“Rather Unusual Stuff”: Nathan Jackson's Early Advent of a Tlingit Modern

• Published in: ab-Original
• Main Author: Green, Christopher T.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Pennsylvania State University Press 2018
• Subjects: Indian; tlingit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/aboriginal.2.2.0300; https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/ab-original/article-pdf/2/2/300/1253496/aboriginal_2_2_300.pdf

Abstract This article considers the work of Nathan Jackson, the preeminent Alaskan Tlingit carver and revivalist of the postwar period, who engaged modernist forms and principles in his early career. His paintings, prints, and experiments in textile design combined Tlingit motifs with expressive color fields and abstract space. Developed under instructors associated with modernist movements such as the Indian Space Painters, Jackson's relationship with modernism represents an alternative to the neotraditionalism of his contemporaries. However, despite achieving initial acclaim for his experiments in printmaking and painting, Jackson came to reject this aspect of his training in favor of classical Tlingit forms and practices. Jackson's early oeuvre thus imbricates Euro-American modernism in the history of Northwest Coast Native art alongside the emulation of nineteenth-century forms, and his eventual rejection of modernist styles refutes the relationship between Indigenous and modern art as one of unidirectional appropriation.