Native American Art of the Pacific Northwest

Today I am featuring a style of art that has always fascinated me; Native American art of the Pacific Northwest, specifically Haida Art; the work of Johnny Kit Elswa. The Haida people come from the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia near Alaska, which they have occupied for at least eight thousand years. Their highly developed designs and style arose partially from the fact that the islands lacked the more valuable resources of the mainland. They developed their sculptural and design skills which they used to make their art, to trade for what they needed.

Tekul or cirrus clouds, Johhny Kit Elswa 1883

Traditionally, the Haida art style or North Coast art style consisted of (among other things) sculptural works like totem poles, canoes, chests, masks, shields, and jewelry. Their drawings and paintings were made with porcupine quill brushes, and natural pigments found from minerals. Often depicting birds, super-natural beings, whales, fish, bears, and many other animal-forms. I think one reason that Haida art is still popular and still being made is that it reflects the spiritual culture of the people in a beatiful, highly expressive style. One of the first westerners to encounter the Haida noted that:

"Haida were so intertwined with the super-natural world before contact that we used to have to sing and dance hard to prove we were human."

Koot Sparrow Hawk on its Nest, Johnny Kit Elswa 1883

The highly stylized forms with natural colors reflecting spiritual, mythological and super-natural motifs is the reason that I like Haida art anyways. Those are two of the things that I try to bring to my art: an abstracted personalized style (their art was very direct and purposeful though obviously) that reflects the underlying spiritual reality of the world.

Johnny Kit Elswa 1883

"We do not inherit this land from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." -Haida saying



Photo source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Note: the above images are used in fair use; lo-resolution images used for critcal review. Also these images are in the public domain under U.S. and most if not all international copyright law; (life of the author + 70 years, and 120 years since the creation of item). Also note the case of Bridgeman vs Corel, which states that slavish or exact reproductions of an item in public domain does not contain a copyright.

Fernand Léger; French Cubist and Futurist

Fernand Léger was a French painter who lived from 1881 to 1955. He initially studied as an architect and when he moved to Paris in 1900 he worked as a draftsman. He then studied at two art schools: Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and the Academie Julian, but not until age 25 did he begin painting more diligently. In 1909 he met fellow avante-garde painters Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, and sculptor Alexander Archipenko. It wouldn't be long before Léger would be considered a major painter in the cubist style.

He was a member of the Puteaux Group, an offshoot of cubism. They used elements of tubular, and cubistic forms with primary and neutral colors in their work. Leger's use of cylindrical shapes in his paintings began to be called tubism by some people; his own personal twist (literally) on cubism. His increasingly abstract style during this time was also influenced by Italian futurism; Russian painter Kazemir Malevich was a also a futurist, and is who I thought of Immediately upon first seeing Leger's work.

"Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power." -Fernand Léger

Still Life with a Beer Mug, 1921, Fernand Léger

Leger lived in the United States during world war II and taught at Yale, returning to Paris in 1945 where he opened an art academy. He moved away from his earlier more completely abstract style and began a new theme of his work: to elevate the common man with his paintings. He emphasized the working class using acrobats, cyclists, and workmen, painted in clear, flat colors. This quote from him below, reflects a recurring theme here at Modern Art Quotes:

"The realistic value of a work is completely independent of its properties in terms of content. " -Fernand Léger

That theme is: that regardless of how perfectly a painting might look like an object from life, if that object or scene from life is not interesting, than neither is the painting. You think this truth would be self-evident but it isn't to a lot of realist painters, who continue to paint dull lifeless repetitive landscapes of bowls, and jars, vegetables, fruits, etc. You cannot say that about Leger's art though, which connects the Cubists, Futurism, the working class, and the modern age.

Related Links:

• Cubist Charlie Chaplin, Fernand Leger (1923-4)
• Fernand Léger's Composión
• Fernand Léger Paintings

Three Women, 1921 Fernand Léger

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Edvard Munch on Color, Line, and Form

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was stylistically ahead of his time. He was a print-maker, a symbolist painter, and an influence in the development of German Expressionism, a style I feel especially drawn towards. I love the following quote, because emphasis on line and vibration or flow of those lines (for lack of better words) are elements I use in my work.

"By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. "

-Edvard Munch (1863 -1944)

I like the way he used color and line forms to define moods in his work. It's easy to call someone like French painter Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) a forefather of modern art, but Munch played a prime and vital role in that development also. The self-portrait below is a prime example; you will be hard pressed to find a painting from 1895 with that much expressionistic color, texture, and overall mysterious feel.

Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895

Mark Rothko on His Paintings

One of my all time favorite painters is Mark Rothko. Probably one of the most misunderstood 20th century painters, his life is fascinating. He preferred cheap Chinese takeout to gourmet restaurants, and once turned down a multi-million dollar commission from Seagram's. After completing the works and visiting the location where the paintings were to hang, he decided he didn't want his work to be viewed by stuffy, greedy, business executives. I think he makes an important distinction in each of the two following quotes concerning the perception of his work:

"I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on."

"The fact that people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions.. the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when painting them. And if you say you are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point."

-Mark Rothko (1903 -1970)

He is not concerned with the relationships of the colors in his work, but of the relationship of the work to himself and the viewer, and the emotional response. Someday I would love to see some of his larger work in person.

de Kooning on the Emotion of Forms

Although he had a very radical gestural style, Abstract Expressionist artist Willem de Kooning never fully abandoned representational imagery, he was similar to Pollack in that his forms usually emerged from his painting style, not necessarily from his conscious mind.

"Forms ought to have the emotion of concrete experience."

(-Willem de Kooning p. 151 Modern American Painting)

The preceding quote from de Kooning especially illustrates just that point. While Jackson Pollack created compositions with no beginning, no end, and tried to draw out the unconcious, de Kooning had a much more visceral approach to painting.