Hunting Art IV

 

Husky  Labradorite Sculptor Gilbert Hayes Courtesy Sivertsons Art Gallery https://www.sivertson.com/

Inuit Dogs 

Inuit life in the Arctic would have been far different without the Inuit sled dog.  Yet few dogs are represented in their earlier art.  The dog was their only domesticated animal but Inuit believe the dog (like Faust) sold its soul, for more reliable mealtimes.  When they were forced into villages, many Inuit had to kill their dogs.  The government replaced them with snowmobiles in the 1970s.  Greenland, a protectorate of Denmark, banned snowmobiles in the 1970s.  Greenland's Inuit's sled dog population is about 30,000.  It's illegal to bring any other breed of dog into Greenland.  There are about 100 purebred Inuit dogs left in Canada, 150 in the United States.  (Denmark also tried to keep northern Greenland 'isolated' from the outside world to preserve its traditional Inuit culture.  That ban was lifted in 1950.)

"Scattered (archeological) findings indicate an indigenous graphic tradition.  In the accounts of early explorers, there are numerous references to the innate ability of Eskimos to draw accurate maps and to reproduce pictorial images from newspapers as soon as paper and pencil became available.  Twentieth century researchers  have found Eskimo children consistently superior in culture-free drawing tests," cites Fitzhugh and Kaplan in, Inua Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo.  They theorize that centuries of survival of people with a keener eye have intensified an ability to observe and reproduce minute details.  Survival was often dependent upon this keen eye, and it was the survivor who lived to reproduce.

Bear Tracks, 1992 woodcut on paper Artist Mary K. Okheena Courtesy Winnipeg Art Gallery http://www.wag.ca/

Qualities of Inuit Art

1.  In 1950 Inuit were not traditionally trained artists, i.e. in schools with established procedures.  But they knew anatomy, closely studied their world and used traditional materials such as stone, ivory, and bone.  They had an exceptional work ethic and their work has vitality, instantly recognized, difficult to inculcate.

2.  Western 20th and 21st century art has focused on stylized human subjects, abstraction, theatrics or geometry, seldom humor, rarely animals.  Animals are Inuit art, closely followed by human subjects, families specifically, mothers with their children, camp life, playfulness, tragedy, and mysticism.

3.Contemporary Western art centers often cluster in urban areas, far removed from the natural world (exceptions: Georgia O'Keefe and nature photography, and a few isolated artists colonies not located in or near cities.)  Not since the Impressionists, in the late 19th century, has nature, albeit a domesticated version, been the main subject.  Inuit art is infused with the WILD.

4.  Pre-1970s Inuit artists were mostly illiterate--not the case with Western art, which often, by necessity, demands written explanation.

5.  Inuit focused on their immediate family with little concept of the individualized artist.  Their art was their way of life, and a way to provide for their families.

6.  They initially made art for commercial purposed after experiencing tragedy.  They had purpose.  Modernization/Industrialization threatens sense of purpose, self, and this is reflected in contemporary Western art.

7.  Inuit have always puzzled Westerners.  They are more humble, less verbal.  There are few biographies, even of the famous old time carvers and printers.  There's a real lack of scholarship in this area, and time is running out for first person accounts, as many Inuit artists are now in their 80s and 90s.  Also, rarely are Inuit art human subjects identified.  Inuit culture is more small group oriented.

8.  There's often a seemingly abstract quality to Inuit prints.  It seems as if objects are floating.  When you are someplace that's flat, with little variation in topography, like looking at the ocean from a ship, or a field of wheat, or, in this case, snowy landscapes, perspective is an elusive thing, so the appearance of abstraction can in fact be an authentic reproduction of what's seen.

9.  Many Inuit prints are monochrome, reproducing the lack of the primary colors red and yellow in the Arctic.  Also, in prints such as Bear Tracks, there's a dynamic element of fear, in the Inuit struggle to capture food, there's always the Arctic danger of being captured.

Things I Remember 17 Linocut by Kananginak Pootoogook Courtesy Eskimo Art Gallery http://www.eskimoart.com/

 

A Brief History of Arctic Peoples

People living in the Far North for thousands of years are divided into five periods:

Pre-Dorset 

The period emerged from migrations from Siberia across the Bering Straight, circa 2000 BC.  Few art objects exist from this period although stone harpoon points imply hunting-magic ideas in Dorset Culture started here.

Dorset Culture

Around 700-500 BC people began to produce figurative objects such as birds, bears, human figures, and masks made of bone, ivory or wood.  Objects had magic-religious significance used in religious rites.  Small in scale so they were easily to transport.

Thule Culture

Around 1000 AD people began migrating from Alaska to Canadian Arctic

and onto eastern Greenland by 1200 AD.  Thule Culture either drove out or eliminated Dorset Culture.  The Norse were in this area too.  The Thule hunted whales and built permanent homes of stone and whalebone.  Some still remain.  Elegant carvings of animal imagery and of everyday things with no religious intent.  Art uniform and distinctly feminine in form and content.

Historic Period

Thule Culture disappears, weather increasingly colder , the whales disappear.  The white man arrives 16th century.  Inuit art forms tailored more and more for Europeans.  In 1896 Yukon Gold Rush---100,000 prospectors arrive.

Contemporary Period

After World War II gradual opening up of North.  Unprecedented amount of contact between North and South Canada.  Most Inuit groups removed from nomadic life and acculturated to become "modern."  Inuit art collectives began the process of establishing Inuit sculpture as major art form.

Hunting Art III

Bear Handstand, Soapstone Cape Dorset Artist Ottokie Samayuallie
Courtesy Sivertson Art Gallery  https://www.sivertson.com/

When James Houston returned to Montreal, he showed his small collection of carvings to the Canadian Guild of Crafts in December 1948.  Houston's nascent idea was a good one.  He soon returned to the Arctic with a grant of $1000, plus $500 of his own money to purchase more carvings.  When they had the exhibition in Montreal, the entire show sold out, 90% of it in three days.  He was soon offered a job with the Canadian government to expand 'this new Arctic work.'  He married Allie Bardon and together they traveled around the Arctic on their honeymoon, often by dogsled, hunting for carvings.  They settled in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island, where they worked for 11 years, traveling the Arctic, commissioning Inuit to join the growing art colony.

River Fishing 1966 stonecut on paper Gov A/43 Artist Victor Ekootak (1916-1965) Courtesy Winnipeg Art Museum http://www.wag.ca/ 

 Inuit souvenir trade carvings of the Late Historic period changed quickly.  By 1952, Houston began calling Inuit carvings "art."  The population of Cape Dorset reached 1000 working artists during his tenure.  This was a natural progression for a people used to working communally.  After researching printing methods in Japan, Houston also set up the Cape Dorset print shop in 1958.    Eventually the Guild enlisted the help of the Hudson Bay Company and other arts groups in the United States and London to distribute the art works.

Caribou  Linocut, stencil on paper, 1958 Artist Joseph Pootoogook Courtesy Winnipeg Art Gallery  http://www.wag.ca/

                      Caribou The above print was created from 

                         a drawing by renowned Cape Dorset camp 

                         leader and carver Pootoogook. The earliest 

                         prints were made with the assistance of James 

                         Houston.  http://www.wag.ca/

Inuit Way of Art And Life

Inuit hunters are skilled butchers, giving them a fluent knowledge of anatomy.  The whole family would take part in Butchering game.  An old belief is animals prefer being killed with beautiful tools, so Inuit incised their ivory and whalebone implements with delicate carvings, later influencing southern whalers' creation of scrimshaw.

Artifacts from the ancient Dorset culture were found on the southwest coast of Baffin Island, near the Arctic Circle, an apt connection to the new Inuit art community there.  Terry Ryan began working at the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative in the 1950s.  He was graduated from Toronto Art College and convinced the Department of Northern Affairs to hire him to fill in for James Houston.  His early impressions of the colony are noteworthy:

"When I got here I found a great many Eskimo drawings in the old building Jim (Houston) had been using as a (work) shop. They were unbelievably good!  I'd no idea Eskimos could express themselves so well.

"Working in stone comes naturally to them.  Wood is something they're not really accustomed to, because there's not much of it in the Arctic.  They work freely with stone.  The Eskimo carver doesn't feel it's an alien material since his people have worked with (stone) for thousands of years," Farley Mowat observed, in High Latitudes, An Arctic Journey.

Few aboriginal cultures have stepped out of their old ways into Western life and within twenty years reach the top of the West's art markets.  Inuit artists work has been called, "A splendid new art of acculturation," their natural abilities quickly catapulting them out of the handcraft genre and into art's mainstream, like Athena, sprung full grown.

It's hard to imagine how drastically and rapidly Inuit lives changed.  Their names for instance. It wasn't until the 1940s Royal Canadian Mounted Police census that every person was assigned an identification number to avoid confusion about given names, for they lived in such small extended families that surnames didn't exist.  Many carvers signed their works with their i.d. numbers (called disc numbers) to avoid confusion in the 1950s and 60s.  

Surnames were officially adopted in 1969.  The Canadian Inuit population reached an all time low of 8,000, in the 1930s, due to starvation and disease.  Today they number about 35,000, and have one of the highest birthrates in Canada.

Hunting Art part II

Bowhead in Amautik  Artist Tim Pitsiulak Courtesy Sivertson Art Gallery https://sivertson.com/

Discovery

Despite profound hardships during the relocation time, a serendipitous Southern Canadian helped a small group of illiterate, pre-Industrial Inuit hunters transform themselves into the most remarkable--and unlikely--successful twentieth century artists.

Four Seasons Artist Ningeokuluk Teevee Courtesy The Eskimo Art Gallery www.eskimoart.com

Recollections of James Houston

..late in the summer 1948, the winds of chance carried me into the Canadian Arctic on a rare emergency medical flight.   I had been drawing amoung the Swampy Cree Indians of James Bay and leapt at this extraordinary opportunity to fly into the Canadian Arctic.  We stopped at two fuel caches beyond the treeline and landed in the single-engine Norseman floatplane at an Inuit camp north of Inukjuak on the east coast of Hudson Bay.

James Houston Courtesy Houston Gallery North  http://www.houston-north-gallery.ns.ca/gallery

                                           When we landed, my colleague Dr. Harper immediately went about his medical business while I hauled out my sketchbook, only to be immediately surrounded by the rest of the camp of smiling, laughing Inuit families.  I knew three words in their language: igloo, kayak, and that familiar word Eskimo, or Esquimau, which was completely acceptable at that time.  Those Inuit seemed to me short, tanned, good-natured, and exotic-looking people with their fur trimmed hoods and their sealskin pants and boots. The women were carrying plump infants in the hoods of their long-tailed parkas.Most of them stood on their toes and carefully observed the drawing I was making of a man standing near me.  He held still for a while, then eagerly grasped my pencil and sketchbook and started making a strong, sure drawing of me, even copying my habit of licking my lips in time with my pencil strokes.  All eyes watched him intently, parents holding up their children to see him sketch.  It was a good, quick profile drawing.  I still have it. Then another person took my pad and drew an old woman.  These drawings were surprisingly accomplished, with no distortion in the portrait of me in the head, the large chin, or the heavy eyebrows. in theMy thought was, ‘What manner of people is this?’
…(The next day) a man approached me...Naomialuk opened his hand and revealed to me a small stone carving of a caribou with bone antlers.  To my delight he gave me this gift, which appeared ancient, like the ones I had seen in museums in the South…Later, I asked the Scottish trader there, Norman Ross, how old he thought it was?  "Carved last night or maybe this morning.  I'd judge--just for you."
I felt a sense of disappointment, like an antique collector discovering that his ancient treasure has just been newly made.  Then a light went on for me.  Could this mean that these people, roughly equipped with crude tools, dressed in shabby clothing and living a ragged tents, could this mean that they already possessed a better way of providing for themselves?  Money was not known or used. In 1948 their main trade items were white-fox pelts, which had fallen in value to $3, and sealskins traded for 25 cents worth of goods.  No trade in carvings then existed. Could their ability as carvers help the Inuit support themselves?  An idea flashed into my mind.  It was probably by far the most important thought that I have ever had in my entire life.  I might be able to help these people develop a channel for their art from the North to art galleries, museums, and collectors in the South.  And so it began, one of the most remarkable stories in the history of art patronage.  When Houston returned to Montreal he showed his small collection of carvings to the Canadian Guild of Crafts in December 1948.  Houston’s nascent idea was a good one. He soon returned to the Arctic with a grant of $1000 plus $500 of his own money to purchase more carvings.  When they had the exhibition in Montreal, the entire show sold out, 90% of it in three days.  He was soon offered a job with the Canadian government to expand ‘this new Arctic work.  He married Allie Bardon and together they traveled around the Arctic on their honeymoon, often by dogsled, hunting for carvings.  They settled in Cape Dorset, Baffin Island where they worked for 11 years, traveling all over the Arctic, commissioning Inuit to join the growing art colony.          ---Part III next post---

I wish to thank Sivertson Gallery in Grand Marais and Duluth, Houston North Gallery, Minnesota and the Eskimo Art Gallery in Toronto, CANADA for generously giving permission to illustrate this feature.  Without their help I would have needed thousands more words to convey just a fraction of the beauty of Inuit art.
–Note--Eskimo was the European name for native Arctic people, accepted usage until the 1980s. Inuit is the name Arctic aboriginal peoples call themselves, it means The People. Inuit is used throughout except in quotations or when describing a regional group.  

Hunting Art by Carol Wallwork

     

Sea Change in the Arctic Part I

Introduction

The North Dakota prairie was my home for 10 years.  It was far removed from the clatter and swirl of mainstream American life--at the time, a perceived failing.  In hindsight, its greatest strength.  It was there I grew a voice, discovered photography, fell dumbstruck in love with the seasons of the Great Northern Plains.  Brief, but vibrant summers, and winters of such intensity I can still imagine, even in a torpid, Virginia summer, the power of that arctic wind chill.  There are few trees on the prairie, nothing to block the chill blasts dieseling down from the North, from October to March.  And that Cold...

Carol south of Minot, North Dakota circa 1978 photo: Jim Wallwork

Our Coldest time was that February night it was minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (and Celsius!) a 40-mile-per-hour wind, equaling a near 100 below wind chill.  After warming our car for 30 minutes, its vaporous exhaust clouding the driveway, Jim and I drove out.  Driving along dimly lit streets to a friend's house for dinner, the rubber wheels screeching and groaning on glassy pavement, the car seemed to swim through a swirling wind-whipped ground blizzard.  All sound and light seemed muted, yet magnified, as if we we'd been transported to life on a different frequency, more akin to space travel than mere winter.  It was easy that night to imagine an Inuit Cold, without a warmed car, murky streetlights, a 75 degree Fahrenheit friend's house.  And be awed beyond count.

__________________________________________________________

                                 Arctic Works 

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In the 1950s, while Swiss photographer Robert Frank was driving across America, soon to change the world of photography, and Jackson Pollock was creating Abstract Expressionism, putting New York City on the international art map, an epic transformation was taking place in the Canadian Arctic.

Toronto, Canada 1939

Canada's Supreme Court ruling on the 1939 Indian Act that the aboriginal Inuit should receive the same rights to health, welfare, and education benefits as Canadian Indians.  World War II delays its implementation.

Baker Lake, Keewatin, Western Hudson Bay, Canada 1940s-1950s

Starvation and tuberculosis were epidemic among the Keewatin Caribou Eskimos in the late 1940s.  The collapse of the white fox fur market and the drastically thinned caribou herds due to disease, were calamitous blows to Inuit subsistence.  The Caribou Eskimo population dwindled to 500 people.   

  Reports flooded the South of dire circumstances in the Arctic  
  and of widespread loss of life.  Members of the Canadian
  government responded to this humanitarian crisis by forced
  relocation of the Inuit into small villages.

Boy with Bear Artist Ohito Ashoona Inuit Courtesy Eskimo Art Gallery http://www.eskimoart.com/

"By 1951, the Eskimo throughout the Arctic were already dying at an unprecedented rate, of malnutrition and its attendant diseases.  In those few areas where the incidence of tuberculosis was known with certainty, as many as 48 percent of the population was afflicted," reported Canadian writer Farley Mowat.  He recounted, in his research expeditions around the Arctic that, "...a series of horrific disasters... resulting in the deaths of at least 200 Eskimos, mostly from starvation and consequences of severe malnutrition."  Mowat also hints that the Canadian government's rush to evict Eskimo from their settlements, was to establish Canadian sovereignty of the resource-rich North, as it was increasingly evident that the Russians could challenge Canadian control of the tundra lands and blurred boundaries of moving glaciers.

These devastating forces set in motion rapid change of the Inuit, from a preeminent hunter-gathering society, that sustained itself for thousands of years in one of the harshest environments on earth, hunting the fiercest mammals, to the bottom of the market economy, domesticated, living in cities.  This would be like plunking Wall Street stockbrokers, in their Brooks Brothers suits, and polished Florsheims, down by seaplane onto the western shore of Baker Lake, to sell stocks in a near-cashless society.  They may have adjusted, but their hearts wouldn't have been in it.

Across the Arctic, from the Beaufort Sea to Labrador, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) began removing Inuit from their camps and placing them in villages so they could access modern medical care, education, and monthly government stipends.  Some were sent to tuberculosis sanitariums.  Many Inuit children were removed from their families all together, and sent to boarding schools in the South, to mainstream them into modern Canadian life. Some weren't even allowed to speak their native language.  The rapidity and method of Inuit removal from their ancestral homes created profound social, physiological, psychological, spiritual, and economic hardship that those communities are still grappling with today, 60+ years later.  According to the World Health Organization, Inuit suicide rates are among the highest in the world.  They also have extremely high rates of alcoholism and depression. The Inuit did not have the right to vote until 1950.

Part 2 next post

Bibliography (for Hunting Art 1,2,3, & 4)                                     

Blodgett, Jean Grasp Tight the Old Ways (Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario 1983)

-Collins, Henry, Frederica De LaGuna, Edmund Carpenter and Peter Stone

The Far North (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 1973)

-Fitzhugh, William W.  and Susan A. Kaplan, Inua Spirit World of the Bering Sea Eskimo  (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982) -

-Flaherty, Robert director, Nanook of the North, 1922, Criterion Collection 1998

-Hessel, Ingo Inuit Art an Introduction (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998)

-Houston, John Confessions of an Igloo Dweller  (McClelland & Stewart 1996)

-Houston, John The White Dawn (Orlando, Florida, Harcourt Brace Inc.1973)

-Houston website http://www.houston-north-gallery.ns.ca/  for reproductions

         

-Mowat, Farley High Latitudes An Arctic Journey 

(South Royalton,Vermont:Steerforth 

Press, 2002) 

______ Michael Scott director Lost in the Barrens Sunday Night Productions, 1990

-Report on Violence and Health Summary, 2000,  http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/factsheets/en/selfdirectedviolfacts.pdf

-Ross, John F. “Top Dogs” Smithsonian, January 2004, 43.   

-Rowell, Galen.  “Nunavut: What’s to Become the Newest Canadian territory in 1999

  Might Well Be the Continent’s Last Frontier.” Grand Forks Herald, March 19, 1998 

-von Finchenstein, Maria ed. Celebrating Inuit Art 1948-1970 (Toronto Key Porter Books 1999)