Adkins Collection provides view of Western, American Indian art
Adkins Collection provides view of Western, American Indian art

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By John Brandenburg

Published: March 7, 2008

NORMAN — A new collection invites us into the magic world of the Taos, Santa Fe and other Western and American Indian artists — like the view of the New Mexico landscape through a car window in a work by Victor Higgins.

The "Highlights of the (Eugene B.) Adkins Collection” show opens today at the University of Oklahoma's Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art with free admission today through Sunday.

More than 200 works are on view at the OU museum from the collection of the late Eugene Brady Adkins (1920-2006), which was given jointly in July as a stewardship to it and Tulsa's Philbrook Museum of Art.

Welcoming us to the show is the glimpse of a dark river, grazing livestock, sunlit adobe buildings, tall trees and distant mountains "Through (An) Auto Window” in the undated watercolor by Higgins (1884-1949).

Higgins is well represented, too, by a "Figure Composition,” in which a seated woman, wearing only moccasins and socks, turns away from us into a nearly Cubistic background of blankets and rugs.

Even more magical, in some ways, and certainly more exotic, are two superb oil on silk paintings, "Dance at Santo Domingo” and "Falconry in Central Asia,” by Russian-born artist Leon Gaspard (1882-1964).

Robed figures on white pueblo buildings and spectators with their backs to us watch dancers in the former, while a falcon perches on the arm of one of two men wearing long, floral pattern coats, in the latter.

A second Russian-born artist, Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955) captures the daunting stare of his seated father, leaning on something, his fur cap pulled low, in a masterful 1912 oil canvas.

Bravura brushwork and expressive gesturing hands also make Fechin's oil portraits of a "Woman with a Cigarette” and a "Negro Girl with (an) Orange” two of the show's more memorable works.

Rivaling their impact is a large oil by Walter Ufer (1876-1936) of a group of American Indians "Going East,” walking through sunlit sagebrush in the foreground, in front of a massive, shadowy mountain range.

Members of the procession in Ufer's oil include a man leading a heavily burdened burro, a woman in a long blue robe, and a central female figure in a fringed shawl, balancing a large black jar on her head.

An oil by Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960) demonstrates not only the "strength of the earth,” but the power of erosion and geologic forces, as well as the interplay of light and shadow, in the "Rio Grande Gorge Near Taos.”

Many other works in the collection are almost equally expressive and intriguing.

"A Navajo Chief,” standing on a hillside, wearing a windblown red robe, has an almost ghostly presence, in an outstanding watercolor by William Robinson Leigh (1866-1955).

Sun lights up the "Land of the White Mesas” for Maynard Dixon (1875-1946), and a lightning bolt helps Peter Hurd (1904-1984) get across the romance of the Old West in his oil of "The Escape of Billy the Kid.”

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts in an eccentric 1965 oil by Dorothy Brett (1883-1976) of a circle of women on horseback, wearing multi-colored robes, receiving the "Blessing of the Mares.”

Santa Clara, Calif., artist Helen Hardin (1943-1984) relies on stylization and vivid colors to convey her "Vision of a Ghost Dance.”

Almost equally stylized is a casein painting of mythic birds enjoying a "Mealtime on the Mesa” by a second Santa Clara artist, Pablita Velarde (1918-2006).

By contrast, there is something disconsolate and almost bedraggled about the subject of a 1972 blue ink sketch of an "Indian and Tipi” by Kiowa/Comanche artist T. C. Cannon (1946-1978).

The exhibit is highly recommended during its run through December 2008 at the OU museum.

— John Brandenburg

Related Topics: Special Interest Groups, Native American Issues