"First American Art" celebrates the rich aesthetic traditions of North American Indians through a series of concepts that define the aesthetic realm in Native American art. The key concepts of ideas, emotion, movement, integrity, intimacy, composition, and vocabulary were chosen at a recent gathering of Native and non-Native artists and scholars, and are used in examining this extraordinary collection. The works included here, from many tribal traditions across Canada and the United States, are manifestations of the cultures from which they spring. They add individual or tribal points of view to an already diverse body of scholarship on the subject of Indians. Various perspectives interpret an art object as commodity, artifact, specimen, heirloom, objet d'art, treasured cultural heritage, or sacred emblem. This book attempts to answer the question, What would be the native perspective? "First American Art" provides the welcome opportunity to explore and celebrate the aesthetic achievements, creativity, and diverse artistic traditions of North American Native people. By offering an aesthetic analysis of the underlying spiritual and cultural inspirations and values that inform these works, this book gives a more complete picture of what is meant by Native art.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
The Dikers' extensive collection of Native art is integrated in their Manhattan home with modern American and European painting and sculpture so that Apache baskets are juxtaposed with paintings by Rauschenberg and Miro. When the Dikers offered to display their Native art at the New York facility of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the curators jumped at the chance to allow the public to view these beautiful objects, not as ethnological artifacts but as true works of art. The exhibit, in place for a year, is well documented in this impressive catalogue, an amalgam of scholarly essays and meticulous color photographs of both traditional and modern Native art. The viewer readily perceives that each object embraces the seven aesthetic principles--idea, emotion, intimacy, movement, integrity, vocabulary, and composition--that the curators agreed are integral to any work of art. The exhibit and dazzling catalogue perfectly fulfill the goal of the NMAI to bring Native art out of the darkness of "overcrowded cases" into the galleries, where its aesthetic beauty can better be appreciated. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Bruce Bernstein is assistant director for cultural resources and Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree) is deputy assistant director for cultural resources, both at the National Museum of the American Indian. Donald Kuspit is professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Margaret Dubin is a scholar and lecturer. The artists, curators, and scholars whose discussions contributed to this book include Arthur Amiotte (Lakota), Janet Berlo, J. J. Brody, Robert Davidson (Haida), Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota), Tom Hill (Seneca), Frank Ettawageshik (Odawa), Harry Fonseca (Maidu), Mary Jane Lenz, Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Ann McMullen, and Peter Macnair.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
If you have "Native Paths" already, you don't need this one!,
By A Customer
This review is from: First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art (Hardcover)
The 3 stars are for the superb photography, the impeccable book design, and the exquisite material in the Diker Collection.Otherwise, rather meaningless essays that may tickle the ears of some gallery-hopping audience, but they hardly connect with the objects in the collection. If writers have to trouble philosophers such as Hegel or artists such as Kandinsky in footnotes to make their choice of words understood, they probably don't know what they really talk about and hope that no reader will see through the "emperor's new clothes." The curators/writers try very, very hard to lift the objects from the "primitive" to the highest levels of "Art writ large" which is a perfectly legitimate goal. But then, a buyer and reader should expect a better and more carefully done documentation, and not one that is full of errors and that lacks almost all important information. Where captions seem too poor and too meagre, they are blown up with meaningless ballyhoo and arty bla-bla. Dimensions often are given incorrectly which may be a minor aspect; but it DOES make a difference if a blanket strip is 3 millimeters (0.3 cm) thick or 3 centimeters as given in the book! Another example of careless documentation: Catalogue number 22 on page 78 features a magnificient blanket strip perhaps made by a Nez Perce or Cayuse woman. The yellow rosettes employ the rare technique of horsehair coils wrapped with colored porcupine quills, sewn down to a hide foundation with each wrap of the quills! This important horsehair is not mentioned at all which makes me think that the writer of the captions had no idea of what she was writing about! From the rosettes' centers buckskin thongs hang down, carrying little brass hawk bells. Probably "brass" was too mundane for the writer so she pepped it up to "copper alloy" -- is that the sort of information that should help broaden the viewer's/reader's understanding of American Indian art? No, it does not add one iota more of information than "brass" would do, but this ethnocentric gallery and museum chic arrogance helps to deceive the buyer of this book. If you have "Native Paths", the first catalogue that was published about the Diker Collection in 1998 and has a lot of the same photographs, you won't need this book. If you don't have, buy "First American Art" and enjoy the beautiful objects. But you better turn off your inner ears and let not spoil your visual feast by arty and meaningless gobbledygook! And let's not forget: the shirts and the moccasins and the bags and the baskets did serve some utiliarian or ceremonial function when they were still owned by their makers -- the Nez Perce boy shirt with the flamboyantly beaded strips and rich fringes, hanging in the stark whiteness of a Bauhaus style living room, can never be pure, functionless art, as a Mark Rothko painting or Calder mobile is. I had a chance to see that boy's shirt in such a setting and it struck me more than any Rothko would!
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