Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Saint Louis Art Museum purchases works by Native American women artists: Kay WalkingStick and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

The Saint Louis Art Museum has acquired works by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick, deepening the museum’s commitment to Native artists with the addition of three critical pieces to the collection.

The acquisitions address gaps in the museum’s collection of works by contemporary Native American artists and leave a significant legacy at the museum for the recent exhibition “Action/Abstraction Redefined: Modern Native Art, 1940s-1970s,” an important presentation of modern Native art and the first exhibition of this size at SLAM.

Kay WalkingStick, American and Cherokee, born 1935 

“Personal Icon”, 1975; 

Acrylic, wax, and ink on canvas; 42 x 48 inches; 

Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor, the Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury Dubinsky and John Paul Dubinsky, in memory of Pauline E. Ashton, and Kiku Obata; 

© Kay WalkingStick

“We are in a moment of heightened visibility for Native artists across the country but especially in St. Louis,” said Min Jung Kim, the museum’s Barbara B. Taylor Director. “Adding these works to our collection is a way to continue to shed light on these vital artists, whose art speaks to both personal histories and wider cultural concerns. These acquisitions are also essential to the continued diversification of both our collection and our programming, ensuring that we provide our community with opportunities to see and experience the fullest view of human creativity from many different cultural and aesthetic traditions.”

One of the works—WalkingStick’s “Personal Icon”—was recently featured in the final gallery of the museum’s summer 2023 exhibition, “Action/Abstraction Redefined.” “Personal Icon” is among the last major works available from a pivotal era in her career. During the mid-1970s, WalkingStick turned away from figuration and experimented with different media while also investigating Native history for the first time. The 1975 painting repeats a low, swelling arc against a gridded frame of red encaustic; these experimental forms and materials shaped her practice subsequently.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Enrolled Salish, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, MT, born 1940; 

“State Names Map: Cahokia”, and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange”, 2023; 

Saint Louis Art Museum, The Siteman Contemporary Art Fund, and funds given by Barbara and Andy Taylor,The Werner Family, John and Susan Horseman, Christine Taylor-Broughton and Lee Broughton, Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, Pam and Greg Trapp, Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wolff, Dottie and Kent Kreh, Dwyer Brown and Nancy Reynolds, Suzy Besnia and Vic Richey, Clare M. Davis and David S. Obedin, Yvette Drury and John Paul Dubinsky, Judith Weiss Levy, Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Lowenhaupt, and Mary Ann and Andy Srenco; 

© Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York; 

Image courtesy of Counterpublic, Photograph by Jon Gitchoff

Using collage and gestural painting, Quick-to-See Smith’s “State Names Map: Cahokia” reconfigures the United States map, using text with only those state names based on Indigenous words. In “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange,” the artist created the frame of a canoe using wood from an Osage Orange tree, and inside the canoe are cast-resin objects—mirrors, guns, liquor and a beaver—that highlight the destructive qualities of European trade goods on Indigenous peoples.

Both “State Names Map: Cahokia” and “Trade Canoe: Osage Orange” are new works that were featured in Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition that showcased contemporary art in locations across St. Louis from April through July. Nearly one-quarter of the artists in the 2023 Counterpublic cited Native heritage.

Quick-to-See Smith’s work has appeared in more than 90 solo exhibitions across the country, most recently “Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. SLAM’s collection includes the mixed media painting “I See Red: Migration” and a suite of prints produced at Washington University’s Island Press including “Celebrate 40,000 Years of American Art.”

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org

Impressionism and Beyond @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Impressionism and Beyond

Saint Louis Art Museum

February 1 - July 31, 2022

“Due to a surge of COVID positive cases among our staff and the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the Museum is closed to the public. At this time, we anticipate reopening to the public on Tuesday, February 1"

EDGAR DEGAS

French, 1834–1917

"Ballet Dancers in the Wings", c.1890–1900

Pastel; 28 x 26 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 24:1935

ODILON REDON

French, 1840–1916 

"Eyes in the Forest", 1882

Charcoal on pale brown paper; 

framed: 23 x 19 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches 

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morton D. May 234:1959

The Saint Louis Art Museum presents “Impressionism and Beyond,” an exhibition of works on paper drawn exclusively from the museum collections.

Through 59 European drawings, pastels and prints dating from the 1850s to the 1930s, “Impressionism and Beyond” highlights the many conversations occurring in the art world between tradition and innovation, representation and abstraction, and the artist’s studio and the art market.

During this period, European life underwent dramatic social, political and psychological changes, which contributed to significant artistic developments. Artists responded to this fluid environment in many ways—visualizing modern life as it was, but also viewing the world through an imaginative lens.

The exhibition reveals that, at this same moment, new attitudes about artistic practice and expressions of modernity elevated drawing and printmaking to prominence among the avant-garde.

In France, which dominated progressive trends, the Impressionists broke with traditional academic modes of representation through formal experimentation and innovative print and drawing techniques. Mary Cassatt, for example, elevated color printmaking to new heights through her adaptation of the Japanese aesthetic that was taking Paris by storm in the 1890s, while her Impressionist colleague Edgar Degas sought multiple avenues for experimentation in print. Degas and other Impressionists also developed inventive drawing styles that allowed them to capture movement and intense effects of color and light in their works.

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944 

"The Scream", 1895

Lithograph; image: 13 3/4 x 27 1/4 inches, 

sheet: 23 1/2 x 16 3/8 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Private Collection 2019.348

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944

"Moonlight", 1896; printed c. 1906

Color woodcut on Japan paper; 

image: 15 13/16 x 18 9/16 inches, 

sheet: 18 7/8 x 23 5/16 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum

Gift of General and Mrs. Leif J. Sverdrup 338:1952

This experimental impulse in turn provided a launchpad for later generations to push formal and technical innovations even further. Paul Cézanne’s early-20th-century watercolors transformed natural environments into abstract washes of color, while Odilon Redon focused on the expressive power of black to create images that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. Edvard Munch rethought the ancient medium of woodcut printmaking, cutting his blocks into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to print in multiple colors.

“Impressionism and Beyond” explores several themes that guided artists in their examinations of modernity. Subjects of modern urban life such as the domestic interior and the modern woman of fashion abound during this period. Meanwhile, experimental treatments of figures and landscapes highlight news ways artists viewed the world around them, sometimes giving way to quirky, even frightening, visions.

“Impressionism and Beyond” is curated by Abigail Yoder, research assistant, and Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, Saint Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org

Damon Davis @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Damon Davis 

Saint Louis Art Museum 

September 17, 2021 - March 27, 2022 

DAMON DAVIS, American, born 1985

Published by Wildwood Press, Saint Louis, Missouri

"All Hands On Deck #3", 2015

Lithograph; sheet (irregular): 32 x 58 3/16 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, 

The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund 9:2016.3

© Damon Davis, courtesy Saint Louis Art Museum

Damon Davis’ “All Hands On Deck” is a powerful artwork that addresses social justice and the call for change. The Saint Louis multi-disciplinary artist conceived the original photographs of hands held up high during the months-long protests following the August 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson.

The Saint Louis Art Museum displays six of the large-scale photolithographs in a special installation. A seventh work from the series will be on view in the exhibition “Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration,” which opens in October 2021.

Damon Davis and his fellow protesters pasted the images onto boarded-up storefronts along West Florissant Avenue, where they shared space with many other rapidly improvised textual and visual statements. Images of the storefronts were broadcast around the world. In the words of the artist:

“The project in itself was a protest to change the physical space of the street in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown. The boarded-up buildings created a narrative of destruction before anything had even happened, and that fed into the media’s biased portrayal of the protesters. It was a way to weaponize art to create a counternarrative centered on the unity and love I saw every time I went out to protest. It sought to raise the morale of the protest community to continue the long fight.”

Damon Davis photographed a diverse array of individuals who were involved in the Ferguson protest movement. Recalling the protesters’ chant “Hands up don’t shoot” that was echoed throughout the protests—they were photographed with their “hands up.” That signal of surrender, however, is transformed in Davis’s photographs into one of resistance, fortitude and community.

Damon Davis’ documentary film about the Ferguson protest movement, “Whose Streets?,” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and received broad critical attention. Among his many other accomplishments, he is 2011 graduate of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute, and in 2020, he was named a Citizen Artist Fellow at Kennedy Center in Washington.

The installation is curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs; and Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110-1380

www.slam.org