Northwest Coast art is the term commonly applied to a style of art created primarily by artists from Tlingit, Haida, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other First Nations and Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast of North America, from pre-European-contact times up to the present.
Two-dimensional Northwest Coast art is distinguished by the use of formlines, and the use of characteristic shapes referred to as ovoids, U forms and S forms. Before European contact, the most common media were wood (often Western red cedar), stone, and copper; since European contact, paper, canvas, glass, and precious metals have also been used. If paint is used, the most common colours are red and black, but yellow is also often used, particularly among Kwakwaka'wakw artists. [1] Chilkat weaving applies formline designs to textiles. Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian have traditionally produced Chilkat woven regalia, from wool and yellow cedar bark, that is important for civic and ceremonial events, including potlatches.
The patterns depicted include natural forms such as bears, ravens, eagles, orcas, and humans; legendary creatures such as thunderbirds and sisiutls; and abstract forms made up of the characteristic Northwest Coast shapes. Totem poles are the most well-known artifacts produced using this style. Northwest Coast artists are also notable for producing characteristic "bent-corner" or "bentwood" boxes, masks, and canoes. Northwest Coast designs were also used to decorate traditional First Nations household items such as spoons, ladles, baskets, hats, and paddles; since European contact, the Northwest Coast art style has increasingly been used in gallery-oriented forms such as paintings, prints and sculptures.
Although highly conventionalized decorative design occurs all along the coast, to the south and north of this center the representational motive becomes progressively stronger. Krickeberg (1925: 144) characterizes this as a fresh naturalism to the south among the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish and a certain relationship to Eskimo engraving and painting among the Tlingit to the north. The shift in emphasis is gradual - Bella Bella art, for example, has a close affinity to its Coast Tsimshian counterpart. Two-dimensional art of all these groups, however, is much more closely related than is their sculpture, especially among the northern tribes of Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and Bella Bella. [2]
Textile arts from the Northwest Coast include Chilkat weaving, Raven's Tail Weavings, Button Blankets, and elaborate ceremonial regalia using a range of materials. Three dimension art was created from many materials, notably wood.
Prior to contact with Europeans, First Nations on the Northwest coast evolved complex social and ceremonial institutions, including the potlatch system, hereditary systems of rank and descent, ceremonial societies, and permanent villages. Social organization involved groups of kin, reckoned variously matrilineally, patrilineally or bi-lineally. These groups hold various tangible and intangible rights and properties. Among them are origin stories. Many instances of Northwest coast art are visual references to these stories.
After European contact, in the late 18th century, the peoples who produced Northwest Coast art suffered huge population losses due to diseases such as smallpox, and cultural losses due to colonization and assimilation into European-North American culture. The production of their art dropped drastically as well.
Toward the end of the 19th century, Northwest Coast artists began producing work for commercial sale, such as small argillite carvings. The end of the 19th century also saw large-scale export of totem poles, masks and other traditional art objects from the region to museums and private collectors around the world. Some of this export was accompanied by financial compensation to people who had a right to sell the art, and some was not.
In the early 20th century, very few First Nations artists in the Northwest Coast region were producing art. A tenuous link to older traditions remained in artists such as Charles Gladstone, Henry Speck, Ellen Neel, Stanley George, and Mungo Martin. The mid-20th century saw a revival of interest and production of Northwest Coast art, due to the influence of artists and academics such as Bill Reid (a grandson of Charles Gladstone) and Bill Holm. A revival of traditional ceremonial ways also drove the increased production of traditional arts. This time also saw an increasing demand for the return of art objects that were illegally or immorally taken from First Nations communities. This demand continues to the present day. Today, there are numerous art schools teaching formal Northwest Coast art of various styles, and there is a growing market for new art in this style. [3]
The revival of ceremonial life, following the lifting of the potlatch ban, has also driven production of traditional clothing, painting and carving for use in ceremonies.
Although neighbouring peoples such as the Coast Salish peoples also traditionally produced art which shares some characteristics of Northwest Coast art, these styles of art are not usually included in the term, since the patterns and artifacts produced are rather different. For example, Salish peoples traditionally created standing welcome figures not created by other Northwest Coast peoples, did not traditionally create totem poles, and did not traditionally use the form lines and shapes of other Northwest Coast peoples. [5] One corollary of this fact is that — contrary to popular belief — other than some of the peoples of the Olympic Peninsula, no Native American nations of Washington and Oregon states produced totem poles and other characteristic, formline, Northwest Coast-style art objects before European contact. [6]
Traditionally, within a given community, some patterns and motifs could be used only by certain families and lineages, or with the agreement of those families and lineages. Today, in British Columbia, it is a point of contention whether only First Nations artists of the appropriate nation have the moral right to produce art of given types and using given motifs, or whether only the intent of the person and the respect given to the respective peoples are significant. Likewise, in Ontario, similar controversies have arisen over whether non-Native artists have the moral right to make use of Native motifs and visual art styles. [7] Some non-Native artists, such as John Livingston, have been adopted into First Nations and have thus formally acquired the right to produce such art. [1] In some nations, such as the Haida, adoptions are seen by some only as gestures, and production of work in their trademark style by outsiders may, in some contexts, be viewed as economic and cultural appropriation.[ citation needed ]
Notable Northwest Coast artists of the 19th century include- Albert Edward Edenshaw [8] (Haida), Captain Carpenter [9] (Heiltsuk), Willie Seaweed (Kwakwak'wakw), Charles Edenshaw, who is widely acknowledged as a master whose art is in all the great collections around the world.
Also Guujaaw, another notable carver and builder who is also Haida political leader. Other notable Northwest Coast artists of the 20th and 21st centuries include Charlie James, Henry Speck, Doug Cranmer, Stanley George, James Schoppert, Bill Reid, Mungo Martin, Ellen Neel, Robert Davidson, Beau Dick, Willie Seaweed, Roy Henry Vickers, Don Yeomans, Jay Simeon, Amos Wallace, Lyle Wilson, Sam (Sammy) Robinson, Ron Hamilton, Art Thompson, Joe David, Reginald Peterson, [10] Freda Diesing, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun , Tony Hunt and Nathan Jackson (artist)
Notable academics and publishers of northwest Northwest Coast include Bill Holm, Bill Reid, Hilary Stewart, Bill McLennan, Martha Black, and George F. MacDonald. Doreen Jensen and Polly Sargent's book Robes of Power (1986) deals with ceremonial robes - called Button blanket - and their history and forms. Cheryl Samuel and her book The Raven's Tail (1987) describes northern weaving style known as Raven's Tail - used to make ceremonial robes and other regalia.
Emily Carr, though she did not formally adopt the techniques, commonly used native art as the motif of many of her early paintings.
The Tlingit or Lingít are Alaska Native Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and are one of two-hundred twenty-nine (229) federally recognized Tribes of Alaska. Their language is the Tlingit language, in which the name means 'People of the Tides'. The Russian name Koloshi or the related German name Koulischen may be encountered referring to the people in older historical literature, such as Grigory Shelikhov's 1796 map of Russian America. Tlingit people today belong to two federally recognized Alaska Native tribes: the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe.
Totem poles are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States, among whom it is traditionally the primary governmental institution, legislative body, and economic system. This includes the Heiltsuk, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures. Potlatches are also a common feature of the peoples of the Interior and of the Subarctic adjoining the Northwest Coast, although mostly without the elaborate ritual and gift-giving economy of the coastal peoples.
Freda Diesing was a Haida woman of the Sadsugohilanes Clan, one of very few female carvers of Northwest Coast totem poles and a member of the Council of the Haida Nation of British Columbia, Canada. Her Haida name is Skil Kew Wat, meaning "magical little woman."
Oscar William Holm Jr. was an American art historian and author, focused on Indigenous Northwest Coast art. He created artworks and taught Northwest Coast style, including formline design. He was Professor Emeritus of Art History, and Curator Emeritus of Northwest Coast Indian Art at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and occasionally lectured at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Chief Mungo Martin or Nakapenkem, Datsa, was an important figure in Northwest Coast style art, specifically that of the Kwakwaka'wakw Aboriginal people who live in the area of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. He was a major contributor to Kwakwaka'wakw art, especially in the realm of wood sculpture and painting. He was also known as a singer and songwriter.
George Hunt (Tlingit) was a Canadian and a consultant to the American anthropologist Franz Boas; through his contributions, he is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right. He was Tlingit-English by birth and learned both those languages. Growing up with his parents at Fort Rupert, British Columbia in Kwakwaka'wakw territory, he learned their language and culture as well. Through marriage and adoption he became an expert on the traditions of the Kwakwaka'wakw of coastal British Columbia.
The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are composed of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and political identities. They share certain beliefs, traditions and practices, such as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual symbol, and many cultivation and subsistence practices. The term Northwest Coast or North West Coast is used in anthropology to refer to the groups of Indigenous people residing along the coast of what is now called British Columbia, Washington State, parts of Alaska, Oregon, and Northern California. The term Pacific Northwest is largely used in the American context.
A button blanket is wool blanket embellished with mother-of-pearl buttons, created by Northwest Coastal tribes, that is worn for ceremonial purposes.
Alaska Native cultures are rich and diverse, and their art forms are representations of their history, skills, tradition, adaptation, and nearly twenty thousand years of continuous life in some of the most remote places on earth. These art forms are largely unseen and unknown outside the state of Alaska, due to distance from the art markets of the world.
Delores E. Churchill is a Native American artist of Haida descent. She is a weaver of baskets, hats, robes, and other regalia, as well as leading revitalization efforts for Haida, her native language.
Chilkat weaving is a traditional form of weaving practiced by Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast peoples of Alaska and British Columbia. Chilkat robes are worn by high-ranking tribal members on civic or ceremonial occasions, including dances. The blankets are almost always black, white, yellow and blue.
Kwakwaka'wakw art describes the art of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of British Columbia. It encompasses a wide variety of woodcarving, sculpture, painting, weaving and dance. Kwakwaka'wakw arts are exemplified in totem poles, masks, wooden carvings, jewelry and woven blankets. Visual arts are defined by simplicity, realism, and artistic emphasis. Dances are observed in the many rituals and ceremonies in Kwakwaka'wakw culture. Much of what is known about Kwakwaka'wakw art comes from oral history, archeological finds in the 19th century, inherited objects, and devoted artists educated in Kwakwaka'wakw traditions.
Formline art is a feature in the indigenous art of the Northwest Coast of North America, distinguished by the use of characteristic shapes referred to as ovoids, U forms and S forms. Coined by Bill Holm in his 1965 book Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, the "formline is the primary design element on which Northwest Coast art depends, and by the turn of the 20th century, its use spread to the southern regions as well. It is the positive delineating force of the painting, relief and engraving. Formlines are continuous, flowing, curvilinear lines that turn, swell and diminish in a prescribed manner. They are used for figure outlines, internal design elements and in abstract compositions."
Doug Cranmer (1927–2006), also known as Pal'nakwala Wakas and Kesu', was a Kwakwaka'wakw carver and artist as well as a 'Namgis chief. Cranmer was a significant figure in the Northwest Coast art movement, both in its traditional form and in a modern contemporary form that he created and developed.
The Totem Heritage Center is a historical and cultural museum founded in 1976 and located in Ketchikan, Alaska. The center is operated by the city of Ketchikan.
Phil Gray is a Canadian artist who specializes in wood carvings from the Tsimshian and Mikisew Cree communities. His work uses traditional technique and features imagery from legends. In 2014, Gray was awarded a British Columbia Creative Achievement Award in Aboriginal Art from the Government of British Columbia.
Lily Hope is an Alaska Native artist, designer, teacher, weaver, Financial Freedom planner, and community facilitator. She is primarily known for her skills at weaving customary Northwest Coast ceremonial regalia such as Chilkat robes and ensembles. She owns a public-facing studio in Juneau, called Wooshkindein Da.àat: Lily Hope Weaver Studio which opened downtown in 2022. Lily Hope is a mother of five children, and works six days a week.
Douglas Reynolds Gallery is an art gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is located in the Business Improvement Area of South Granville. The gallery was founded in 1995 by Douglas Reynolds.
Ravenstail weaving, also known as Raven's Tail weaving, is a traditional form of geometric weaving-style practiced by Northwest Coast peoples.
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