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Beam, Carl
Emerging Sitting Bull
1978

The Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is one of a number of nineteenth-century Indigenous Chiefs depicted in Beam’s works. Beam admired, not only Sitting Bull’s bravery during his wars of resistance, but also his worldliness as a well-traveled cultural performer, not “bound by his own culture but a willing participant in human affairs” (1984). This work, the first of Beam’s purchased by the Bisches, marks the beginning of the artist’s transition away from Colour-field painting toward the politicized iconography and multimedia practice for which he became known.

 
Beam, Carl
M'Chigeeng ON 1943-M'Chigeeng ON 2005
Emerging Sitting Bull
1978
watercolour on handmade paper
87.0 x 67.3 cm
Gift of Jane Bisch in memory of her husband, Lance Bisch, 2013
56-016.01

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