MBR: The Native American Shelf
Midwest Book Review
American Indians In British Art, 1700-1840
Stephanie Pratt
University of Oklahoma Press
2800 Venture Dr., Norman, OK 73069
080613657X $29.95 www.oupress.com
American Indians In British Art, 1700-1840 by Stephanie Pratt (a tribal
member of the Crow Creek Dakota Sioux and Senior Lecturer in the
History of Art at the University of Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom) is
a unique survey of Native American images painted, drawn and sketched
by British artists and reveals an artistic tradition that avoided
simplification and stereotype to portray Native peoples in realistic
and complex imagery that ranged from depicted them as noble savages to
primitive aborigines, but always as active participants in contemporary
societies and cultures. Enhanced with a profusion of both color and
black/white illustrations, Pratt provides each artistic work in its
proper historical context and deftly traces a movement away from
abstraction (where Indians were symbols rather than actual people) to a
representational art portraying Indians as actors on the colonial stage
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Scholarly, erudite,
informed and informative, American Indians In British Art, 1700-1840 is
a unique and welcome addition to personal, academic, and community
library Native American Studies and Art History reference collections.
The Argumentative Indian
Amartya Sen
Farrar, Straus, Giroux
19 Union Square West, NY, NY 10003
0374105839 $26.00 www.fsgbooks.com
Any interested in Indian history or culture will find The Argumentative
Indian: Writings On Indian History, Culture And Identity is essential
to understanding the culture, customs, viewpoints and identity of
modern India. It considers India's rich long argumentative tradition,
its traditions of skepticism and questioning, and its philosophies from
ancient to modern times. Any interested in Indian tradition who would
understand its spirituality, culture, literature or politics must
understand its argumentative tradition: no better in-depth coverage is
available than The Argumentative Indian.
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