Volume 1

art remains most strongly associated with painting, and the Southwest holds a particular beginning point in Native art history with the introduction of painting by Dorothy Dunn in the 1930s and the “Southwest studio” style that was its outgrowth. From interventionist forms of artistic assimilation such as Dunn’s, new generations of painters emerged, first following then later breaking with the “studio” style guidelines and prescriptions. Among the earliest painters to rise to prominence was Joe Herrera (b. 1923), who drew from his Cochiti and San Ildefonso roots, especially the influence of his mother, Tonita Pena, a self-taught watercolorist. Herrera wed his own tribal traditions with those of the Studio School and the Euro-American modernists of the 1950s to create a powerful synthesis in form and popular reception. By the 1960s, the melding of political claims with art genres ushered in an activist consciousness that found artistic expression in the establishment of the IAIA in Santa Fe. The consideration and assertion of an American Indian identity as integral to the artwork is both politicized and legitimated by artists and art consumers who deem the notion important to modern art forms created and sold today. Within the contemporary art market, the representation of a recognizable style that reflects a specific geographical location is one way to localize Southwestern art. For example, Shonto Begay ( Diné) is a postimpressionistic painter whose work often centers on the subject of contemporary Diné reality, such as his depictions of the family-centered drive from the reservation in Arizona to the off-reservation town of Gallup, New Mexico. This school of “Diné realism” is unique to the Southwestern Indian art market. Begay, a painter and illustrator 37 ____________________________________________________________ Art (Contemporary), Southwest