Yua: Treasures of the Arctic Peoples

[Image: Cup’ig artist, Mask (c. 1915), wood, cormorant feathers, sinew and paint, The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Photograph copyright 2020 the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco]

The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco consists of a wide range of art and artefacts from the peoples of the Arctic. The quality of the objects and variety of types makes the group especially valuable for anyone wishes to get an overview of Arctic cultures. Thomas G. Fowler (1943-2006) was an esteemed graphic designer and keen traveller of the Arctic north. He started collecting in the 1970s and built a collection of nearly 400 items. Upon his death, he bequeathed his collection to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where it joined the long-established Native American collection.

Yua: Spirit of the Arctic documents highlights of the collection and provides a comprehensive overview of the material culture of the people of the north. (Yua means spirit of a being in Yup’ik.) The excellent-quality large illustrations with technical data and brief notes bring objects to life. Experts provide essays covering different aspects of the many cultures in the huge area of northern North America and Greenland. The peoples represented in the collection include the Inuit, Aleut, Yup’ik, Iñupiaq, Unangax̂, Inuktitut and Kalaallit (the definitions of which sometimes overlap) and the historical groups Okvik, Punuk, Birnik and Thule. An extensive essay details the history of Western collecting of artefacts made by northern peoples.

The majority of the material dates from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries but some are much older. Pieces dating from the Okvik and Purnuk eras (100-400 AD) are small tusk carvings of figurines. Some seem to represent children in swaddling clothes. In one figurine (no. 18) the minimally decorated striations on the face and oval eyes have the countenance of West African mask carvings. The dark coloration of some pieces is due to artists using partially fossilised walrus ivory rather than fresh material. Some figures may have been dolls or for girls to dress, thereby practising skills they would use for making clothing. There is a figurine from the Thule culture, which vanished and superseded by the Inuit from 1400 onwards. The Thule did not prize art and what they left has little decoration and is unambitious – in contrast to the forceful art that previous and later eras produced.

Most of the materials used are traditional and locally sourced, including walrus skin/ivory, whale bone, driftwood, stone, reindeer hide/sinew, teeth, grass and birch bark. Metal was used sparingly – particularly in areas without trees, which provided the fuel for smelting. Sources included meteorites and other readily accessible sources. (The Copper Inuit is a small tribe who got its name from the ore deposits on Coppermine River, Nunavut. The Cape York (Innaanganeq) meteorite was an important source of iron for the local Inuit tribe before it was taken by Captain Robert Peary took it to the USA in 1897.) Colour is minimal – limited to soot/charcoal, red ochre, white clay and blue clay – often impermanent.

The decorated knife and hook handles show how the Inuit altered manufactured items from the south and embellished them with meaningful symbolism. Designs include animal forms and designs indicating geographical regions or cosmological zones. Some harpoon heads are decorated – relating to common beliefs about the interrelated nature of men and animals and their spirits. “Such decorations not only beautified utilitarian objects but also imbued them with spiritual meaning and honoured the life-giving power of animals and the ancestors.” The value of punctilious and diligent appeasement and mindfulness is stressed in a number of folk tales which instil the most effective ways of hunting and living. There is a belief that the spirit of a prey animal will be appeased if it is caught by a hunter who takes pride in his craft. The devotion of attention to a weapon head that had high likelihood of being lost in the hunt shows how seriously those ideas were taken.

Snow goggles carved from driftwood show us the ingenuity of technology of the Inuit. The ergonomically efficient goggles have narrow horizontal slits which reduce the glare of sunlight reflected from snow – which is so strong it can blind people – and (in this case) has a visor to shield from direct sunlight. Western travellers used tinted (or smoked) glass but the locals (who did not have access to glass, except through trade in later periods) got there earlier. This pair of goggles is dated c. 1850.

Simply from studying the form and function of these artefacts – ranging from art to tools – we can an insight into the priorities. Many objects functioned on multiple levels: utilitarian, symbolic, artistic, instructional, status demonstration, ritual, spiritual, entertainment and others. It is often hard to determine exactly what the relevance of each aspect of an object is and how it was seen by its makers and users. (See also my review of a book about Incan objects, Sculpture Journal.)

Objects indicating regular trade with the south include pipes, tobacco boxes and gunpowder horns. Clothing includes full outfits for a man and women, Greenland style, c. 1910 and 1949.

A number of later items seem to have been made specifically for the tourist trade. (One example is a (presumably) non-functional pipe carved from ivory.)

[Image: Inupiaq artist, Pipe (c. 1890), walrus tusk and pigment, The Thomas G. Fowler Collection at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Photograph: Randy Dodson, copyright 2020 the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco]

Fowler was not deceived but was a collector who wanted attractive pieces, be they functional or handicrafts. Fowler recognised that whatever the intended use for the objects, they displayed genuine invention and care in their creation.

Combs, ornaments, masks and game pieces show the Inuit at leisure, giving us a glimpse of people at play and relaxing. It is a testament to the hardiness and resourcefulness of the northern peoples that they had time to create and use such items in the most inhospitable terrain on Earth. We get an understanding of the mobile, nomadic lifestyle of the creators from the features that indicate travel: clasps on baskets, carrying cases for needles and holes drilling for threading objects so that they would not be lost during travel.

From recent decades one finds fine-art sculpture which develops traditional materials and forms in ways that enter the purely aesthetic territory. There constructions are highly complex and delicate, made the museum or private art collection. The named artists are David Ruben Piqtoukun (b. 1950), Abraham Anghik Ruben (b. 1951) and Susie Silook (b. 1960), each of whom contribute statements. Others are Judas Ullulaq (1937-1999), Kay Hendrickson (1909-2002), Levi Tetpon (b. 1952) and Naulaq.

Yua: Spirit of the Arctic is an informative and enjoyable book which provides a chance to encounter civilisations of surpassing inventiveness and enduring aesthetic traditions.

 

Hillary C. Olcott, et al, Yua: Spirit of the Arctic. Highlights from the Thomas G. Fowler Collection, de Young/Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/Delmonico/Prestel (distr. Prestel), 2020, hardback, $40/£29.99, ISBN 978 3 7913 5945 8

© 2020 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art

Kenojuak Ashevak/ᕿᓐᓄᐊᔪᐊᖅ ᐋᓯᕙᒃ, Inuktitut artist

This monograph covers highlights from the art of Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013). Kenojuak was an Inuit artist, part of one the Canadian First Nations of Nunavut. She is the most acclaimed and beloved native artist of Canada’s Northern Territories, considered to be one of the founders of modern Inuit art. She received many national awards and honours, dating from 1967 up to her death. Her art has continued to receive more recognition since her death.

The book gives an overview of the artist’s eventful life. Kenojuak was born into a nomadic Inuktitut clan in a haumuq (igloo) on South Baffin Island. Her family were hunters. Seal hunting was dangerous work and income low. Her father was murdered in a clan dispute, victim of summary justice. Any tale of Kenojuak’s life must include local hunter and part-time artist Johnniebo Ashevak (1923-1972), whom she married in 1946. His art is less well known than hers, although it is well regarded and in national collections. Kenojuak experienced forcible hospital confinement due to tuberculosis (1952-5) and lost children in infancy due to illness. She married twice after Johnniebo’s death and was mother to 16 children over the years, five adopted; seven did not survive infancy.

She learned traditional crafts from her family. Her skill was noticed and encouraged during her hospital stay. Some of her bags, dolls, boots and tapestries used stencils monochrome motifs.

Like other Inuit artists of the Cape Dorset region, her creativity was harnessed and disseminated by the couple Alma and James Archibald Houston. In the 1930s Houston had sold native crafts to Canadians in the South and the couple’s establishment of the print studio in 1956 proved highly successful, causing a sensation and leading to the introduction of Inuit art to Canadians nationwide. The studio allowed Inuit craftsmen to reach new markets and gain a significant source of income

One of the key artistic mediums of Canadian First Nations artists is the soapstone print. Blocks of local soapstone – soft enough to be cut with a knife – are flattened then a matrix cut in relief. The matrix is inked with a roller then a sheet of paper applied over it, taking the ink. The use of stencils allows variation in inking.

[Image: copyright 2020 Kenojuak Ashevak]

This catalogue for a touring exhibition (2020-2, Saskatoon, Dawson City, Kelowna, Ontario, Winnipeg and Medicine Hat) features Kenojuak’s late art, especially the bird pictures that she was famed for. The well-known late style contrasts with the few examples here of Kenojuak’s work of the 1960s. These pencil drawings lack colour and show less concern for neat shading. They are less visually appealing than the colour works but they have greater rawness and intensity. The freedom apparent compensates for the less polished finish.  As new materials became available she adapted her style to take advantage of colours.

Exhibited art includes drawings (in black and coloured inks), soapstone prints, colour lithographs and an etching with aquatint. Most of the art is late drawings from the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, alongside colour prints. Double-page spreads compare the original drawing to the subsequent print. Between the two, there are few changes in composition, only minimal changes to conform to the characteristics of the print medium. (Most of the prints were made by printmakers who transcribed drawings as matrices and editioned the prints.) Most typical of Kenojuak’s art in this book is the single animal or groups of few animals set against a blank background. Often the there are no picture borders, with the motif existing free of setting. Kenojuak favoured horizontal axes.

[Image: copyright 2020 Kenojuak Ashevak]

Kenojuak’s art shows animals frontally or in profile using curvilinear outlines, patterned shading and bold decorative fans of appendages, referring to feathers and spines. These extravagant appendages induce a hypnotic effect on the viewers. The animals are mainly birds and fishes, with frequent changes of scale. Owls, loons, swans, ravens, gulls, foxes, hares and chars all feature; Kenojuak rarely depicted whole figures in her mature work. Sometimes the animals are in the process of transformation or engaged in unclear (or unspecified) interactions.

This attractive book (trilingual in English, French and Inuktitut) provides an enjoyable introduction to one of Canada’s most beloved artists.

Leslie Boyd, Silaqi Ashevak, Kenojuak Ashevak: Life and Legacy, Pomegranate, 2020, hardback, 109pp, fully col. illus., English/French/Inuktitut text, $29.95/C$39.95, ISBN 978 0 7649 9818 8

 

© 2020 Alexander Adams

To see my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art

Ningiukulu Teevee, Inuit artist

 

A new book on the work of Inuit artist Ningiukulu Teevee introduces us to a world that encompasses the real and imagined, the present and the eternal and the stories of her people. Teevee’s art – all drawings and prints, going by what is presented here – is full of the world of Cape Dorset, Northern Canada. The region is now well known for its flourishing art scene, which has become widely recognised in North America. In her art people, animals, plants and the land (and sky) are the subjects of boldly coloured depictions telling stories or presenting us with more detached views.

Subjects included are animals, plants, landscapes, snowscapes, characters and mythological subjects. Individual animals include walrus, owls, reindeer, fish, polar bears, ravens, wading birds, geese, loons and foxes. Pelts and feathers provide an outlet for Teevee’s pleasure in drawing patterns.

Hunting and gathering plays an important part in Inuit life, for both sustenance and commerce. The Inuit learn from their parents and elders the skills of survival and hunting, including new technology such as satellite phones, telescopic rifle sights and unwater listening devices. While there is veneration for tradition, the current generations of Inuit – like any people – do not restrict themselves arbitrarily to the technology of their ancestors. They want to be safer, more efficient and more comfortable. Just as it is in hunting and snow travel, so it is in art. Whereas their forefathers were carvers of stone and bone primarily, the Inuit artists of today use plate and offset lithography, serigraphy, photography and video.

[Image: © 2019 Ningiukulu Teevee]

Teevee is one of the many artists of Dorset Bay who have benefitted from the opportunity to make art in a studio which enables local artists to produce prints professionally for sale in the municipal centres of Canada and beyond. For her drawings, Teevee, like other Inuit artists, uses accessible materials that are sometimes considered the domain of amateur – felt-tip pens, crayons and colour pencils. The prints Teevee has made include serigraphs, lithography, aquatint and stonecut (with and without stencils). The stonecuts (usually made on local soapstone, which is a very smooth soft stone of aluminium silicate) are usually in colour, sometimes graduated. This is a common Inuk art medium. In her art we also find other aspects common in Inuk practice: linearity, flat space, abstract grounds (or in the case of shaped stonecut matrices, no ground at all), curved forms, side views, lack of shaded volumes and shadows, motifs in circular movement.

A very fine print using stonecut and stencil is Siku Siggiaju (Spring Break Up) (2014) is of broken sheet ice on swelling seas. The quality of the blank white paper as the ice gives a contradictory dynamic of positive motif as negative space. The pared-down depiction uses the medium’s flat areas of colour or bare paper to echo the blank glare of snow-covered ice.

The 2004 colour lithograph of kelp has fronds overlayering each other, filling the print plane, is a figural description that becomes abstract. Likewise, designs of shoals and reindeer herds employ such a similar approach in a realistic manner, whereas the repeated motifs of owls scattered evenly across a picture is a more artificial design. The swirling movement of repeated forms is something that can be found in Aboriginal Australian dot paintings and some Japanese art, such as that by Yayoi Kusama and Minoru Onoda. It is all too easy for observers schooled in Western traditions to consider Inuit art as struggling between binary poles of traditional image making of Inuk design and Western pictorialism, when it might be better to look East and South to other traditions of the Pacific.

[Image: © 2019 Ningiukulu Teevee]

Her children’s book Alego (2009) follows a young girl learning about her beach and how to forage for food there. Teevee has said in interviews that she has retained the proclivity to view the world with the wonder and curiosity of a child, which keeps her art fresh. Some of her drawings of Alego are illustrated in this book.

The multiple subjects of Teevee’s art (including mythical subjects, cosmological scenes and humorous inventions relating to modern life) will leave some viewers wrong-footed but Teevee’s freedom is to her credit. This moving between registers and genres is not uncommon in Inuit art, where folklore, the natural world, customs and Western technology and culture all combine in art that is nimble and surprising.  The humour in Teevee’s pictures of walrus is related to the many folk myths of walrus transforming into people. (Shapeshifting is a common part of stories.) Her walrus range from the naturalistic to the anthropomorphised. Likewise, her mermaids can be dreamy or humorous. Teevee’s participation in the storyteller practice animates her art sometimes. Often we encounter an image that makes us wish to know what story this image illustrates. Teevee moves between cool detachment and mischievous frivolousness.

Leslie Boyd is very familiar with Inuk art and has interviewed the artist to provide a sympathetic and informed introduction to the art. She explains some of the stories behind the art, as well as discussing Teevee’s intentions for her art. A list of exhibitions and publications by the artist show us how Teevee’s art has been received throughout Canada and the USA. The captions for the illustrations provide editions and printers for the prints, which is welcome.

Teevee addresses social issues such as pollution, addiction and depression, which she sees as problems for the Inuit. She incorporates such subjects into her art in ways that are mostly glancing. It is difficult to gauge how much of her art deals with social matters on the evidence of this book, which is intended as a general guide to Teevee’s art. The balance is firmly with art that is based on mythology, caprice and neutral scenes of the land, sea and animals.

This book comprises an approachable, generous and informative survey of Teevee’s art and is recommended for anyone interested in Inuit art, Inuit printmaking and Canadian art.

 

Leslie Boyd, Ningiukulu Teevee: Drawings and Prints from Cape Dorset, Pomegranate, March 2019, hardback, 92pp, over 80 col. illus., $24.95, ISBN 978 0 7649 8466 2

 

© 2019 Alexander Adams

To view my art and books visit www.alexanderadams.art