 25 years after that, so the prospects of him knowing people
who knew the other life and who had all the traditional stories and perspectives,
they were communicated to him in his language, in their language.
(12:49):
And so he grew up in a very traditional environment. environment,
one of his major influences was his grandmother.
And, you know, there were other, you know, family members around.
So as typical from what I read and what he told me,
(13:09):
he very quickly took on his personal identity as an artist and as a very special
kind of person who had his own gift,
which was not only art, but a certain kind of quietness and reflective and intellectual
quality that he kept all his life.
(13:30):
Now, I personally believe he had a really special gift for seeing the world
physically, different than most of us do.
Particularly people who are born in a tradition that is based in a kind of representational style.
You know, so you have to, like Picasso said, you have to kind of unlearn that
representational style to get to be abstractionist.
(13:54):
Where Oscar was born into a tradition that was abstract, whether or not it was
parfleshes or beading or quilting. And his mother and his grandmother were great quilters.
And so he remembers playing with the various swatches of color fabric that they
had. And the other great quality in his work is his love of color and his genius with color.
(14:20):
He can do things with color that I've never seen other artists do.
Certain colors are notorious in their difficulty for artists because they don't
tint, tone, and shade with any kind of quality.
You know, you take purple. You tint, tone, and shade purple. I mean, you just kill it.
(14:41):
But somehow Oscar could work with that. Yellow's the same and green's the same.
And as his work developed, he needed a full palette of the various tones of these colors.
And sometimes I'm sure he would address himself to working with a particularly challenging color.
(15:01):
Music.
(15:23):
Oscar has a very recognizable style, so much so that most people have not even tried to copy it.
Because as soon as you see somebody who's working in the Oscar Howe style,
people will go, ah, Oscar Howe.
And so even the people that he trained here, who had similar backgrounds and
(15:44):
interests, you know, shy away from, you know, once they're no longer students,
shy away from using his style.
But his style was, you know, highly personal.
And I think it was intuitive with him.
He started doing, like almost all of us who are artists, you know,
he started drawing, you know, fairly realistic things around you that,
(16:06):
you know, you draw the things that you love, like in his case it was horses.
You draw cartoons and you draw the kinds of things that graphic designers give
us to look at, you know. In that case, it was like Art Nouveau and those sorts of things.
But he was always trying to develop his personal style.
(16:31):
And when he went to Santa Fe as a young boy, not so young, but he just finished
ninth grade at the Pure Indian School.
And he had some starts and fits, and he got through in about 10 years.
So he graduated there at about 18. and it was unclear exactly how he got to go to Santa Fe.
(16:56):
There was something very special happening in Santa Fe right around that time.
In 1935, a woman by the name of Dorothy Dunn Kramer took advantage of a change
in government educational policy.
Towards the education of Indian people. Based on the Miriam Report from 28,
(17:18):
there was a slow change in BIA schools towards letting Native people depend
on their own culture more.
You know, so art became incorporated again, whereas for a long time art wasn't taught.
And so she, She, at the Santa Fe Indian School, she was an art teacher.
(17:41):
She came out of the Chicago Art Institute.
She established a program there that was to die for.
I mean, it was really revolutionary. Five years, she totally,
totally remade, you know, the conception of Indian art and gave it a professional
basis and a professional look. It was called the Studio Style.
(18:02):
Later, it just continued on and on and on adagium. And, you know,
people now refer to it as a Bambi school and those kinds of things because it
became, like any style, too self-focused, okay?
And it was certainly dominated by the Southwest because that's where the school was.
The majority of the students that went there were from the Southwest.
(18:25):
And so, and this art program was kind of set off, given its own place.
And Dorothy Dunn was very selective about the 50 or so students that she would accept.
Well, in those five years, based upon,
you know, her perspicacity, I guess you would say,
in choosing artists who had to apply and pass muster, basically almost every
(18:50):
major Native American artist of that generation passed through her tender, loving care.
And so, you know, it was Alan Houser or Pepinita Velarde or any of those sorts
of people. I mean, she established baseball.
In doing that, she also established what was emerging as an Indian style, watercolor and paper.
(19:14):
Flat, outlined figures, no spatial references, you know, minimum landscape, if any.
Subject matter would be Indian traditions, dances, both old and new.
And so basically, it was pretty tight.
(19:34):
Well, Oscar mastered that program and was one of the absolute best artists I've
ever seen working in that Santa Fe style.
I mean, it was brilliant, I mean, he drew well, he understood the style immediately,
but quickly he became uncomfortable with that.
And even though Dorothy Dunn encouraged people to draw from their own roots
(19:58):
and their own traditions, you know, you still had that style they're facing
you. Everybody from, you know, they work really with it.
Well, this was a point in time when the Indian Crafts and Art Board was established
and they They were promoting Indian art, principally for its economic development potential.
They wanted stuff that says, screamed off the walls at you, Indian art.
(20:20):
In 1948, the city council employed Oscar to design the murals for the Corn Palace.
Oscar had wanted to do it for some time, and finally was allowed to design those murals.
And he continued that until 1971.
So from 1948 to 71, every one of the murals were designed by Oscar Howell,
(20:42):
not only to design the murals,
but he oversaw the building or the putting the corn on each of them because
things have a way of changing when they get up on the wall. It didn't look quite
like they did in the design.
Oscar had to be there to oversee that operation, make sure it was right.
Is there like a theme? You know, Oscar, I think, has to be, had to be,
(21:08):
and still is an inspiration to many Indian people.
If you read his life history, he had a very tough life.
And living on the reservation, reservation schools were very difficult to him.
And it took a while for people to understand what his art was all about.
The thing virtually sings to you. I mean, because you're looking at his work,
(21:31):
you're going into depth and bouncing out as kind of like Hans Hoffman's push-pull thing.
You know, he's really creating a space that didn't exist before,
and Indian art was fairly rare in American modernism at that point in time.
So he was, I would say, the best kind of combination of a unique artist with
(21:53):
a unique vision and an educated artist who knew what was going on,
both in the traditional world and in the contemporary world.
You know, what he means to the city of Mitchell, a lot of people probably,
like anybody else, wouldn't know who he was or much about him.
But to people that have been involved in the history of Mitchell,
the history of the Corn Palace was everything.
(22:17):
We, the people that decorated the palace over the years, there really haven't
been very many. And Oscar did it longer than anybody did.
And he is, to me, the most noted artist we have in Mitchell.
Music.
Music.
(00:15):
I was one of the Native American children, adopted at birth and removed from
our country's Indian reservation system.
I was raised in a small middle-class farming community, but was never told of.
Music.
My true American Indian heritage.
It was still taboo back in those early days.
The years passed, and in 1987 I lost both parents.
(00:37):
While going through their personal belongings, My wife discovered my adoption
papers and she began a search.
Five years later, I was reunited with my biological Lakota family living on
the Lower Brule Sioux Indian Reservation of South Dakota.
I am a son of two mothers and a product of two worlds that had collided.
(00:58):
But I have an equal amount of love and pride for both.
I'm Paul LaRouche, and the stories you are about to see are an attempt to share
this true American story of a hidden heritage.
Oscar Howe was a pioneering American Indian artist of Yanktoni,
Dakota descent, renowned for his innovative contributions to Native American art.
(01:21):
Breaking away from traditional styles, he developed a unique modernistic approach
that blended indigenous themes with abstract influences.
His work vividly portrays the culture's history and spirituality of his people,
earning him recognition as a trailblazer in contemporary Native American art.
(01:42):
Through his vibrant paintings, Howe not only challenged stereotypes,
but also inspired future generations of Native artists to explore new creative horizons.
We recently paid a visit to the Oscar Howe Art Gallery, located in the University
of South Dakota, to learn a little bit more about this acclaimed late American Indian artist.
(02:04):
Here's the interview. Well, I first met Oscar in the early 70s.
He had come to the university in 1957 and had a variety of hats that he wore.
Partially, he was with the art department, but mostly he was with the museum,
W.H. Holver Museum, as an assistant director, and with the Institute for Indian
(02:27):
Studies, and also taught courses. He was a professor.
The primary teacher for the fine arts, the department at that time was small,
and its emphasis was on commercial art on one hand and art education on the other.
And in between that, those two or three faculty would teach a few painting courses,
(02:50):
et cetera, but they weren't what you would consider to be intense fine arts courses.
And so Oscar was brought in to the university to establish a core for the fine arts.
Things were changing in the late 50s and the early 60s. We were leaving behind
emphasis on, you know, kind of applied arts and moving into fine arts all across the nation.
(03:16):
And so Oscar was brought in to start that. And that was a pretty lonely existence
for him because at that point in time, you know, he didn't fit the department
because the other several faculty people were by and large,
you know, they didn't know what to do with a real fine artist and particularly
somebody as abstract and modern as Oscar Howe was.
(03:40):
And so he that started a fairly lengthy
experience which is a story all in
itself as to how he how he fit into
not only the fine arts but the university as a whole and there are a lot of
different stories with that but I met him in the early 70s on a number of occasions
I came down once because I was interested in seeing the department and meeting
(04:04):
some of the faculty at that point he was over in Old Main.
He also came to Mount Marty where I was teaching and gave a lecture and we had
a small exhibit of his works so I had a chance to talk to him.
I was quite struck by him but then when I started teaching
part-time here I had a little bit more contact with him and it became when I
(04:25):
became chair then he was one of my faculty and so I worked as a chair should
with trying to understand what the faculty's own personal professional goals were.
And so I spent a lot of time talking to him. And I found that Oscar Howe.
Have been caught in a seam again in terms of the development of the art department,
(04:47):
because by the time I came, it was like the third iteration of the art department's self-identity.
When he first came, it was art education and commercial art.
Then a whole bunch of, I can't call them anything else but hippies, came in to replace that.
(05:07):
They only lasted about a year, but they revolutionized everything.
That was a point in time when higher education was in deep flux.
And Oscar was really excited about these people coming in because they were
all really fine artists.
But again, they didn't know what to do with him because they were very,
very pop artists, you know, very, very, very cutting-edge contemporary art.
(05:31):
And while Oscar's art was modern and, you know, kind of and highly abstract,
it was, from their point of view, fairly conventional. And they had no background
in terms of the Indian subject matter that he was using, etc.
So they didn't know exactly how to do it. And there was a great age discrepancy there.
Oscar was older than these people who saw themselves pretty much as radicals,
(05:54):
redefining, you know, what art education was, which needed to happen.
But so he found himself kind of outside of that.
And then once those people left, they brought in a kind of more mainstream group
of modern artists and things kind of settled down with that,
with the faculty at that point.
There were people who really understood Oscar and appreciated Oscar,
(06:17):
but at that point, I think Oscar was old enough and had been through the wars
as it was enough that he wasn't going to reach out to these people in any great effort.
And he had really good working relationships with a lot of people across campus,
but I don't think the same can be said.
(06:38):
With the art department. So when I became chair, I decided that I was going
to cut through this estrangement.
We were going to take advantage of one Oscar Howe's reputation and bring him
into the art department so the art department understood what they had.
And they were receptive to this, and they worked with that.
(07:00):
By that time, there was an Oscar Howe gallery on campus, And we kind of worked to mainstream that.
Unfortunately then, and this was basically, you know, 76, et cetera,
when I took over as chair of the department, I also took over as director of the Oscar Howe Gallery.
(07:21):
And so I got intimately involved in helping to select the works,
which we selected like four or five pieces each year.
In compensation for some extra salary that he received as artist-in-residence.
And so I would talk to he and the family, particularly Heidi,
(07:42):
about the works that we'd bring in.
And that kind of hooked me into deciding this was a really, really,
really special man who needed and deserved a lot more attention from the university, from his peers.
He may have had an international reputation at that point, And he certainly
got lots of press in South Dakota, but I don't think there was a real understanding
(08:05):
of what it is that Oscar Howe, what it was that made Oscar Howe unique.
And so I set about to kind of preserve as much as we could and promote as much
as we could in the future Oscar Howe's legacy.
Music.
(08:42):
We took over this building seven years ago. The city gave it to us for a $1
payment, and we have been working on the building ever since.
We have put over about $200,000 into it, trying to restore it.
Our pride and joy is the dome, and the dome was painted in 1940 by Oscar Howe.
(09:06):
At that time, he was not a noted Indian artist, but a young,
struggling artist trying to make a nickel here and there.
And for his work, he received a grand sum of $65.
This was a WPA project, Work in Progress outfit, and they were finding jobs
(09:27):
for people, and Oscar took this job.
And it's interesting in that when he started painting, he got it all laid out,
and as you can see, it's quite an intricate design, but as he got it laid out,
he had to come back and start over again.
He started using egg temper-based paint and painted his first bit.
(09:49):
He had to paint at night because daytime, it was too hot.
And when he come back the next day to start again, the paint had baked off.
So he had to clean it all up and start all over again.
The painting stood as it was until 1977. 1977, Oscar had just retired down at
the University of South Dakota, and his successor was Dr. John Day.
(10:12):
Dr. Day brought his students up, and they, along with Oscar being present part
of the time, restored the mural to its original beauty.
And in 89, it was touched up just slightly again, but since then,
it's not been touched, and it's still in excellent condition. We have Dr.
Day come up and inspect the thing to make sure that if there's something going
(10:33):
on that we should know about, we can take care of it.
Oscar was born in 1950.
He was born on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation right outside of Pierre,
which I believe was established in, you know, the 60s, like 1863.
And it was one of those things that was created after they started dividing
(10:56):
the Great Sioux Reservation.
And this was, to a certain extent, I think it was established in response to
the Sioux uprising in Minnesota in 62.
1962, and so they brought about a bunch of people out here to this area near
here, and most of those people are Dakota people.
(11:20):
Oscar was born a Nakota speaker, and it was his first language until he got
sent to boarding school.
And he was born at Joe Creek on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation,
which is, even by, I think, reservation standards at the time,
really out of the way, relatively small community,
(11:40):
you know, that stuck way back.
And so he grew up in a very, very traditional community where everybody spoke Nakota.
And he basically was with a generation,
including his grandmother and many older relatives who had known life on the
(12:06):
plains when it was uninhibited,
when the Great Sioux Reservation took everything from the river all the way out.
So it was not much of a change in the terms of the way that people lived.
So if you consider that the extermination of the buffalo was done by 1890 and
(12:26):
started in the 70s and they killed 30 million buffalo.
Oscar was only born 25 years after that, so the prospects of him knowing people
who knew the other life and who had all the traditional stories and perspectives,
they were communicated to him in his language, in their language.
(12:49):
And so he grew up in a very traditional environment. environment,
one of his major influences was his grandmother.
And, you know, there were other, you know, family members around.
So as typical from what I read and what he told me,
(13:09):
he very quickly took on his personal identity as an artist and as a very special
kind of person who had his own gift,
which was not only art, but a certain kind of quietness and reflective and intellectual
quality that he kept all his life.
(13:30):
Now, I personally believe he had a really special gift for seeing the world
physically, different than most of us do.
Particularly people who are born in a tradition that is based in a kind of representational style.
You know, so you have to, like Picasso said, you have to kind of unlearn that
representational style to get to be abstractionist.
(13:54):
Where Oscar was born into a tradition that was abstract, whether or not it was
parfleshes or beading or quilting. And his mother and his grandmother were great quilters.
And so he remembers playing with the various swatches of color fabric that they
had. And the other great quality in his work is his love of color and his genius with color.
(14:20):
He can do things with color that I've never seen other artists do.
Certain colors are notorious in their difficulty for artists because they don't
tint, tone, and shade with any kind of quality.
You know, you take purple. You tint, tone, and shade purple. I mean, you just kill it.
(14:41):
But somehow Oscar could work with that. Yellow's the same and green's the same.
And as his work developed, he needed a full palette of the various tones of these colors.
And sometimes I'm sure he would address himself to working with a particularly challenging color.
(15:01):
Music.
(15:23):
Oscar has a very recognizable style, so much so that most people have not even tried to copy it.
Because as soon as you see somebody who's working in the Oscar Howe style,
people will go, ah, Oscar Howe.
And so even the people that he trained here, who had similar backgrounds and
(15:44):
interests, you know, shy away from, you know, once they're no longer students,
shy away from using his style.
But his style was, you know, highly personal.
And I think it was intuitive with him.
He started doing, like almost all of us who are artists, you know,
he started drawing, you know, fairly realistic things around you that,
(16:06):
you know, you draw the things that you love, like in his case it was horses.
You draw cartoons and you draw the kinds of things that graphic designers give
us to look at, you know. In that case, it was like Art Nouveau and those sorts of things.
But he was always trying to develop his personal style.
(16:31):
And when he went to Santa Fe as a young boy, not so young, but he just finished
ninth grade at the Pure Indian School.
And he had some starts and fits, and he got through in about 10 years.
So he graduated there at about 18. and it was unclear exactly how he got to go to Santa Fe.
(16:56):
There was something very special happening in Santa Fe right around that time.
In 1935, a woman by the name of Dorothy Dunn Kramer took advantage of a change
in government educational policy.
Towards the education of Indian people. Based on the Miriam Report from 28,
(17:18):
there was a slow change in BIA schools towards letting Native people depend
on their own culture more.
You know, so art became incorporated again, whereas for a long time art wasn't taught.
And so she, She, at the Santa Fe Indian School, she was an art teacher.
(17:41):
She came out of the Chicago Art Institute.
She established a program there that was to die for.
I mean, it was really revolutionary. Five years, she totally,
totally remade, you know, the conception of Indian art and gave it a professional
basis and a professional look. It was called the Studio Style.
(18:02):
Later, it just continued on and on and on adagium. And, you know,
people now refer to it as a Bambi school and those kinds of things because it
became, like any style, too self-focused, okay?
And it was certainly dominated by the Southwest because that's where the school was.
The majority of the students that went there were from the Southwest.
(18:25):
And so, and this art program was kind of set off, given its own place.
And Dorothy Dunn was very selective about the 50 or so students that she would accept.
Well, in those five years, based upon,
you know, her perspicacity, I guess you would say,
in choosing artists who had to apply and pass muster, basically almost every
(18:50):
major Native American artist of that generation passed through her tender, loving care.
And so, you know, it was Alan Houser or Pepinita Velarde or any of those sorts
of people. I mean, she established baseball.
In doing that, she also established what was emerging as an Indian style, watercolor and paper.
(19:14):
Flat, outlined figures, no spatial references, you know, minimum landscape, if any.
Subject matter would be Indian traditions, dances, both old and new.
And so basically, it was pretty tight.
(19:34):
Well, Oscar mastered that program and was one of the absolute best artists I've
ever seen working in that Santa Fe style.
I mean, it was brilliant, I mean, he drew well, he understood the style immediately,
but quickly he became uncomfortable with that.
And even though Dorothy Dunn encouraged people to draw from their own roots
(19:58):
and their own traditions, you know, you still had that style they're facing
you. Everybody from, you know, they work really with it.
Well, this was a point in time when the Indian Crafts and Art Board was established
and they They were promoting Indian art, principally for its economic development potential.
They wanted stuff that says, screamed off the walls at you, Indian art.
(20:20):
In 1948, the city council employed Oscar to design the murals for the Corn Palace.
Oscar had wanted to do it for some time, and finally was allowed to design those murals.
And he continued that until 1971.
So from 1948 to 71, every one of the murals were designed by Oscar Howell,
(20:42):
not only to design the murals,
but he oversaw the building or the putting the corn on each of them because
things have a way of changing when they get up on the wall. It didn't look quite
like they did in the design.
Oscar had to be there to oversee that operation, make sure it was right.
Is there like a theme? You know, Oscar, I think, has to be, had to be,
(21:08):
and still is an inspiration to many Indian people.
If you read his life history, he had a very tough life.
And living on the reservation, reservation schools were very difficult to him.
And it took a while for people to understand what his art was all about.
The thing virtually sings to you. I mean, because you're looking at his work,
(21:31):
you're going into depth and bouncing out as kind of like Hans Hoffman's push-pull thing.
You know, he's really creating a space that didn't exist before,
and Indian art was fairly rare in American modernism at that point in time.
So he was, I would say, the best kind of combination of a unique artist with
(21:53):
a unique vision and an educated artist who knew what was going on,
both in the traditional world and in the contemporary world.
You know, what he means to the city of Mitchell, a lot of people probably,
like anybody else, wouldn't know who he was or much about him.
But to people that have been involved in the history of Mitchell,
the history of the Corn Palace was everything.
(22:17):
We, the people that decorated the palace over the years, there really haven't
been very many. And Oscar did it longer than anybody did.
And he is, to me, the most noted artist we have in Mitchell.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.