Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Indigenous Art of the Americas

Are images and representations central to understanding Native Americans? How do Native artists, as producers of visual culture, respond to what art critic Lucy Lippard has called "the overwhelming burdens" of Indian art? In this path breaking study, anthropologist Nancy Marie Mithlo examines the power of stereotypes, the utility of pan-Indianism, the significance of realist ideologies, and the employment of alterity in Native American arts. Addressing the question of how visual referents communicate across cultural divides, she aims to deconstruct the common understanding of stereotypes...

Baskets made of baleen, the fibrous substance found in the mouths of plankton-eating whales--a malleable and durable material that once had commercial uses equivalent to those of plastics today--were first created by Alaska Natives in the early years of the twentieth century. Because they were made for the tourist trade, they were initially disdained by scholars and collectors, but today they have joined other art forms as a highly prized symbol of native identity. Baskets of exquisite workmanship, often topped with fanciful ivory carvings, have been created for almost a century,...

The Northwest Coast of North America has long been recognized as one of the world's canonical art zones. This volume records and scrutinizes the history of how and why this has come about. A work of critical historiography, it makes accessible for the first time in one place a broad selection of the 250 years of writing on Northwest Coast art. The contributors ? leading scholars, writers, and artists ? provide perspectives on the diverse intellectual traditions that have influenced, stimulated, and clashed with each other. In unsettling the conventions that have shaped the idea of...

Using the idea that lowriding is an Indigenous way of being in the world, artist and historian Dylan A. T. Miner discusses the multiple roles that Aztlan has played at various moments in time, from the pre-Cuauhtemoc codices through both Spanish and American colonial regimes, past the Chicano Movement and into the present day. Across this "migration story," Miner...

"Early Art of the Southeastern Indians" is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full color, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centers for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America.

Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periods--from thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600--Susan C. Power introduces us to an...

During much of the nineteenth century, paintings functioned as the Plains Indians' equivalent to written records. The majority of their paintings documented warfare, focusing on specific war deeds. These pictorial narratives--appearing on hide robes, war shirts, tipi liners, and tipi covers--were maintained by the several dozen Plains Indians tribes, and they continue to expand historical knowledge of a people and place in transition.

War Paintings of the Tsuu T'ina Nation is a study of several important war paintings and artifact collections of the Tsuu T'ina (Sarcee)...

In the Spirit of the Ancestors celebrates the vitality of contemporary Pacific Northwest Coast art by showcasing a selection of objects from the Burke Museum's collection of more than 2,400 late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century Native American works.

Essays focus on contemporary art while exploring the important historical precedents on which so many artists rely for training and inspiration. Margaret Blackman reflects on building one of the largest collections of Northwest Coast serigraphs, and Joe David reminisces about his artistic journey through mask-making....

In 2010, five magnificent Blackfoot shirts, now owned by the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum, were brought to Alberta to be exhibited at the Glenbow Museum, in Calgary, and the Galt Museum, in Lethbridge. The shirts had not returned to Blackfoot territory since 1841, when officers of the Hudson's Bay Company acquired them. The shirts were later transported to England, where they had remained ever since.

Exhibiting the shirts at the museums was, however, only one part of the project undertaken by Laura Peers and Alison Brown. Prior to the installation of the exhibits, groups...

Don Smith - or Lelooska, as he was usually called - was a prominent Native American artist and storyteller in the Pacific Northwest. Born in 1933 of "mixed blood" Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan and had relationships with elders from a wide range of tribal backgrounds. Initially producing curio items for sale to tourists and regalia for Oregon Indians, Lelooska emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved crucial to the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art. He also developed into a supreme...

When you hold a Pueblo pot in your hands, you feel a tactile connection through the clay to the potter and to centuries of tradition. You will find no better guide to this feeling than Talking with the Clay. Stephen Trimble's photographs capture the spirit of Pueblo pottery in its stunning variety, from the glittering micaceous jars of Taos Pueblo to the famous black ware of San Ildefonso Pueblo, from the bold black-on-white designs of Acoma Pueblo to the rich red and gold polychromes of the Hopi villages. His portraits of potters communicate the elegance and warmth of these artists, for...

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...