Although the Inuit have lived in the Artic since prehistoric times, Inuit art as we know it only came about in the late 1940s. This contemporary art form is appreciated around the world for its power and exquisite beauty, an art that embodies the Inuit's harsh artic environment, unique way of life, and traditional beliefs. This historical, cultural, and aesthetic exploration of Inuit art features examples of Inuit drawings, prints, textiles, and sculpture through 125 color photos, 35 black-and-white photos, and maps.
Qummut Qukiria! celebrates art and culture within and beyond traditional Inuit and Sámi homelands in the Circumpolar Arctic -- from the continuance of longstanding practices such as storytelling and skin sewing to the development of innovative new art forms such as throatboxing (a hybrid of traditional Inuit throat singing and beatboxing). In this illuminating book, curators, scholars, artists, and activists from Inuit Nunangat, Kalaallit Nunaat, Sápmi, Canada, and Scandinavia address topics as diverse as Sámi rematriation and the revival of the ládjogahpir (a Sámi woman's headgear), the experience of bringing Inuit stone carving to a workshop for inner-city youth, and the decolonizing potential of Traditional Knowledge and its role in contemporary design and beyond. Qummut Qukiria! showcases the thriving art and culture of the Indigenous Circumpolar peoples in the present and demonstrates its importance for the revitalization of language, social wellbeing, and cultural identity.
From Front blurb: Kenojuak is a tribute honouring the life and work of one of the world's most celebrated and prolific Eskimo artists. Originally published in 1981, as a limited edition of 275, this book was never before available to the general public. We are proud to present a new edition of this magnificent book-a visually stunning and richly documented history of an important Canadian artist. The Toronto Globe & Mail described Kenojuak as "the visionary artist from Cape Dorset in West Baffin Island-a special Canadian. Her stonecut print, the Enchanted Owl, which netted her $25 originally, has been auctioned since for as much as $12,000. In 1970, the aggressive little owl's image was reproduced on a Canadian 6-cent stamp. Her stone sculptures in the Toronto-Dominion Bank's prestigious Inuit collection have been viewed by hundreds. In 1967, (she) was awarded the Order of Canada." In addition, she has numerous exhibitions, and designed Canada's mural at the World's Fair in Osaka Japan. Today, the 58-year old artist says, "I continue to carve. A small canvas tent against the side of my house in Cape Dorset serves as my carving studio in bad weather. Otherwise I carve out of doors. I am grateful to those people who are interested in and admire my work. When I am dead, I am sure there will still be people discussing my art." Kenojuak is a handsome volume, containing over 160 color plates, with every print the artist has produced up to 1980, many of her drawings, photographs of her sculpture, and numerous documentary photographs of the artist in her working and home environment. Kenojuak is unique in the field of art book publishing. Never before has the work of an Eskimo artist been so comprehensively and masterfully treated.
In 1956 artist James Houston came to Cape Dorset as the northern service officer with the Canadian government's Department of Northern Affairs. One of his duties was to foster the production of carvings and other handicrafts by the Inuit residents. By 1959 the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative had been formed, laying the groundwork for a legendary printmaking tradition. Today the annual release of Cape Dorset prints, produced by the Co-operative's Kinngait Studios, is eagerly anticipated by collectors around the world. Cape Dorset Prints: A Retrospective is the first book to tell the full story of this historic printmaking community. - Publisher.
"A thoughtful, elegantly written, and easy-to-read guide to over three hundred years of architectural style in Canada." - Kelly Crossman, Carleton University
Some fifty years ago, the remote Arctic community of Cape Dorset was introduced to the ancient traditions of Japanese printmaking by a Canadian artist, James Houston, who had studied printmaking in Japan with the revered master printmaker Un'ichi Hiratsuka. The remarkable story of that artistic encounter and its extraordinary results are the focus of this groundbreaking book. With two major essays and detailed captions, it features 49 exquisite and rare artworks (including Inuit prints from 1947 to 1963 and Japanese prints that were brought to Cape Dorset in 1959, as well as never-before-seen works by James Houston), and shows how Cape Dorset graphic artists selectively borrowed and actively transformed Japanese influences. It includes the voice of Cape Dorset printmaker Kananginak Pootoogook, as well as previously unplished historic photographs from Japan and Cape Dorset.
A monument to the talent of Canadian women artists in the interwar period. this book provides a full and diverse cross-country survey of the art made by women during this pivotal time, incorporating the work of both settler and Indigenous visual artists in a stirring affirmation of the female creative voice. Residence: Ontario. Print run 2,500.
For the first two years of her life Kari Herbert lived with her mother and father, the explorer Sir Wally Herbert, among the Inuit people in the vast snowy wastes of the High Arctic. Her first words were Inuktun, her first friends the children of hunters and the pull of the place and its people lured the family back several times during her childhood. Then in 2002 she returned to the Arctic alone. She met her childhood friends again, remembered the exhilaration of sledging with dogs across the ice and remembered the language and faces of her early years. She also encountered alarming changes: the uneasy coexistence of modern life and ancient traditions, and of the hopes and tragedy at the heart of this extraordinary and yet deeply familiar community. place of family memories and of savage beauty, where her friends still hunt and eat whale meat; and where she rediscovers a compelling world where light and darkness dominate life.
In the winter of 1886-87, during his stay in Paris, Vincent van Gogh bought 660 Japanese prints at the art gallery of Siegfried Bing. His aim was to start dealing in them, but the exhibition he organized in the café-restaurant Le Tambourin was a total failure. However, he was now able to study his collection at ease and in close-up, and he gradually became captivated by their colourful, cheerful and unusual imagery. When he left for Arles, he took some prints with him, but the core remained in Paris with his brother Theo. Although some prints were later given away, the collection did not disperse. This book reveals new analyses of the collection, now held in the Van Gogh Museum, given as a long-term loan from the Vincent van Gogh Foundation. The authors delve into its history, and the role the prints played in Van Gogh's creative output. The book is illustrated with over 100 striking highlights from the collection.
“Graceful yet precise, poetic yet deeply rooted in research, this exploration of an overlooked painter is gorgeous — a joy to read. Molly Peacock’s insights and empathy with her subject bring to life both Mary Hiester Reid and her luscious flower paintings.” — Charlotte Gray, author of The Massey Murder Molly Peacock uncovers the history of neglected painter Mary Hiester Reid, a trailblazing artist who refused to choose between marriage and a career. Born into a patrician American family in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mary Hiester Reid was determined to be a painter and left behind women’s design schools to enter the art world of men. After she married fellow artist George Reid, she returned with him to his home country of Canada. There she set about creating over 300 stunning still life and landscape paintings, inhabiting a rich, if sometimes difficult, marriage, coping with a younger rival, exhibiting internationally, and becoming well-reviewed. She studied in Paris, traveled in Spain, and divided her time between Canada and the United States where she lived among America’s Arts and Crafts movement titans. She left slender written records; rather, her art became her diary and Flower Diary unfolds with an artwork for each episode of her life. In this sumptuous and precisely researched biography, celebrated poet and biographer Molly Peacock brings Mary Hiester Reid, foremother of painters such as Georgia O’Keefe, out of the shadows, revealing a fascinating, complex woman who insisted on her right to live as a married artist, not as a tragic heroine. Peacock uses her poet’s skill to create a structurally inventive portrait of this extraordinary woman whom modernism almost swept aside, weaving threads of her own marriage with Hiester Reid’s, following the history of empathy and examining how women manage the demands of creativity and domesticity, coping with relationships, stoves, and steamships, too. How do you make room for art when you must go to the market to buy a chicken for dinner? Hiester Reid had her answers, as Peacock gloriously discovers.
