艺术家 Kent Monkman 的最新作品藏着诸多时尚彩蛋

When, four years ago, the Frick Collection invited the Indigenous artist Kent Monkman to create a series of new works, Monkman turned his attention to one of the museum’s smallest—yet most cherished—holdings: Johannes Vermeer’s Officer and a Laughing Girl. The painting, from 1657, depicts a young woman in conversation with an officer wearing a wide-brimmed black beaver hat.

“Beavers used to drive the economy of North America,” says Monkman, who is Cree. “They were the first currency—you paid for things with beaver pelts.”

His wheels soon began to turn. In his practice, Monkman likes to rewrite European art and history from an Indigenous perspective. Could he give this Vermeer a Native twist, with a bit of his signature sense of humor?

The answers to that question make up “Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl,” on view in the Frick Collection’s Cabinet Gallery from now through February.

In his new acrylic paintings, Monkman replaces the female figure in Vermeer’s original scene with his genderfluid alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a frequent presence in his work. “Miss Chief has always been in strategic relationships with colonial men,” Monkman says. “She’s always trying to improve the life of her people. She is someone that stands up, talks back, reverses the gaze, and questions authority—and she always does it in a way that is with love. She’s always trying to seduce people with love.”

Over four years, Monkman and his studio created five different versions of Officer and a Laughing Girl using his Miss Chief character. (At the Frick, they’re all set against beaver-themed toile wallpaper.) Not only do both Miss Chief and the officer’s clothes evolve from one painting to the next, but their setting shifts, too, reflecting different elements of Indigenous history. “Through these paintings, I knew I could have a conversation about colonial history, fur trade, treaty relationships, geography, and the dispossession of land,” Monkman says.

There is a deliberate chronology to the paintings. As visitors move clockwise around the space, the works’ colors shift from cool to warm, signaling the growing threat of climate change. There are other references, too. In the first painting—titled New Amsterdam, 1600s—Miss Chief is dressed in a traditional winter coat and a pearl earring (an homage to the Vermeer), talking to the officer in front of a wall-hung hide. In the next, titled New France, 1700s, Miss Chief is seen in trade-silver jewelry, alluding to the currency of that period. “[Fashion] and jewelry really became part of the storytelling, giving clues to the time and the place,” Monkman says.

Elsewhere, in Black Hills, 1800s, a framed portrait of the Lakota chief Sitting Bull, known for defending his tribal lands, is mounted behind the two figures; and in Reservation, 1900s, there is a large map of the nation’s Native reservations at the time: “I was thinking about that period of dispossession and institutionalization of Indigenous peoples.” (Crosses and prison keys also feature in the work.)

As the tones grow warmer—and both Miss Chief and the officer appear in less and less clothing—red emerges as a theme. “It’s always been her signature color,” says Monkman, “but over time, it’s also [represented] this solidarity with missing and murdered Indigenous women.” (Red is the official color of the MMIW movement.)

In Manhattan, 2000s, Monkman works in a reference to modern Indigenous creativity: Miss Chief wears a striking silver cuff by Adrian Standing Elk Pinnecoose, a Diné and Southern Ute artist. “Adrian’s work, to me, represents tradition and futurism,” says Monkman. “I wanted to feature that piece because it’s about where we come from, but also where we are going.”

So, too, is Monkman’s show more broadly, in fact. “I want people to see that we still have joy, and we still have these values that inform how we live with other people, and how we exist in treaty relationships with everyone,” he says. “I wanted Miss Chief to really represent that. And she’s going to bring as much joy, humor, sass, good fashion, and as much sexiness as she can bring.”