As Bill Reid got older, Parkinson’s disease began to take its toll on his body, and consequently, on his ability to produce more artworks. As if in response, Reid’s sense of scale grew to mammoth proportions, a change that required a team of artisans and assistants to help him out. Where Reid had begun alone with small-scale objects, mostly gold and silver jewellery, he now worked mostly in bronze–the material of the ancient Greek sculptors.

At the same time, Reid’s creative impulses matched the new scale. The large-scale works above are, from top to bottom and left to right: Mythic Messengers, a 1984 celebration of Haida oral culture that can be seen in Vancouver’s Bill Reid Gallery; Killer Whale, also from 1984, a celebration of northwest coast ecology and native culture that stands outside the Vancouver Aquarium; the gigantic yellow cedar The Raven and the First Men, a fusion of the modern and the traditional around which an entire room was built in the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology; and the 1996 Jade canoe edition of his The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, his last major work, a bronze masterpiece of northwest coast animals and persons in a boat that “moves on, forever anchored” in the same place–in this case, Vancouver International Airport.

I find it interesting that three of the above works feature a community of people and animals of Haida myth, myths that Reid has interpreted for and in a contemporary context. Mythic Messengers retells several of the stories of the Haida: the Bear Mother story, which recounts the mythological establishment of the Bear Clan of the Haida, and the story of Nanasimget’s rescue of his kidnapped wife from the Killer Whale. A Reid favourite, the wasgo, or sea-wolf, stands third in the series, while the mysterious dogfish woman and the shark with whom she is associated remain sculpted in bronze though their stories have been lost. An eagle with a frog, an animal often associated with eagles in Haida stories, ends the piece. Each of the animals are joined by touching tongues, “mouth-to-mouth,” a celebration of Haida orality.

Reid did many sketches and several sculptures and even jewellery pieces of killer whales, who occasionally figure in Haida myth and legend; in any case, the one that stands outside the Vancouver Aquarium is his largest killer whale. Meanwhile, The Raven and the First Men was a story popular with totem pole carvers long before Reid came to it; it is the creation story of the first humans–the Haida, in this instance.

Finally, at the end of the tumultuous twentieth century, Reid’s last major work was chosen by the Government of Canada to adorn the courtyard of its embassy in Washington, DC. Reid covered this bronze sculpture with the appearance of argellite, and won the right to make an additional edition, which he duly did when Vancouver International Airport commissioned it: The Spirit of Haida Gwaii. Both sculptures are fraught with political meanings. Reid had at one point stopped working on the embassy sculpture to protest logging on Haida Gwaii, then called the Queen Charlotte Islands; near the end of his life, he also applied to the federal government to be recognized as having the status of Indian. Some have seen the backward-looking bear as representing Russia, while the presence of creatures at odds with each other could also serve as a reminder of the various “solitudes” of Canada. At the broadest level, each of the boat’s occupants finds many counterparts in all nations and peoples. Meanwhile, in having his last–and many would say his greatest–masterpiece placed in Vancouver’s international airport, Reid assured the visibility of the northwest coast aboriginal peoples in the province of BC and in the world of Canadian art.

Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas image from Wikipedia

Cynthia Freeland’s Art Theory in Oxford University Press’s “A Very Short Introduction” series is a nice counterpart to Arnold’s work on art history (see the preceding post). Like Arnold, Freeland has a gift for taking a complex subject and making it accessible and interesting to the average person “on the street” (or, for that matter, in the gallery). The exigencies of the moment mean that I am too pressed for time to do this work the justice of a full-review, so, if I may make a virtue out of a necessity, I will “live-blog” the book. “Live-blog” is in quotation marks because I am typing this work after I finished the book; since I noted various portions in the book over the last few days as I read it, though, this serves as a fairly accurate reflection of some of my thoughts on Freeland’s text. The reader should note that in art I tend to prefer the beautiful and traditional above all else, and thus I usually don’t actually have much patience for the Western art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

P. 1: “The Aesthetics of Blood in Contemporary Art”: “Something was guaranteed to disgust almost everyone there [at the American Society for Aesthetics].” Freeland warned us in the introduction that her first chapter would have shocking material, but it’s not so shocking reading about it in print. That said: Note to self: Remember not to join the American Society for Aesthetics.

P. 4: Illustration of Damien Hirst’s shark illustration: The Physical Impossibility of Death: Hmm, some modern art can actually have a decent point.

P. 7: In a section summarizing Kant’s view of aesthetics: “Beautiful objects do not serve ordinary human purposes, as plates and spoons do.” Too Western-centric. Excluding free-standing totem poles, the art of the northwest coast First Nations comprised almost entirely “ordinary objects,” including “primitive” tools shaped like birds or other animals.

P. 8: I disagree with Kant’s analysis of art: that our appreciation of it must be “disinterested.”

P. 9: Thank goodness for Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Pp. 12ff.: “Defending Serrano,” the artist of Piss Christ. Freeland does an outstanding job defending Serrano’s artistic production and his intentions in creating it. I was raised in a fundamentalist community, and as such, took great offense to Serrano as an adolescent. Freeland’s treatment is great, and it’s experiences like these that are why I pick up books like this: it broadens my thinking. That said, for me at least, bodily excretions are more easily turned into humour than high art. Now that said: what’s up with Serrano’s urge to criticize the “Church” for commercializing images? The Catholic Church, in particular, has been doing that since the Middle Ages.

P. 23: Interesting about how Aristotle’s analysis of hamartia, a simple mistake made by a character in Greek tragedy, could be misunderstood as “the tragic flaw” of Shakespearean drama.

P. 28: In Chartres cathedral, sculptures of Pythagoras and Aristotle appear underneath Mary. The order of “reading” is from bottom to top, somewhat similar to northwest coast First Nations art, where the figure at the base of the totem poles is the most significant.

P. 37: Arthur Danto wrote that art is “any artifact . . . which has had conferred upon it the status of candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the art world” (ellipses in quotation in original).

P. 44: How did the Menil Collection acquire the African fetish nail sculptures? If the objects had, as the author says, important cultural meaning to their communities as the guarantor of agreements, with what justification were they removed to a museum?

P. 51: Freeland likes Richard Anderson’s definition of art as “culturally significant meaning, skillfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium.” I like it, too. This definition likely has ramifications for the distinction between arts and crafts, something that I think is more complex than most think.

P. 52: Freeland mentions the “British Columbia Museum of Modern Art.” Unfortunately, no such institution exists, and a Google search with the phrase in quotation marks turns up just one hit: a combination of “British Columbia” on one line and “Museum of Modern Art” on the next. It appears that no such institution ever existed, and Freeland’s book requires a correction. Freeland is a scholar: I wonder how an error like that got made?

P. 63: “America’s most wanted painting”: Fascinating!

P. 63: Why does everybody always pick on Thomas Kinkade? Freeland calls his work “kitsch,” which she defines as “something vulgar and popular with great mass appeal.” By what standard is Kinkade “vulgar”? Freeland doesn’t call art made with blood or urine vulgar. I’d really like to know by what standard Kinkade is considered sub-art by the art intelligentsia. Hmm: perhaps it’s like the difference between interpretive fiction, and escape fiction. I occasionally like the latter, though I know it’s not the former. But I wouldn’t necessarily call it vulgar.

P. 76: I like Freeland’s comments on a post-modern artist named Hans Haacke: for her, his work is too “preachy” and “ephemeral”; she contrasts his critiques of mining company Alcan with Goya’s more durable message in The Executions of May 3, 1808.

P. 78: “anti-commercialism”: yada, yada, yada. I think I’m going to invent a new word: commerciaphobia: the unreasonable fear of commercial enterprise. Perhaps no group of people have been so manhandled (rhetorically speaking) in the last one hundred years of Western civilizational history as merchants.

P. 93, a discussion of women in art: Society went downhill after the Renaissance, when an authority like Vasari could list women as artists of note. In the 19th century, women needed special permission to wear trousers.

Pp. 100ff: The beginning of chapter 6, the heart of the book. It’s an excellent chapter, one that focuses on interpretation. Freeland discusses one theory of interpretation: the “expression theory,” which assumes that all artworks are the emotional expression of the artists who made them, whether conscious (as for Tolstoy) or unconscious, as in Freud. The theory is wanting, but Freeland’s treatment of the theory is a bit odd. She comments that expressiveness is not in the artist, but the artwork, because an artist could not have been having the same emotion during the entire time it takes to complete an artwork. This seems a simplistic understanding of the theory.

P. 107: Expression Theory 2.0: Art expresses not only emotion, but also ideas. That sounds much better than 1.0, certainly.

Pp. 109ff: Foucault and the “Death of the Author,” & Velázquez’s Las Meninas. This should be interesting. Foucault says that we deferred too much to the author in assessing meaning. Everyone knows Foucault’s position on this, but I hadn’t realized that he felt artworks “do have meanings” (emphasis in Freeland). Foucault feels that Velázquez’s Las Meninas belongs to a particular “episteme,” one which was newly focused on self-consciousness, though here the “subject cannot truly perceive himself.” Freeland summarizes his position thus: “Meaning is a matter not so much of artists’ desires and thoughts, as of the era in which they live and work.” I agree that social and historical contexts are important, but a time does not create an artwork, strictly speaking: a person does.

P. 115: Cognitive Science, art, and interpretation: somehow, even though the cognitive schools always seem to be correct, reading about them is so boring!

Pp. 119ff: The last chapter, on technology and art. When words like spam have to be placed in quotation marks, you know right away what the situation is: some people of a certain generation, regardless of their level of scholarship, just don’t understand the internet. And talk about “CD-ROMs” sounds quaint and not much less archaic than talk about floppy disks.

Conclusion: A very nice summation! This is a good pedagogical bit of writing, for the author is continuously summarizing her points in clear, concise paragraphs. If you miss a major point, you have another few chances to catch it–in the middle of a chapter, at its end, or in the conclusion.

At the end of this book, I feel very much that a void still exists in the “Very Short Introduction” series from OUP: a book and accompanying video on art creation and appreciation still needs to be written.

Vermeer’s Maid with a Milk Jug image taken from Wikipedia

I just finished Dana Arnold’s book Art History from Oxford University Press’s “A Very Short Introduction” series. The book comes in at just over one hundred small pages, and so is very short indeed. A sign of the book’s excellence is that I wished it could have gone on much longer.

Arnold, a past editor of the journal Art History, begins by asking what art history is, pointing out that “art history” until the twentieth century denoted a history of art made by dead European males. Since I am more or less one of these–well, never mind. She situates her topic for the reader in its intellectual context today in a way that will not overwhelm the general reader.

Arnold points out that nowadays, when “art history” is expanding to include “primitive” art and other art from other quarters, often, the writing is still being done by Europeans and its offshoots in North America. Arnold draws into her discussion, in the end, references to the theories of Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Freudianism, Feminism, and Queer Theory.

Although I’ve never really fallen in love with these, they do have very significant benefits. It’s fundamentally a good thing to be aware of our own limitations and to be open to the perspectives of others, and that’s what I take away from each of these “isms.” And, for better or for worse, Arnold is surely correct when she writes that these developments are an essential part of art history now. Fortunately, Arnold does not say that the meaning of art resides only in the reader or viewer, but in the interplay between artist, work, and viewer, an interplay that is affected by issues of context, culture, class, etc. that the viewer needs to be aware of.

Arnold encourages the reader to focus on, understand, and contextualize the “objects” (i.e. the artworks) themselves. Knowledge of the iconography of the time of the artist, as well as knowledge of scientific, technical analysis of artworks can help us to deepen our understanding of these works. Arnold uses Vermeer’s painting Maid with a Milk Jug as an excellent example. We know from scientific analysis of the work itself that Vermeer, the painter, had originally painted a laundry basket behind the maid; such a laundry basket obviously touched on her role within the house. He replaced it with a foot-stove, which was used to “provide much-needed heating in the winter months.” The foot-stove thus represents “warmth, love, and loyalty,” characteristics that may be related by the viewer to the tiles at the bottom of the wall behind the maid, tiles that show Cupid. All this knowledge, both of the cultural role of a foot-stool in Vermeer’s time, and the various ways the painting was altered by Vermeer himself, very much relates to the meaning of the painting, and will be especially interesting to those who have seen the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Arnold does make a mistake when she touches on religion. Her interpretation of a scroll in Jesus’s hand in a 14th century Byzantine image from the School of Venice, Virgin and Child doesn’t pass muster; Arnold claims the scroll represents death, whereas nearly any Christian could correctly point to the scroll as representing Jesus as the logos of God.

In a book of this size, the reader should be very glad to get any photographs of art, and the pictures can’t help but disappoint. They are constrained by the small physical specifications of the book, and the black and white printing. Fortunately, in this age of high speed internet, larger, colour versions are only a few clicks away.

Arnold’s material chosen to illustrate her book ranges from the classical Apollo of Belvedere–which I learned was a marble Roman copy of a bronze Greek original–to Vermeer, to modern artists like Judy Chicago, and the reader comes away, if not with comprehensive knowledge of art history, then at least with a kind of systematic skeletal framework on which to hang future knowledge. After reading Arnold’s chapters on the writing of art history, the presentation of art history in galleries, and “reading” and looking at art, the reader will come away thirsting for more, and better prepared for further reading.

One thing is clear, though: OUP needs to produce another “very short” book solely dedicated to understanding the physical processes of producing fine art and interpreting the finished product without reference to critical theory*–a book that absolutely must be complimented by a video component, preferably an online one, for those of us who are visual learners.
–
*There is already a “Very Short Introduction to” Art Theory published by OUP.

See the previous post for information on each pole

This post grew out of the preceding one, a brief summary of Hilary Stewart’s excellent book Looking at Totem Poles.

The Haida and Kwakiutl poles above feature something that has intrigued me for some time: the presence of multiple presences within the same physical space, a concept seen in Bill Reid’s modern jewelry piece The Milky Way. Thus, in the Kwakiutl pole (above right), the central head and two end-heads of the sea-monster Sisiutl form the chest and outstretched wings of the Thunderbird. The Haida pole above (a replica of a nineteenth century pole) makes even more use of this method of representation: the head of the downward-facing Whale becomes the head of Sea Bear, while the Whale’s blowhole, often depicted on poles as a face inside a circle, also doubles as the face of Nanasimget’s wife, whose body is often shown wrapped around the whale. For Reid’s use of such faces, see this post for Killer Whale and this one for Raven; Reid specifically stated that the face in the Raven’s tail was decorative, a development of the circles that often appear between heavy form-lines in northwest coast art. Stewart’s work shows that in choosing to place a face here, Reid was clearly operating within the northwest coast tradition.

The Haida pole is also interesting in that the bird at the top is, according to Stewart, Eagle rather than Raven. The Eagle’s beak seems to me rather too long and not curved enough to be a typical Eagle’s beak (assuming the drawing is accurate); this serves to remind us that it is not always easy to tell the two beings apart by their beaks.

See below for information on each pole

An introduction already aims to summarize a field, but this post aims to be a particularly short summary of some of the material in Hilary Stewart’s excellent introductory book (reviewed in the previous post) Looking at Totem Poles. This post is in part inspired by a very brave and intelligent Japanese student I talked with today in the Bill Reid Gallery who asked about the differences between Haida art and other northwest coast aboriginal art.

Essentially, “totem poles” are columns of wood carved with family crests. Historically, only families with the right to use certain crests would be permitted to use them. Furthermore, certain crests naturally went together, as it were. Thus, the frog is associated with the eagle, but not with all other crests. (Interestingly, Bill Reid, coming as an outsider to this tradition, acknowledged making a mistake in this regard when he placed Eagle on the top of a “mortuary” pole that told the Bear Mother story; Eagle is not associated with the Bear Mother tale.) The figures carved on the poles are not usually “gods,” (though figures like Raven, could be considered supernatural); they are often the founders of a clan, or figures who interacted in some important way with an ancestor of a clan. Three examples serve to illustrate the range of the kinds of figures who could be included on the poles: the supernatural Raven, who brought light to the world and helped the first men to procreate without women; Bear, a magical but seemingly mortal being who married a human woman and produced two children, the founders of the Bear Clan of the Haida; and Ya-l, a human murderer of legend who is credited with founding the settlement at Kispiox during a particularly bad winter.

The totem poles of the past may be classified by their functions:

1. welcome poles, which welcomed visitors to villages
2. house post poles, which gave support to the roof of a longhouse
3. house frontal poles, which stood “against” the exterior of the house with a doorway off to the side
4. house portal poles, which are the same as above, except with the entrance through the pole instead of at the side
5. memorial poles, used to glorify a deceased person
6. mortuary poles, which had a large “cavity” cut into the pole to store the remains of a person at the top end; these poles, while somewhat rare, often were placed with the narrow part of the pole down
7. shame poles, used to shame someone

Stewart is careful to note that not all groups had all poles.

In addition to the above, poles have been carved since the 1920s for other reasons: to function as replacement artworks for aging poles, or to answer to commercial interests. Also–and this is more or less implicit in Stewart–poles may be carved by contemporary artists for historic, political, artistic, and other reasons.

The first pole shown above is a particularly celebrated pole. In the finest sentence in the book, Stewart writes:

“Dr. Charles F. Newcombe photographed it in 1901, Emily Carr did a painting of it in 1928, the Royal British Columbia Museum collected it in 1954, and Henry Hunt and Tony Hunt carved a replica of it in 1966″ (p. 98).

The pole stands at the entrance to the Royal British Columbia Museum. The second pole is a Kwakiutl pole, and this will be the kind most familiar to tourists to and residents of Vancouver, BC, as the collection of poles in Stanley Park is dominated by Kwakiutl designs. It is a memorial pole carved in 1978 by Sam Henderson for his wife, May, and stands in the We-Wai-Kum Band cemetery near Cambell River. The third pole, from 1969, is Gitksan in style, and was carved for the Ksan reconstructed village by Duane Pasco and other carvers.

This short summary is here for educational purposes, and serves as an introduction to Stewart’s fuller introduction; her volume is excellent, affordable, and worth the time of the reader.

Note on the different styles of northwest coast aboriginal art
The poles exhibit several styles: principally Tlingit (pronounced with an initial “k” sound, as “klingit”), Haida, Gitksan, and Kwakiutl (the Kwakwaka’wakw). (There is only a handful of Nuu-chah-nulth and Nisga’a poles in the book, as well as a couple of Coast Salish sculptures.)

Although Stewart does not devote much space to the issue of the differences between the various northwest coast styles, one can say that the appealing Gitksan poles seem to have a lot of limbs wrapped around them. The fascinating Kwakiutl poles are often easily distinguished by means of extravagantly large protrusions such as wings or beaks. The Haida feature an elegant and refined stylistic minimalism in terms of the depiction of each figure, carved as though it were a formline painting on a bentwood box. The Tlingit are similar to the Haida.

“Looking at Totem Poles,” by Hilary Stewart. Image taken from the Spirit Wrestler Gallery website

Today I finished Looking at Totem Poles, by Hilary Stewart, whose earlier, most excellent book Looking at the Art of the Northwest Coast was instrumental in helping me to understand the traditional forms of First Nations northwest coast art.

Looking at Totem Poles is, from an organizational and formatting perspective, a stroke of genius. Three maps of the northwest coast show the location of the various First Nations to which the author refers. The foreword is written by a veteran carver and artist, Norman Tait. Part 1 contains four sections on background material: “The Northwest Coast: The Land and the People”; “Totem Poles: A Historical Overview”; “Types of Totem Poles”; and “Carving an Raising Poles.” Part 2 deals with “Images Carved on Poles,” and here the chapters cover “Figures,” “Crests,” “Ceremonial and Everyday Objects” and the “The Depiction of Legends.” The chapters’ contents justify their titles, being highly informative, even to the point of touching on First Nations liturgical practices. Part 3, the bulk of the book, contains a geographically-organized catalogue of poles organized from south to north, ending with the Tlingit of Alaska.

Each pole is illustrated with an excellent line drawing by Stewart, and several short paragraphs of text on the same page as the line drawing; thus, on average, each pole receives one page of coverage, beginning with three headers: location, carver, and cultural style (e.g. Haida). In some cases, antique photographs show the poles as they were in situ in the villages of the First Nations. Stewart also captures in her drawings and her texts fascinating details that help in the interpretation of the works being considered. Finally, each page has an approximate scale in the height of a six-foot/ 1.8m figure placed beside the pole in question.

The content of the book is similarly outstanding, and Stewart mostly rises to the occasion. This is, in fact, a much more ambitious project than her previous, outstanding work referred to above. For one thing, where print-making, covered in her earlier work, has been practiced for only half a century or so, totem poles exist up and down the coast from every period in the last 150 years. Furthermore, there are so many figures carved on poles that it is not sufficient merely to learn about Raven, Eagle, Frog, Bear, and the usual figures. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the amount of specialized knowledge necessary to understand poles in general is significantly greater than that required to understand most two-dimensional artworks. Indeed, in many cases, the figures embody the legends and mythology of the people who carved these stories onto poles, and Stewart’s work ends out being far from merely an art-guide; it becomes a valuable introduction to traditional northwest coast First Nations culture and oral history.

With approximately 110 poles covered, with each having roughly one page, including the drawing, the work could have become quite monotonous. Stewart tries, on the whole successfully, to keep things–within her chosen format–varied and interesting. Perhaps because of this challenge, though, and the necessity of keeping each textual entry small, sacrifices are made in terms of clarity of written expression. I cannot speak for each reader, but I found myself often wondering whether she was describing an original or a replica, a pole on the left, or on the right, etc. I found these ambiguities recurred rather too frequently.

In addition to these problems with diction and syntax–and the fact that there is no pronunciation guide–there are other issues, too, for Stewart leaves so many questions unanswered–as would have been bound to happen in a volume of this size. Stewart covers quite well the Huxwhukw, Thunderbird, Kolus, Sisiutl, Dzunukwa, and Fog Woman, Creek Woman, and Master Carver, in addition to Raven, Eagle, Bear, and the rest, but who is Leading In? Who is Cedar Man? White Owl? Ice Nose? Eagle Person? Split Person? Man of the Wilds? Half-way out of the Door?* Wegyet? What exactly is a “human crest” (p. 150, and not really visible in the drawing)? Why is a “copper” always in its typical shape? What does “Buk-Buk” mean, and why does Puk-ubs say it?

Stewart also, for the most part, confines herself to poles from the last fifty years, both new design productions and those that replicate older poles. This seems defensible, but should have been made more explicit. (In fairness to Stewart, some of the First Nations did not want her to cover their work, for reasons of their own.) On the other hand, anyone who has been to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) will be somewhat confused by her beginning with two replica wooden sculptures, as she describes the locations of the replicas rather than the originals in the MOA.

Stewart’s treatment of the “legends” in her section on them is also problematic. She begins by saying that according to her dictionary, a “legend” does not necessarily imply fictionality–but she then goes on to narrate as examples three stories which cannot possibly be historically true (e.g. The Raven Steals the Sun, which is most certainly a myth rather than a legend). Just as no modern scholar of the Bible would describe the first two creation accounts in Genesis as “non-fiction,” the same should hold true here.

Another criticism would be the omissions: it would have been nice for Roy Henry Vickers’ Commonwealth pole to have been included. Stewart includes the second-tallest pole in the world, but omits the tallest. And surely the Tanu pole that inspired Bill Reid deserves a place.

Perhaps the most serious criticism that can be made of the book is that it does not really consider enough the artistic meaning of the poles as artworks. Why are the figures so often swallowing each other or being swallowed? How should one read a pole–from top to bottom or bottom to top? (Stewart begins her guide on each pole by beginning on the top, but claims that the figure on the top is often the least significant figure, though a few poles towards the end of the book seem to tell against this.)

These criticisms of Stewart’s work, while to my mind serious, do not detract from her admirable accomplishments in writing a work that remains helpful, informative, and as far as I can tell, authoritative. The book is systematic and encyclopedic while being brief, helpful while not being patronizing. There are dozens of anecdotes about the carvers, and there is a wealth of micro-narratives that point the reader in the areas that she or he needs to go (and indeed, there is a good bibliography at the end of the book). Some of the poles are very thought-provoking, and Stewart gives the reader the necessary equipment to realize that deep thinking and contemplation are sometimes required.

Perhaps best of all, Stewart relates the poles, the figures on them, and the making of them, to the cultures that have produced the poles, whether in the late 19th century or at the end of the twentieth. The text on the fourth pole, for instance, explicates the meaning of a pole that to the non-specialist shows only a man, a man with a weapon, a man with a strange tongue and some odd implements, and another man holding a big wale. Stewart helps such a reader to see that the pole is actually a very evocative encomium of the role of whaling in Nuu-chah-nulth culture, and in learning about the pole, we also learn about whaling as it was practiced by the Nuu-chah=nulth. Stewart’s genius is the ability to communicate to the ordinary reader a world with which (s)he may have had no contact at all, and to make it largely intelligible and worthy of his/her studied interest and even long-term enthusiasm. Stewart’s learned passion for poles is infectious. That her introductory book does as much as it does for the general reader with little to no specialized knowledge is a reflection of brilliant talent, intelligence, knowledge, and hard work–and I suspect that the book will repay even those who consider themselves to be beyond beginners in this field.

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*Not “Halfway Out,” who is explained.

Nest with eagle and eaglets by Richard Krentz

Yesterday I visited for the first time the Klahowya Village exhibits in Stanley Park. The village, which recalls a living First Nations presence in the land that would later become known as Stanley Park, includes several booths with First Nations artisans and artists selling their productions. One such artist, cedar-bark weaver Todd DeVries is shown below weaving red cedar into a hat. Cedar was, of course, a traditional material that was used by the First Nations of the northwest coast for everything from canoes to boxes to blankets.

Richard Krentz is credited with the production of the larger-than-live bentwood box, which, like the eagle and eaglets show above, is visible from the newly-rechristened “Spirit Catcher” train.

One particularly beautiful artwork, a dancer’s mask, is shown below; I was unfortunately able to find out whether it was Huxwhukw, Thunderbird, Raven, or some other being:

There is also a stage for shows and events:

The art and sculptures in the village are designed to appeal to children as well as adults, and there are also aboriginal-themed crafts for children, as well as a “feast-house” vendor stand selling traditional aboriginal food. In addition to these, there is also storytelling and singing.

There are a few quirks to the execution of the village–the historic miniature train seems greatly inferior to the canoe as physical mode of transport and artistic medium, but it ends out working out all right. The teepee on the premises is not representative of the northwest coast First Nations, and I would have preferred a wooden longhouse. Finally, I personally would give the village a dedicated website with full credits for the artists and artisans involved, and with details of how the works have functioned in traditional and contemporary First Nations cultures.

Despite these few glitches, Klahowya Village is a welcome project that showcases very capably in a small space several important aspects of the arts and culture of the northwest coast First Nations. The village is a welcome addition to Stanley Park in particular and Vancouver in general, and should serve to give all Vancouverites pride in the cultures of the northwest coast First Nations while increasing most Vancouverites’ knowledge of an important segment of our society. For collectors and connoisseurs of northwest coast art, the Klahowya Village could prove a fun way to introduce others to the northwest coast artistic traditions that have captivated so many for so long. Readers are encouraged to visit the Village and enjoy it before the event’s ending in mid-September.

Today I finally filled a blogging hole I have been wanting to get to for some time: I brought a camera to Bill Reid’s amazing sculpture that stands in front of the Vancouver Aquarium. It is, of course, the Killer Whale, a monumental work sculpted in bronze. The energetic, kinetic vitality of the killer whale mid-jump contrasts sharply with the serene water out of which it has appeared, and into which it is forever poised, about to return. (I remember reading somewhere that Reid was originally against the smoothness of the water, and indeed, in other versions of this sculpture the water was choppy. I think that each kind of water functions well with the piece.)

Although we live in the modern world, where technology makes so much possible, the fact that the piece can stand (on the tips of the tail) without falling is in itself a feat of artistic and engineering ability. In addition to asserting the ability of the artist to control the possible, Killer Whale also has political and artistic meanings.

The killer whale has carved on it the forms of the northern versions of northwest coast art: ovoids, crescents, T-shapes, split-U figures, etc., and yet appears realistic while retaining these stylistic elements, almost as though wearing them. These serve to remind the viewer that the land and waters of the northwest coast were once peopled exclusively by the First Nations–people who lived in harmony with the orcas throughout their own cycle of life. Most importantly, these people are still here.

This is one of Reid’s more public artworks, and it can be enjoyed from different angles, two of which are shown below:

The dignity of the stylized yet realistic whale, the splendour of its arched back, the suddenness of its apparent motion, the sharpness of its teeth, the enormous power of this king of the ocean world, the face of heart-breakingly beautiful eternity frozen in the circled orb of the blowhole–all these are deeply moving to me, and make this among my favourite Reid works.

Incidentally, I am almost finished Hilary Stewart’s Looking at Totem Poles, but wanted to mention that carvers of totem poles routinely put faces in the circular blowholes of their whales. I suppose Reid might have said that this face in the blowhole is merely decorative, like the face in the Raven’s and other animals’ tales (which are also commonly made by carver-artists), but that does not lessen the impact of what is for me a reminder of the union of the present, the eternal, and the beautiful in a trinity that will surely kill us and bring us to new life if we just let it.

I am really enjoying the new textiles exhibit, entitled Time Warp at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art. The two blankets shown above, are woven in the northern geometric (left) and chilkat (right) patterns. The gallery also features several woven cedar-bark pieces, which I will likely post in the near-future here. The textiles exhibit seeks to highlight the role of women (who produced the textiles just as men have traditionally produced poles on the northwest coast), and provides the gallery with a special kind of warmth that has really added something to my visits there. The videos produced for this exhibit, which are located on computer monitors throughout the gallery, are also current, informative, and interesting. For those who are interested in the art of the First Nations of the northwest coast, this is a must-see exhibition.

My second edition Shadbolt [see the preceding post] arrived some days ago, and I read the last chapter and admired all the photographs in it. The photographs are much better, for the most part: they are brighter and sharper than in the first edition. As far as I can see, the text in the bulk of the book has not been updated, but I did not look closely. I did very much enjoy the new final chapter, with a multitude of photographs, including one of Reid’s final masterpiece, the Jade Canoe. A few of the most interesting photos I saw in the new final chapter showed the beautiful box that Don Yeomans carved (the one that sits in the Bill Reid Gallery on the mezzanine level) being used to transport the smaller box that carried Reid’s ashes to his final resting place. The Yeomans box functioned as a carrying box, while the smaller box was the urn. (The carrying box was carried by hand, and also by canoe.) I couldn’t help being reminded of the story, told by Reid, of the old man with his “box which contained a box which contained an infinite number of boxes each nestled in a box slightly larger than itself until finally there was a box so small all it could contain was all the light in the universe” (Reid’s The Raven Steals the Light, p. 19).
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By the way, I very much regret the graininess of the above picture; I find that my camera does less well indoors with no flash.

-Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, edited by Robert Bringhurst

-The Raven Steals the Light, a retelling to Haida mythology by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst

-Bill Reid, an art-historical, quasi-biographical work by Doris Shadbolt (1st edition)