Posted on 02/24/2005 10:19:19 PM PST by Fizzie
Churchill Art Piece Called Into Question
by CBS4 News reporter Raj Chohan
Feb 24, 2005 8:03 pm US/Mountain BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) Boulder County resident Duke Prentup has been a fan of native American art for as long as he can remember. That love of art took him to the home of Ward Churchill in the early 1980's, where Prentup bought several pieces of Churchill's art, including a serigraph titled "Winter Attack."
"I have enjoyed them ever since immensely, they're obviously up inside my house," Prentup said.
Last month came a stunning revelation, though, as as Prentup flipped through a 1972 book called The Mystic Warriors of the Plains written and illustrated by the late artist Thomas E. Mails. He found a sketch that was strikingly similar to the Churchill piece.
(Excerpt) See the rest of the article, and photo comparisons of the 2 pieces of art here: http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_055200531.html
(Excerpt) Read more at news4colorado.com ...
Welcome to Free Republic!
He's a phony or it wouldn't bother him. lol!
OMG!
Seriesly, good find!
He thinks he is so cool! PUKE!
We just miss some meowchmeat?
Yeah. I didn't report 'em, but I guess someone did. They said Ward Churchill could kick our ass.
Note: Not a direct link.
http://www.native-net.org/archive/nl/9202/0211.html
American Indian Art and Artists
In Search of a Definition
By Ward Churchill
"Your images are interesting, even beautiful. But I'm afraid I
could never buy one because they're too modernistic to be really
Indian." Non-Indian woman observing the author's images during solo
exhibition at the Institute for American Indian Arts Museum - Santa
Fe, New Mexico, 1982. "Your work is too traditionally-orientated to
sell here. We deal in contemporary art." Representative of the
Elaine Horowitz Gallery to the author during the same show - Santa
Fe, New Mexico, 1982. The phrase, American Indian art, immediately
presents me with a problem because we are dealing with a basic
misnomer. "Art", like "philosophy" and "religion", is not an
American Indian concept. It is a notion and category of activity
imported from Europe right along with the horse, firearms, trade
beads and smallpox. In this sense, contemporary efforts to define
what is traditional American Indian art and who are legitimate
American Indian are more than passingly absurd.
(snip)
At this point, we find the stylistic restrictions that once
served to constrict the development of modern Indian art supplanted
by other mechanisms. And, after the fashion of advanced colonial
systems everywhere, the dominator has duped the dominated into
using such devices against themselves. The most glaring example is
a group in Santa Fe, New Mexico, headed by painter David Bradley,
who insist that no one lacking a certain amount of Indian blood or
possessing a federally-issued certification of his/her Indian-ness
id entitled to be described as an American Indian artist.
Regarding the first point, I would say that application of a
"blood quantum" standard to identification of a people amounts to
adoption of a eugenics code no different in principle from that
used by the Nazis against the Jews, the Afrikaners against blacks
and "coloreds" in South Africa, or by the Israelis against
Palestinian Arabs. Blood quantum in any guise is a virulently
racist proposition and deserves to treated as such.
As to the U.S. government certification of tribal membership, it
is an absolute denial of American Indian national sovereignty, just
as if the U.S. were to begin to stipulate who is and who is not to
be considered a member/citizen of France or Belgium. Definition of
it's own membership or citizenry is the INTERNAL PEROGATIVE of ANY
sovereign nation. No nation has the right to impose upon another
the definition of its citizenry as the U.S. has historically done
to Native Americans. The present demands of the Bradley group -
designed to improve their own "take" in market proceeds - obviously
leads directly AWAY from the exercise of indigenous sovereignty in
North America. Correspondingly, they retreat from the needs and
emergent realities of Indian life and thence from any vestige of
traditional aesthetic function.
It matters little to me what pedigree is held by any Indian
artist. Still less am I concerned with the success evident in their
sales records. What DOES count is the extent to which their art
informs and reinforces the contemporary American Indian struggle to
regain the standard of dignity and self-sufficiency once enjoyed by
all peoples indigenous to thos hemisphere. To this extent, Indian
art can never be a formal artistic or aesthetic proposition. To the
contrary, it MUST be an inherently political, spiritual and
socially activist process. This is the spirit which guides my own
production of objects, and the standard by which I measure my own
success or failure. For me, nothing else is, or could be, truly
Indian.
"Simply stunning. This is a mirror image. "
- This is all quite easily explained. You see, the original picture was called "Winter Attack" whereas Mr. Churchill's art could simply be entitled, "Return From Winter Attack".
"Flyer meets Michelle Malkin" - 2002
You really shouldn't mess with Churchill.. he's a Native American you know.
I am henceforth searching for YOUR threads before I go anywhere else. Dang!
Great job!!
Easily 10 years back, the whine from the left was that they felt "excluded" from the "good ole' boys club" by which "connections" were everything. So, the left created their own "good ole' liberals" club. Which means, they think they are only doing that which conservatives do: lock others out of "advancement and opportunity". Churchill is such an example.
He's not an Indian.
He's not a paratrooper.
Can't find his thesis.
His story about smallpox on the blankets was a lie.
He fakes pictures.
What have I forgotten?
All the professor groupy, hippy girls on his campus are now afraid that he faked all of his orgasms.
Even the position of the feathers in the headdress and the flow of the fringe in the sash are IDENTICAL in the postcard photo and Churchill's "original by me, Ward Churchill, from my own Native American imagination" photocopy artwork.
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