Why read Becoming Mary Sully?

Book cover of Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract

Book description

Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully was the great-granddaughter of respected nineteenth-century portraitist Thomas Sully, who captured the personalities of America's first generation of celebrities (including the figure of Andrew Jackson immortalized on the twenty-dollar bill). Born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota in 1896, she was largely self-taught.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Becoming Mary Sully as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Celia Stahr

Author

Before reading this book, I had never heard of Mary Sully. I’m thrilled that I now know about her stunning “personality prints,” abstract designs arranged in horizontal triptychs. Sully, who was born on the Standing Rock reservation in 1896, was largely a self-taught artist who never achieved wide recognition. Philip Deloria, a professor of history and a relative of Sully’s, delves into the complexities of what it meant to be a Dakota Sioux woman artist working with an innovative style of abstract art that didn’t fit into neat categories. This mirrors, Deloria says, the “scramble for survival” that an “Indian”…

From Celia's list on The best books about women artists: overviews and individual lives.