Art Papers
March/April 1989

Interview: Bob Haozous
by Claire Wolf Krantz

Bob Haozous is a Native American sculptor whose life and work straddles the often diverging worlds of mainstream America and his Indian heritage. A descendent of Geronimo's tribe of Chiricahua Apaches and the son of a respected sculptor, he was reared among Indians but educated in white schools. Living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, provides him with a rich environment for his art, with its diverse Indian, Anglo, and Hispanic populations and a thriving art scene. Here, his figurative sculptures play out these cultural differences in satiric, witty commentaries on Indian and Anglo society.

Haozous' Indian background provides an alternative perspective to societal organization and its relationship to nature. For example, Western metaphysical thought shapes the world in terms of dualisms that must be resolved, while the Native American's world contains multiple unresolved facets of reality. Disparate elements, such as good and evil, exist within a whole, the undesirable elements contained by being balanced with desirable ones. Within such a worldview, neither the Utopia and pessimism of Romanticism, nor the dead-end totalizing views of postmodemism are conceivable.

Therefore, when Haozous speaks about the natural, he means an Indian cultural relationship to nature, uncontaminated by Western civilization. Similarly, Haozous' discussion of the individual must be understood as deeply embedded within a communal society. While uniqueness, in Western thought, develops in opposition to culture, an Indian develops his or her individual resources, such as creativity, leadership, and strength, in order to contribute to the welfare of the tribe. In sharp contrast to the Romantic vision of the individual, made alien by his very uniqueness, the contemporary Indian artist shapes his relationship to the community from the tradition of the shaman or warrior who is valued for his ability to extend and perfect tradition, not shatter it.

While Haozous' life is situated within contemporary Western culture, his retention of core values from his Indian heritage enables him to view the scene from a critical distance. By refusing to be homogenized, yet also unwilling to become a living token of the Anglo culture's fantasized Utopian past, he is able to inject fresh vitality into an art world that is constantly searching for meaning.

Claire Wolf Krantz: Why did you begin to make art?
Bob Haozous: I guess my father had a big influence on me, because he was always making art. My grandfather made art, although he wasn't an artist, and I had a natural ability to draw. I lived in a very restricted area in Utah that was quite racist. One of the only ways of expressing ourselves was drawing, and almost all of my friends could draw. We did very antisocial kinds of drawings.

Krantz: And why do you make art now?
Haozous: That's a simple question but the answers are very complex. I'm not really certain. I think art should reflect an individual's life experiences and it should be the ultimate tool of that reflection --  not words, not your paycheck, but your art. Every piece should be a self-portrait as you are thinking and evolving. And unfortunately, that's not acceptable in the art world. I'm coming to the realization that nobody really wants to see art, they don't really care about anything except design, or what they call beauty. They don't want to be stimulated, they don't want to be taught, they just want to be left alone with these little images around them.

Krantz: How would you like to see your art have impact on people?
Haozous: You're asking what the role of art is and I don't know. I direct it towards myself always; even my political statements are directed toward myself, my own feelings, my own observations. Once they leave my studio, I try not to worry about it. But at a certain time, public response is important. I would like people to look at my art and give more, try to see more than they do see. For me, art makes me think about my own values and my own concepts of honesty and humanity, my ability to appreciate aesthetics, and gives me respect for people who can handle these things, not only the technical side but also the more profound aspects. It's enlightening, it's educational. I can only tell you what I want my pieces to say, and people respond in their own way.

Krantz: Can you tell me how being an Indian affects your work?
Haozous: Well, I grew up in an Indian community, but being an Indian is more profound than that. I think that politically it's easy to say you're an Indian. But most Indian people are not reflections of the Indians that were categorized as Indians in the beginning. Through intermarriage, through loss of culture, loss of philosophical concepts, loss of language, all kinds of social customs are lost and manipulated, and there's no real basis for calling yourself an Indian today. But as an artist you can do it, because artists are the wild card of our society. They can create philosophy to suit their needs and it's acceptable. There are only a few people in this whole world who can do that. I believe that an artist has a responsibility in our society to consider everything about his society and try to put it in perspective. I use international concepts that the Europeans attributed to Native Americans when they first met them, such as the Great Environmentalist, the Honest People, the Free People, that certainly are not true today, but did give a foundation, however questionable, on which to base my art. I think people like the original Native Americans, who were forced to have a direct relation to the earth, have a philosophical concept that deals with the earth: the earth being alive. This is an obvious thing but in America it's not; the earth is just something you walk on, it's not something that supports you. This treatment of the earth as though it wasn't an essential part of one's life suggests to me who I would and would not like to be as an artist. I would like to treat my environment, my political environment, my physical environment with honesty. A very basic core of an artist has to be honesty. Even if he interprets that honesty in an incredibly wild fantasy, it still has to be at its core.

Krantz: And so your art reflects some of these values, which may or may not be intrinsic to Indians, but are almost cliches that are attributed to Indians?
Haozous: They're not cliches, they did exist and they exist today. There's a big difference between a non-Indian and an Indian today. You can see it and you can feel it in the way Indian people treat each other and treat other people. Unfortunately, in response to the white or non-Indian society, many Indians have adapted the tools of the non-Indian society to defend themselves. It's part of the breakdown of Indian culture.

Krantz: Do you believe that in your art, you, as an Indian, can contribute a more healthy perspective?
Haozous: I don't know. I don't even think in terms of educating non-Indians. I think that Americans are directed toward an international or universal concept of an artist, primarily cultureless, while I think that art comes from culture, basically. My experience comes from far, far beyond my father. That's part of my culture. My attitude, my humor, my intelligence, comes from a specific part of mankind, and that's what I'm trying to focus on. That's true of almost any artist you interview. Whether you live in a ghetto, or a big city, or a farm, you have a wealth of resources to tap into. And if you make a political statement that's contemporary and has nothing to do with your farm life or your Indian life, it doesn't matter, it comes from you. And I think that's one of the things that's lacking in contemporary art. It's as if you have to whitewash -- and that's a term I use intentionally -- these beautiful pieces of wood. You whitewash your past so that you can be free, supposedly, to interpret your life without any restrictions from your culture. That's absolute nonsense.

Krantz: Do you find your work responded to equally by Indians and Anglos?
Haozous: I think most Indians lack the education to appreciate my work, but they don't not appreciate it. They don't really judge because they don't know what to judge. It does take a lot of experience to realize when someone's making some basic statements, and my statements arc very basic. So I get very little response from the Indian community. But a lot of the Indian artists like my work. They themselves are producing images that come directly either from Hollywood or New York, salable objects, salable images; or else they're doing images that come from the art books. You know it's art because you've seen it before. But it has really nothing to do with them as individuals. One of my restrictive categories for art is that if I don't see a self-portrait, then it's not art, then it's craft or a decorative art. It has to be a unique statement of today; that's what makes fine art. I've been making these unique statements for 20 years, and I have great pride that very time I go into the studio, something changes. But I'm learning, as I get older, that it's not satisfying in terms of the financial rewards. If I repeat myself, or something else, the freedom may be greater in the long run to be able to buy materials. It's very unsettling. Because the consumers are naive, the galleries are naive. They put tremendous restrictions on the artist to conform to their need for couch-sized, patio-sized sculptures. My goal is to make the arch in St. Louis look small. But I don't know how to do it because there's no support.

Krantz: Why is big better?
Haozous: For me, big isn't better. For me, using the materials to their full extent, or to my capacity, is better. And now that I'm using steel I can do much more. Steel will support itself, it has the technical capacity to be big. Big isn't better, it's just more satisfying. My technical restrictions with steel are unlimited, only controlled by gravity.

Krantz: So you need to pursue the material as far as you can push it?
Haozous: Yes. I'd like to make habitable sculptures, like big buildings. One of the things I saw in Chicago, the Picasso sculpture, was absolutely beautiful: the design, the way it fits together, the simplicity. People just stood together, very respectful of this huge thing. But it's like a toy on the rug, with these huge buildings all the way around it. This one beautiful piece of art is so small, it's just dwarfed by everything around it. People look at the Picasso as art and they don't look at the buildings around them. Everything should be art. In this society, bad art is everywhere. I would like to see more art, not more bad decorations. Art should be all around us; instead of a little sculpture in the park, the park should be the art and the sculpture should be a part of it. That's one of the reasons, I think, that I'm driven to making bigger pieces.

One of the things that I have to keep constantly in mind is that I'm just a step,  that's all, one little step. A lot of people think that they are the focal point of mankind. But we have to keep in mind that nothing is more important than the creative process itself, not the objects you produce. I live here and now, and the problems are obvious, and that's what I'm dealing with. You know, there are great stimuli everywhere for me to do art, a lot of it comes from negative observations. But a lot of it also comes from positive observations. I firmly believe that you have to have positive and negative constantly. There's no such thing as beauty without ugliness. Something I read said that the difference between Europeans and native Americans is that the Native Americans always have a sense of the center. There's the bad and the good overlapping, and the Europeans always strive for the good and try to ignore the bad. That's the heaven and hell concept. Don't go to hell, go to heaven.

There's a profound difference, especially today, between the native peoples and those that came in. It's a basic philosophical concept. And as far as I can see, in nature, you have beautiful animals but they eat other beautiful animals to survive and you have to know that, to constantly be aware of that. It's not just to protect those beautiful animals. You have to be honest about life. Life is directed toward death. Period. Life and death is a cycle. To think that we, today, are it, is not healthy and not honest. Being Indian isn't racial to me, it's philosophical. The laws behind it are as strong as any philosophical laws that exist. They're basic. I think, if anything, Indian philosophies will get stronger. Because I think the honesty of the statement. of the observation, is so much more meaningful than to just take art and make it decorative, or to take a people and watch them dance their Indian dances and say that's Indian. It has nothing to do with Indian people. The core of the people has to do with philosophy and religion and attitude and social behaviors, that's what makes a people. Instead of drowning out and disappearing, it will become more strong, and maybe less related to native American people. But the idea, the attitude, and maybe some of the social, cultural, and religious beliefs will just spread and get stronger.

Krantz: Does this core relate to rituals that you participate in?
Haozous: No. I've never participated in any rituals, of any people, but I go and observe them as an artist, not a participant. I also get great strength from almost all the Indian people that I meet, I observe how they interact, how they treat me. We can talk, we can communicate, and that must come back from centuries and centuries of something, I don't know. I have to admit, it might just be a fantasy, or an openness in myself. I'm not very open with most people.

Krantz: You do use particular symbols in your work. Tell me about them, where they come from, and how you expect them to be read.
Haozous: They just come from my experience. It's like using a shiny toy when you're a kid. You pick them up and like them and use them. I've selected my toys that say something to me, like airplanes and cars, and my Mother Earth symbols. They're my shiny toys that I use over and over again. Because I enjoy using them. And I also know that they can be used as a communicative tool to help express my statement. But not specifically, sometimes I just use them because I like them, that's all. Sometimes they symbolize technology, but that's really vague, it really doesn't say anything. Or they also become a design element: they clarify, they give direction, or a decorativeness to my pieces.

Krantz: So you feel that all of the symbols you use are in the public domain?
Haozous: They've always been. That's where symbols come from.

Krantz: That depends on which public. For instance, an airplane would symbolize technology to almost everybody. But you were telling me what the bear means, which is something I would have no access to, unless I picked up a dictionary of Indian symbols.

Haozous: In America most people relate to the airplane and not the bear. That's okay, it's what it means to me. These are my toys for my statement and I can't try to communicate to everybody or anybody. I wouldn't even pretend to be able to take one of my sculptures to central Africa and have them understand my statement. They wouldn't. But, with repetition and time and education, the statement would be clear to everybody. So I use symbols that are in the public domain, in a way, but it's not important. The symbols themselves are only symbols, but used together they give power to the piece.

Krantz: And so, if people understand the literal meaning of the symbol in addition to getting the power from the piece, that's all to the better?

Haozous: Yes.

Krantz: I'd like to know how you see yourself in relation to the international art world, so I'm throwing out the words "modernism" and "postmodernism" to symbolize, as it were, that scene. How do you see yourself within these critical terms?

Haozous: It's a difficult question to answer, because I try not to. It's so frustrating because in America it all comes down to dollars and prestige. Mostly dollars, or accessibility, or collectability. All these terms refer to success. But it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your success as an artist. I consider myself quite successful. I consider myself as contemporary as any artist, anywhere in the world. I also see my weaknesses very clearly as an artist and as a human being. That's all. But in terms of a public awareness, which is absolutely essential, I don't exist in world art. A very small pocket of people know about my work and I'm not convinced that they know what they're seeing. Because most of them don't know what my art's about. They just recognize it, I think they feel its power, and that's all.

Krantz: So you're not really involved in the theoretical arguments that are raging about contemporary art?
Haozous: If art's honest and an individual statement, it's contemporary, period. I don't believe in the art scene and its interpretation of what is contemporary art. It's fascinating, but it's all intellectual games. It's just a way for people to titillate themselves. It has nothing to do with the individual who produced it, or with what art is, real art. It only has to do with the pseudo- intellectual art support system. But it opens doors at the same time. I follow what's going on in all the art capitals and I read as much as I can. But only because I need the information to express what I am, and unless it expresses the individual, it's just a game. But it's very, very tempting, because you can make a lot of money. If enough people tell you you're great and you're famous, and they pay, you become great and famous. Besides, there are all these games going on: New York art, Paris art, cowboy art, Indian art., and they're all fun to play, but what happens to the artist that's important is what happens in the studio, what happens in his head, his own life experience. That's what makes art to me.