POTEET VICTORY

An intimate biography of an acclaimed Native American artist.

After a mutual friend introduced Keating to the painter Poteet Victory, the novelist knew he had to tell the man’s life story. This lengthy, comprehensive book details a life that recalls the stories of Horatio Alger. Victory, who has Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry, grew up on skid row in Idabel, Oklahoma; he was often left on his own and worked at rodeos as a young teenager. Fortuitously, the young cowboy befriended the painter Harold Stevenson, a contemporary of Andy Warhol whose male nudes shocked the arts scene of the early 1960s. Stevenson used the 30-something Victory as the model for a heralded series of paintings and served as a mentor in the artist’s early career. Stevenson helped him hone the skills of the trade and opened doors for his fellow Oklahoma native in New York City’s elite art world. In three decades as a successful artist in his own right, Victory has earned international acclaim for a style that blends Native American motifs with his interests in mythology, neuroscience, and meditation. Keating skillfully retells the harrowing, glamorous, and occasionally humorous events of Victory’s life with salient details. He tells of joining Victory’s “spiritual journey” through his conversations with his subject and shows sensitivity to the internal conflicts and philosophical concepts that are central to Victory’s art. He also pays special attention to the role of the artist’s wife, Terry, in his life. Based primarily on recorded interviews with the couple, the book sometimes comes off as hagiographic; it also lacks formal citations and doesn’t present significant outside research on Victory’s life. In addition, it unusually blurs the line between fact and fiction by introducing made-up characters (a successful movie producer named Elliott, who stands in for the author, and his research assistant) to help drive the narrative, noting that Keating “wanted the book to be factual and authentic but also entertaining.” These, unfortunately, come across as gimmicks in a book about a life that needs no such embellishment.

An often engaging, if unevenly executed, biography of a contemporary artist.