M.P. phoned the Appraisers Association of America in New York City, of which I am a member. She asked for advice on a piece and they directed her to call me, since I am located in her hometown of Santa Barbara. Typical, reputation isn’t often made where you live. I felt happy to find that M.P. has a rather interesting work of art with an interesting backstory.
In the 1970s and 1980s decorators with clients in areas with bright southern sunlight favored a certain style. We called that style Southwest. You probably remember a relative who had the bleached or limed pine furniture pieces, in huge, naturally hewn boards and logs, all whitish, and topped and finished with the pastel colors of the Southwest: mint greens, light pinks and foggy blues accented with orange. My father owned a huge pine log four-poster bed that weighed 800 pounds and took up the whole bedroom. But that was then, in the bad-taste days.
By the end of the 1990s, the style waned, and the places that adopted Southwest were stuck with the style. You might think, “Oh, just Santa Fe?” No. Places as far afield as my brother’s ranch house in Ridgewood, NJ, was Southwest. My dad’s bachelor pad in Arlington Heights, IL was Southwest. And so was M.P.’s aunt’s home in Fort Lauderdale.
M.P. writes that her aunt passed in 2001 and her mom received Southwest accents. One of the pieces she inherited is pictured here, a monotype by Fritz Scholder (1937-2005), who wasn’t just an average Southwest decorative artist, but was a good artist indeed.
Scholder was one-quarter Luise¢o, a California tribe. Among many other prestigious positions, he taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He printed with Tamarind Institute and El Dorado Press, worked for the New York Graphic Society, was guest artist in premier museums and universities, and received five honorary degrees. He worked in a style some recognize as Southwest, but to Scholder it was more than “ethnic.”
All forms of ancient art appealed to him. Scholder studied Egyptian art in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, he established his own art press, Apocrypha. Scottsdale and Phoenix art centers and museums showed his work in the 1990s, and in 2000, Scholder began a series with works in London, Paris and Budapest called Millennium. He was one of the first to produce a digital book in 2000.
When an artist is associated with a movement, such as Southwest, this can be a detriment. Once a decorative style is out of fashion, the artist is out of fashion. But M.P. has a nice monotype by a good artist who outlived the Southwest fashion. Thankfully.
M.P. asked what a monotype actually is. Her monotype is a lithograph, but it is a one-off lithograph, a one-of-a-kind, printed on a lithographic stone in colors. But it is not a multiple. In other words, the piece she has is the only one, although it is a print. If it were one of a series of the same, we’d see a fraction: 5/100 or so, which means she’d have had the fifth strike of the stone, of which the artist had authorized only 100. A monotype is generally thought to be more valuable than one of a series of the same image.
M.P.’s piece is large, at 54 by 43 inches, framed. It’s signed and titled, and the title seems to relate to the location of the robed figures. I immediately recognized the signature, “Scholder.” I’ve always thought the artist got a bad deal in the 1980s-1990s, as every hotel decorated in Southwest across the nation, and every bright white condominium redone in that period, had a print by Scholder. Yet Scholder’s work can be ironic: The pieces that were thought to be representative of the American Indian, under Scholder’s brush, became a loaded commentary on commercialism and cliche. Scholder proved himself a major influence on Southwestern style art. And he became an artist people loved to hate and misunderstand just as readily, as ladies like M.P.’s aunt bought his work to decorate a condominium because of the pastel colors.
M.P. hopes to sell the piece to a good home. Maybe Southwest will come back in the way we see the craft designs of the 1970s return. The value of her monotype is $800.