Unknown Artist
1859-1953
Taos Ceremonial Drummer
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
DIMENSIONS: 20 x 16 inches
Signed lower left
SOLD FOR: $76,050
Including Buyers Premium
2017,
LOT 343
1859-1953
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas
DIMENSIONS: 20 x 16 inches
Signed lower left
SOLD FOR: $76,050
Including Buyers Premium
The interior of a Taos pueblo home, with its elegantly curved corner fireplace, forms the setting for Joseph Sharp’s Taos Ceremonial Drummer. Sitting on a skin, grasping the handles of a large drum while a blanket cascades down at left from a small hand drum, Sharp emphasizes the ritual nature of the relationship between the drummer and the drum. The skin, the cascading blanket, the hearth, all these symbolize the world outside, the natural world. It is as if, Sharp suggests, the drumming that is about to begin, the music that is imminent, will be some sort of summons to and reverence for the waterfalls, animals, and forces of the universe.