The Call of Beauty: Masterworks by Nampeyo of Hopi

This book is about how beauty calls to us, about the power of beauty, and specifically about how that power is expressed in masterworks by the Hopi artist Nampeyo, whose life spanned ca. 1860 to 1942. It sketches a picture of the changing American West that was backdrop to that era, Hopi cultural ways, and the development of Nampeyo’s art from her early youth through the apex of her mastery. We wish to look closely at how she saw and interpreted her world, her technical innovations, and her work within the context of a broader Pueblo communicative expressiveness. ................ "The Call of Beauty, Masterworks by Nampeyo of Hopi by Edwin L. Wade and Allan R. Cooke (El Otro Lado Press, in association with Western Scottsdale’s Museum of the West) is a beautifully written and sumptuously illustrated book on this extraordinary artist, who lived circa 1860-1942. While Nampeyo’s life and times have been discussed before, this book concentrates on her artistic vision, her transformation of ancient Hopi pottery traditions, her technical innovations, and her worldview, making the case for Nampeyo as an important world artist—and, in essence, a modernist. Wade writes, “Nampeyo created an aesthetic, intellectual, and emotive portal into the core of the Hopi experience, but also into the transcultural experience of beauty.” Some of Nampeyo’s finest works reside in the Allan and Judith Cooke Collection of Hopi Pottery, on view at Western Scottsdale’s Museum of the West. —James D. Balestrieri, Clark Hulings Writer-in-Residence