This wall painting is one of sixteen Diné (Navajo) sandpainting-style murals decorating the first-floor lobby of the historic McKinley County Courthouse. It was reportedly painted by “a young Navajo painter”1in 1939, the year the New Deal building opened. It is the companion piece to a semicircular mural painted on the wall opposite it (the murals are painted on either side of the building’s entryway staircase). Together, the two murals form a circular composition that references the four cardinal directions, represented by the circles and rectangles colored white and yellow (seen here) and blue and black (seen in the companion piece). The four directions are sacred to the Diné (Navajo) people because the Diné homeland is delineated by northern, southern, eastern, and western mountains (as seen in the Navajo Nation flag).
It is not only this mural and its counterpart that are painted in pairs. Throughout the entire first floor of the courthouse, sandpainting-style wall paintings are composed in sets. Moreover, the artist intentionally placed sandpainting designs and figures so that they flank entrances, lobbies, and passageways, with most symbolically communicating messages of guardianship and blessing. Here, the semicircular mural includes four songbirds, perhaps bluebirds and orioles, which traditionally symbolize good fortune (generally speaking). In this manner, the artist wrapped the entire space in a protective embrace.
The first recorded instance of reproductions of Diné (Navajo) sandpainting designs being used for interior decoration was in the El Navajo Inn in Gallup, NM. The El Navajo was a Harvey House hotel—one of dozens owned and operated by the Fred Harvey Company at major stops along the Santa Fe Railroad. It opened in 1923 and featured first-of-its-kind artwork in the lobby and common areas: twelve sandpainting-style wall paintings copied by Fred Greer, a white artist, from drawings by Sam Day Jr., a Diné artist. This use of sandpainting designs was highly controversial as sandpainting was traditionally a deeply sacred, private, and protected ceremonial practice. To quell the outcry from the Diné community, the Harvey Company arranged for the hotel’s opening to include a ceremony performed by a reported twenty-nine “medicine men.”1
Less than two decades later, the sandpainting-style wall painting concept was repeated in Gallup’s 1938 New Deal McKinley County Courthouse, when, according to a contemporary report, “state art directors . . . made provision for the selection of a young Navajo artist to aid with the murals for the new McKinley county [sic] courthouse.”2 The artist painted a total of sixteen sandpainting-style wall paintings throughout the building’s first floor, and, in fact, the one seen here is a nearly exact replica of one installed at the El Navajo Inn3 (which was demolished in 1957). Perhaps because these murals are seen as “decorative” or “reproductions” of traditional/cultural designs, the artist was never credited by name (the story of the three sets of painted-over initials seen along the bottom of the painting has been lost; they are presumed to be additions made and then “erased” long after the fact and their relevance and meaning is, at this point, undetermined).
This is one of sixteen wall paintings that decorate the first-floor lobby of the historic New Deal-built McKinley County Courthouse, reportedly made by “a young Navajo painter”1 in 1939 (the same year the courthouse opened). The wall paintings replicate designs and compositions originating from the Diné (Navajo) spiritual practice of sandpainting. The transition of sandpainting from a sacred, private ritual to a secular, public art form occurred at the turn of the 20th century as cultural tourism arose in the Southwest and a market for Native art developed. Diné artists navigated this transition by modifying sandpainting designs to offset their spiritual significance—swapping colors, eliminating certain elements, re-ordering patterns. The mural seen in this image highlights this transition as it incorporates the aesthetics and language of sandpainting with European-derived visual practices. Here, common sandpainting designs and symbols are arranged in a vertical wall composition (sandpaintings were historically created on the ground) to represent a figure in dimensional space—a ceremonial dancer standing on a surface surrounded by plants and/or a landscape.
Trained in the Studio Style by Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School between 1936 and 1937, Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache) worked in this “flat” style during the New Deal and at the start of his career, on his way to becoming a trailblazing 20th-century artist. Even in this early work, one can see Houser pushing the boundaries of the conventions of the era, painting the dancer’s movements with palpable energy and power.
Untitled (Navajo Girl with Lamb) reveals how the flat aesthetic of the 1930s Studio Style, which dictated Native American painting for the first half of the 20th century and beyond, curtailed artists’ ability to communicate meaning. As told in the Studio Style, Timothy Begay’s (Diné/Navajo) story of the sacred and spiritual relationship between his people and their sheep is reduced to a pleasing, decorative scene.
In Untitled (Yei Bi Chei), Harrison Begay (Diné/Navajo) breaks through the restrictive conventions of the “flat” Studio Style in which he—along with most Native painters of his generation—was trained in the 1930s, achieving a sense of movement, rhythm, and energy.
Untitled (Taking Down a Finished Rug) is an excellent example of the problematic Studio Style of Native American painting taught by non-Native art teacher Dorothy Dunn at the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1930s. Harrison Begay (Diné/Navajo) was one of many Native artists initially trained there as a painter. The Studio Style defined Native painting for a generation and its influence is still felt today. It is characterized by formal and conceptual flatness: blank backgrounds, outlined forms, lack of perspective and shading, and an emphasis on “traditional” themes.
