Inuit art

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Contents

[edit] Prehistoric period

Around 4000 BC nomads crossed over the Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and Newfoundland. Very little remains of them, and only a few preserved artifacts carved in ivory could be considered works of art.[1]

The Dorset culture, as it is now called, produced a significant amount of figurative art between c. 600 B.C. to 1000 A.D. utilizing ivory, bone, antler, and occasionally stone, to create small-scale birds, bears, walruses, seals, and human figures, and masks.[2] These items had a magical or religious significance, and were either worn as amulets to ward off evil spirits, or used in shamanic rituals.

Around 1,000 A.D., the people of the Thule culture who were ancestors of today's Inuit, migrated from northern Alaska and either displaced or slaughtered the earlier Dorset inhabitants. Thule art had a definite Alaskan influence, and included utilitarian objects such as combs, buttons, needle cases, cooking pots, ornate spears and harpoons. The graphic decorations incised on them were purely ornamental, bearing no religious significance, but to make the objects used in everyday life appealing.

In the 16th century the Inuit began to barter with whalers, missionaries and other visitors to the north for tea, weapons or alcohol. Ivory carvings of animals, hunting or camping scenes, which had been decorative tools or shamanic amulets became a trade commodity. Inuit artists also began producing ivory miniatures to be later used to decorate European rifles, tools, boats, and musical instruments. Cribbage boards and carved walrus tusks were intended for the whalers. Missionaries, on the other hand, encouraged the introduction of Christian imagery.

[edit] Contemporary Inuit Art

All of the nomadic Inuit's utensils, tools and weapons were made by hand from natural materials: stone, bone, ivory, antler, and animal hides. They could take very little else with them besides the tools of their daily living; non-utilitarian objects were also carved in miniature so that they could be carried around or worn, such as delicate earrings, dance masks, amulets, fetish figures, and intricate combs and figures which were used to tell legends and objectify their oral history and deeply held beliefs. Masks among Eskimo peoples were used for several functions. The symbolic meaning of several items of the material culture is unknown, not recorded. In some cases ("flying bear" figure), interpretations can be conjectured by considering beliefs, soul concepts, shamanism among Eskimo peoples, these are far from being homogeneous.

As the Inuit settled into communities in the late 1940s, their carvings became larger, and the requests to produce them as artwork increased.

The Government of Canada recognized the potential economic benefit of commercial carving to the isolated Arctic communities, and actively encouraged the development and promotion of Inuit sculpture. Inuit artists expanded their subject matters beyond utilitarian objects and games. Figures of animals and hunters, family scenes, as well as mythological imagery became popular. By the 1960s, co-operatives were set up in most Inuit communities, and the Inuit art market began to flourish.

Inuit continue to make pieces entirely by hand. Power tools are occasionally used, but most artists prefer to use just an axe and file as this gives them more control over the stone. The final stage of carving is the polishing, which is done with several grades of waterproof sandpaper, and hours and hours of rubbing.

Since the early 1950s, when Inuit art still had a "primitive" or naïve look, most Inuit artists have adopted a stylistic approach deeply rooted in naturalism. Their works often appear more refined, especially over the past decade or so, when many artists have developed a preference for highly polished sculpture.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery in Winnipeg,Manitoba has the largest collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world.

[edit] Notable Inuit artists

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Source

  1. ^ The History of Inuit Art. Eskimo Art Gallery.
  2. ^ Hessel & Hessel 1998: 12–13

[edit] References

  • Canadian Inuit Sculpture. Canada publication: Indian Affairs and Northern Development. ISBN 0-662-59936-5. 
  • Ingo Hessel (1988). Inuit Art: An Introduction. Douglas & McIntire. 
  • Hessel, Ingo; Hessel, Dieter (1998). Inuit Art. An introduction, foreword by George Swinton, 46 Bloomsbury Street, London WCIB 3QQ: British Museum Press. ISBN 0-7141-2545-8. 
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