Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Through Jan 19

All

10 / 10

Previous Next

Organized religion was one of the many institutions that came under question in the 1960s. For many artists, the search for alternatives led to the exploration of expansive forms of spirituality, influenced by cultural roots, ancestral knowledge, and the occult. Many practitioners of historic Surrealism promoted esotericism and the magical sciences as tools for unlocking the subconscious mind and critiquing the dominant institutions—family, church, and state—of the period. The artists gathered here follow that line of thinking to various critical ends. Some, such as Jordan Belson and Ching Ho Cheng, sought spiritual knowledge by using meditation, psychedelic drugs, and divination as tools for elevating consciousness. Others, including Claes Oldenburg and Eduardo Carrillo, looked outward, questioning the dominance of religious institutions and reappropriating conventional iconography for new ends. Still others, such as Oscar Howe and Carlos Villa, evoked ritual practice in their work to assert claims to cultural identity and counter the destabilizing effects of colonization and Christianity upon Indigenous systems of belief.

Back

3 / 6

Previous Next

Abstract painting with sharp, overlapping shapes in blue, red, and black tones, forming a swirling circular pattern.

In Retreat Oscar Howe pictured a swirling sky and a body in motion through geometric forms and quilt-like motifs, as if the viewer were caught directly within the action of a traditional Dakota ceremony. By offering a first-person point of view, Howe countered the more ethnographic approach favored in colonial depictions of indigenous life, as well as the market pressures Native American artists faced to represent stylized visions of Native experience. The combination of representation and abstraction in this work reflects Howe's staunch advocacy for artistic self-determination and his desire to expand the visual language of Native modernism.

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Sixties Surreal | Art & Artists

Mojo Secrets

10

Oscar Howe, Retreat, 1968

Artists

On the Hour