Evolution of Native American Art Essay Example

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While picture and sculpture declined and clothing survived in its original state, absolutely new techniques and images were borrowed from Europeans. Shell and feather decorations were substituted by glass beads, and floral motifs typical for European ethic art now became part of native American design. Unlike indigenous population of East and Southeast, the cultural region, which is conventionally called Plains was characterized by hunting and gathering way of life, although by and by agriculture was practiced. Scholars found no other evidence of artistic activities but samples of rock art.

It was only in the eighteenth century when drastic changes took place. As the Encyclopaedia of North American Indians suggests, “the introduction of the horse in the eighteenth century and the westward migration of other tribes fleeing European settlers caused a shift in customs. These aspects of life influenced Plains art, which became portable and was intended to display the courage, war heroism, and prestige of the owner”. As a result of the development of hierarchical nomadic society, it was mostly applied practical art that flourished in those times.

Fine clothing signifying rank, horse regalia can be mentioned as outcome of such societal change. There was a combination of originally Indian and European materials used in embroidery: traditional quills and shells were complemented by glass beads. As for the Western region, the researchers found the examples of pictographs and rock art. One more tradition is worth special consideration, namely the art of basketry. As Frank W. Porter III writes in his book Art of Native American Basketry: A Living Legacy, the basic technology was the so-called woodsplint basketry.

It “involves beating

black ash, white oak, or hickory logs, when wet, to separate the annual growth rings, called grains. After being smoothed and trimmed with a knife to the correct thickness and width, the splints are plaited. Rims and handles of carved oak or maple are added and bound on with splint, completing the basket” (Porter, 47). It is also interesting, that after the contact with the non-native population, the art began to be practiced by ‘Yankees’ too and there was little difference in techniques. Naturally, since the nineteenth century basketry has been increasingly commercial.

The situation in the Northwest Coast is different from all other regions because of its isolation and unique ecological conditions. Artistic life was exceptionally rich among the indigenous population, taking various forms such as producing blankets, wood carvings, sculpture and ceremonial masks. Art was not confined to its pictorial variation, as masks were created with moving parts in order to take part in special ritual theatrical performances. In the nineteenth century in the course of intrusion the culture of the Northwest Coast suffered ruin, although many customs survived at the level of communities.

That’s why it was possible in the mid twentieth century for this culture to find its new renaissance. Although Southwestern art is usually viewed as a single culture zone, three unique subcategories can be defined according to the names of tribes representing them: Hohokam, Mogollon and Anasazi. All the three groups led a sedentary existence, living mainly in agricultural villages and cultivating such crops as corn and beans. Hohokam Indians produced jewelry using shells and pottery for household matters.

As they grew cotton, textile was one

of the main “industries”, which contributed to experiments in design. Mogollon had similar customs, their pottery tending to be produced of iron-rich volcanic clays, which made the outcome dark brown. Anasazi specialized in architecture applying zoomorphic and anthropomorphic elements in the decoration of interior. Traditional pottery, basketry and textiles were also typical for them. As we see, textiles were a common handicraft for many groups of native population. I’d like to focus on describing the technique of making textiles, which Frederick J. Dockstader described in his book Weaving Arts of the North American Indian.

“The raw materials used by North American weavers were essentially those animal-vegetable-mineral substances supplied by a benevolent nature. Animal hides were used as weaving cordage; they were slit and stripped, then twisted or separated to form the fibers which were re-worked into a fabric. Fur, however long or short, stout or delicate, was also incorporated into twisted threads for weaving, and the hair from a variety of animal (and humans) was likewise spun into weaving fibers.

Vegetable plant substances were also split, stripped, often pounded to separate the fibers, and used for spinning; or they were boiled, squeezed, and crushed to provide dye pigments. Minerals yielded colored pigments for use in producing dyes” (Dockstader, 54) . The author enumerates a number of different fibers, which were used for weaving, some of them being rather coarse, others quite fine. The former include such materials as henequen, yucca, split bark, cotton, milkweed, moss and so on. The latter comprise different furs like rabbit, horse, raccoons, muskrat and some others.

It is also interesting that human hair was used for producing textiles

as well. While some of these fibers could be used naturally, most of them had to be prepared for weaving. This process could be as simple as washing and cleaning, or it could involve a far more complex preparation. At first, simple fan-shaped beaters were devised to separate the seeds from the cotton bolls and align the thin fibers. Later this close unity was achieved by beating or picking, and then by carding — a process whereby the fibers were brushed or pulled in one direction by the use of any of several toothed implements (55)

The previous information about the regional specifics of Native American art presented the general picture of the phenomenon in its historical progression. It makes us aware that evolution did take place due to the contact with European culture. Since that time on the change has been going on, and at the modern period the situation is quite different. On the one hand, the twentieth century brought hope of revival to the native culture. On the other hand, one has to realize that modern state of Native American art is far from its virginal prehistorical condition and even from its nineteenth century’s version.

The culture in question is increasingly commercial and the growing demand for it does not always result in authentic art. At the same time, two more facts should be taken into consideration. First, there is no denying the fact that nowadays Native American art is even more heterogeneous than before the contact with civilization. Second, in modern global society art is getting more and more global as well, crossing the borders of countries and cultures.

These days, Native American art should be treated as equally modern and up-to-date as art of any other nation.

It is an open system affected by all cultural and artistic trends of the epoch. As Elizabeth Hutchinson states in her article Modern Native American art: Angel DeCora's transcultural aesthetics, Early historians of Native American art privileged artistic traditions that seemed untainted by Western influences. Hybrid art forms were dismissed as inauthentic, assimilationist, or even degenerate. In recent decades, however, art historians have become interested in how indigenous material and visual culture can express the transcultural situation of American Indian people (740).

At the same time she recognizes that there is no single idea of the point at which Native American art became “modern”. “Some locate it as soon as artists began producing objects for Western viewers. Others identify it with the point when they started working in Western media, especially easel painting. Still others claim that the only "modern" artists are those who use the visual idioms of modernism in their work. ”(740). The concept of transculturality is the key one to Hutchinson’s study.

She believes that at the current stage Native American art is inevitably transcultural, being transitional and hybrid between global art and authentic art. In fact, the statement can be more or less true of any ethnic art nowadays. The lack of purity does not signal of cultural decline at all, being just a sign of globalization trends, where no culture can exist in isolation. In the current paper I attempted to provide the general view of Native American art, treating it as a continuous evolution, which never stopped

and which was forced by a number of historical factors.

Analyzing regional peculiarities, which to a large extent depended on climatic conditions and way of life, I also paid attention at how the culture was affected by the contact with colonizers. The contact was of dual nature, both violent and commercial. Since that time Native American culture has been moving in the direction of transculturality. At the present stage Native American culture does not exist in its pure initial condition. In the global society, it is a hybrid form, a mixture of many influences. At the same time, it preserves some unique ancient techniques, which allow to refer it to a separate cultural tradition.