Blood and Land by J.C.H. King

Author:J.C.H. King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846148088
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

Native American Art History

There are very different contexts, then, for Indian art: in performance, the powwow and the potlatch, where the material may be, frankly, immaterial; in the consumption of art in transgressive circumstances such as Indian Market; and in the vast data bases, run now in tandem with Native people and sometimes exclusively by First Nations. Art history works best in the study and explanation of Native North American culture when there is a great wealth of objects, well preserved and documented and derived from a fully recognized and appreciated culture or nation.21 This means that there are a dozen or more material cultural traditions with thriving scholarly penumbras, of speaker-specialists usually writing and publishing and buying, selling, exhibiting and collecting objects. These networks are intimately connected with those of creators and artists, and most especially with the people who make and use things to perform and dance, to show respect and to worship. Outside of Asia, Native North America is the only continent with ivory-working and jade-using traditions, and with a full panoply of metal working, from the original use of native copper and meteoric iron to a vast contemporary jewellery market, especially in silver. Then there are the woven objects: twined baskets, the textiles of bark and wool from the Pacific Northwest, the extraordinarily high-quality coiled basketry, especially in California and of birch-bark, a light and tight material for covering canoes, containers and homes, also used in Eurasia, but to a lesser extent. Without the wheel for throwing pots, with virtually no glaze and without domesticated mammals much beyond the dog, achievements in material culture and art were defined in different ways: in painting and the use of skin, the elaboration of basketry not as craft or folk art – in which aesthetic elaboration is pushed to extremes in culturally and politically marginalized communities – but as achievements integrated into the mainstream.

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