This timely new book surveys the artistic traditions of indigenous North
America, from those of ancient cultures such as Adena, Hopewell,
Mississippian, and Anasazi to the work of modern artists like Earnest
Spybuck, Fred Kabotie, Dick West, T. C. Cannon, and Gerald McMaster. The
text is organized geographically and draws upon the testimonies of oral
tradition, Native American history, and the latest research in North
American archaeology.
Recent art historical scholarship has helped restore, to a large degree,
some understanding of the identities and cultural roles of Native
American artists and the social contexts of the objects they created.
Native American art is often discussed simply as a cultural production
rather than the work of individual artists who made objects to fufill
social and cultural purposes; this book focuses as much as possible on
the artists themselves, their cultural identities, and the objects they
made even when the names of the individual artists remain
unrecoverable.
But this is not a book of artists' biographies. It seeks to inform a
general readership about the history of Native American art with a
lively narrative full of historical incident and illustrated with
provocative and superlative works of art. It explores the tension
between artistic continuities spanning thousands of years and the
startlingly fresh innovations that resulted from specific historical
circumstances. The narrative weaves together so-called traditional arts,
tourist arts, and Native American art of today by taking the point of
view of their particular and local histories--the artists, their
communities, and audiences.
Among the many cultures included are: Arapaho, Athapascan, Cherokee,
Cheyenne, Chumash, Hopi, Hupa/Karok, Inuit, Iroquois, Kwakiutl, Lakota,
Miwok, Navajo, Ojibwa, Pomo, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Uypik, and Zuni.
