The first full-length critical analysis of the paintings of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, this book focuses on Smith's role as a modernist in addition to her status as a well-known Native American artist. With close readings of Smith's work, Carolyn Kastner shows how Smith simultaneously contributes to and critiques American art and its history.Smith has distinguished herself as a modernist both in her pursuit of abstraction and her expressive technique, but too often her identity as a Native American artist has overshadowed these aspects of her work. Addressing specific themes in Smith's career, Kastner situates Smith within specific historical and cultural moments of American art, comparing her work to the abstractions of Kandinsky and Miró, as well as to the pop art of Rauschenberg and Johns. She discusses Smith's appropriation of pop culture icons like the Barbie doll, reimagined by the artist as Barbie Plenty Horses. As Kastner considers how Smith constructs each new series of artworks within the artistic, social, and political discourse of its time, she defines her contribution to American modernism and its history. Discussing the ways in which Smith draws upon her cultural heritage--both Native and non-Native--Kastner demonstrates how Smith has expanded the definitions of "American" and "modernist" art.

At various intervals between 1931 and 1945, Georgia O'Keeffe (18871986) completed seventeen drawings and paintings of katsina tithu ("kachina dolls"), the painted-wood representations of spirit beings carved by Native American artist -- especially Hopi and Zuni -- that have long played an important role in Pueblo and Hopi ceremonialism. O'Keeffe never explained how or why she became interested in these Native American carvings. Because she gave generic titles to her paintings of them except those works depicting Kokopelli, she may not have been aware of their specific names, meaning, or functions. But the artist always took inspiration from her immediate environment, whether working abstractly or representationally, often seeking subjects that conveyed her feelings for or experiences of specific places; her depictions of Native American spirit beings were no exception. As she later pointed out, "My pictures are my statement of a personal experience". The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition of fifty-three works by the artist, features fifteen drawings and paintings of katsina subjects made between 1931 and 1941 and thirty-eight additional works made between 1929 and 1953 that resulted from her deep exploration of the distinctive architecture and cultural objects of Northern New Mexico's Hispanic and Native American communities. Also included are numerous landscape paintings, a subject O'Keeffe addressed most consistently during her career. The book also features contributions by noted art historian W. Jackson Rushing III, Hopi weaver Ramona Sakiestewa, Hopi artist Dan Namingha, and Hopi tribal leader and author Alph H Secakuku. Rushing discusses O'Keeffe and other modernist painters, including Emil Bistram, Fred Kabotie, and Gustave Baumann, in their approach to Native subjects; Sakiestewa writes about O'Keeffe's katsina paintings and the influence the artist had on her own designs; Secakuku explicates katsinam ceremonalism; and Namingha is interviewed about katsina imagery in his work.