On Tuesday, Indigenous artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smithโwhose raw works depicting contemporary Native life have appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, and other major institutionsโ died at 85 , following a battle with pancreatic cancer. She was born in on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, where she was raised by her father, a horse trader. In the late s, after studying at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington, and the University of New Mexico, Smith began to develop the style that became her signature, rooted in abstract landscapes, Jasper Johns-esque maps, and pictographs addressing some of the issues facing modern Native Americans.
Lukavic, the Andrew W. While her work could be unflinchingly darkโtaking on the racism, displacement, and violence against her communityโshe also injected it with levity and a sense of humor, often deliberately mimicking the styles of influential painters like Andy Warhol or Pablo Picasso.
There are also newspaper articles about current events. Her recreations of American maps, for example, ignored current borders, instead recalling how Indigenous peoples shaped the continent before colonization. They are strangers in this land, and have spent the last years destroying evidence of our Native existence. Save this story Save. The art world has lost a trailblazer. Mixed media on paper. Archival pigment print. Christian Allaire is the Senior Fashion and Style Writer at Vogue , where he covers celebrity style, red carpet fashion, trends, emerging designers, and more.
He is particularly passionate about championing Indigenous stories and artistsโa niche that reflects his own Ojibwe heritage, hailing from Nipissing First Nation in Canada.
He regularly Read more. Topics Obituary.
