Gerald McMaster was born in 1953 and grew up on the Red Pheasant First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada. His father is Blackfoot, while his mother is Plains Cree. He says he grew up listening to the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy on the radio, while avidly reading western comic books – all of which would later influence his art.[1]
McMaster says, "I've been an urban Indian since the age of nine. I've attended art school in the United States, trained in the Western tradition; yet I am referred to as an 'Indian' artist. I have danced and sung in the traditional powwow style of Northern Plains, yet my musical tastes are global ..."[1]
McMaster draws and paints with humour and an ironic juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary pop culture elements. Identities, fluid and multiple, are central to his art practice. In his piece Eclectic Baseball, "traditional Plains Indian symbols of warfare and sacred ceremony were freely mixed with symbols and actual equipment of contemporary baseball". One of his best known series is The cowboy/Indian Show.[1] Hide painting, pictographs, and petroglyphs inspire his methods of representation. He works in oil and acrylic.[5]
In 1995, he ceased being a full-time artist in order to devote more time to curating, critical theory, and writing.
He served as the director's special assistant and deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City from 2000 to 2004. He worked with the permanent collections there, as well as curating the shows, First American Art in 2004 and New Tribe/New York in 2005.[9]
In 2020, McMaster published a Iljuwas Bill Reid: life & Work through the Art Canada Institute. The book is one of the first comprehensive documentations of the artist's storied career and affinity for his indigenous heritage.
McMaster, Gerald, Jennifer S. H. Brown, Clara Harfittay, and Shirley J. R. Madill. Robert Houle: Indians from A to Z. Goose Lance Editions, 1990. ISBN978-0-88915-156-7.
McMaster, Gerald and Lee-Ann Martin. Indigena. Contemporary native perspectives in Canadian art. 1992. ASIN B0010YFFSC.
McMaster, Gerald. Edward Poitras: Canada Xlvi Biennale Di Venezia. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. ISBN978-0-660-50753-8.[12][13]
McMaster, Gerald. Mary Longman: Traces. Exhibition catalogue. Kamloops, BC: Kamloops Art Gallery, 1996.
McMaster, Gerald. Jeffery Thomas: Portraits from the Dancing Grounds. Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery, 1996
McMaster, Gerald. "Museums and Galleries as Sites for Artistic Intervention", In The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspectives. Eds. Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 250–261. 1998.
McMaster, Gerald. The New Tribe: Critical Perspectives and Practices in Aboriginal Contemporary Art. Amsterdam: Acedemisch Proefschrift, University of Amsterdam, 1999. ASIN B001ELWQLK.
McMaster, Gerald. Reservation X. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. ISBN978-0-295-97775-1.
McMaster, Gerald and Clifford E. Trafzer, eds. Native Universe: Voices of Indian America: Native American Tribal Leaders, Writers, Scholars, and Story Tellers. National Geographic, 2004. ISBN978-1-4262-0335-0.[14]
McMaster, Gerald, Bruce Bernstein, Kathleen Ash-Milby, eds. First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art. Washington DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2004. ISBN978-0-295-98403-2.
McMaster, Gerald and Joe Baker, ed. Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World. Washington DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2007. ISBN978-1-933565-10-1.
^Review: Friend, Daniel (Autumn 2004). "[Untitled review]". Off the Shelf. Inside Smithsonian Research. 6: 15.
References
Newlands, Anne. Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings. Richmond Hill, Ontario: Firefly Books, 2007. ISBN978-1-55407-290-3.
Ryan, Allan J. The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art. Victoria: University of British Columbia Press, 1999. ISBN978-0-7748-0704-3.