Objects of Bright Pride; Northwest Coast Indian Art from the American Museum of NaturalHistory by Allen WardwellReview by: Aldona JonaitisArt Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter, 1979-1980), pp. 147+150Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/776411 .

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Expressionist stereotypes is blunted when both are pooled. Even our sense of the physiognomy of the work, so congenial to Sandler, is threatened by the lumping together of an artist who uses the brush as a dancing point with one who stirs all the paint up like a gumbo. It is imperative to establish a scale of gesture, from sensuous touch to anxious erasure, from the picturesque to the existential. Unless the vari- ety of "gestural" realism is charted, the artists, given Sandler's scheme, are all in orbit around de Kooning, like planetary dust.

In one way The New York School is a better book than The Triumph of American Painting. When Sandler wrote the earlier book many of the Abstract Expressionists who were his sub- jects were alive and would not tolerate compar- ative discussion. Thus the book has a tendency to retreat to the monographic chapter, which limits the range and thoroughness of group and connective discussion. In The New York School, however, there is a convincing sense of the city as a busy place crowded with artists in the intricacies of contact.

LAWRENCE ALLOWAY

Allen Wardwell, Objects of Bright Pride; Northwest Coast Indian Art from the Amer- ican Museum of Natural History, New York, The Center for Inter-American Relations and the American Federation of Arts (distributed by University of Washington Press, Seattle), 1978. $17.95.

Like African art, which the public came to admire only after European artists of the early 20th century found in it significant artistic merit, the paintings and sculptures of North- west Coast Indians needed first to be taken up by artists to be considered acceptable art. Be- fore the 1940s, when this art finally arrived, exhibits of Northwest Coast materials in New York City appeared as ethnographic specimens at the American Museum of Natural History rather than as art objects at the Metropolitan Museum. In 1946, the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York exhibited Northwest Coast Indian paintings in response to the growing interest of several artists in the visual characteristics of this art. What intrigued painters about these works is best expressed by Barnett Newman in his catalog essay: "Here, then, among a group of several peoples the dominant aesthetic tra- dition was abstract ... Their concern ... was not with the symmetry but with the nature of organism; the metaphysical pattern of life."

Before the 1940s, most published information on Northwest Coast art appeared in anthropo- logical rather than art-oriented books. Now, with its acceptance as art, literature exploring the aesthetic and iconographic significance of this material has begun to appear regularly. A recent book on the subject is Objects of Bright Pride, a catalog of the traveling exhibition of Northwest Coast artworks from the American Museum of Natural History, by Allen Ward- well, director of Asia House Gallery. In order to evaluate this book, one must place it within the

historical development of literature on North- west Coast Art.

In the 1950s and 1960s the first phase of this literature emphasized the interrelations be- tween art and society. An early example of this type of work is Robert Inverarity's Art of the Northwest Coast Indians (1950). The introduc- tory essay presents general information on en- vironment, economics, social structure, and re- ligion as it relates to the art. The 279 plates provide an adequate overview of the major artistic monuments of the area, but, because of the vast quantities of Northwest Coast art, they are by no means exhaustive. Published exam- ples of Northwest Coast art proliferated during the 1960s in books that had formats substan- tially similar to Inverarity's: a general survey of society plus plates. An outstanding example is Erna Gunther's Art in the Life of the Northwest Coast Indians (1966), which analyzes, in great depth, the social and religious significance of Northwest Coast art in the collection of the Portland Museum.

In the late 1960s and 1970s writers became more specific and in a variety of ways attempted to provide new perspectives on, and new ideas about, Northwest Coast art. One approach, ex- emplified by Bill Holm's Crooked Beak of Heaven (1972), which concentrates on the Kwakiutl, treats the art of a specific tribe ex- tensively and thoroughly. Another, seen in Wil- liam Sturtevant's Boxes and Bowls (1974) as well in as Edward Malin's A World of Faces: Masks of the Northwest Coast Indians (1978), provides penetrating analyses of a specific type of art from different tribes. Form and Freedom: a Dialogue on Northwest Coast Indian Art (1975) initiates a major new perspective. The text, a series of transcribed conversations about individual pieces between William Reid, a Haida artist and Bill Holm, a sculptor and Northwest Coast art scholar, provides both fac- tual information on the artworks as well as aesthetic critiques from both native and West- ern perspectives. Edmund Carpenter's intro- ductory essay discusses the fascination North- west Coast art had for Surrealists like Max Ernst, structuralists like Levi-Strauss, and col- lectors like G. T. Emmons and Louis Shotridge. The book is a prime example of the extent to which Northwest Coast art books had pro- gressed beyond the earlier society/art format.

Considering the range of new approaches to Northwest Coast art, it was exciting to antici- pate what might come from a catalog of art from the American Museum of Natural History, whose collection is both enormous and unus- ually well documented. Objects of Bright Pride contains two introductory essays, one of which satisfies this expectation. In the section entitled "The Formation of a Great Collection," Ward- well presents a great deal of hitherto unpub- lished information on the acquisition of the Museum's Northwest Coast holdings. The men of varied backgrounds who purchased this art from the natives between 1880 and 1900-J. W. Powell, Superintendant for Indian Affairs in British Columbia, G. T. Emmons, naval lieuten- ant, and Franz Boas, anthropologist-shared

with museum officials and financial backers a serious commitment to preserving the art of an already severely eroded culture. Wardwell pub- lishes letters to that effect and presents infor- mation on the number of objects and the amounts spent on their acquisition. A fascinat- ing interrelation between the Eastern elite and the Northwest Coast natives becomes apparent on reading the list of some of the patrons of these acquisitions: Collis Huntington, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and John Pier- pont Morgan.

Wardwell's other essay, "An Introduction to the Art," is by no means as informative and useful as is his essay on the collection. Return- ing to the preoccupations of the 1950s and 1960s, he presents a general overview of North- west Coast environment, economics, social structure, and art. His categorization of art into three functional types-art for heraldic display, for secret society initiations, and for shamans- was developed in a far more thorough manner in 1966 by Gunther. Most of his comments on the art, although general, are valid enough, but certain of his statements are questionable. For example, he fails to support his assertion that shamanic paraphernalia has "more of a magical or surreal quality to it" than heraldic or cere- monial art. One reads this comment to mean that shamanic pieces are more distorted or have an eerier quality than other types. This is not true in the majority of cases, since much sha- manic paraphernalia from the Northwest Coast is virtually indistinguishable from secular art, as becomes readily apparent if one looks at the plates of shamans' masks and notices their striking similarity to potlatch masks.

Included in the essay is a list of three "dis- tinctive" objects of Northwest Coast art: the bentwood box, totem pole, and transforma- tional mask. It is curious that Wardwell singles out these particular items, since, although there were several bentwood boxes, there were only two transformational masks and no totem poles in the exhibition. While Wardwell does include in the text four plates of villages that show totem poles, nowhere are these specifically re- ferred to or analyzed. As for the transforma- tional mask, it is indeed a distinctive object, containing as it does two different masks. When closed it looks like most other Northwest Coast masks, but when opened by manipulating strings it reveals another mask hidden beneath the first. The catalog's cover illustrates an open transformational mask which is shown closed in the plates. It is unfortunate that these illus- trations are not cross-referenced.

The plates are organized into the conven- tional categories such as masks, daggers, and shaman's charms. Certain articles, however, are incorrectly categorized. A comb is illustrated among the charms; a "ceremonial food tray" is found among the spoons and ladles rather than, properly, among boxes, bowls, and chests. Within each category, objects from different tribes and for different purposes are presented together and seem to lack a system of organi- zation. For example, secular, ceremonial, and shamanic masks from all over the coast appear

WINTER 1979/80 147

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in what seems to be a haphazard arrangement. It would at least have been useful to organize the plates according to Wardwell's three func- tional categories.

The very selection of pieces published raises another objection to the book: most of the objects are visually similar to many already published specimens. For example, two Chilkat blankets and one hide shirt appear in the tex- tiles and painted hides category. Almost every book on Northwest Coast art illustrates blan- kets which, because of the strict conventions imposed on their manufacture, are all quite similar. It would have expanded the knowledge of Northwest Coast art if Wardwell had pub- lished more painted hide costumes, which have varied style and symbolism, instead of the stan- dardized blankets. Only a handful of pieces in this catalog lay claim to any degree of unusual- ness. They are several shaman's maskettes that are rarely published, three oyster catcher rat- tles of iconographic interest, and a Kwakiutl food dish in the form of a killer whale with a modeled human head emerging from its tail, which has extraordinary artistic merit in its juxtaposition of two- and three-dimensionality.

The contents of Objects of Bright Pride fail to provide the reader with new information or new analyses. Instead of effectively consolidat- ing past specialized scholarship, Wardwell sim- ply recapitulates well-established generalities. Along the same lines, since many standard or conventional examples of Northwest Coast art have already been published, it seems time for the more unusual or unique pieces to be shown. There are many such objects in the American Museum of Natural History's storerooms; it is most unfortunate that Wardwell did not choose more of them for this catalog.

ALDONA JONAITIS State University of New York at Stony Brook

All inquiries should be addressed to the Book Review Editor: Jennifer Licht, % CAA, 16 East 52nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022. Unsolicited manuscripts will not be considered.

books received

ADAMS, ANSEL (intro. by Paul Brooks), YOSEMITE AND THE RANGE OF LIGHT, Boston, Mass., Little, Brown, 1979. 28 pp., 116 ills. $75.00 cloth.

ADAMS, WILLIAM HOWARD, ATGET'S GARDENS, Garden

City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1979. 120 pp., 76 ills. $19.95 hardbound, $9.95 paper.

AGEE, WILLIAM C., and BARBARA ROSE, PATRICK HENRY BRUCE: AMERICAN MODERNIST (A CATA- LOGUE RAISONNA), New York, The Museum of Mod- ern Art, 1979. 232 pp., ills. $30.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

ARWAS, VICTOR, ALASTAIR: ILLUSTRATOR OF DECAD- ENCE, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1979. 100 pp., 105 ills. $8.95.

ARCHER, MILDRED, and JOHN BASTIN, THE RAFFLES DRAWINGS: IN THE INDIA OFFICE LIBRARY, LONDON,

Oxford, New York, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1978. 119 pp., 38 ills. $52.00.

BAIGELL, MATTHEW, DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ART, New York, Harper & Row, 1979. 402 pp. $15.95.

BATH, VIRGINIA CHURCHILL, NEEDLEWORK IN AMER- ICA: HISTORY, DESIGNS, AND TECHNIQUES, New York, Viking, 1979. 336 pp., ills. $25.00.

BECK, JAMES, LEONARDO'S RULES OF PAINTING: AN UNCONVENTIONAL APPROACH TO MODERN ART, New

York, Viking Press, 1979. 104 pp., ills. $10.95. BILLCLIFFE, ROGER, CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH:

THE COMPLETE FURNITURE, FURNITURE DRAWINGS, AND INTERIOR DESIGNS, New York, Taplinger, 1979. 252 pp., addenda and index, ills. $60.00.

BILLCLIFFE, ROGER, MACKINTOSH WATERCOLOURS, New York, Taplinger, 1979. 144 pp., ills. $12.50.

BLUNT, ANTHONY, THE DRAWINGS OF POUSSIN, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1979. 223 pp., 203 ills. $40.00.

BUCKLE, RICHARD, DIAGHILEV, New York, Atheneum, 1979. 640 pp., ills. $22.50.

CLARKE, BRIAN (ed.), ARCHITECTURAL STAINED GLASS, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1979. 234 pp., ills. $29.50.

CUMMINGS, PAUL (interviews by), ARTISTS IN THEIR OWN WORDS, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1979. 173 pp. $12.95.

DARS, CELESTINE, IMAGES OF DECEPTION: THE ART OF

TROMPE-L'OEIL, Oxford, Phaidon, 1979. 80 pp., 72 ills. $14.95.

DE LA SERNA, RAMON GOMEZ, DALI, New York, William

Morrow, 1979. 240 pp., ills. $35.00. DUFRENNE, MIKEL et al., MAIN TRENDS IN AESTHETICS

AND THE SCIENCES OF ART (Main Trends in the Social and Human Sciences), New York, Holmes & Meier, 1979. 437 pp., $14.95.

DUNLOP, IAN, DEGAS, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, Harper & Row, 1979. 240 pp., 204 ills. $37.50.

EVENSON, NORMA, PARIS: A CENTURY OF CHANGE, 1878-1978, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1979. 399 pp., 254 ills. $30.00.

FOSTER, STEPHEN, and RUDOLF KUENZI, DADA SPEC- TRUM: THE DIALECTICS OF REVOLT, Madison, Wisc., Code Press, 1979. 291 pp., ills. $15.95 cloth, $6.95 paper.

GERHARDUS, MALY and DIETFRIED, SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU: SENSE OF IMPENDING CRISIS, RE- FINEMENT OF SENSIBILITY, AND LIFE REBORN IN

BEAUTY, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1979. 104 pp., 73 ills. $17.50.

GIROUARD, MARK, THE VICTORIAN COUNTRY HOUSE

(rev. and enlarged ed.), New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1979. 474 pp., ills. $35.00.

GREIFF, CONSTANCE M., JOHN NOTMAN, ARCHITECT:

1810-1865, Philadelphia, Pa., The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 1979. 253 pp., ills. $20.00.

GUGGENHEIM, PEGGY, OUT OF THIS CENTURY: CONFES- SIONS OF AN ART ADDICT, New York, Universe

Books, 1979. 396 pp., ills. $17.50. HALL, DOUGLAS, MODIGLIANI, New York, Phaidon

Press, 1979. 16 pp., 48 ills. $12.50. HARDING, JAMES, THE PRE-RAPHAELITEs, New York,

Rizzoli, 1979. 96 pp., ills. $3.95. HARRINGTON, LAMAR, CERAMICS IN THE PACIFIC

NORTHWEST, Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1979. 128 pp., 190 ills. $14.95.

HAVERSTOCK, MARY SAYRE, AN AMERICAN BESTIARY, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1979. 240 pp., 198 ills. $35.00.

HENDRICKS, GORDON, THE LIFE AND WORK OF WINS-

LOW HOMER, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1979. 345 pp., ills.

HUNTER, SAM, ISAMU NOGUCHI, New York, Abbeville Press, 1979. 334 pp., ills. $65.00.

JOHNSON, DIANE CHAMBERS, AMERICAN ART NOUVEAU, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1979. 311 pp., 394 ills.

KIST, J. R., DAUMIER: EYEWITNESS OF AN EPOCH,

Woodbury, N.Y., Barron's, 1979. 26 pp., 96 ills. $1.95. KLEIN, ROBERT, FORM AND MEANING: WRITINGS ON

THE RENAISSANCE AND MODERN ART, New York, Viking Press, 1979. 274 pp. $19.95.

KOHLER, SUE A., and JEFFREY R. CARSON, SIXTEENTH

STREET ARCHITECTURE (Vol. 1), Washington, D.C., The Commission of Fine Arts, 1978. 590 pp., ills.

LARNER, GERALD and CELIA, THE GLASGOW STYLE,

New York, Taplinger, 1979. 24 pp., 205 ills. $24.95. LAWRENCE, JACOB and ROBERT HAYDEN, THE LEGEND

OF JOHN BROWN, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1979. 61 pp., 22 ills. $4.00.

LEVINE, FREDERICK S., THE APOCALYPTIC VISION: THE ART OF FRANZ MARC AS GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM, New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London, Harper & Row, 1979. 200 pp., 314 ills. $16.95.

LICHT, FRED, GOYA: THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN TEMPER IN ART, New York, Universe Books, 1979. 288 pp., 136 ills. $16.50.

LINDSAY, JACK, WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS LIFE AND WORK, New York, Taplinger, 1979. 432 pp., ills. $14.95.

LOBELL, JOHN, BETWEEN SILENCE AND LIGHT: SPIRIT IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOUIS I. KAHN, Boulder, Colo., Shambhala, 1979. 120 pp., ills.

LUCIE-SMITH, EDWARD, SUPER REALISM, Oxford, Phai- don Press, 1979. 80 pp., 67 ills. $14.95.

MACCARTHY, FIONA, A HISTORY OF BRITISH DESIGN:

1830-1970, London, Boston, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1979. 136 pp., ills. $21.00 cloth, $9.50 paper.

MERRYMAN, JOHN HENRY and ALBERT E. ELSEN, LAW, ETHICS AND THE VISUAL ARTS: CASES AND MATE-

RIALS, VOLUMES 1 AND 2, New York, Matthew

Bender, 1979. 700 pp., ills.; 810 pp., ills. $29.50. MILLAIS, GEOFFROY, SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS, Lon-

don, Rizzoli International, 1979. 96 pp., 100 ills. $9.95.

MITCHELL, MARGARETTA K., RECOLLECTIONS: TEN WOMEN OF PHOTOGRAPHY, New York, Viking Press, 1979. 206 pp., ills. $25.00.

MORGAN, WILLIAM, LOUISVILLE: ARCHITECTURE AND THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT, Dublin, N.H., William L. Bauhan, 1979. 96 pp., ills. $6.95.

OESTERREICHER-MOLLWO, MARIANNE, SURREALISM AND DADAISM: PROVOCATIVE DESTRUCTION, THE PATH WITHIN AND THE EXACERBATION OF THE PROB- LEM OF A RECONCILIATION OF ART AND LIFE, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1979. 104 pp., 74 ills. $17.50.

ORMOND, RICHARD (ed.), NATIONAL PORTRAIT GAL- LERY: IN COLOUR, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1979. 128 pp., 320 ills. $20.00.

POHRIBNY, ARSEN, ABSTRACT PAINTING, Oxford, Phai- don Press, 1979. 120 pp., 96 ills. $17.50.

REED, WALT (ed.), NORTH LIGHT COLLECTION 2, West-

port, Conn., Northlight, 1979. 175 pp., ills. $16.95. ROBINSON, DUNCAN, STANLEY SPENCER: VISIONS FROM

A BERKSHIRE VILLAGE, Oxford, Phaidon Press, 1979. 80 pp., 70 ills. $14.95.

ROETHEL, HANS KONRAD, KANDINSKY, Paris, Nouvelles Editions Francaises, 1977. 55 pp., catalog with 48 entries, ills.

ROSENBERG, PIERRE, CHARDIN 1699-1779, Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, with Indiana University Press, 1979. 423 pp., ills. $35.00 cloth, $22.50 paper.

ROTH, LELAND M., A CONCISE HISTORY OF AMERICAN

ARCHITECTURE, New York, Hagerstown, San Fran- cisco, London, Icon Editions, Harper & Row, 1979. 426 pp., 304 ills. $25.00

ROTHENSTEIN, JOHN, STANLEY SPENCER: THE MAN: CORRESPONDENCE AND REMINISCENCEs, Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1979. 156 pp., 23 ills. $18.00.

SANDLER, IRVING, ALEX KATZ, New York, Harry N.

Abrams, 1979. 222 pp., 217 ills. $55.00. SCRASE, DAVID, DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS BY

PETER DE WINT, Cambridge and London, Cambridge University Press, 1979. 155 pp., 125 ills. $27.50 hard- cover, $6.95 paper.

SECREST, MERYLE, BEING BERNARD BERENSON: A BI-

OGRAPHY, New York, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1979. 495 pp., ills. $15.95.

SPALDING, JULIAN, LOWRY, New York, Phaidon Press, 1979. 16 pp., 48 ills. $12.50.

SPIEGEL, RUTH W. (ed.), THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION IN

THE MAKING: 1920-1930, Washington, D.C., Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Institution, 1979. 96 pp., ills. $10.00.

TRACHTENBERG, ALAN, BROOKLYN BRIDGE: FACT AND

SYMBOL (2nd ed.), Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1979. 216 pp., ills. $6.95.

VON MOOS, STANISLAUS, LE CORBUSIER: ELEMENTS OF

A SYNTHESIS, Cambridge and London, M.I.T. Press, 1979. 387 pp., 222 ills. $30.00.

150 ART JOURNAL, XXXIX/2

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