Drunken Indian in Car
Fritz Scholder, Luiseño / American, 1937 - 2005
Luiseño (Luiseno)
California culture
1974
Acrylic on canvas
Overall: 30 3/16 × 40 3/16 in. (76.6 × 102 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Jane and Raphael Bernstein
P.986.77.6
Geography
Place Made: Sacramento, United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Painting
Research Area
Native American
Painting
Native American: California Culture
On view
Inscriptions
Signed, in purple acrylic, on canvas, lower center.: Scholder
Label
Fritz Scholder’s Drunken Indian in Car insists on portraying some of the "real, not red" Indians he encountered in everyday life, in opposition to the conventional, romanticized, and nostalgic portraits of 19th-century chiefs, or the tedious oral tradition of drunken Indians. When I first came to Santa Fe, I vowed to myself that I would not paint Indians. Then I saw the numerous over romanticized paintings of the "noble savage" looking in the sunset and decided that someone should paint the Indian from a different context. . . . And I think that art is the vehicle for putting forth and fighting clichés, which we all fall into. . . . No one had dared paint the massacres. No one had dared paint an Indian with a beer can. With all these artists running around and doing Indians, it had always been mainly romantic views, which, of course, wasn’t Indian at all. They looked like Italians dressed up in feathers. —Fritz Scholder From the 2019 exhibition Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, guest curated by Rayna Green
Challenging the flat and what he deemed disingenuous representations of Native Americans by other Indigenous artists, Fritz Scholder’s masterful use of color and composition pulls the viewer in for a deeper contemplation of his “Indian” subject. Scholder’s depictions disrupted the romanticized trope of the “noble savage” and grappled with topics such as alcoholism, addiction, violence, and the complexity of Native American lives.
As a leading painter and teacher at the Institute of American Indian Art, Scholder expanded possibilities for future generations of artists, and therefore, research on his painting is often focused on issues of representation. However, for Scholder, the subject was secondary to the color and composition within his painting. In speaking about color and composition, he once said, "One color by itself is pretty blah. I don’t care what color you take. It’s when you put the second color next to the first color that, then things start to happen, and you get vibrations, you get, when you get purple next to an orange, things are going to happen."
From the 2023 exhibition Kent Monkman: The Great Mystery, curated by Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs & Curator of Indigenous Art
Course History
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2012
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2012
WRIT 5, Expository Writing, William Nichols, Winter 2012
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2013
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2013
NAS 30.1, ARTH 17, Modern Native American Art History, Joyce Szabo, Summer 2013
NAS 16, 20th Century Native American History, Angela Parker, Winter 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Spring 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2014
NAS 8, Perspectives in Native American Studies, Vera Palmer, Fall 2014
Exhibition History
A Space for Dialogue 31, Myth of the Noble Savage, Meghan Rice, Class of 2006, Special Projects Intern, Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 3-May 21, 2006.
Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, October 15, 2008-August 15, 2009.
Hopkins Center 25th Anniversary Exhibition: Artists-in-Residence at Dartmouth, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 12-May 22, 1988.
Images of the West: Selections from the Permanent Collection, MALS 190, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 15-August 28, 1994.
Kent Monkman: The Great Mystery, Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 8 - December 9, 2023.
Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 8, 2011-March 12, 2012.
Perspectives: Native American Art from the Hood Museum of Art's Collection, Perspective in Native Studies, NAS 8, Spring 2014, Vera Palmer, Teaching Exhibition, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 24-June 16, 2014.
Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 23, 2020.
The Soaring Spirit: Contemporary Native American Arts, The Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, September 13-November 29, 1987.
Publication History
Meghan Rice, A Space for Dialogue 31, Myth of the Noble Savage, Hanover, New Hampshire,: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2006, ill. p. 3.
Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.67, no.43.
George P. Horse Capture, Sr., Joe D. Horse Capture, Joseph M. Sanchez, et al., Native American Art at Dartmouth: Hightlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2011, ill. p. 15 and p. 149, no. 53.
John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 183, ill. plate no. 114.
Provenance
Tally Richards Gallery, Taos, New Mexico; sold to Jane and Raphael Bernstein, Ridgewood, New Jersey; given to present collection, 1986.
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