Featured Galleries: Margaret Lois and Samuel Schwartz Inuit and First Nations Sculpture Collection

“CLASSIC PERIOD” INUIT SCULPTURE (1948 –c.1990)

The sculpture by Inuit on display represents some of the most gifted artists from various regions of the Canadian Arctic. They were made during the period between 1970 and the middle of the 1990s. These works are richly satisfying in themselves, as objects, and at the same time they embody powerfully many of the cultural forces, past and present, that constitute the special form, flavor, and impact of the Canadian Inuit experience.

Beginning in 1948 and continuing to around the turn of the Century (once referred to as the Contemporary Period,), the Canadian Inuit began producing a body of sculpture of extraordinary variety and quality. This was a time when the acculturative forces acting upon the Inuit were especially intense, causing sudden and dramatic changes in lifestyle. In less than a single generation, the Inuit went from a nomadic subsistence order to a sedentary trade and money economy. Accompanying these changes was an unprecedented production of artwork. Aided by marketing and promotion agencies such as the Canadian Handicraft Guild and the Eskimo Arts Council, this new artform was introduced to a Southern audience intrigued by the distant, the exotic and the new. Soon, in dozens of communities across the Arctic, most adults were engaged in the production of an unprecedented amount of sculpture.

Following the international touring exhibition Sculpture/Inuit and George Swinton's landmark 1972 publication Eskimo Sculpture, the art of the Inuit could no longer be perceived simply as novel craft or curiosity. It was now being acquired by a wide range of collectors from the uninitiated to the connoisseur who recognized this vital and appealing art as being as profound and meaningful as that of any culture. Inuit-owned co-operatives played key roles in nurturing and marketing the various Inuit arts to a growing network of commercial galleries. The success of these endeavors is evidenced by the thousands of works now in private and public collections around the world, including those on display from the Schwartz collection.

An analysis the genesis of this art, the differing modes of expression, the range of subject-matter and materials employed, reveals its multi-faceted complexity. To better understand this remarkable phenomenon it is helpful to visualize the Classic Period efflorescence as resulting from a spark generated by the overlapping of two cultural planes: that of the traditional Inuit and modern Euro-American. What we are then faced with is an inter-cultural reality in which the sculpture of the Inuit can be seen as a natural and fortuitous artistic phenomenon driven by inter-cultural forces. Such an approach allows one to hear the voices of the artists and their communities in the North, as well as those of collectors, critics and historians in the South. As Inuit gained a living through sharing their experiences with the outside world through their art, by the same token they preserved their knowledge and experiences for themselves and successive generations:

Nowadays, I generally begin work at something I’m going to carve in the early morning when it’s nice, just beginning to get light. I carve at it all day, the next day and even into a third day. I won’t get tired of it. I won’t get bored. When a carving is finished, when it is completely finished, you get a really happy feeling and your mind is at rest, though not for long!
- Osuitok Ipeelee 1993

As long as I am able, I like to be a sculptor, this is what I like best. I would also like my son to live where I live. Maybe he too could become a sculptor and find happiness as I found. That’s what I wish for him.
- John Tiktak, 1978

I first started carving when I was a very young person and now I have even come to the point where I am old now and I am still carving . . . I enjoy carving and I am happy when I’m carving. But at times when I am ill or sick, that’s the only time I cannot really do any carving.
- Mark Tungilik 1982

Until very recently, the art of the Inuit has been largely based on the memory of past lived experiences, as the majority of older artists took up settlement life in the 1950s and 1960s as mature individuals having experienced first-hand many aspects of traditional Inuit material and spiritual culture. These artists satisfied y a deep need of their own when they depicted, for instance, scenes charged with the excitement and rewards of the hunt, or when they produced sculptures filled with delight in the sheer power and beauty of Arctic animals; and certainly when they explored the mystic relationship between humans and animals. The role of shamanism that is central to their traditional belief system and the related belief in spirits and the sea-goddess (the all-powerful being that dwells at the bottom of the sea) are recurring subjects which offer potent images that hold special appeal.

More recently, art-making has taken on a special significance: it functions as an identity-maintaining mechanism. Younger artists offer ample evidence that the “past” has an enduring relevance:

I am trying to get across to young and old people some of my understanding of older shamanic activities; trying to put into tangible images things important to traditional culture. (I don’t speak Inuktitut any longer.) My great grandparents were shamans. I try to think of how they thought and believed in a general sense.
- Abraham Anghik

I think what I am trying to do here is I am trying to find my identity. I am trying to find my culture, you know, which I don’t see a lot, especially living in southern cities. So I think I’m reaching out for some fragments of the past, and put it in front of me to try to understand more of myself. Mainly it’s searching for the meaning in your past.
- Manasie Akpaliapik

Today, a new generation of artists, many born after their parents moved off the land, strive to bridge traditional Inuit culture and that of others by grappling with questions of Inuit identity, loss of culture, social conditions and personal crises. They employ new technology, materials, art-making techniques, subject-matter and modes of expression not unfamiliar to any contemporary creative individual.

ART REGIONS AND COMMUNITIES

Generally speaking Inuit art is descriptive and narrative rather than abstract. Careful workmanship and attention to detail are highly respected among Inuit although some artists choose to work in more rough or simplified styles. Despite elements which are pervasive throughout the art of the Inuit, distinct regional and community styles are manifest owing to historical circumstances, availability and nature of materials, Southern craft officers and the personal inclinations and influence of senior artists. These artistic regions roughly coincide with cultural and political boundaries. The regions of Labrador, Nunavik (Arctic Quebec), Baffin, Kivalliq (Keewatin), Central Arctic, Kitikmeot, and Western Arctic to some extent each have their own artistic fashions which can be further broken into more distinct community styles.

MATERIALS

All carving stone has some talc content which is necessary in order for the stone to be able to be carved. The especially high talc content of most Northern Quebec steatite (soapstone) enables the artists here to easily carve fully defined highly naturalistic images embellished with fine details such as fingernails, eyelashes and parka decoration. South Baffin communities like Cape Dorset are noted for large, bold and dramatic sculpture that takes full advantage of the striking green serpentinite common to this region. This locally obtained jade-like stone, with its distinctive veining and propensity for taking a highly polished finish, results in pleasing sensuous surfaces. In contrast, much sculpture of the Keewatin is restrained and self-contained, in keeping with the hard unyielding nature of the stone itself, a gray steatite which tends to contain the harder clorite and magnetite in addition to talc.

These stones, and others like marble and argillite, are generally obtained from local quarries thus making it possible to identify an artwork as being from a specific community. Obtaining the stone was always a difficult and even dangerous endeavor:
Sometimes the stone is so hard that the sparks are coming off when you are working with an axe or knife. Around Gore bay, there’s soapstone. But it’s quite hard to get in wintertime because of the cliff, the stone is falling, rolling down. But it is possible to get it in the summertime. It’s much easier. Although some part of it is okay to get soapstone it’s still quite a dangerous place. I was hammering away and heard this sudden noise from above and I just ran and I was holding the tools I had and a huge piece of rock just fell right where I was. –Jean Mapsalak 1982

Most quarries can only be reached after a lengthy journey over land or water. Today, due to scarcity, artists in some villages rely on stone imported from other northern communities or even the South.

Inuit sculptors also work with locally found and harvested natural materials: whale bone, walrus and narwhale ivory, caribou antler and musk ox horn. One of the materials favoured in the Kitikmeot region is whalebone, the remains left from 19th and early 20th century whaling. Caribou antler is used by many Keewatin artists. Ivory, mainly from walrus tusks, was used almost exclusively in pre-historic and historic times and this remains so for the Central Arctic. (The Schwartz collection was assembled in the United States. The absence of ivory and whalebone pieces in this display is owed to the restrictions placed on the importation of bone and ivory under the 1972 CITES convention.)

Inuit graphic art has fewer historical precedents than sculpture. Apart from clothing design and tattooing, and a certain amount of engraving of tools, Inuit produced little two-dimensional art until the 20th century. Printmaking was initiated in Cape Dorset in the late 1950s. By the early 1970s printmaking programs, ceramics experiments and textile wall hanging production were flourishing in many communities.

ALASKAN PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC SCULPTURE

From the middle of the last millennium BC, at the time the Dorset paleo-Eskimo were occupying the Canadian Arctic, there appeared in the Bering Sea area, including St. Lawrence Island, the Okvik, Old Bering Sea and Punuk, cultures in sequence. Subsistence was derived mainly from the hunting of sea mammals of which there was a large supply. In addition, land mammals, fish and birds enabled these Eskimoan people to develop and refine their hunting methods, weapons and implements. It also gave them the leisure in which to decorate objects with linear engravings cut into ivory, bone and wood implements, ornaments and figure sculptures.

By the middle of the first millennium AD, the Thule culture emerged and became established in North West Alaska from Norton Sound north to the Arctic Ocean. These whale-hunting ancestors of the contemporary Alaskan Yupik (and the Canadian Inuit), then spread East across Arctic Canada all the way to Greenland.

The similarities in construction of much of the earlier Alaskan art combined with a persistence of certain customs suggests an ongoing link between prehistoric Western Alaskan culture and that of the 19th and early 20th century. The Eskimos of the Bering Strait were among the first people to extensively carve walrus ivory derived from the tusks of both male and female walruses. Largely owing to its availability, durability and beauty, ivory was the favoured material for artworks up until recent times.

The pre-historic Alaskan small human figures on display, perhaps used as dolls, appear to be from the late Old Bering Sea era (c.100-500AD). Though their facial features and appendages are clearly defined, the ancient figures on display remain rudimentary though highly expressive. The ancient ivory comb is most likely from the Punuk period (c.500-1200 AD). In contrast to the highly complex curvilinear designs utilizing ellipses, arcs and circles common for much of the earlier Old Bering Sea period, Punuk art is more minimal even though the makers now had access to iron as opposed to flint for their burins and small carving blades. The forms are often simplified, the designs having a decorative quality in contrast to the highly symbolic content of earlier works.

In the 19th century, engraving of representational subjects on ivory developed into a distinct form of art on bow drills. These engravings consist of silhouetted images usually blackened. Utilizing stick figures and schematic bodies of various shapes, these images were highly narrative portrayals of animals, camp scenes, and men engaged in hunting and fighting, Rows of walrus, whales, seals or caribou functioned as a hunting tally. They had no ceremonial function.

The advent of commercial whaling in mid-century increased trading opportunities and provided an outside market for carved and decorated walrus tusks. In the latter part of the century, large ivory pipes in what is known as the modified engraving style became in demand. Like the bow drills, these objects provided engraved narratives but were more deeply carved, often with the addition of traditional design elements like the circle and dot motif and intersecting lines. Pipes, cribbage boards and tusks from the Norton Sound area such as these on display are finely carved and highly detailed. Utilizing the entire tusk, these elaborate tableaus often feature creatures in rows or elaborately entwined in a complex frieze.

NORTHWEST COAST ART

The Pacific Northwest Coast of North America is home to an indigenous people who today continue to produce an art form with deep roots in an ancient culture. The temperate climate, abundant food supply, and the shelter of the rich rain forest, allowed the people to form permanent settlements unlike virtually anywhere else on the continent.

The long, rainy winters became the time of ceremony. These feasts became known as the potlatch, from the universal trade language (Chinook), which means the giving of gifts. Dignitaries from distant nations were invited to witness and participate in ceremonies hosted by powerful chiefs. With no written language, the spoken word, augmented by dance and the art, conveyed the cultural and family histories and told of the connections between all creatures on earth and the spirit world. Over time, the role of artists became increasingly more valued to produce works such as masks for ceremonies and totem poles that made statements on the importance of the village.

Several of the pieces in this collection are carved in argillite, a black slate stone indigenous to Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands.). Argillite carving began with the trade with passing ships and the demand for utilitarian objects such as bowls, platters, and pipes - as well as distinctive cultural objects such as model totem poles.
The panel pipe was one of the most definitive objects to emerge from the early trade era with a series of entwined figures that depicted historic stories. There are four examples of panel pipes in the Schwartz collection including three historic works and a modern version by master artist, Christian White. During the 1860’s, a smallpox epidemic decimated the Haida population, but the practice of argillite carving continued, both as a source of income and to preserve many of the traditional stories. By the 1960’s, with the repeal of the anti-potlatch law and a more stable population with a growing and dedicated interest in cultural survival, the artists began to explore their artistic traditions with the goal of equaling the skills of the historic masters.

The collection also includes a splendid example of a wooden, abalone inlaid shaman’s rattle – the major figure depicted being an Oyster Catcher which was a bird that travelled between all three realms of the natural world; land, sea and sky. The frog on its back also had the knowledge of multiple realms, water and the land. Many of the family- owned stories on the Northwest Coast involved travel to other natural realms, often at great peril or sacrifice, and returning with the wealth and knowledge of that world.

The Swartz collection also includes multiple examples of ladles or spoons with various degrees of carving. The mountain goat provided both wool for weaving and the horn could be steamed and shaped for implements such as the bowl of a ladle. The mountain goat was elusive and dangerous to hunt and therefore objects made from these materials were greatly valued. Elaborately carved and decorated spoons and woven wool robes were important gifts reserved for the high-ranking guests attending a potlatch.