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Robert Colescott
End of the Trail, 1976

With an attitude that is both satirical and brash, Colescott uses punchy colors and loose brushwork to parody a famous early-twentieth-century sculpture by James Fraser, which shows a defeated Native American warrior on an exhausted horse. Here, the slouching Native American subject has been transformed into a grinning, dark-skinned figure wearing a pair of white briefs and torn sneakers. A cloudy sky of unnatural colors makes up the shallow background.

Colescott’s painting is dry, brushy, gaudy in color, and a little crude. During the 1970s, he used humor and irony to address American social issues by replacing selected individuals in historical works of art with black figures. These paintings were unapologetic in their bold manipulation of historical settings and skin color, and they raised important questions about the absence of African Americans in art history.

Artwork Info

Artwork title
End of the Trail
Artist name
Robert Colescott
Date created
1976
Classification
painting
Medium
acrylic paint on canvas
Dimensions
74 3/4 in. × 96 1/4 in. (189.87 cm × 244.48 cm)
Date acquired
1977
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Purchase with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1975 Soap Box Derby Fund, and the New Future Fund Drive
Copyright
© Estate of Robert Colescott / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/77.78
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Why is this figure grinning?

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NARRATOR:

This painting titled the End of the Trail by Robert Colescott brings a biting, humorous twist to the cultural history of the American West. In this 1976 work he depicts a dark-skinned figure sitting on a horse. They are posed in front of a sunset rendered in acidic shades of purple, blue and yellow. While the figure and the horse both look dejectedly downward, there’s definitely a sense of mischief in the air.

Colescott based the painting on a bronze sculpture, also called “The End of the Trail,” by James Frasier. The sculpture was originally displayed in San Francisco’s 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. It symbolized the defeat of the Native American population by European Americans who had conquered the West. Curator, Janet Bishop:

 

JANET BISHOP:

What Colescott has done in this painting, is use the James Frasier bronze sculpture as a taking-off point. The figure is very similar in composition, but you can see that there’s an element of What’s Wrong With This Picture? The dark-skinned figure in Colescott’s painting is shown wearing bright, white contemporary jockey shorts and tennis shoes, and rather than looking down in a defeated way, he sort of turns up at the viewer and grins, in a manner that might suggest that he’s up to something.

 

NARRATOR:

Here the artist plays with the stereotypical Western image of a defeated native. Like many of Colescott’s paintings from the 1970s, “End of the Trail” is a highly satirical look at race from an African American perspective.

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Other Works by Robert Colescott

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