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ART REVIEW BY KATE BONANSINGA
Expanding the Circle
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The maquette for Killer Whale and Thunderbird is part of Expanding the Circle.Robert Davidson may soon move back to his birthplace, Haida Gwaii, a compact archipelago off the west coast of British Columbia officially known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Returning to the site of the artistic and family heritage that he has spent a lifetime reclaiming will bring him full circle. Davidson's great-grandfather, the wood carver Charles Edenshaw, instigated a revival in Haida culture; it had been repressed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Indian artists were encouraged to cease traditional practices and create artwork for whites to purchase. Davidson's totem pole Breaking the Totem Barrier will be installed in front of Eliot Hall on the Reed College campus next week. It is part of an exhibition that includes masks, paintings, prints and jewelry created over the past 12 years on the Salish Reserve near White Rock, B.C. There will be a performance by Davidson and the Rainbow Creek Dancers to celebrate the installation at 7 pm Wednesday, Sept. 16, and the artist will also lecture at Reed's Kaul Auditorium at 6 pm Thursday, Sept. 17. Adorned with images of eagles and humans, Breaking the Totem Barrier exhibits the technical competence the artist learned from Edenshaw. It is carved in the round, "expanding the circle," as he puts it, of traditional poles, which are undecorated on the back and meant to be viewed from one perspective. The totem pole is a powerful type of public art that narrates the myths and belief systems of Northwest tribes, and it is also Davidson's signature format. Davidson's long and distinguished career began in the 1960s. Embraced by the art and academic establishments, he has received honorary doctorate degrees from many institutions in the United States and Canada. His Talking Stick resides in the office of the papal nuncio in Ottawa, and his Three Variations on Killer Whale Myths, a triptych of totems, was created for the sculpture gardens at the PepsiCo World Headquarters in Purchase, N.Y. (A maquette from this group is on view in the current exhibition.) The Vancouver Art Gallery had a major retrospective of his work in 1993, and three of his pieces are at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. Private patrons have commissioned Davidson to carve sculptures or architectural elements for their homes, an echo of an Indian tradition in which artists carved family crests on the structural posts of houses so that family totems literally support the home. Of course, for Davidson's non-Haida patrons, the cultural context of the work is vastly different. The Cooley exhibit allows viewers to appreciate Davidson's work on a formal level, but the cultural context remains elusive. There is a nicely produced catalog with a detailed essay by curator and Reed professor emeritus Charles Rhyne, but it won't be published until after the exhibition is over, and Rhyne's commentary is not included in the wall labels. While the catalog offers viewers a rich overview both of the process of the creation of Davidson's large-scale work and of the variety of his oeuvre, there is no information about the traditional meaning of the imagery or the cultural purposes of the formats. It would be enlightening to know, for example, that the carved and painted red-cedar self-portrait mask, Eagle Transforming into Itself, is based on masks worn at a potlatch, the Northwest Coast ceremony for weddings, house dedications and totem-pole raisings. The event involves the distribution of gifts to the guest witnesses, as well as dances that enact human contact with supernatural beings; when the dancer pulls the strings of one of these mechanical masks, its image transforms from one creature into another. Where else to search for context? The Portland Art Museum's collection of Native American art would offer some assistance, but it's not currently on view. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington in Seattle devotes an entire case to the work of Haida artists, including Davidson and his ancestors, and the Seattle Art Museum also has a well-documented collection of Northwest-Native art. Further afield, the University of British Columbia boasts an awe-inspiring collection on display in an equally awe-inspiring setting. The Museum at Warm Springs has historic Native objects consistently on view, although coastal tribes are not as well represented as others. For Davidson, certainly, the cultural significance of this art is profound. "If we look at the world as a circle, let us look at what is on the inside of the circle as experience, culture and knowledge," he has said. "Since the almost complete destruction of our spirit, the disconnection of our values and beliefs, it has been the art that has brought us back to our roots. Each piece preserved in these museums is a document of our once-rich culture. I am proud to be one of those people chosen to put the puzzle back together and move on... The challenge is ours to keep expanding the circle."
originally published September 9, 1998 |
