Listen to the conversation, or read the full transcript below.
Follow us on Spotify for more audio from The Met.
Matthew Martinez: Hello, I’m Matthew Martinez, former first lieutenant governor at Ohkay Owingeh and former Deputy Director at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.
Patricia Norby: I’m Patricia Marroquin Norby, associate curator of Native American Art here at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
—
Norby: We’re looking at Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1937 painting From the Faraway, Nearby, an enlarged mule deer skull levitating above a landscape, which is a desert landscape in the Southwest.
And I would say that my interest in her work began really heavily around 2010 when I took a trip as a graduate student to New Mexico. And stepping off the plane and walking into the airport, there was a sign that said, ‘Welcome to O’Keeffe Country.’ It was one of my first trips to New Mexico, and I had always understood New Mexico as an Indigenous space. So to have that type of welcoming so public struck me and I began to wonder why New Mexico was being identified with one specific artist and how that impacted local Indigenous communities.
I am an Indigenous woman—I am of Purépecha descent. And so just understanding the context of O’Keeffe’s paintings from an Indigenous perspective was really important to me. And unpacking the history of the relationship between O’Keeffe and her Génizaro neighbors as well as her other Indigenous neighbors where she lived in Abiquiú—how that changed her, impacted her work. There’s so many layers to her imagery and there’s so much information that has been omitted by the American art-historical canon. And so I wanted to take the time to do a deep dive and really explore those layers and what they mean to different people.
Martinez: So the region and the area that we’re talking about, it’s really in my backyard. My family’s from Northern New Mexico. And so we obviously see bones and antlers depicted here, within this painting, and for local Indigenous and Pueblo communities, the understanding and the approach of revering mule deer stems from a long history of hunting and celebrating these animals.
We also believe that there is still energy within these animals who are quote, ‘no longer living,’ but they’re still very present with us. The way they’re treated, whether it’s through food or through songs and ceremonies, they always have that long life that continues in this world and the afterworld. And looking at this painting here, I think about where this lives within the particular piece, within an institution, within a larger community story.
Norby: What interests me is that O’Keeffe aestheticized what in many ways was a traumatic history for local communities. Many of her bone depictions were created during the 1930s and then into the forties following the 1934 Livestock Reduction Act. And this was an act which impacted a number of Indigenous communities in the Southwest, but was mainly enforced on the Navajo or Diné peoples.
Oftentimes the act is associated with environmental issues, so overgrazing because of overpopulation of livestock. But when you look back at the records, it actually reveals this bias toward the cattle industry. So there are some questions about if perhaps Indigenous people, local Hispano communities, were targeted intentionally by the state and federal government. We know of one example when horses were executed around a drinking hole in the Abiquiú area. Their bodies were left there and for many years, local people mention that you could smell the animals decaying over time.
So O’Keeffe was known to have walked through the Abiquiú landscapes bone collecting. And even local community members talked about this and were very puzzled by this. And I think it’s important to understand that yes, there were bones that were acquired naturally through the specific life cycles of the animals. But many of the bones that she found may have also been part of these livestock reduction processes. And so O’Keeffe’s understandings of the bones is completely different from other people and their experiences with bones in the desert.
Martinez: Traditionally, for a lot of northern New Mexicans, Hispanos, and Indigenous communities, there’s a protocol of items that are left untouched. If you see them, you appreciate them, they’re part of the larger landscape. If at a particular time any items are collected, they’re probably put to traditional uses in ways that give life. These are items not, not to be collected and objectified, but actually put within a particular context that is long and as old as the Southwest is.
So, when I look at paintings or photographs, I often think what’s not captured is also part of that story. We’re obviously looking at this image of a mule deer and these multiple antlers. So what’s missing, right? Where’s the body? Did that decay or was it something that was just removed and set aside because it wasn’t pleasing to the eye to be painted?
Norby: Well, I really appreciate that you bring up what is omitted from the painting, Matthew, because I’m often interested in what are the embellishments. And we know anatomically that this is not correct, that O’Keeffe was looking to her own imagination and is adding additional antlers to this mule deer skull.
When she first visited New Mexico, she really claimed that for herself, separate from her marriage with Alfred Stieglitz, who she had been living separately from on and off for quite some time by the time this image is created. She was really becoming more independent. She wanted to create her own space. So part of her correspondence with Stieglitz discusses how she felt isolated at times from him, but also enjoyed that faraway feeling.
I think the faraway feeling is also part of her imagination, also about what she dreamt about or thought about in terms of her connection with the desert. But she was part of an art community that included a number of notable artists and intellectuals who all spent a great deal of time romanticizing the desert, while at the same time appropriating land and aesthetics from a number of the original people who lived there.
—
Martinez: It’s important to understand the historical backdrop of New Mexico and the Southwest. New Mexico was granted statehood in 1912, and it took a long time to get to that point because of the debate in Congress that there were quote, ‘too many Indians and too many Mexicans’ in the Southwest for the state to be part of the union. So there was a lot of performance around branding New Mexico as a safe space, so to speak. Politically it was always challenging for New Mexico to really develop an identity.
And then you know, into the 1920s and 1930s, you get a lot more traffic as far as collectors and painters and hobbyists really wanting to come out here to the southwest where it’s unique. And so that narrative really shifted in ways that promoted the marketing of the state as a way to take ownership in a rugged, western landscape where you’re able to just build your own place and capitalize on this notion of finding and discovering new places. That was very much captured in postcards and photographs and travel guidebooks.
Norby: And in O’Keeffe’s situation, images of her were featured in popular magazines like Life Magazine, and they would feature O’Keeffe’s paintings of the empty desert alongside her photographed collecting bones, walking around, looking very mysterious. And she’s often only depicted alone walking around in these vast desertscapes. And so going back to your point about what is omitted, I want to say who is omitted. This depiction of the entire region as empty really helped to promote what you’re describing as this space for people to just move right in, a place that is unoccupied, which is of course not true.
I was thinking earlier that the image relates to what the scholar Patricia Albers describes as, ‘the simultaneous ravaging and revering of Indigenous communities and culture.’ Looking at the image, it’s almost like a hunter’s trophy that might be hung on a wall. And I think it’s perfectly fine to appreciate a work of art for its aesthetic richness and qualities, or the wonderful skill level of an artist or from an artist’s interpretation. But I also think it’s important to be a responsible viewer when it comes to art and to do those deeper dives into the historical and cultural context. And to understand that works like this mean so much more than what is depicted on the canvas.
As you’re saying, Matthew, not everything can be captured within the image surface. And so it’s important to look a little further. And it’s also very eye-opening. It’s very exciting. It’s wonderful to learn and to make these kinds of connections. And I think that if people were open to doing that more often, it would just really benefit everyone.
###
