Thanksgiving themes in contemporary art

With Thanksgiving exactly two weeks away, I thought it would be interesting to research how traditional American Thanksgiving images (your quintessential turkey, pilgrims and Native Americans) have played out in Contemporary art. After some intense googling, I stumbled upon an installation by artist Sam Durant entitled Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching (2006).  This installation was on display this past summer at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, TX  for “The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art” exhibition.

Those of us who grew up in attending elementary school in America probably remember the story of the pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower, meeting a nice Indian named Squanto, learning to share the land and celebrating the first Thanksgiving together. We might have even made Indian headdresses and Pilgrim hats out of colorful construction paper and feathers while having a Thanksgiving party in the classroom. This story probably gave us warm fuzzies as a kid and did not share the actual reality of the pilgrims colonizing the native people and their land.

Pilgrims and Indians, Planting and Reaping, Learning and Teaching (2006) shows what colonization in the 1600s really looked like. Durant’s work is a life-size split diorama with figures of Native Americans and Pilgrims interacting together on a slowly revolving machine platform. On one half, we see a Native American teaching the newcomer Pilgrim how to fertilize the soil; on the other side, Captain Myles Standish (the pilgrim pictured below) kills the Pequot Indian! Nothing is more daunting than the explicit message of this piece: that the contrast between reality and myth is always a temptation for any work of icons from American history.

The truth of the matter is that reality does not always paint a pretty picture, and Durant made sure of that in his art. Using creepy dioramas that one might see in a natural history museum – copper skinned Indians and the pilgrims in heavy leather boots – Durant taps into one’s mysterious sense of what happened during the first Thanksgiving.

With that being said, please feel free to enjoy your turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie while giving thanks with your family and friends this holiday season.