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It is a Good Day to Die

Steve Justice Paintings Title: It is a Good Day to Die Material: oil on canvas Size: 72x48 Year: 2015 “Benteen, come on, be quick. Bring packs.” -- George A. Custer (at Little Bighorn) “It is a Good Day to Die” is one of many examples of my changing a context to borrow one myth to leverage another in order to release a new energy that can then be examined. I stopped work on this comment on ambitions and mortality in 1995 due to demands for its exhibition, and finally completed it in 2015. It borrows the subject, pose and symbolism from Andrea Mantegna’s “San Sebastian”, while recasting Custer as poster child for American arrogance. This fell out of my interest in Native culture that began when teenage-me went with church missionaries out West to convert the Red Man, but returned with the opposite result. “It is a good day to die,” is a classic Lakota rallying cry. Custer’s mismatched uniform comments on the Civil War surplus he and other Indian fighters were expected to use against sometimes superior armaments.Title: It is a Good Day to Die
Material: oil on canvas
Size: 72×48
Year: 2015

There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry. — George Armstrong Custer

When I was a yout, I did two weeks of church mission work on a Mesquakie Indian Reservation in Iowa.  We were constantly visited with stickers and graffiti posted by Native Americans our own age reading, “Custer died for your sins.”  After I figured out what it meant, my eyes, ears and mind were opened.  I had gone to Iowa to ‘convert the native’ but the ‘natives’ converted me.  Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it wasn’t.

“Culuster’s Last Stand” is an example of my changing a context to borrow one myth to leverage another in order to present a third.  I borrowed the subject, pose and symbolism from Andrea Mantegna’s “San Sebastian” in type-casting George Armstrong Custer as a poster boy for American arrogance.  It is our last stand here, amid the ruins of a dysfunctional civilization.

Custer’s mismatched uniform comments on the Civil War surplus he and other Indian fighters were expected to use against better horsemen who frequently even had superior fire-arms.  The Sioux had their sources as well as their horses.

The word “Culuster” in the title is a Latin word meaning “asshole”.

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