How to Understand the Art of the Northwest Coast First Nations
Understanding the aboriginal art of the northwest coast is a worthy endeavor; fortunately, the first steps are not difficult. This post functions as a table of contents, or index, to the posts in my series on the formal elements of the aboriginal art of the First Nations of the northwest coast. The series took as its starting point Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast, by Hilary Stewart. The book is a concise, well-written and well-illustrated guide to the basic shapes and animals of northwest coast aboriginal art; additionally, Stewart covers, albeit briefly, the significance of the animals in the mythology of the northwest coast First Nations. After summarizing Stewart’s treatment of the various shapes and elements, and the use of negative space, there are three posts wholly my own in which I apply that knowledge to three selected Roy Henry Vickers artworks.
Part I: Understanding Native Art of the Northwest Coast
Part II: The Ovoid
Part III: U-forms
Part IV: S-forms and Split U-forms
Part V: The Negative Space: Crescents, Circles, Ts, & Ys
Part VI: The Animals of Aboriginal Northwest Coast Art
Part VII: Raven and Whale (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)
Part VIII: The Westcoasters (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)
Part IX: Solstice 2001 (Roy Henry Vickers artwork)
Addendum: The Thunderbird
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Note: The collage above was created using Picasa, but this is a tool I wish Microsoft would put in its less clunky and more user-friendly Windows Live Photo Gallery; I’m not really happy with the collage, but my own skills are too weak in the area of manipulating graphical elements on the computer.
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February 5th, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
As usual, a great post. Thanks!
February 5th, 2010 @ 8:02 pm
Thanks, Titus. I also appreciate your regular blogging on the subject of ancient coins!
March 28th, 2010 @ 9:20 pm
[...] killer whales everyday. Also noteworthy is the “classical hand of norther art” (after Hillary Stewart on each of the [...]
June 20th, 2010 @ 9:39 am
[...] *For those without an introduction to the First Nations art of the northwest coast, please see the table of contents to my little blog post series on this [...]
August 18th, 2010 @ 9:54 pm
[...] 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 [...]
August 22nd, 2010 @ 9:26 pm
[...] 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 [...]