Outsider art: Western Eyes

T. C. Cannon, Washington Landscape with Peace Medal Indian (1976), acrylic on canvas, collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art

The snake dance arrives at the culmination of ceremonies for seasonal, life-giving rains. The snake priests reach into the kisi, a cone-shaped shrine built to hold the snakes, grabbing them by hand and mouth. This dramatic scene — a priest with snake held firmly in the mouth — remains among the most prevalent of the traditional Indigenous dances scenes in the representational art of New Mexico.

And that’s a dissertation waiting to happen.

But the Hopi snake dance is the prominent motif in a section of the exhibition Western Eyes: 20th Century Art Here and Now at the New Mexico Museum of Art (through Jan. 8) on Native dances. And Christian Waguespack, the museum’s curator of 20th-century art, uses the snake dance to highlight various approaches to Indigenous representation.

Outsider art: Western Eyes

Fritz Scholder, Snake Dancer (1967), oil on board, collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art (2410.23P)

Outsider art: Western Eyes

Georgia O’Keeffe, Desert Abstraction (Bear Lake)Ìý (1931), oil on canvas, on long term loan to the New Mexico Museum of Art from the Museum of New Mexico Foundation (1984.336)

Outsider art: Western Eyes

Raymond Jonson, Light (1917), oil on canvas, collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art (292.23P)

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