Dan Namingha aims to transform Native American art into an abstract, minimal form
Dan Namingha has been working with the same subject matter for most of his career as an artist. He explores the beauty of the Hopi Reservation, where he grew up, and the iconography and beliefs of the Hopi people in several media. In the current exhibition are acrylic-on-canvas paintings and bronze sculptures, though over the course of his career he has worked in many other mediums.
In this particular exhibition, Namingha demonstrates a wide interpretive range, from semirepresentational to completely nonobjective. I was drawn immediately to the simplest images in this exhibit — five 20-inch-by-20-inch landscape studies consisting of half-inch brushstrokes in black that hint at the outlines of clouds, mountains and topography. The lines are uniform, largely horizontal, rhythmic and dynamic; the backgrounds are painted in a neutral flesh tone. These new, spare ‘“drawings” are even more minimal than Namingha’s sketchbook pen-and-inks (published in “The Art of Dan Naminga”), but similar in feel. I never cease to be amazed at the power of reducing detail in painting, of saying more with less. (It’s essentially what my mother told me as a teenager, before I left for a party: to look in the mirror and take off all but one piece of jewelry.)
A series of abstracted, modernist landscapes shows off Namingha’s talent as a colorist. Simplified mounds, mesas and meadows comprise areas of clear hues outlined with black; only occasionally does one color encroach on another, and then in honest brushstrokes made to be seen. As in the landscape studies, Namingha’s black lines stay within the invisible “frame” of the painting. In these landscapes he has also painted a framing outline in a soft color that blends into the sky, as if to erase the boundary between earth and heaven. The forms and dominant lines here call to mind some early 20th-century landscapes by Arthur Dove and regionalist Frank Applegate’s watercolors of mountains.
In “Desert Red” and several other more representational landscapes in this exhibit, we see Namingha’s familiar technique of combining abstracted, horizontal geometric forms that represent mesas with realistic sagebrush in the foreground and spectacular skies that truly do evoke the excess of desert vistas. The sunset sky of “Desert Red” blazes with red and orange; he has layered the paint and moved it around on the canvas, creating a mottled effect that inexplicably mimic the soft, blended colors of sunset.
Likewise, works from Namingha’s ongoing “montage” series collect Hopi symbols — spirals, katsina masks and forms, the colors of the four cardinal directions — on canvases that are often bisected by color. This binary approach also references Native American beliefs in the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, above and below. The most significant of these in this exhibit is “Hopi Montage #17,” a long, horizontal canvas segmented in four parts. The two central panels depict the Hopi flute player, his tail spiraling into the sacred spring as he makes music to encourage the corn and other crops to grow. Here his tail is painted in bands representing the four directions: yellow/north, white/east, blue/west, red/south.
More interesting are Namingha’s untitled, horizontal, abstract geometric paintings reminiscent of the works of Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly. In these it seems Namingha has taken the symbols and colors of his heritage, fragmented them, blown them up and formally arranged them. With only the slightest suggestion of stroke, these are quite minimal. But the bisection of the canvases and unusual color combinations clearly refer to Namingha’s montages.
Standing somewhat alone is my personal favorite of the paintings, a vertical called “Horizon” that combines the concept of the large geometric canvases with the softer lines of the modernist landscapes. “Horizon” offers rounded forms, hard-edged shapes and complete separation of pure color blocks. Still, there is ambiguity in the location of the referenced horizon, a message that echoes the duality seen elsewhere in this exhibit.
Namingha, who has made sculpture since the beginning of his career, has completed several new bronze works already this year. At 20 inches tall, “Desert Arch I,” a paean to Henry Moore, feels like a maquette; it begs to be executed in monumental size. This piece, representing a massive rock formation, combines planar and rounded surfaces. Two vertical forms — one much larger than the other — are set at a 45-degree angle to each other and join at a center point to create an arch. The work clearly has a front and back, and should be erected as a gateway to a park or other large public space. “Desert Arch” also evokes a sense of religious awe; the larger column is spirelike, while the bases of the two sides are solidly earthbound.
Namingha is the great-greatgrandson of the famous Hopi potter Nampeyo; his mother, Dextra Quotskuyva, also was an accomplished potter. His stepfather, Edwin Quotskuyva, was a katsina doll carver. Yet Namingha’s own aim in making art is “to transform the subject matter of Native American art and its customary realism into an abstract, almost minimal, form,” he told Thomas Hoving in “The Art of Dan Namingha.” In this exhibition he has moved further toward that goal, and not coincidentally, his best works are those that are most minimal. Aesthetically, he can still afford to take off some more “jewelry.” That is, his minimal work is strong enough to leave behind his more representational approach of the past.
Contact Hollis Walker at hwalker259@earthlink.net.
If you go
WHAT: “Dan Namingha: New Works”
WHEN: Through June 12
WHERE: Niman Fine Art, 125 Lincoln Ave.
CONTACT: 988-5091, namingha.com
