What makes Northwest Coast Native American art authentic? And why,
when most of art history is a history of the avant-garde, is
tradition so deeply valued by contemporary Native American artists
and their patrons? In Privileging the Past Judith Ostrowitz
approaches these questions through a careful consideration of
replicas, reproductions, and creative translations of past forms of
Northwest Coast dances, ceremonies, masks, painted screens, and
houses.
Ostrowitz examines several different art forms -- two very
different architectural constructions, a dance performance, and
modern sculptures and dance paraphernalia -- considering their
relations to arts of the past. Chief Shakes' Community House has
endured, in various forms, at the same site in Wrangell, Alaska,
for 170 years as an "old style" Tlingit tribal house. The Grand
Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization at Hull, Quebec, is
constructed as a Native village with an assemblage of replicated
houses made by contemporary Native artists, both old and new totem
poles, and references to the Northwest Coast landscape. The opening
ceremonies of the exhibition Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl
Potlatch at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in
October 1991 included a dance program by a group of Native
performers from Vancouver Island, B.C., adapting traditional
elements for a long and complex theatrical presentation. Finally,
artists such as Art Thompson, Beau Dick, Doug Cranmer, Robert
Davidson, Susan Point, and Jim Schoppert produce vital and lively
art -- masks, rattles, prints, and paintings are considered here --
that utilizes inherited subject matter and conventionalized
stylistic devices. Ostrowitz findsthat these replicas and
performances function as do most other works of art, referencing
history in a highly selective manner.
Ostrowitz draws on an extensive body of interviews she conducted
with tribal leaders, artists, and artisans long known and highly
respected in both Native and non-Native venues. Throughout the
book, we hear their voices -- members of the Alfred, Cranmer, Hunt,
Tallio, and Webster families, and many other individuals -- as they
relate their responses to the modern adaptation of their cultural
heritage.
Privileging the Past explores intellectual issues raised by
postmodern theory, supported by detailed studies of projects that
will interest a broad audience of students, historians,
museum-goers, and those intrigued by Native American art and
cultural history.
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