Artistic traditions of indigenous North America are explored in a study that draws on the testimonies of oral tradition, Native American history, and North American archaeology, focusing on the artists themselves and their cultural identities. Original.

Fourteen authorities explore sociology, anthropology, art history of Native American creativity.

The richness of Native American art is explored from the early pre-Columbian period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over five centuries and across an immensely diverse range of regions. 53 color photos. 104 halftones. 8 maps.

This eBook is best viewed on a color device. North American Indian Arts is a fascinating introduction to the arts and crafts reflected in the material culture of North American Indians. Knowledge of the skills and techniques developed by the various Native American tribes, and the fine materials produced provides a key to understanding the rich diversity of native cultures. Packed with information and authentic full-color illustrations, this handsome guide will be welcomed by everyone interested in American cultural history.

North American Indian Art: Masterpieces and Museum Collections from the Netherlands showcases 114 oustanding examples of Native art and heritage from the Canadian subarctic forests to the American Southwest preserved in Dutch museums. Many of these rare material documents collected between the seventeenth and the twenty-first century have never been published before. They are here stunningly presented as individual works of art and placed into their cultural and historical contexts by forty-two leading American, Canadian, and European experts who weave together the historical narrative of each object's acquisition with current Native and scholarly interpretations of their use and meaning. In his introductory essay Pieter Hovens provides a detailed account of the history of Dutch interests in North American Indian cultures, from the seventeenth-century colonial experience in New Netherland through the collecting activities of public institutions and private connoisseurs to academic scholarship and social engagement. All of these interests have contributed to the wealth and range of objects featured here as well as to the public perception of Native Americans in the Netherlands. This book offers for the first time an overview of all institutional collections of Native North American arts and cultures in a single European country. It is the privilege of the Dutch museums to share these heritage collections with the widest audience possible.

The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book. The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world’s artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories. In the 1950s Bill Holm, a graduate student of Dr. Erna Gunther, former Director of the Burke Museum, began a systematic study of northern Northwest Coast art. In 1965, after studying hundreds of bentwood boxes and chests, he published Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. This book is a foundational reference on northern Northwest Coast Native art. Through his careful studies, Bill Holm described this visual language using new terminology that has become part of the established vocabulary that allows us to talk about works like these and understand changes in style both through time and between individual artists’ styles. Holm examines how these pieces, although varied in origin, material, size, and purpose, are related to a surprising degree in the organization and form of their two-dimensional surface decoration. The author presents an incisive analysis of the use of color, line, and texture; the organization of space; and such typical forms as ovoids, eyelids, U forms, and hands and feet. The evidence upon which he bases his conclusions constitutes a repository of valuable information for all succeeding researchers in the field. Replaces ISBN 9780295951027

The magnificent art and decorative craftsmanship of the Indian tribes of North America appear in all of their colonial variety and complexity in this superb volume. Examples are included of the work of every major region in the areas now comprising the United States and Canada, of most of the numerically important or artistically pre-eminent tribes, and all of the major techniques employed by Indian artists. No reader of this book can long continue in a misapprehension of the stereotyped image of 'the Indian.' The varying cultures which developed on the North American continent - from the Eskimo hunters of the Arctic to the woodland League of the Iroquois, and from the Pueblo agriculturalists to the nomads of the Great Plains - are all represented. Each found its own ways of using available natural resources for utilitarian objects, for religious and ritual purposes, or for sheer aesthetic pleasure. The book abounds in beautiful examples of characteristics shell and quill work, pottery and weaving, deer and buffalo hide painting, carved stone pipes and tomahawks so commonly associated with Indian cultures. Less familiar are illustrations of mysterious stone effigy sculptures from the death-cults of the ancient Southeast; sophisticated carvings in stone and ivory from the Midwest; elaborate horse-trappings and costuming from the Great Plains; and a fascinating variety of masks. Dr. Dockstader draws upon a thorough knowledge of Indian life, custom and artistic tradition to relate this material to its sources in his introduction and in the extensive background comments accompanying each of the illustrations. He sees the art of the American Indian not as a subject for static sociological research, but as a living and continuing expression of a vital people, and he has included in this book a number of examples of recent and contemporary work by Indian artists. -- from dust jacket.