Synopses & Reviews
Child of the Fire is the first book-length examination of the career of the nineteenth-century artist Mary Edmonia Lewis, best known for her sculptures inspired by historical and biblical themes. Throughout this richly illustrated study, Kirsten Pai Buick investigates how Lewis and her work were perceived, and their meanings manipulated, by others and the sculptor herself. She argues against the racialist art discourse that has long cast Lewisandrsquo;s sculptures as reflections of her identity as an African American and Native American woman who lived most of her life abroad. Instead, by seeking to reveal Lewisandrsquo;s intentions through analyses of her career and artwork, Buick illuminates Lewisandrsquo;s fraught but active participation in the creation of a distinct andldquo;Americanandrdquo; national art, one dominated by themes of indigeneity, sentimentality, gender, and race. In so doing, she shows that the sculptor variously complicated and facilitated the dominant ideologies of the vanishing American (the notion that Native Americans were a dying race), sentimentality, and true womanhood.
Buick considers the institutions and people that supported Lewisandrsquo;s careerandmdash;including Oberlin College, abolitionists in Boston, and American expatriates in Italyandmdash;and she explores how their agendas affected the way they perceived and described the artist. Analyzing four of Lewisandrsquo;s most popular sculptures, each created between 1866 and 1876, Buick discusses interpretations of Hiawatha in terms of the cultural impact of Henry Wadsworth Longfellowandrsquo;s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha; Forever Free and Hagar in the Wilderness in light of art historiansandrsquo; assumptions that artworks created by African American artists necessarily reflect African American themes; and The Death of Cleopatra in relation to broader problems of reading art as a reflection of identity.
Review
andldquo;Child of the Fire is a tour de force. Kirsten Pai Buick has written a brilliant, historically and culturally grounded investigation into one of the most fascinating people of the nineteenth century. Despite the challenge of a subject as elusive and enigmatic as Mary Edmonia Lewis, Buick brings Lewisandrsquo;s work back where it belongs: into the fold of nineteenth-century American art, albeit from the vantage point of a knowing, African American, female, expatriate, Catholic iconoclast.andrdquo;andmdash;Richard J. Powell, author of Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture
Review
“Child of the Fire marks a dramatic change in how scholars approach artists marginalized by race, ethnicity, or gender. In the field of American art, most studies of such artists have assumed that their art directly expresses or reflects their racial, ethnic, and gender identities, usually understood in terms of late-twentieth-century identity politics. While these heroic narratives of self-expression and cultural resistance are a necessary first step in recovering such artists from oblivion, the time has come for a more sophisticated analysis of how these artists actually worked and what they achieved. Kirsten Pai Buick provides that.”—Kirk Savage, author of Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America
Review
andldquo;Buick provides the most comprehensive history of Lewis to date and a critical assessment of the discipline through close readings of primary sources and the leading scholarship on Lewis. . . . This volume is a crucial model for multiple disciplines. Essential. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[D]oing justice to the subject of Edmonia Lewis may be beyond the knowledge of any single scholar, as studying her andlsquo;differencesandrsquo; and the ways in which she was cast as anomalous requires one to search a myriad of shifting databases and intervene in the interstices of archives. Speaking generally, however, this book goes a long way toward providing a model of responsive, responsible art history.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This book is so tantalizing because, as Buick herself concludes, Lewis remains an enigma. . . . Despite the difficulties presented by the lack of archival materials, the quality of this study presents a challenge to art historians to avoid andlsquo;conversing with stereotypeandrsquo; by doing our cultural and contextual homework.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Buickandrsquo;s book is groundbreaking in its reinterpretation of Lewis and her art. . . . Child of the Fire is a significant book because it reminds us to consider cultural context over simpler readings that merge racial and gender identity with interpretation of an artistandrsquo;s work.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[A] thoughtful, groundbreaking study that should be a must-read for anyone interested in art of the United States and in a nuanced treatment of race, ethnicity, and gender.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[T]his fiercely intellectual study offers insightful, original readings of Edmonia Lewis's art. Buick gives these intriguing sculptures the serious attention they have long deserved.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In revisiting and revising the examination of Lewis and her art, Buick challenges earlier interpretations and sheds new light on Lewis and adds to the scholarship.... Buick concludes with a persuasive call for a more andlsquo;responsive and responsible art historyandrsquo;andhellip; [Her] Child of the Fire helps move us forward.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Brownstoneandrsquo;s meticulous study makes available a unique set of little-known hide paintings and offers valuable insights into one of the less studied indigenous societies of the Great Plains. A must for every library on Native North American art and culture.andrdquo;andmdash;Janet Catherine Berlo, professor of visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester and author of Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawkand#39;s Vision of the Lakota Worldand#160;
Synopsis
An analysis of the prominent nineteenth century African American sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis in relation to issues of race and gender.
Synopsis
An argument against reductive accounts of the nineteenth-century sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis s work as the product of her identity as an African American and Native American woman.
Synopsis
During much of the nineteenth century, paintings functioned as the Plains Indiansand#8217; equivalent to written records. The majority of their paintings documented warfare, focusing on specific war deeds. These pictorial narrativesand#8212;appearing on hide robes, war shirts, tipi liners, and tipi coversand#8212;were maintained by the several dozen Plains Indians tribes, and they continue to expand historical knowledge of a people and place in transition.
War Paintings of the Tsuu Tand#8217;ina Nation is a study of several important war paintings and artifact collections of the Tsuu Tand#8217;ina (Sarcee) that provides insight into the changing relations between the Tsuu Tand#8217;ina, other plains tribes, and non-Native communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Arni Brownstone has meticulously created renderings of the paintings that invite readers to explore them more fully. All known Tsuu Tand#8217;ina paintings are considered in the study, as are several important collections of Tsuu Tand#8217;ina artifacts, with particular emphasis on five key works. Brownstoneand#8217;s analysis furthers our understanding of Tsuu Tand#8217;ina pictographic war paintings in relation to the social, historical, and artistic forces that influenced them and provides a broader understanding of pictographic painting, one of the richest and most important Native American artistic and literary genres.
About the Author
Arni Brownstone is the assistant curator of world cultures at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. He is the author of
War Paint: Blackfoot and Sarcee Painted Buffalo Robes in the Royal Ontario Museum.
and#160;