page_title: Jim Denomie
section_title: Metaphorical surrealism
hierarchical_section_title: Jim Denomie / Artistic career / Metaphorical surrealism
context_page_description: Jim Denomie is an Ojibwe painter. He is known for his colorful, at times comical, looks at United States history and Native Americans.
context_section_description: Denomie describes his narrative painting style as "metaphorical surrealism". His paintings frequently examine historical and contemporary events in American and Native American history, as well as aspects of pop-culture, art history and Anglo-Indian relations.
  Works such as Attack on Fort Snelling Bar and Grill (2007) are a comical examination of 19th century American events and contemporary culture. Inspired by his wife's participation in the 1862 Commemorative March, which took place in March 2006 to honor Dakota women and children forced to walk 150 miles from the Lower Sioux Agency to Fort Snelling due to the refusal by Indian agent Thomas J. Galbraith to release foodstuffs to the community. Andrew Myrick, a storekeeper from the agency, stated that if the Indians were hungry "let them eat grass or their own dung." Myrick was killed on the second day at the Battle of Lower Sioux Agency and when his body was found he had a mouth stuffed full of grass. Many of these events are shown in the painting: Myrick running away from an Indian on a lawnmower with grass in his mouth, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks inspires the Bar & Grill, a World Wrestling Entertainment flag flies high as a tribute to Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, Edward S. Curtis photographs an Indian couple in their own version of American Gothic, a nude Indian woman riding an appaloosa, and other numerous events and individuals representing Indian Country yesterday and today.
  Edward S. Curtis makes a number of appearances as a voyeur in Denomie's artworks. In Edward Curtis, Paparazzi: Skinny Dip Denomie mocks Édouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. A group of four Indians, one in a lake, while the others reclining in a grassy area, relax after a day of skinny dipping and Edward Curtis is shown in the corner, with his camera, prepared to take pictures.
  Peking Duck (2008) parodies the Bering Strait theory by showing an Indian riding in a rickshaw carrying Chinese takeout in his hand. Above the taxi is a Denomie's own version of The Creation of Adam, depicting White Buffalo Calf Woman giving a drum to the Lakota people.
caption: Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, which served as the scene for Edward Curtis, Paparazzi: Skinny Dip
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