Untitled (Apache Crown Dancer)

This is an untitled painting by artist Allan Houser, depicting an Apache Crown Dancer. The work is fifteen inches wide and twenty inches tall, painted on paper with casein paint and tempera. For more about this painting style and the history of this painting, refer to the “About this Artwork” section above.

The painting captures a single Apache Crown Dancer in movement during a dance. He is facing left, bent over at the waist, and he is caught mid-step, with his left foot on the ground and his right foot raised high as he takes a lunging step forward. In each hand he holds a long, dark green and black sword-shaped implement decorated with a wavy line down the blade.

The dancer is adorned on both head and body. His head is crowned with a headdress, and his face fully covered by a black mask with small circle openings for eyes and mouth. The mask has white triangular designs above his eyes and on his forehead. Encircling his neck is a blue polka-dotted piece of cloth, wrapped as one might wear a bandana. His torso and arms are colored light blue, and a long wavy line extends down his left arm from the shoulder to the hand. On his chest are painted two dark blue bands extending from either shoulder to his breastplate, creating a necklace-type effect. They join at a shape some viewers might recognize as similar to a Maltese cross, which is comprised of four triangles forming a square by connecting at their points in the square’s middle. The dancer has thin white strips of material tied around his upper arms, from which stream long pieces of pink material decorated with white feathers with black and orange tips. On his lower body he wears a long pale yellow skirt, decorated with three horizontal green and red lines. Two pieces of fur or material appear on the left and right of the skirt hem, they are yellow with red at the tip, and appear tail-like while swaying with the dancer’s movement. On his feet are yellow moccasins with pale yellow soles, a green and red design on the lower ankle portions, and red and blue diamond shapes on the shaft portions which cover the dancer’s shins.

The most dramatic thing the dancer wears is his headdress. The headdress appears about two feet tall and is likely carved from wood. Some viewers might relate its shape to American football goal posts. The base of the headdress, which rests on the dancer’s head, is a slightly curved black triangle. Above the triangle and balanced on its tip stands the goal post-style structure, a horizontal bar with two vertical arms extending on the left and right. At either end of the horizontal beam, the vertical arms are painted yellow on the bottom half and green on the top half. They are decorated with diamond shapes and are tipped with feather-shaped tips. In the middle of the horizontal beam, a rectangle shape extends straight upward, topped by four thin sticks with feather-shaped tips.

The elaborate nature of the dancer’s regalia matches the high energy and vigor of his movements.