The Art and Artists of “The Indian New Deal”
Sacred and Secular
In no artistic arena is the tension between sacred and secular more apparent than in sandpainting, which was commodified in the period leading up to the New Deal in a way that illuminates how Native artists carefully maneuvered the onslaught of westernization.
At First Glance
How are these two wall paintings similar?
How are they different?
Looking Closer & Seeing Past
Style & Context
These sandpainting–style wall paintings adorn the first-floor walls of the historic McKinley County Courthouse. According to a contemporary news report, they were made by a Navajo artist, whom the paper did not name, in 1939. Though not part of the story of the Studio Style, these wall paintings illustrate the complexities of defining “Indian art” in the New Deal era.
While today these wall paintings look “traditional,” at the time they were made they would have been seen as quite cutting-edge.
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Sandpainting originated as a sacred, ceremonial practice. According to Diné (Navajo) custom, ceremonial singers or medicine men created sandpaintings as a means of calling forth holy people/spirits into a ceremonial space. Sandpaintings were made for a specific, temporary purpose and were never preserved, as it was believed that to do so would entrap the holy ones.
In the late 1800s, anthropologists began lobbying singers and medicine men to allow them to document ceremonies, reasoning that their religion was dying out. Traders soon hopped on the bandwagon, requesting reproductions for display and demonstrations at their trading posts, thus spurring the shift from sacred practice to secular art. By 1917, sandpainting–style weavings were being produced. Another turning point came in 1918, when medicine man Sam Chief made a sandpainting for Arizona State University and allowed it to be preserved.
Still, it took five years for sandpaintings to be hung on the wall and used as decoration. In 1923, John Huckel, who ran the Indian Department for the Harvey House hotel company, commissioned twelve large sandpainting replicas for the El Navajo Hotel in Gallup. This move caused controversy, and the company arranged for a dedication complete with blessings by Navajo medicine men.
Looking Closer
Style
Artists deftly managed the transition from sacred to secular in sandpainting. They made alterations to design details such as changing colors to deflate their spiritual power. They did not enclose sandpainting–style artworks within a border so as not to ensnare holy people.
This sandpainting–style wall painting is an example of the balance between sacred expression and secular modification. It is composed to emphasize the four directions, which are sacred in Navajo spirituality. Correspondingly, it represents the north, south, east, and west winds (the circle designs gathered toward the center), the skies and mountains (symbolized by the trapezoidal designs), as well as the four sacred plants (corns, bean, squash, and tobacco; extending diagonally from center). A rainbow Yei deity, a guardian figure, creates a protective arch around three sides of the perimeter. Yet the artist did not orient the painting according to the cardinal directions, instead making a quarter turn. For instance, in Navajo spirituality, the north, represented by the mountain Diné Nitsaa (Mt. Hesperus), is signified by the color black. In this wall painting, however, the color black is aligned to the west (both figuratively and geographically speaking).
Looking Closer
Style
This sandpainting–style wall painting exemplifies the ultimate completion of the transition from sacred to secular in the art form. It is less a symbolic design and more of a representational painting. Here, the central Yei figure appears more like a person and is grounded instead of floating in space. This is most likely a representation of a Yei Bi Chei dancer (a person dressed to impersonate a Yei spirit as part of a ceremonial dance; as in Harrison Begay’s Untitled (Yei Bi Chei) painting). The tobacco and corn plants are similarly painted in a more realistic way and oriented as they would be in a landscape.
Sandpaintings & The Studio Style
Taken together, these sandpainting–style wall paintings illustrate how Native artists made their own ways through the headwinds of commodification, commercialization, and westernization by innovating.
They also reveal one source of inspiration for Dunn’s Studio Style (in addition to prehistoric rock art, hide painting, and other Indigenous art forms) and some of the causes of its commercial success. The Studio Style and sandpainting share a two-dimensional, linear, and stylized aesthetic, which lends the former the perception of authenticity, of a connection to ancient cultures and histories. Moreover, as Diné (Navajo) scholar Kevin Brown explains, the Studio Style’s emphasis on abstraction tantalizes the intended consumer, heightening the Euro-American viewer’s sense of experiencing a “foreign” culture: “the pull and hypnotism of these artworks is the curse of sharing sacred ideas with a capitalistic culture,” Brown says.
