By placing these works together, Dr. Gail Stavitsky, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, and Twig Johnson, Curator of Education and Native American Art at The Montclair Art Museum organized an exhibition which displayed common aesthetic values transcending differences in time and origin. Included in the exhibition were paintings by such acclaimed modernists as William Baziotes, Adolph Gottlieb, Will Barnet and more, juxtaposed with artifacts from Northwest Coast Indian, Cheyenne, Sioux, Hopi, Navajo and other Native American tribes. N ative American art has survived and evolved through the paradox of custom and innovation. While intermarriages, the arrival of the white man, the forced removal of tribes onto reservations and the tourist trade all affected the style of the traditional arts, the inherent concepts have remained the same.
Iconography represents emotions, spiritual essences, and the unseen forces experienced in dreams.
Designs are inspired primarily by nature or religious beliefs. J ust prior to World War I, the first generation of modernists began to embrace indigenous art and culture as a revitalizing antidote to the ills of contemporary society. By contrast, Native American-influenced art and theory after 1941 was a vital source for a modern art based on the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious. What both generations of modernists shared was the celebration of Native America as a means of rejecting European culture and acquiring indigenous roots. For the first time, ethnographic objects were removed from the realm of natural history and looked at as works of art.