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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > Art styles not limited by date > Art of indigenous peoples
The native American face has long fascinated artists in every
medium. Its strong features and deep character present a challenge
and an opportunity for visual expression. In this new book, Terry
Kramer offers the wood carver a method for creating realistic
native American faces in wood. From layout to finish, Terry takes
the carver step-by-step through the process. Each step is
illustrated in full color and clearly described. A gallery of
several carved faces gives the reader an idea of the variations
that are possible, as well as guidelines for future carving
projects.
Sketching and carving both visualize and memorize a given image,
but within Nowau culture the manner in which this is achieved in a
canoe prowboard is entirely different than in a conventional
drawing. When studying the impressive ceremonial canoes of Kitawa,
in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea, G.M.G. Scoditti
became struck by the absolute predominance of the artist's mind in
the process of creating images: all its stages, its uncertainties
and experimentation, must unfold within its silent, rarefied space.
Only once fully formed can the image be revealed to the village in
material form. Reflecting on the absence of orthographic writing
within Nowau culture, and finding parallels with poetic and musical
composition, Scoditti gained further insight into the Nowau
processes of creation through the critiques the Kitawan carvers
made of his own fieldwork sketchbooks. Spurred on by their
curiosity, the anthropologist handed over his art materials to the
master carvers to make their own drawings on paper or cardboard.
Traditional pigments used on the polychrome canoe prowboards were
added to the unfamiliar media of watercolour, acrylic, coloured
pencils and ballpoint pen. Three-dimensional ornamentation became
two-dimensional as images of self-decoration and huts were added to
those of prowboards. This exercise was all the more fascinating
given the prohibition of drawing on the surface of the wood before
carving. On return to Italy, further graphic dialogues unfolded
when an architect and an artist from the tradition of Italian
Abstraction responded with their own intriguingly different
interpretations of the canoe prowboard and its relationship to the
Nautilus shell. All these drawings are brought together in this
book, along with Scoditti's own sketches from fieldwork and
ethnographic collections in Newcastle upon Tyne and Rome. 'The
fieldworker's or museum ethnographer's sketches are never going to
be quite the same. Through the double filter of Kitawan philosophy
and Scoditti's ruminations, the apparently simple triad of sketch -
drawing - carving opens out into a discourse on the creative mind.
The Kitawan creator - here primarily the male carver - does not
have to demonstrate how he creates, and what springs from these
pages have a fascination of their own. Several distinctive hands,
Kitawan and Italian, reflect from different interpretive and
professional vantage points on the very process of drawing through
doing exactly that, drawing. The result are images that delight and
challenge, sensitively assembled, beautifully reproduced. An
extraordinary record of creativity, and a rare corpus of visual
memorials.' - Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, University of
Cambridge
More than a hundred years ago, anthropologists and other
researchers collected and studied hundreds of examples of quillwork
once created by Arapaho women. Since that time, however, other
types of Plains Indian art, such as beadwork and male art forms,
have received greater attention. In Arapaho Women's Quillwork,
Jeffrey D. Anderson brings this distinctly female art form out of
the darkness and into its rightful spotlight within the realms of
both art history and anthropology. This book is the first
comprehensive examination of quillwork within Arapaho ritualized
traditions. Until the early twentieth century and the disruption of
removal, porcupine quillwork was practiced by many indigenous
cultures throughout North America. For Arapahos, quillwork played a
central role in religious life within their most ancient and sacred
traditions. Quillwork was manifest in all life transitions and
appeared on paraphernalia for almost all Arapaho ceremonies. Its
designs and the meanings they carried were present on many objects
used in everyday life, such as cradles, robes, leanback covers,
moccasins, pillows, and tipi ornaments, liners, and doors. Anderson
demonstrates how, through the action of creating quillwork, Arapaho
women became central participants in ritual life, often studied as
the exclusive domain of men. He also shows how quillwork challenges
predominant Western concepts of art and creativity: adhering to
sacred patterns passed down through generations of women, it
emphasized not individual creativity, but meticulous repetition and
social connectivity - an approach foreign to many outside
observers. Drawing on the foundational writings of
early-nineteenth-century ethnographers, extensive fieldwork
conducted with Northern Arapahos, and careful analysis of museum
collections, Arapaho Women's Quillwork masterfully shows the
importance of this unique art form to Arapaho life and honors the
devotion of the artists who maintained this tradition for so many
generations.
A nuanced look at Maya mythology, from the literary record of the
Popol Vuh to a broad range of artistic depictions by ancient Maya
artists
This selected bibliography is a guide for both the collector and
the general reader who would like additional information about
Native American pottery and potters.
When the Blackfoot Indians were confined to reservations in the
late nineteenth century, their pictographic representations of
warfare kept alive the rituals associated with war, which were
essential facets of Blackfoot culture. Their war ethic served as a
unifying force among the four tribes of the Blackfoot nation -
Siksika, Blood, and North and South Piegan. In this visually
stunning survey, L. James Dempsey, a member of the Blood tribe,
plumbs the breadth and depth of warrior representational art. He
has mined archival resources and museum collections and interviewed
many tribal members to provide a uniquely Native perspective on the
importance of warrior art in Blackfoot history and culture. Filled
with 160 images of startling beauty and power, Blackfoot War Art
tells how pictographs served as a record of both tribal and
personal accomplishment. This singular historical record of all
available information on Blackfoot warrior pictography depicts
painted robes; war tepee covers, liners, and doors; and painted
panels. Dempsey provides descriptions and a great deal of other
information about the pieces included here. His survey focuses
especially on recent paintings that scholars have overlooked. In
revealing changing trends in the representation of war, Dempsey
skillfully weaves together pictures, people, and histories to
convey a fascinating view of this warrior art from a Blood
perspective.
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The Sound of Drums
(Paperback)
Lloyd Kiva New; Edited by Ryan S. Flahive
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R1,045
R848
Discovery Miles 8 480
Save R197 (19%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Social and behavioral scientists study religion or spirituality in
various ways and have defined and approached the subject from
different perspectives. In cultural anthropology and archaeology
the understanding of what constitutes religion involves beliefs,
oral traditions, practices and rituals, as well as the related
material culture including artifacts, landscapes, structural
features and visual representations like rock art. Researchers work
to understand religious thoughts and actions that prompted their
creation distinct from those created for economic, political, or
social purposes. Rock art landscapes convey knowledge about sacred
and spiritual ecology from generation to generation. Contributors
to this global view detail how rock art can be employed to address
issues regarding past dynamic interplays of religions and spiritual
elements. Studies from a number of different cultural areas and
time periods explore how rock art engages the emotions,
materializes thoughts and actions and reflects religious
organization as it intersects with sociopolitical cultural systems.
River-cane baskets woven by the Chitimachas of south Louisiana are
universally admired for their beauty and workmanship. Recounting
friendships that Chitimacha weaver Christine Paul (1874-1946)
sustained with two non-Native women at different parts of her life,
this book offers a rare vantage point into the lives of American
Indians in the segregated South. Mary Bradford (1869-1954) and
Caroline Dormon (1888-1971) were not only friends of Christine
Paul; they were also patrons who helped connect Paul and other
Chitimacha weavers with buyers for their work. Daniel H. Usner uses
Paul's letters to Bradford and Dormon to reveal how Indian women,
as mediators between their own communities and surrounding
outsiders, often drew on accumulated authority and experience in
multicultural negotiation to forge new relationships with
non-Indian women. Bradford's initial interest in Paul was
philanthropic, while Dormon's was anthropological. Both certainly
admired the artistry of Chitimacha baskets. For her part, Paul saw
in Bradford and Dormon opportunities to promote her basketry
tradition and expand a network of outsiders sympathetic to her
tribe's vulnerability on many fronts. As Usner explores these
friendships, he touches on a range of factors that may have shaped
them, including class differences, racial attitudes, and shared
ideals of womanhood. The result is an engaging story of American
Indian livelihood, identity, and self-determination.
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