In 1948, a young photographer named Gordon Parks spent weeks getting to know and aiming his camera at the gritty world of 17-year-old Leonard “Red” Jackson on the streets of New York City. The photo essay that resulted, “Harlem Gang Leader,” was published in Life...
The pitchfork is what many people notice first, its tines sharp and unforgiving, its handle rigid in the farmer’s grip. His eyes stare coolly, and his mouth is set in moral rectitude — or is it half-concealed levity? The woman by his side (His wife?...
He was the scion of distinguished European artists, yet a roughneck who proved himself a cowboy on Texas cattle drives at the turn of the last century. While a young man, he enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City, apprenticing to the...
In 1921, the federal government banned the Pueblo tribes sacred “pagan” dances. About the same time, a San Ildefonso woman started painting pictures — though only men of her tribe were supposed to paint. That artist, Quah Ah, captured the defiant, inner strength of her...
Artist Earl Biss was a man driven by visions and demons. He was brilliant, charming, handsome, volatile, sometimes violent and, as his friend, Hunter S. Thompson, affectionately said, “crazy as five loons.” He was also a primary catalyst in an art movement that saw works...
Only the most gifted artists are able to fold art history and personal history into a cohesive and imaginative new direction. Painter John Nieto, who passed away in July 2018, was such a master. Nieto is recognized as the first American artist to bring French...
With 50 years of modern American art in the rearview mirror since the 1960s, it may be difficult to grasp how radically the work of one young Native American painter at the time diverged from what had come before, and the impact his vision would...
Albert Bierstadt’s last great painting was a grand-manner allegorical canvas recounting the impending demise of the two prime symbols of the American West, the buffalo and the Plains American Indian tribes. It is titled The Last of the Buffalo (1889). So important was the subject...
It seems that Olive Rush [1873–1966], a pioneering artist long hidden in the shadows of American art history, may have contributed to her own obscurity by accidentally branding herself as a mild Quaker spinster, rather than the worldly, independent, adventurous spirit she was. After having...
At just about the time that Eduardo Carrillo [1937–1997] was up for tenure in his teaching position at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the 1970s, he became aware that an African-American member of his department was being left out of some activities....