T.C. Cannon, Bob Dylan, Allan Houser, and Henry Moore
By Chadd Scott on
The first week of 2025 brought me the discovery of two artistic inspirations I was previously unaware of featuring two of my favorite artists: T.C. Cannon (1946-1978; Kiowa/Caddo) and Allan Houser (1914-1994; Chiricahua Apache).
Surprisingly, it was not Cannon and Houser – arguably the most influential Native American painter and, inarguably, the most prominent Native American sculptor, respectively – doing the influencing. Instead, they were the ones being influenced. Influenced by white artists from the mainstream, Bob Dylan in the case of Cannon and Henry Moore (1898-1986) in the case of Houser. Everyone knows who Bob Dylan is; Brit Henry Moore is often considered the most influential sculptor of the 20th century.

T.C. Cannon, 'Self Portrait in the Studio,' 1975. Tia Collection.
While I say “surprising,” it shouldn’t be. There is a tendency – and I’m guilty of this – in thinking Native American artists are exclusively influenced by their specific cultural backgrounds and those of other Native traditions. This leads to a stereotype and marginalization of Native artists as creatively isolated, disconnected from the mainstream. Contemporary Native artists in 2025 are the mainstream.
Native artists, like all artists, are influenced by everyone they are exposed to. Cannon and Houser, among the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe’s original students and instructors, would have been exposed and open to more non-Native influences than most.
Lloyd Kiva New’s mission when helping found IAIA in 1962 was contemporizing Native American art. Creating a place where Native American art could move into the future. Encouraging students to look to their cultural heritage, surely, when creating, but look just as assuredly to New York and Europe and contemporary art trends taking place outside of their communities.
Bob Dylan and Henry Moore, for instance.
T.C. Cannon x Bob Dylan
I know Cannon’s work and backstory much better than I know Dylan’s. I have a huge cultural blind spot for Dylan and the late 60s/early 70s, folk singers, Joni Mitchell, singer/songwriters, psychedelic, Haight Ashbury, Vietnam War era.
I was born in 1975. I came of age culturally during the 1980s. 1980s culture was a backlash to the 10-year period before I was born.
Madonna’s “Material Girl” replaced Neil Young’s (Four Dead in) “Ohio.” Music was pop. Commercial. Michael Jackson, Prince, hair metal. Sure, Springsteen was doing his thing, but even he was co-opted – unwillingly – by the era, by Ronald Reagan, “Born in the USA” turned from a protest song into a flag-waving anthem.

T.C. Cannon, Waiting for the Bus (Anadarko Princess)
Following the tumult of the late 60s and early 70s – assassinations, Black Panthers, anti-War, bra burning, American Indian Movement, Chicano Movement, mass protests, drug culture, ’68 Democratic Convention, occupation of Alcatraz, Watergate – America was exhausted of the hard work required to improve itself and just wanted to have a good time. That good time came through buying things, an era of unprecedented consumerism. Greed is good. The good time came through believing in American superiority instead of questioning it. “Top Gun.” “Rocky IV.” Patriotism in the extreme. Entertainment heavy on style and escapism.
My parents weren’t counterculture or into folk music. They were Elvis and Beach Boys fans. Dylan was no part of my musical upbringing.
It has only been in the last six or seven years, coinciding with my starting to write about art and culture, that I have begun deep-diving the era preceding my birth for the treasure it holds. That was the era of Cannon’s brief adulthood. An era dominated by Dylan.
A YouTube video from Medicine Man Gallery owner Mark Sublette turned me on to the now-obvious Cannon-Dylan connection. Sublette came of age during the era. I can tell by how often in his “Art Dealer Diaries” podcast he asks interview subjects about the Vietnam War draft. The War and the draft are major touchstones in his life; I wasn’t born until just after it ended.
Motivated by having seen the new Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” Sublette details Cannon’s near obsession with Dylan. Cannon listened to Dylan music constantly. He created drawings of Dylan over many years. A portrait of Dylan. Cannon titled some of his most major paintings after Dylan song lyrics.
Take Mama and Papa Have the Going Home to Shiprock Blues (1966). I have been familiar with this painting for years. I’ve seen it in storage at IAIA. I am aware that Cannon was a musician, in addition to being a painter (and a poet, too). The shocking degree of my Dylan blind spot is revealed by my not connecting the title of Cannon’s painting to Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (1965).
In fact, my Dylan “ah-ha” moment didn’t come until last year, 2024, and a snippet of his “Only a Pawn in their Game” song appearing in a spectacular new Elvis documentary on Netflix. The song’s lyrics are as chillingly insightful to the 2024 presidential election as they were to the Civil Rights Movement they were written in.
Allan Houser x Henry Moore
As with Cannon and Dylan, I am much more familiar with Allan Houser than Henry Moore. I wasn’t properly aware of Moore until attending an exhibition pairing Moore with Georgia O’Keeffe in early 2024 on the basis of their shared fascination with nature.

Allan Houser, Chiricahua Apache, Dance of the Mountain Spirits II, 1989. Outside Hotel Santa Fe.
Finally reading my December 2024 copy of “Western Art Collector” magazine, I took notice of a show connecting Houser with painter Harry Jackson at the Booth Museum in Cartersville, GA. In the article, museum director and exhibition curator Seth Hopkins remarks on Houser being influenced by Moore.
Again, in hindsight, perhaps this should have been obvious in my enjoyment of dozens of Houser sculptures over the years. Their flowing lines and voids – holes – nod to Moore.
Houser applied this style to figurative sculpture; Moore’s were abstract. Houser took inspiration and personalized it. He owned his style and subject matter to such an extent it would be absurd thinking he’s derivative of anyone.
Cannon and Houser were Native artists who looked everywhere for inspiration. To what was close at hand and to what was far away. Their willingness to do so, in no small measure, is responsible for their ability to help shape contemporary Native art and become two of the most influential Native artists to subsequent generations.