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From the Introduction: Recently there has been an increasing trend towards exhibiting the arts of native peoples in art galleries. Paintings, weavings, and sculptures have at last been removed from the storage rooms and attics of museums of anthropology and natural history to be placed in the spotlight as works of art. Proper recognition of these arts is long overdue, but more particularly, recognition of the native artists is long overdue. This catalogue of works attributed to the Haida Indian artist Tom Price, Chief Nunstins, is a contribution towards such recognition. In 1967 the Vancouver Art Gallery presented a comprehensive exhibition of Northwest Coast Indian art, entitled ARTS OF THE RAVEN. When all the art objects were brought together in preparation for the show, striking similarities between some of the works prompted Bill Reid to write in the catalogue that: The recurrently similar styles can lead only to the conviction that the high art of the region was a product of a few men of genius, many of whom apparently had long, slowly maturing careers. Much comparative work must be done to confirm or disprove this and other speculations, but at a wild guess it is possible that during the nineteenth century . . . the great works came from the hands of twenty or thirty men, and the number could be much lower. The support of an appreciative community which gave their talents an honoured place, assured time and resources for their impressive output. |
| Much of the character of local and regional Northwest Coast Indian art can be explained by examining the careers of the many practising artists — discovering where and when they worked, how much they influenced the art around them, how traditional they were in their art, or how innovative. The immediate problem is to document these individual styles. But documentation is not easy. Haida art in particular is now scattered in museums and private collections throughout North America and Europe, and there is little information on artists to be found even in those collections. The older pieces were collected by sailors and sea captains, fur traders, missionaries, and Indian agents usually as curiosity items. But even museum collectors at the turn of the century recorded very little about artists. Marius Barbeau's book, HAIDA CARVERS IN ARGILLITE 2, was the first attempt to historically document the lives and works of several Haida artists. But no one before Duff, Holm, and Reid, organizers of the ARTS OF THE RAVEN exhibit, worked primarily with stylistic attributes in trying to identify artists' works. Wilson Duff in particular did extensive research into the identification of personal art styles, focusing his attention on the art of Charles Edenshaw, one of the most well known and outstanding Haida artists of the last century. Similarly, in 1967 Susan Thomas (Davidson) prepared an impressive honours thesis at the University of British Columbia entitled THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES EDENSHAW: A STUDY OF INNOVATION. THE ART OF NUNSTINS exhibit isolates the clear and distinctive style of another Haida artist - a necessary step towards a fuller appreciation of Haida Art. |
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