Mucha’s Come to Town

Timeless Mucha: the Magic Line opened last week at the New Mexico Museum of Art and will continue through September 20. The exhibition tour started at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and will go on to the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Nelson Atkins Museum and finally the Museo Kaluz in Mexico City.

I obviously do a lot of research online and was getting frustrated with information I could not find, ending up going around in circles. Then in my online search I found some of what I was looking for in Missives from the Art World, a Missive I had written 6 years ago at the time of a tour of a previous Mucha show and had totally forgotten! 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2019/07/alphonse-mucha.html

Alphonse Mucha (Czech 1860-1939) spent much of his professional life in Paris. He became a major exponent of the Art Nouveau style. In 1992 after the death of Mucha’s son, Jiri, his wife Geraldine and their son John formed the Mucha Foundation to preserve his estate, gather more of his work and promote his memory by establishing a museum in Prague and organizing international exhibitions.

"Self-Portrait" by Mucha

Mucha honed his graphic skill through classical training in Vienna, Munich and Paris, and was influenced by other artists of the period in France including Gaugin. His work, in turn, influenced artists in the later 20th century.

This exhibition is comprised of drawings, posters and photographs demonstrating the artist’s incredible draughtsmanship as well as his eye for detail, composition and color. In this pencil on cardboard study of a man in an evening coat, you get an idea of his formative classical training and meticulous work.

Photography at the time was mainly used for documentation but for Mucha it served as an initial step in his artistic process. He made sketches from photographs of nudes he posed in his studio, adding flowing garments and elaborate backgrounds, or staged fully costumed vignettes as in this example of his late work for Hearst’s International Magazine, July 1922. 

As a struggling illustrator, his big break came when he created a poster for Sarah Bernhardt. Fortuitously, he had stopped in a frame shop where he learned that the superstar of her day wanted a new poster within two weeks to rekindle interest in her play Gismonda. He took on the project and rushed to the theater where she was performing to sketch her there. Breaking with the conventional format for publicity posters he created elongated vertical images that were plastered all over Paris. The posters were not only successful as publicity for Ms. Bernhardt, they became instant collectors’ items bringing the artist to the fore and gaining the actress additional acclaim. Bernhardt signed him to a six-year contract and several of the monumental posters he designed for her subsequent plays form the core of the current exhibition, standing as indisputable masterpieces of graphic art.

Mucha went on to commissions for commercial advertising and product packaging that are included in the exhibition. Though his Art Nouveau style had fallen out of fashion by the time of his death, the show concludes with a section of psychedelic rock posters and album covers that testify to the revival of his influence in the 1960’s and 70’s. Here is one example.

Mucha’s imagery may be overly familiar from reproduction, but it goes without saying that it is always best to see a work of art in the original where you can appreciate the detail and feel the spirit that the artist wished to convey.

I Had To Be There!

When I was 15 years old my high school French teacher asked for volunteers to join him at a near-bye Woolworths for a sit-in at their food counter to protest the fact that those who were called Negros, at the time, were not allowed to sit there. I am ashamed to say I did not join them. Probably mostly out of fear, but maybe also that I did not want it to take up my Saturday! Until the Saturday before last, I continued to avoid demonstrations out of fear of crowds, whether celebrating or protesting.

On No Kings Day, I finally found no excuse sufficient to keep me from participation ... and what a lesson it was for me in civic pride and sociology. Here in Santa Fe, there was some police presence in front of the Capitol, but none visible when the body of protesters marched onward to loop around and into the Plaza (our central public square). There the entire demonstration was peaceful, orderly and there was a feeling of camaraderie.

The temperature was well over 90 degrees, and since I am 80 and walk with a cane, my wife and I opted to wait on the Plaza for the crowd to arrive. There was a positive communal spirit all around. A lady who saw me with my cane immediately offered me her seat on one of the few benches in the shade. A gentleman, around my age, joined us and purchased water from a vendor. Without our asking he brought us some. Nearby was an unofficial, old fashioned folk singer with guitar and harmonica, who sang some protest songs from long ago and others where he wrote his own lyrics to known tunes. Here is a video of him singing and one of his verses ...

This is for all the migrant people ...

Livin’ in fear from day to day ...

Don’t give up, cause you got the support of many ...

Who don’t want you to go away ...

Demonstrators carried all kinds of homemade signs mocking Trump and protesting his policies, but many also had American flags. This was a great relief to me as I have been so distressed to see the recent misuse of our flag as a symbol of the far right, the white supremacists and the fanatical religious right. It should be a symbol of pride and love of our country.

Crowd size is often used as an indicator of the strength of popular sentiment. The City of Santa Fe has a population of close to 90,000. Although it was difficult to count the number of protestors since they were spread out downtown, based on the numbers in previous demonstrations that were more centrally located, the No Kings turnout has been estimated around 5,000. That would represent more than 5% of the population.

Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, has come up with the rule that says that when 3 ½ % of the population demonstrates it can lead to real change. We didn’t reach that threshold nationwide, but we did in our town!

In the range of statements expressed in the demonstrators’ signs, the two-sided one my wife made was in the middle of the spectrum, with few milder or much stronger.

I had to be there!

The Institute of American Indian Arts

You may be familiar with our federal government’s history of breaking treaties signed with Native American tribes. Well, this tradition has not been abandoned. Here is the latest update.

The Trump administration’s “Big Disastrous Bill” is looking to cut over 13 million dollars of funding from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). This represents about 75% of their annual budget!

The Institute of American Indian Arts was founded in 1962 with funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and grew from a high school to an accredited 4-year public tribal land-grant college chartered by Congress. While the college focuses on Native American art, it has a full academic program and accepts a fair number of non-Indian students.

IAIA Campus

According to their website, “IAIA seeks to attract… students from diverse backgrounds and cultural experiences. IAIA believes in equality of educational opportunity and welcomes all applications for admission. Non-American Indian applicants are evaluated by the same criteria as American Indian, Alaska Native and Canadian First Nations applicants. Admission is granted without regard to age, gender, race, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or religion.”

The Santa Fe location of the college is appropriate since 20% of the Native American population resides in the Southwest. In its 68 years of existence, 4,000 students, representing more than 90% of the 562 federally recognized tribes, have graduated from IAIA, and more than 20% of those have earned graduate degrees. What I found particularly interesting was that IAIA has a Museum Studies Program and many of its graduates have gone on to museums around the map.

In addition to their campus on the perimeter of Santa Fe, IAIA also has a museum in the center of town. It presents independent exhibitions of indigenous art and also shows alumni work that is part of their permanent collection. The downtown location serves to introduce the many visitors to Santa Fe to contemporary Native American Art.

In the Southwest the names of many Indian artists and their teachers are far better known than those of the European Old Masters that I was familiar with in New York. The list of prominent Native artist/teachers and graduates of IAIA is long so I will only mention a few.

One of the teachers, I wrote about a few weeks ago was Fritz Scholder, others are Allan Houser, Otellie Loloma, David Bradley as well as the renowned author N. Scott Momaday. Among the graduates are Tony Abeyta, Roxanne Swentzell and her daughter Rose Simpson (who had an outdoor exhibition last year in New York,) as well as Diego Romero and his brother Mateo Romero (who did the paintings of Powwows Indians which are on the new Forever U.S. postage stamps).

Though there are many things lacking in the education we give our children these days, I believe that there are few who do not know that the Indians were here first, hence the term Native Americans. Further it is acknowledged that their population was decimated by the “Manifest Destiny” of an advancing White population who came as immigrants from Europe seeking freedom and economic opportunity.

In response to the proposed new budget cut for IAIA, Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee Nation), who has been President of the University for the past 18 years and is planning to retire at the end of July, said this: “Our ancestors faced similar kinds of challenges, probably even more difficult than something like being zeroed out … and they continued to persevere and not give up … That’s the same thing that has to happen here.”)

Dr. Martin receives National Humanities Medal

Why, with the destructive chaos that the Trump administration has already caused, would they now go after the education promised by the federal government to the original inhabitants of this country? Yet another promise broken.

Mail By Mule Train

Mail has been delivered ever since people could write and wanted to communicate with others. If you go back far enough, you find that in Egypt around 2400 BCE, the Pharaohs used couriers to send out their decrees! The first regular courier service was established by the Persian Empire between 559 and 530 BCE.

Looking ahead about 2,500 years, you have the Pony Express in 1860, which I mentioned last year when I was writing about the speed of mail delivery ...

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/search?q=pony+express

What I did not realize, however, is that in principle it continues in this country to this very day. 

In the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine is an article by Sarah Yager with photographs by Elliot Ross (unless otherwise indicated). It explains that the challenge of universal mail service in this country is with one place which cannot be reached by any ground vehicle, and by helicopter only when the weather and wind are right. That is the town of Supai in the Grand Canyon. Why is there a town at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Well, because it is part of the Havasupai Indian Reservation.

In 1882, the U.S. Government restricted the Havasupai tribe to just 518 acres of their former wide-ranging hunting grounds on the South rim of the Grand Canyon, in order to create what would become the Grand Canyon National Park. In a 1975 act of Congress, 188,077 acres were returned to the tribe. Though their reservation remains within the National Park, the Havasupai have retained their sovereign rights, and they are considered guardians of the Canyon.

According to the 2010 census the town of Supai had 208 inhabitants. Although the 2020 census recorded zero, the population is currently estimated to be growing. In truth there are about 500 of the 770 registered in the Tribe supported on agriculture and tourism. Of the tens of thousands of tourists every year at the Grand Canyon a few intrepid visitors reserve a stay on the tribal lands. You have to book months ahead and hike down to the lodge or camping grounds. Your stay is limited to 3 days during which you can hike, swim and visit the village to learn about their tribal culture.

Getting back to the mail, like the Pony Express, the current system relies on animals, but with mule trains rather than horse relays, to carry the packages which include food, medicines and anything that is needed for the one village store. From the Atlantic article, “The mule train, which makes the 16-mile, six-hour loop up and down the canyon five days a week, is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the USPS mandate to “render postal services to all communities.”

Being the mailman is not for the faint of heart. Nate Chamberlain, married to a member of the tribe, did it for 25 years without a vacation and then handed it over to his nephew. The path is narrow, and one slip can be fatal for man or beast. Temperatures are extreme, and when the weather gets bad during the monsoon season, shelter must be found quickly as torrential rains wash down the canyon and there are rockslides.

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," and, in the case of Supai, the old ways are the only ways!

Historical Discovery Through Art & Science

I believe in Art, as you well know, and science as well, if it comes from a respected source. When they come together in a symbiotic manner it is most satisfying.

Sequels are familiar in detective stories where the author continues a main character throughout a series like Agatha Christie’s detective, Hercule Poirot. However, I would not have expected a sequel in the form of a medieval manuscript adding to the story of King Arthur. There are around 40 originals, each, of course, written by hand on parchment. Dr. Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, the Cambridge University Library French collections specialist, was one of the first to recognize a sequel in the University library, Identifying it as “an old French vulgate Merlin sequel, a different and extremely important Arthurian text.” It continues the story of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, a best seller in a time when reading was not yet universal. The manuscript was written in old French. This gave a clue to its origin because this was the language of the court and aristocracy of medieval England after the Norman Conquest and the work was a romance intended for a noble audience, including women.

The discovery was made by pure happenstance when a former Cambridge University archivist, Sian Collins, just happened to notice the word “Excalibur” in the text. This manuscript was found stitched into the binding of a property lease where the durable parchment had been utilized in the 1500’s as a protective book cover. It is truly astounding that this torn fragment still existed.

It took various experts, including curators, archivists, imaging experts, and conservators 3 years to trace and preserve this interesting moment in literary history. Without the newest scientific knowledge and techniques, it might have taken another 100 years to identify and restore the document.

In another case, the Harvard Law Library included in its online collection a copy of the Magna Carta. That is exactly what they believed they had, a copy, but it has turned out to be an original.

The Magna Carta is believed to be the first document to proclaim the principal that the King and his government were not above the law. What made it so important was that it became the basis for English common law and many constitutions since, including our own.

Ratified in 1215 after much contention between the Barons who demanded the charter and King John I of England, it was revised and reissued several times, first, shortly after it was written, then again during the reign of Henry III. In 1297 King Edward I, who was facing issues over his taxation policies, reissued the 1225 version. This helped solidify the charter’s status as part of English law as it guaranteed the rights and liberties it recognized.

How many of us have trawled the internet trying to learn about some subject, often symptoms of an illness. In this case, a medieval history professor at Kings College, London, David Carpenter, was trawling for unofficial versions of the Magna Carta in U.S. university libraries. He was researching the influence of the charter based on its appearance in collections of legislation made for lawyers. He was sidelined, however, when it struck him that that he had come across an original rather than a copy in the Harvard Library.

One clue was that the dimensions were within millimeters of the few known originals. Since the Harvard document was rubbed and stained it was more difficult to confirm the text. Spectral imaging and ultraviolet light made it possible to search the document word-by-word. It was found to match perfectly the 1225 version, even to the form of King Edward’s signature. If you wish to learn more about the discovery of the Harvard Magna Carta, here is an article and part way down you will see the image above and click on the “play button” for the video. 

https://hls.harvard.edu/today/harvard-law-schools-copy-of-magna-carta-revealed-as-original/

These are just two examples of how discoveries are made in some of the most obvious places by academic sleuths with the help of science. As the late renowned Louvre curator, Pierre Verlet, once said to his students, “Everything exists, it is up to you to find it”.

Public Funding for the Arts?

If you had asked me a year ago whether public funding for the arts by City, State, or Federal Government was a good thing. I would have said, of course, it is. But. the situation has changed drastically and very quickly, at least from the Federal side.

Public funding for the arts can be justified on many grounds. As I have written several times in the past, it has been shown that just seeing art or listening to music has a calming effect and can help keep one healthy. Last month, I even wrote about doctors’ prescriptions for art. 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2025/04/an-art-prescription.html

Actively engaging in the arts enhances education both by teaching discipline and encouraging creativity and innovation. We can also learn a lot about history through the arts of the past. Theater, movies and literature can bring the past alive. Also, the art created today acts as a time capsule for tomorrow. Both historic and contemporary arts play a crucial role in preserving cultural heritage and identity.

As a species, we have a need for collective interaction. We read so often that loneliness is on the rise because we are losing our ability to communicate directly, due to our absorption with all the technology we have at home. You have to admit that it is more exciting if you are in an audience with others and can share the experience rather than watching alone in front of your screen.

We cannot forget what the arts do for the economy. How many people are employed in a theater and the support thereof How many musicians play in a concert or orchestra. Movies and TV shows don’t just need actors. Have you ever followed the credits at the end of a film listing all individuals it took to put the movie together!? Contrary to the image of a lone painter in his studio he or she may have a back up team, an assistant, a publicist or a gallery that employs a number of people, including art handlers, packers and shippers. At the end of that line are the clients who purchase the art or buy tickets for the show.

What happens, however, when the government makes the decisions on what should be communicated, be it by the artist, the producer, or the editor? During the McCarthy era, when communists or left-leaning artists and intellectuals were considered the enemy, a professor teaching advanced mathematics was fired for his leftist political beliefs, though the latter had nothing to do with the former.

How much influence should a donor of any sort have on arts and educational organizations. Public schools are funded by governments because it is vital to any country to have an educated and functional population. But what happens when government gets involved in editing out parts of history such as slavery or the holocaust. Is it in the interest of a “Government of the people, by the people, for the people" to keep their constituents ignorant?

What happens when one individual or an administration, be it local or federal, has the power to dictate what we are allowed to learn or see or even create?

In China, today, there are severe restrictions on what can be portrayed in the arts. An artist who portrays anything that the government considers against its interests can be sanctioned, in some cases which can include a prison sentence.

In that situation, citizens cannot know about the ideas that were not being allowed, only what the government finds to be appropriate and in its interests.

Self-censorship will limit the creativity of artists who want to make a living from their art and the same will be true for arts organizations. It is easier to follow party lines and accept what someone else thinks you should enjoy or think. It is appropriate for a young child to be guided by parents and teachers, but in this country, we have been encouraged to question, explore, and expand our horizons beyond those limits. It has made us an admired world world-leading nation.

We are losing the ability to decide what we like or what is good or bad with our current administration’s desire to eliminate the NEA and the NEH and dictate what can be presented by government-funded organizations. I want to be able to have broad exposure and make my own judgments. It is not a question of good art or bad art, or right art or wrong art. This is an existential threat to art itself as all art comes from a creative process which involves free thinking and imagination without restraints.

Fritz Scholder

Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), born Fritz William Scholder V, is a Native American artist enrolled in the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians. He has worked as an artist creating paintings, monotypes, lithographs, and sculptures. I have mentioned him a few times in various Missives but never devoted one to him. Like so many who have been born of mixed blood, Native American and European, he made his choices; he did not want to be pigeonholeed, but his work relates to Indian issues.

He is generally considered the leader of the New American Indian Art Movement.

A major retrospective of Scholder’s work at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in 2008 was titled “Indian/Not Indian”. Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), curator of contemporary art at the museum wrote, “Although one-quarter Luiseño (a California mission tribe), Scholder always insisted he was not American Indian any more than he was German or French, yet he became the most successful and highly regarded painter of Native Americans in U.S. history—a fact that raises the question of what ‘Indian art’ actually is”.

I like to relate my Missives to recent articles or events, and at this moment, there is an exhibition of Scholder’s works on paper at the LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, which will be on until June 7. All the images used here should be credited, “LewAllen Galleries and the Estate of Fritz Scholder”.

Most artists’ themes start out expressed on paper, with the immediacy of studies that develop into major works, making this exhibition particularly interesting to me.

Sholder’s self-portraits often grapple with issues of identity. He used his art to challenge the simplistic notion of "Indian" and to portray the complexities of his own mixed heritage. “Self Portrait in Roma” (1978), an etching and aquatint on paper from an edition of 50. shows an individual in classic, if somber, white man’s garb, with a questioning look on his face. The hand emerging from the white of his shirt holds what may be his etching tool.

Furthering the theme of complexity and stereotypes is his “Laughing Artist” (1974), an etching from an edition of 35. The image challenges stereotypical depictions of Native Americans wearing feathers and dancing or as solemn or tragic figures. Though from the and the not quite white coloring of the face you can infer that this is an Indian, but he still looks like anyone you might meet at a party.

“Indian at the Bar” (1970-71), lithograph in an edition of 75 from the “Indian Forever Suite” which consists of eight stone lithographs. The prominent Coors beer can held by the leering Indian, wearing dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat, is clearly a comment on the alcoholism prevalent in the Indian population. Although many Native Americans object to the characterization, it was a subject Scholder depicted more than once.

My favorite print in the current show is “Indian Contemplating Columbus” (1991), an etching and aquatint on paper from an edition of 50. I like a slightly different title that it is known by better, "Native American Contemplating the Arrival of Columbus." The evocation of a faraway look in the face we cannot see of a figure identified by his moccasin and feathered headdress, I find haunting. How would things be if Columbus had not “discovered” America?!!!

It takes incredible talent and intellect for an artist to combine both sides of an issue so that his work tells the story. That is why I find Scholder’s work exciting, disturbing, and in the end, illuminating.