Eskimo Art: A Review Essay

• Main Author: Klein, Ceclia F.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: eScholarship, University of California 1981
• Subjects: carvings; print; Euro-American guilt; preserve culture; Arctic; Canada; eskimo*; Alaska
• Online Access: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vr5h1rq

Eskimo Art: A Review Essay Cecelia F. Klein Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska. By Dorothy Jean Ray. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977. 298 pp, $29.95. PitseoIak: Pictures Out of My Life. Edited by Dorothy Eber. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. 96 pp. pap. $5.95. Since its first, tentative, appearance in the shops and galleries of southern Canada and the U.S. in the 1940s, "Eskimo art" has become big business. In parts of the eastern Arctic and Alaska, its sale is now the major source of income for the otherwise impoverished natives. White enthusiasm for Eskimo carvings and prints, the two most popular Eskimo art forms, has derived, in part, from an awareness that purchase of Eskimo goods helps these Eskimos to survive. At the same time some whites believe that, by purchasing art that is distinctly "Eskimo," they help preserve a dying culture, Euro-American guilt over the destruction of traditional Eskimo life and well-being is thus mitigated by the purchase of durable symbols of the vanishing Eskimo way of life. When any new or newly "discovered" body of artworks makes a major impact on the art market, numerous books on the subject inevitably follow. Such has been the case for Eskimo art. Most of these books-and articles - have played, understandably, to the leading motives for "appreciating" Eskimo products by either emphasizing the improved economic circumstances of the producers or discussing their imagery in terms of old lifestyles and beliefs. For the more mercenary art collector, dealer and museum concerned for their investments, the literature affirms the high "aesthetic quality" of the style. Seldom have the books dealt openly with the historic events that brought the art into being, however, and seldom have they been sensitive to the full effects of these on that art and its creators. The intent clearly has been instead to enhance the value and desirability of Eskimo art by focusing on its noncontroversial features, thus avoiding data that could leave the ...