Arthur Amiotte
Arthur Amiotte ( Lakota Language: Wanbli Ta Hócoka Washte, English: Good Eagle Center; * 1942 Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota) is an American artist and art historian. He belongs to the Indian tribe of Oglala Lakota and is different for different museums and commissions worked as a consultant to the culture of the Great Plains tribes. Amiotte lives in Custer, South Dakota.
Artistic career and family background
Amiotte was a student of Oscar Howe, he continues the synthesis of tradition and modernity with distinct accents. A significant influence also had his grandmother Christina Standing Bear and his great-grandfather Standing Bear ( Mató najin ), whose talent for drawing, he also inherited. Amiotte thus comes from a family of Indian intellectuals, whose tradition he continued. He sees himself as an " ambassador at on behalf of the Lakota and for the traditional arts of Native Americans ."
Great influence was also the Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches, who introduced him to the spirituality and the associated ceremonies of the Lakota tradition 1972-1981. The mystical experiences on the basis of the Lakota philosophy characterize art Amiottes. His whole work is an expression of Lakól wicóh'an washtélaka, the love for the Lakota traditions. Based on this conviction Amiotte is also patron of the Lakota rites such as the Sun Dance ( wiwányank wacipi ). The visionary experiences of the traditional ceremonies are reflected ( Sun Dance scenes) in his art works.
The collage work of Arthur Amiotte are inspired by Ledger Type. On witty way he demonstrated so that the gap between the traditional and contemporary Lakota culture (" The Visit, " 1995, Acrylic Collage, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Wyoming).
Titles and functions
1964 became Amiotte the Bachelor of Art Education at Northern State College in Aberdeen / South Dakota, then the Master of Interdisciplinary Studies of anthropology, religion and art at the University of Montana. Later awarded him an honorary doctorate of the Oglala Lakota College and the University in Brandon / Canada.
As an artist and cultural advisor at the interface between modern and traditional indigenous art, he received, among other things, the titles and functions as an art teacher ( educator ), consultant for the native cultures of the Northern Plains and associate professor of Native Studies at the University of Brandon.
As an expert and consultant, he was appointed to numerous commissions and committees, including as a temporary consultant at the Smithsonian 's National Museum of the American Indian as well as the Presidential Advisory Council for the Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center. He is a member of the Indian Advisory Board of the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody / Wyoming, the Board of Directors for the Native American Art Studies Association, the Council of Regents of the Institute of American Indian Arts and the United States Department of the Interior 's Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
Amiotte was involved in the organization of exhibitions about the culture of the Great Plains tribes, including the Wheelwright-Museum/Santa Fe, Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain, South Dakota, in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center / Cody and the Museum of world Cultures / Frankfurt am Main.
Other activities and exhibitions
Amiotte undertakes numerous lecture tours at home and abroad. As an author, he was in 1989 involved in the work Illustrated History of the Arts in South Dakota with a chapter on the culture of the Sioux.
His versatile work from painting to sculpture to working with substance is present in 26 public and 200 private collections. Particularly well known are his series of collages in which he pointed with wit and ingenuity to the broad range of the Lakota culture between tradition and modernity brings to represent ( " The Visit ", 1995, Acrylic Collage, Buffalo Bill Historical Center).
Amiotte defined his work in it than the reserve culture committed connected to a balancing act between yesterday and today, which is often mastered in an astonishing manner; this Amiotte: " I Realized did contemporary art what ignoring the whole reservation period. This had been a dynamic time. Some people were going to school in the east, to Carlisle and Hampton. (...) People were moving ontological country allotments. They were familiar with print media, exposed to lots of magazines, pictures, photographs (...) Daily life was infused with this mixture of nonliterate / literate. There were new technologies (...) it Seemed to me that it what more honest to deal with all this in my art, rather than to create a fake hide painting ".
Awards (selection)
- Arts International
- Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Artists at Giverny, France
- Getty Foundation Grant
- Bush Leadership Fellowship ( 1981)
- The South Dakota Governor's Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Arts
- Lifetime Achievement Award as Artist and Scholar from the Native American Art Studies Association
- Bush Artist Fellowship ( 2002).
Works (selection)
- Arthur Amiotte: The Lakota Sun Dance - Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. In: Raymond J. DeMaillie / Douglas R. Parks ( ed.): Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1987, ISBN 978-0806120553 ( with illustrations of the artist).
- Arthur Amiotte: Eagles Fly Over and Our Other Selves. In: D. M. Dooling / Paul Jordan -Smith ( eds. ): I Become Part of It - Sacred Dimensions in Native American Life. Parabola Books, New York 2002, ISBN 978-0930407070.
- Arthur Amiotte, Vic Runnels: Art & Indian children of the Dakotas: An introduction to art and other ideas. U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Aberdeen (SD) in 1978.
- Myles Libhart, Arthur Amiotte: Photographs and poems by children from the Sioux Porcupine Day School, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. U.S. Department of the Interior, Rapid City in 1971.