Hopi Painting: The World of the Hopi by Patricia Janis Broder

Abstract

66 Western American Literature • Arundel C. Hull's "Steve Young Hanged at Laramie by Vigilantes. October 19, 1868," flinging forth the eloquent forms of Steve Young's wellclad body (striped blouse) hanging straight as a plumb bob on its pole, and, in balance, the elegantly classical wooden earliest buildings of young Laramie, with nobody watching but the photographer. Each of the three i~ages is a volume in its own right to be carefully "read," and each requires a written volume explaining it. It is not a question of words or pictures being worth more, but they are utterly different. The pictures are pieces (not wholes) of the old reality that retrospective writing may partly recapture. What were the Chinese railroad builders bringing from their own old world into the new West? How much did the Zuni governors know by 1879 of their own and the total Indian destiny? And in the bright mid-morning light of Oct. 19, 1868, in Laramie, what human times are joined by Steve Young's dead body and the young Renaissance building? Wordsmiths must answer these questions that the pictures uniquely pose, for the West to be known. The Currents' book, treating the styles of nineteen major photographers of the old West (to the 1920's), is authoritative and beautifully produced , a landmark work in depicting the West becoming modem. William Current's own photographic style (in selection of negatives and printing of new photographs) is the twentieth impressive style conveyed by the book. Karen Current's textual commentary is fine instruction in "the impact and importance of the visual document." One thinks at first that here is a pleasant photo album of the old West, but it becomes through repeated study a remarkable lesson in how we may see the West both old and new. Photography , as Karen Current says, was a new frontier itself when the West started expanding. It still IS. STAN ANDERSON, San Francisco, California Hopi Painting: The World of the Hopi. By Patricia Janis Broder. (New York: Brandywine Press, Inc., 1978. 319 pages, $25.00.) This is a much more successful book than it should be. Patricia Broder, a native New Yorker now living in New Jersey, has put together a remarkably integrated collection of modem, nonceremonial Hopi painting as well as examples of its sources in traditional religious artwork. The volume is excellent for several reasons. Despite her Eastern identity, Mrs. Broder is a serious student of the American West. She is the author of Bronzes of the West, which won the Best Art Book Award of 1974, and she was given Western Heritage's "Wrangler" Award for writing the best article of 1975, Reviews 67 "The Pioneer Woman - Image in Bronze." Notwithstanding these credentials , in Hopi Painting she has carefully remained within her limitations as a non-Indian art historian. While she analyzes the style and iconography of contemporary Hopi painting, she relies upon the artists themselves to interpret the meaning of their work, both in terms of its relationship to traditional Hopi religious life and to modern secular existence. Thus, she avoids, for the most part, the temptation to assume the mantle of spokesman for a cultural world she does not belong to. The work is given unity by its simple organization. At the center are the paintings by a comparatively small group of young artists, the Artist Hopid, who have returned ~o the Hopi world after some immersion in the white man's schools. Some have received training in western art. But unlike those native artists who prefer to live in urban centers of the Southwest, they participate continuously in the cohesive life of their village, clan, and family. Consequently, their art not only draws upon ancient symbols and techniques but it expresses their continuing commitment to Hopi culture. At the same time, they try to bridge both native and white worlds. For generations, as Mrs. Broder tells us, Hopi artists have painted images upon kiva walls, alters, masks and other ceremonial objects. All these designs express the abiding Hopi celebration of the generative forces of spiritual existence. No less, the painters of the Artist Hopid show both Hopi and non-Hopi that the spirit...