Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, 2017.
In this dissertation, I examine some of the ways Native American artists represented the
built environment in the first half of the twentieth century. I focus on the coincidence of
two trends: long-running changes in North American building styles and the early-twentieth
century development of fine art paradigms for viewing indigenous material
culture. Scholarship tends to treat Native American art and architecture separately. This
separation emphasizes-in turns implicitly and explicitly-the loss of so-called
traditional indigenous structures. If Native architectural styles are lost, then pictures of
buildings would seemingly flatten houses and empty them of their associations with
indigenous landscapes and memories. Many scholars may conceive of Native architecture
as being lost, though twentieth-century artists have attended to a plurality of Native
building styles and spatial epistemologies. Here, I examine the representation of
buildings through case studies, art historical narratives, and comparative analyses.
Chapters are divided by media: sculptural house models, drawings and paintings, the built
environment, and photographs. By looking at the depiction of buildings, I argue that
Native architectural styles have remained vital, if transformed, in the work of Native
American artists through the twentieth century.