Native North American Art

by Berlo, Janet Catherine; Phillips, Ruth B.

• ISBN13: 9780192842183
• ISBN10: 0192842188
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-11-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This exciting new investigation explores the indigenous arts of the US and Canada from the early pre-contact period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over five centuries and across an immensely diverse range of regions. The richness of Native American art is emphasized through discussions of basketry, wood and rock carvings, dance masks, and beadwork, alongside the contemporary vitality of paintings and installations by modern artists such as Robert Davidson, Emmi Whitehorse, and Alex Janvier. Authors Berlo and Philips fully incorporate substantive new research and scholarship, and examine such issues as gender, representation, the colonial encounter, and contemporary arts. By encompassing both the sacred and secular, political and domestic, the ceremonial and commercial, Native North American Art shows the importance of the visual arts in maintaining the integrity of spiritual, social , political, and economic systems within Native North American societies.

Author Biography

Janet Catherine Berlo is the Susan B. Anthony Chair of Gender and Women's Studies and Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester, New York.
Ruth Phillips is Director of the Museum of Anthropology and Professor of Fine Art and Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 An Introduction to the Indigenous Arts of North America	1	(36)
Art history and Native art	3	(4)
What is `art'? Western discourses and Native American objects	7	(2)
Modes of appreciation: curiosity, specimen, artefact, and art	9	(8)
What is an Indian? Clan, community, political structure, and art	17	(4)
Cosmology	21	(1)
The map of the cosmos	22	(2)
The nature of spirit	24	(1)
Dreams and the vision quest	25	(1)
Shamanism	26	(1)
Art and the public celebration of power	26	(1)
The power of personal adornment	27	(1)
`Creativity is our tradition': innovation and tradition in Native American art	28	(4)
Gender and the making of art	32	(5)
Chapter 2 The Southwest	37	(34)
The Southwest as a region	37	(3)
The ancient world	40	(7)
From the colonial era to the modern Pueblos	47	(13)
Navajo and Apache arts	60	(11)
Chapter 3 The East	71	(36)
The East as a region	71	(3)
Hunting cultures, burial practices, and Early Woodlands art forms	74	(5)
Mississippian art and culture	79	(7)
The cataclysm of contact: the Southeast	86	(2)
The early contact period in the Northeast	88	(2)
Arts of the middle ground	90	(4)
Arts of self-adornment	94	(13)
Chapter 4 The West	107	(32)
Introduction	107	(5)
The Great Plains	112	(18)
The Intermontaine region-an artistic crossroads	130	(3)
The Far West: arts of California and the Great Basin	133	(6)
Chapter 5 The North	139	(34)
Geography, environment, and language in the North	142	(2)
Sub-arctic clothing: art to honour and protect	144	(8)
The Arctic	152	(21)
Chapter 6 The Northwest Coast	173	(36)
Origins	173	(8)
The early contact period	181	(2)
Styles and techniques	183	(5)
Western connoisseurship and Northwest Coast art	188	(2)
Shamanism	190	(4)
Crest art	194	(4)
The potlatch	198	(4)
Art, commodity, and oral tradition	202	(2)
Northwest Coast art in the twentieth century	204	(5)
Chapter 7 The Twentieth Century: Trends in Modern Native Art	209	(31)
Questions of definition	209	(1)
Commoditization and contemporary art	210	(3)
Moments of beginning	213	(2)
The Southern Plains and the Kiowa Five	215	(2)
The Southwest and the `Studio' style	217	(1)
The display and marketing of American Indian art: exhibitions, mural projects, and competitions	218	(2)
Native American modernisms, 1950-80	220	(7)
Institutional frameworks and modernisms in Canada	227	(7)
Postmodernism, installation, and other post-studio art	234	(6)
Notes	240	(7)
List of Illustrations	247	(7)
Bibliographic Essay	254	(20)
Timeline	274	(8)
Index	282