12/28/2023 0 Comments End of trail indian on horse bookends![]() ![]() There was a comparison being made between the veteran and the warrior, and this brought up conflicting feelings and emotions in me. Jeffrey Gibson: Over the years, I went to powwows with my family, where I saw End of the Trail screen-printed on flags that were used in ceremonies honoring veterans and prisoners of war. Shannon Vittoria: When did your perception of this work begin to change? It seemed to be an image about defeat and despair. It always made me feel badly about myself, and I wondered if this was this really how the rest of the world viewed us, as failures. At the time, I saw it as an image of a shamed, defeated Indian. Jeffrey Gibson: I remember visiting the Cherokee gift shop as a kid, where there were small novelty versions of the sculpture for sale. Shannon Vittoria: When did you first encounter Fraser's End of the Trail? His American Indian heritage together with his formal training as an artist-at both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal College of Art in London-have shaped his perspective on this work of art. I spoke with contemporary painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson about Fraser's End of the Trail, a work he describes as "having a very ambivalent relationship with over the years." Born in Colorado Springs, Jeffrey is half Cherokee and a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. ![]() The sculpture continues to resonate with audiences in the twenty-first century, taking on new meanings and new forms in the digital age. James Earle and Laura Gardin Fraser Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, New Yorkįraser's sculpture has been interpreted in various ways: while some critics regarded the Indian's decline as a necessary step in America's westward "march of progress," others have viewed the work as a remorseful indictment of "the national stupidity that has greedily and cruelly destroyed a race of people possessing imagination, integrity, fidelity and nobility," as an unnamed critic wrote in Touchstone in 1920. Silver nitrate photograph 4 7/8 x 6 1/4 in. James Earle Fraser in His Studio with a Clay Maquette of the "End of the Trail" Sculpture, ca. Seated upon a windblown horse, Fraser's figure slumps over despondently, embodying the physical exhaustion and suffering of a people forcefully driven to the end of the trail. Despite its appeal as a popular American icon, Fraser intended the work as a pointed commentary on the damaging effects of Euro-American settlement on American Indian nations confined on government reservations. It was even featured on the cover of The Beach Boys 1971 album Surf's Up. Today, an online image search for "End of the Trail" returns tens of thousands of results, as the work has been endlessly reproduced in paintings and in prints, on posters, T-shirts, pins, bags, belt buckles, and bookends. Within a few months, thousands of prints and photographs of the statue were sold, and in 1918 Fraser began producing bronze reductions of the sculpture in two sizes. First modeled in 1894, the sculpture is based on Fraser's experiences growing up in Dakota Territory as he wrote in his memoirs, "as a boy, I remembered an old Dakota trapper saying, 'The Indians will someday be pushed into the Pacific Ocean.'" The artist later said that, "the idea occurred to me of making an Indian which represented his race reaching the end of the trail, at the edge of the Pacific." In 1915, Fraser displayed a monumental plaster version of the work at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, earning popular acclaim and a gold medal. James Earle Fraser's End of the Trail is one of the most iconic works featured in The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Friends of the American Wing Fund, Mr. James Earle Fraser (American, 1876–1953).
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