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Eskimo Realities

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Eskimo Realities is a hauntingly beautiful evocation of (the Arctic's) harsh, windswept land and its enduring people. "What exists," writes Edmund Carpenter, "the Eskimo themselves must struggle to bring into existence. Theirs is a world which has to be conquered with each statement and act, each song and carving." Faced daily with the most elemental struggle for survival, the Eskimo bring forth art - in their ornaments, their amulets, their utensils, their weapons. For theirs is a world in which art is an integral part of survival, in which art and life are one. Even the most mundane tool becomes an art object, though not in any Western sense: Art to the Eskimo is an act, not an object; a ritual, not a possession. This blind-white universe acquires form only through man; poet and carver reveal form; they cancel nothingness.

And the forms they reveal are remarkable as much for their source as for their beauty, for they come from a tribal vision, a corporate consciousness. Eskimo society is implosive: everybody is involved with everybody in a seamless web of kinship and responsibility. There is no isolating individualism, no private point of view. For the Eskimo, art - like life - is a collective experience, as timeless as the land in which they live, as meaningful as their own survival.