Throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s, the paintings and photographs of non-Native artists, including Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Edward Curtis, and Paul Kane, shaped American consciousness of Indigenous peoples and western landscapes. Their romantic depictions of fantastically lit, yet uninhabited, landscapes and stoic leaders served as billboards for western expansion, which violently dispossessed Indigenous nations and confederacies across Turtle Island (North America) through forced dispersals and widespread massacres.
Monkman takes exception to this unearned power and flips the dynamics of visual authorship by symbolically reclaiming these landscapes for Indigenous peoples. He presents histories that reference Indigenous identities, experiences, and truths. While these histories challenge perspectives or reference injustices and discrimination, which can be unsettling, Monkman reminds us that art, creativity, and even humor, can create new paths of understanding.
Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and History Painting
In the mid- to late 1700s, many European and American artists responded to a growing interest in Classical Greek and Roman art and culture. Academic painters developed the style of Neoclassicism to create monumental history paintings that depicted Classical scenes and themes. While, at first glance, these paintings seem to focus on the past, they have more to do with contemporary views about cultural values, superiority, political leanings, and social dynamics.
In the later 1700s, Romantic artists in France and the US, who prioritized emotion and imagination, turned history painting on its head by depicting current events on the monumental scale previously reserved for antiquity. Monkman follows the paths forged by these artists and draws references from their paintings to illuminate contemporary lived experiences.
To see examples of Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and history painting, as well as other art historical sources in Monkman’s paintings, be sure to visit Miss Chief’s library later in the exhibition.
Artist and Model
2012
Acrylic paint on canvas
Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum, 2016.287.
Reproduction © and courtesy Kent Monkman
In this painting, Monkman inverts the power dynamic between Native model and non-Native artist. Since the mid-1800s and continuing into the 1900s, photographers have perpetuated romantic stereotypes of Indigenous people, such as the work of Edward S. Curtis. Miss Chief takes back creative control by posing a photographer as her passive, eroticized subject. Monkman poses the model like traditional depictions of St. Sebastian, a favorite subject of Renaissance artists who was adopted by many gay men in later times as an icon, whose hands are usually bound and whose body is riddled with arrows.
Sunday in the Park
2010
Acrylic paint on canvas
Collection of Belinda Stronach
Reproduction © and courtesy Kent Monkman
This idyllic scene of relaxation and community features elegant Indigenous kâ-wâsihkopayicik (Miss Chiefs term for her more “sparkly” friends) and evokes French artist Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, a painting which pictures people enjoying a park just west of Paris. Here, Monkman reverses the quaint European picnic scene to emphasize that national parks, tourism hotspots, and popular hunting grounds were, in fact, established on Indigenous homelands. The scene starkly contrasts with the sweeping, uninhabited landscapes painted by non-Native artists in the 1800s such as Albert Bierstadt, whose works promoted western expansion.
History is Painted by the Victors
2013
Acrylic paint on canvas
Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum, 2016.288
Reproduction © and courtesy Kent Monkman
With a landscape imagined and painted by artist Albert Bierstadt in the 1800s as a backdrop Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (more on her soon), entertains Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and soldiers of the 7th Cavalry. Soldiers swim, frolic, and sunbathe—their poses referencing the nude young men in Thomas Eakins’s paintings and photographs. On her easel, we see an artistic reference to Lakȟóta artist Red Horse’s drawing of the Battle of the Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn), where Native warriors defeated and killed Custer. Monkman ultimately asks us to consider who writes history and whose perspectives are missing.
The Triumph of Mischief
2007
Acrylic paint on canvas
Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa: Purchased 2008, 42217
Reproduction © and courtesy Kent Monkman
Monkman makes clear that Miss Chief is here to challenge dominant narratives across time and place. He references a host of mythological, historical, and art historical figures. In just one example, painter Pablo Picasso is surrounded by a group of Black men posed as the female figures in his seminal modernist painting Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon and who are attempting to wrestle back an African mask that he appropriated in that work. The presence of numerous Indigenous figures, spiritual beings, and arts, including Zuni pottery and Chilkat blankets, speaks to the many rich artistic heritages also appropriated by settler artists.
mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People): Welcoming the Newcomers
2019
Acrylic paint on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Purchase:, Donald R. Sobey Foundation CAF Canada Project Gift., 2020, 2020.216a
Reproduction © and courtesy Kent Monkman
Those of you who are our relatives from across the oceans, when your ancestors came to our lands twenty generations ago, we cared for you … Now it is time for you to listen carefully to those who belong to the land.
Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors is organized by the Denver Art Museum and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It was developed with generous support from the D. R. Sobey Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Henry Luce Foundation, with additional support provided by the Birnbaum Social Discourse Project, The Christensen Fund, Walker Youngbird Foundation, Marilyn Carol and Robert Weaver, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.
