Jaune Quick-To-See Smith

By: Jaemin Song

AP Art History Project

Identification• Artist: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith• Title: Trade (Gifts for Trading Land

with White People)• Date: 1992

Content

• Columbus Day, 1992, was the 500th anniversary of the explorer's arrival in North America. Determined to challenge this traditional celebration of the European "discovery" of North America and the consequent "benefits" of white civilization, American Indian artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith conceived a group of paint-ings she called "The Quincentenary Non-Celebration."  Smith's series, which includes the Chrysler's monumen-tal Trade, was quickly acclaimed as a masterstroke of Native American protest and revisionist cultural his-tory.

Site

• 1992 marked the five-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. In response to the traditional cele-brations, many American Indians and activists made sure that the art world knew there was another side to this historical event

Media/material

• Jaune used oil based paint, cutouts of Native American publications, miniature American memorabilia hanging on top of the three panels with clothesline, to convey the message of the unfair trading of land that went on between the White people and Native Americans as well as the unnecessary use of Native American sym-bols in the everyday lives of White people.

Scale

• 60 x 170 in. (152.4 x 431.8 cm)

Purpose

• Gives a view into the thoughts and world of Native Americans.

• This piece was made to let people view celebration of Columbus's day in Native American’s prospective.

Style

• From the picture, the canoe doesn’t seem to be in the foreground; the patches of colors remind me of a mist and cover parts of the canoe. Above the canvas, she hangs a clothesline which has a various objects hanging from it. Some of these objects are Native American artifacts such as belts and beaded jewelry mixed with sports memorabilia that have Native American names

Formal Elements

• It has large patches of color reds, orange, and green juxtaposes in these large strokes giving it an appearance of a thick texture. The colors are placed in the negative spaces and in the middle is a painted canoe.

Indian Hand, 1992

•  This piece Indian Hand uses oil paints, mixed median and canvas. It is a fairly large like her previous work. 

• She cover the rest of this collage with oil paints similar to the Trade.

•  She also allows the paint to drip leaving streaks and adding texture to the whole com-position.

Indian Hand

War Shirt, 1992

War Shirt

• Oil and mixed media collage on can-vas

• Similar usage of colors• Juxtaposition through usage of colors