Description:
Tempera on paper. Signed l.r.: Hokeah, Stamped u.r.: PLANCHE 21.
From: American Indian Painters, Vol. 1, p. 16: Hokeah is as straight as a cavalry office of the old school and owns the most magnificent pair of shoulders in Oklahoma. And how he can dance! Like the god of the fauns -- or an inspired stallion. He is decidedly more individualistic in his dancing than other Indians. He could have made a success on the sage. He did in New York for a while. Nostalgia brought him back home. On several occasions we had nice jobs lined up for him, but he was slightly deaf and did not always hear when Indian Service officials were approaching. Invariably he was caught at a disadvantage of some sort or another. Hokeah was born in 1902 in western Oklahoma. He was left an orphan almost in infancy and was really brought up by the Padres of Saint Patrick Mission near Anadarko. He was one of the original group of five young Kiowa artists. During the days of the WPA and PWA, he painted murals at the United States Indian School in Santa Fe. For others, he prepared the cartoons that the young Pueblo artists executed. He exerted a considerable influence on the style of the Pueblos' painting, as well as on the style of their dance costumes and even their dances. Some white purists in New Mexico wanted to "get that Kiowa away from here. He is contaminating all the Pueblos." In his paintings, he seems to prefer to express the contemplative side of Indian life, thought he does not sentimentalize over it. His subjects are usually single figures -- a medicine man in prayer or in some ritual, often kneeling, with raised hands. At the same time, his paintings have a more decorative, almost abstract, quality than the works of other Kiowas. They look like applied jewelry; the subjects are evolved into decorative patterns full of barbaric splendor. His color is as rich and varied as in a Persian miniature, but much bolder and more masculine than the Persian. He works very slowly and with meticulous care; there are few Hokeah paintings in existence and they are, as a consequence, already rare. He now produces very little. "The Kiowa Mother and Child" is a rather unusual painting by Hokeah, as he prefers the whole figure or figures -- often squatting or sitting down. As a space composition, dividing a rectangle by the oblique, it could hardly be improved upon; as a color arrangement, it is simple and direct. Hokeah's evident intention is to center the interest on the child; he uses the elaborate deer bone ornament as a device to that end. (Collection, Oscar Brousse Jacobson)