Troubling Abstraction: Robert Houle

by W. Jackson Rushing, Carol Podedworny

Robert Houle has been a visionary artist since the beginning of his career. Native artists, he wrote, are committed to involvement in the polemics of modern art. Meaning derives from living in the twentieth century, where painting ranges from realism to abstraction and sculpture varies from shamanism to assemblage. Employing the traditions of modernist painting, particularly as practiced by Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Houle has tenaciously insisted on reciprocity among the aesthetic and cultural specificities with which he engages. After years of breathtaking solo exhibitions, he returns to his first stylistic impulse: abstraction. This important publication, with three essays and an artist statement, documents a unique and vital side to Houle s innovative artistic practice.

103 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007