One of the most celebrated artists of the 20th and 21st centuries is making his exhibit debut in the Phoenix metro area, and he’s sharing the spotlight with pieces of art that are themselves leaving California for the first time.
The exhibit is called “David Hockney’s Yosemite and Masters of California Basketry,” and is on display at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. It includes a series of drawings Hockney made on an iPad during visits to Yosemite National Park, as well as some of his photo collages of the park. The exhibit also features baskets made by Indigenous artists living in and around Yosemite Valley.
The Show spoke with Ann Marshall, director of research at the Heard Museum and Erin Joyce, the museum’s fine arts curator. The Show started the conversation by asking Joyce what the thinking was behind this exhibit — in terms of combining these different artists and art forms.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: One of the most celebrated artists of the 20th and 21st centuries passed away last week. David Hockney was 88. While he was best known for his bright paintings depicting life in Southern California and gay culture, there are other works in Hockney’s collection, including those on display in a 2019 show at the Heard Museum here.
The exhibit was called "David Hockney’s Yosemite and Masters of California Basketry." It included a series of drawings Hockney made on an iPad during visits to Yosemite National Park, as well as some of his photo collages of the park. The exhibit also featured baskets made by Indigenous artists living in and around Yosemite Valley.
I spoke in 2019 with Ann Marshall, director of research at the Heard Museum, and Erin Joyce, who was then the museum’s fine arts curator. I started the conversation by asking Joyce what the thinking was behind this exhibit in terms of combining these different artists and art forms.
ERIN JOYCE: Well, I think part of the impetus for this exhibition stems from our mission, which is looking at the intersectionality between Indigenous cultures of the Western hemisphere and broader cultural and artistic themes. So, we were thinking about, you know, what are those connection points with a place like Yosemite? And I think this exhibition really emanated out of place and how place has an impactfulness on either a culture or a person to create art. But we thought it would be a really interesting juxtaposition to look at how place and material manifested in these baskets, and then how such a celebrated and well-known artist like David Hockney was also inspired by Yosemite.
MARK BRODIE: When you look at the drawings from David Hockney, it’s very visual. You can sort of see its Yosemite. When you look at the baskets, are you looking more at the materials that they’re made of? I mean, is it — it seems to an outsider at least less obvious that these are from that part of the world.
ANN MARSHALL: Yes, I think knowing the life histories of the weavers and how Yosemite was an integral part of their lives, their home, and I think that is one of the stories that we try to tell in the exhibit.
MARK BRODIE: I’m curious about the juxtaposition, Erin, you talked about the juxtaposition of sort of the these various materials and the various pieces. You have some things that are fairly old, with things that are also very, very new here.
ERIN JOYCE: Yeah, so there is about a 100-year gap between the baskets that were produced by these Indigenous women during the Yosemite Indian Field Days and, you know, 1982 when David Hockney first went to Yosemite and started capturing it through different mechanized and digital technologies. And I think that technology is another big theme in this exhibition. It’s looking at how different artists instrumentalize different tools to create a work of art.
So you have something like these baskets, which are a very sophisticated technology that maybe grew out of a ceremonial or utilitarian use, and then in this show, they’re very much purely artistic manifestations of these artists’ creativity. And then you have David Hockney who, you know, has worked in fax machines and photocopiers and, of course, is known as an excellent draftsman and painter. But he’s experimenting with photography and with an iPad to create these monumental works of art.
So I think that’s one of the things that really — even though there is that huge span of time, not only topically are they, you know, similar in that Yosemite is drawing them together, but there’s innovation, and they’re abstracting these landscapes through very different ways.
MARK BRODIE: And when you talk about the technology of the baskets, these were in large part made during the early part of the 20th century, a lot of them from the ’30s or so. Were things changing in terms of how the women were making these baskets at that time?
ANN MARSHALL: I think one of the successful parts of the story is that beginning with the Indian Field Days, these baskets became associated with a known weaver. Basketry is not a signed art form, and too many wonderful baskets we don’t know who the weaver was. So in this instance, we do know who the weavers were.
MARK BRODIE: I think for a lot of people when they think of Yosemite, they think big. Because things are big there, and when you look at a lot of these drawings, even the ones that aren’t the monumental ones, even the ones that are smaller, they still depict things that are very big. And some of these baskets are also very large, but they almost sort of — they look smaller next to the drawings on the wall. Did you consciously have to sort of put bigger ones where they maybe wouldn’t look quite so small? You didn’t want to put a smaller one next to, for example, a drawing of El Capitan?
ANN MARSHALL: I think we were interested in giving the impression of the baskets almost nestled within the valley of Yosemite. And because of the size of David Hockney’s work, and then here they are in these cases, and then the cases, of course, you can get up very close. So you can stand back and look at some of the big Hockneys and then get up very close and look at some of the baskets.
MARK BRODIE: I think there are a lot of people who sort of have an image in their mind of what Yosemite, or at least a part of Yosemite, looks like either from having been there or seeing photographs. When you look at the baskets, though, it’s a tells us a slightly different picture. It’s not necessarily something that I think a lot of people think about with Yosemite. How important a part of this story are these baskets relative to sort of what people already know about this place?
ERIN JOYCE: Oh, I think that it’s completely integral. I mean, these baskets, you know, as Ann mentioned, they were produced during the Indian Field Days. ... They were produced as artworks and I think, you know, also the fact that we know who these weavers are, we know their biographies to a certain extent, and we’re making visibility happen.
I think a lot of people don’t have a very good understanding of Indigenous North America or those cultures, or if they do, it’s maybe a more stereotypical view. You know, so I think that that knowledge knowing the framework from where these baskets come from — and I mean these baskets not only are from Yosemite, they are Yosemite. They’re made from it.
And I think another thing that is kind of interesting about the way they play with the Hockney work is, you know, we have these, you know, formal representations of the valley. Of course, they’re abstracted through David Hockney’s lens and how he depicts artwork. But it’s the materials that these are made out of, you know. You see the landscape as depicted by Hockney, and that’s where these baskets come from.
MARK BRODIE: What do you hope that people who come to see this take away from it?
ERIN JOYCE: You know, I think it’s it’s multi-pronged. I think it’s so important for us to educate the public and show them the complex histories that inform a lot of art production. So on the Indigenous side, you know, again, sort of breaking those stereotypes and showing people the spectrum of indigeneity across the United States.
... And then also to educate the, you know, Phoenix metropolitan area about David Hockney. This is his first exhibition in the state of Arizona, you know, and he’s arguably one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th and 21st century. You know, so I think another big theme is, you know, innovation. All of the artists represented in this exhibition, whether it’s Tina Charlie or Carrie Bethel or David Hockney, have it’s sort of like you’ve been saying, "Where did that come from? Where did they get this idea?" It’s so incredibly inspired.
MARK BRODIE: Erin Joyce is the fine arts curator at the Heard Museum. I also spoke with Ann Marshall, the museum’s director of research.
They spoke about the importance of knowing the names and stories of the artists who made the baskets. That sentiment is echoed by Lucy Parker. She’s related to most of the basket weavers in the exhibit. She’s Lucy Telles’s great-granddaughter, for example. Parker still lives just outside Yosemite Valley, and when I met her outside the museum, she was surrounded by the materials to make new pieces.
LUCY PARKER: We still can make the baskets in the styles that she has done and the thing is is we run out of material because it’s not as plentiful it was when they were weaving baskets 50 years ago. There was a lot more, you know, to gather. and so those are the just the things we run into. But we still can create and do the techniques and the styles that I’ve learned that since I was very young.
MARK BRODIE: Parker says basket weaving has been in her family for generations, and that while the exhibit is humbling, it also makes her proud and honored.
LUCY PARKER: Just going in there and just seeing the generations of our family’s baskets, it’s just very heartbreaking. I mean we were just emotional and tears in our eyes that, you know, these creations of our people, you know, what they have made and it still exists. The baskets will last forever, and it’s up to us to carry that legacy on and we can do it.
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