THE
LEARNING CURVE Winter/Spring 2010
Art History, Archaeology, Astronomy, History, Literature, Philosophy, Music
Painting the American Indian and the West (part 2)
Examine the work of six artists whose images of the American Indian shaped popular beliefs and captivated viewers, drawing attention to the American Indian in very different ways.
Week 1: Karl Bodmer traveled through America between 1832 and 1834, painting the Native American. The artist had been hired by German Prince Maximilian to illustrate and document their travels through North America. After this one trip, Bodmer never returned to the New World.
Week 2: Taos artist Joseph. H. Sharp painted tightly composed scenes of the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest for sixty years. He created 212 portraits of Indians who fought against Gen. Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
Week 3: Taos artist, E. Irving Couse, was trained in Paris. Critics called him “The Image Maker for America” for his treatment of the Native American culture. He was the most nationally recognized and commercially popular of the Taos Society Artists.
Week 4: Taos artist Victor Higgins traveled to Taos in 1914 to document the people and pueblos. He was the most experimental stylist of the Taos group, working early in an Impressionistic style and later creating almost Cubist, geometric-formed western landscapes.
Week 5: Nicolai Fechin was formally trained in both painting and woodcarving in Russia. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1924 and adopted Taos and the Pueblo people, who lived just outside his New Mexico doorstep, as the inspiration for his paintings.
Week 6: Howard Terpening, most critics agree, is one of the finest artists of Plains Indians history. His brilliant control of color and instinctive ability to evoke emotion has given him the late 20th century name “storyteller of the American Indian.”
When: Tuesdays, Feb 23 – Mar 30, 10:00am-noon
Where: The Windmill Inn, 4250 N. Campbell Ave.
Cost: $135 (6 sessions)
Instructor: Penny David, Ph.D., Professor of Humanities and Theater, served on the faculty of Western Michigan University and has lectured throughout the United States and abroad, delighting her students and bringing new insights to familiar subjects. She has published extensively and has a special interest in the life and work of Mark Twain.
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