Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe

Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keefe, Robert Henri and John Sloan were among the artists who flocked to the art colonies of Taos and Santa Fe. Drawing inspiration from the Indians of the pueblos and their perceived harmony with nature, these painters forged new directions in American art. Hartley sought archetypal images of America that would give birth to a ""sturdier realism.'' Marin confronted the elemental forces of sky, sea, mountain and plain in a slashing Cubist style. O'Keeffe borrowed Hispanic images of skulls and crosses in stark meditations on death. Based on an exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art, this arresting, illustrated volume unravels the mystique of the New Mexico school. The artists' glorification of Indian life, their use of stereotypes in depicting Hispanic culture, are analyzed in the context of fieldwork by anthropologists and photographers, the exploitive commercialism of the tourist trade and the Federal government's suppression of pueblo culture. Included in the survey are early traditionalists such as Ernest Blumenschein and modernist experimenters like Victor Higgins whose shimmering crystalline landscapes bring mountain and mesa to life. (April 15)