Baker Lake Inuit Drawings: a Study in the Evolution of Artistic Self-Consciousness.

Abstract

Since the late-1940s, Canadian Inuit (Eskimo) artists have been recognized for their aesthetically strong and ethnographically interesting sculpture in soapstone, bone, and ivory. From the late-1950s onward, they have received similar attention for their stonecut and stencil prints. A growing body of critical and interpretive literature and a number of exhibitions have brought Inuit sculpture and prints to public attention. However, original drawings--the most personal and least commercialized form of Inuit art--have been the subject of little study. Viewed primarily as support for the Arctic printmaking programs, the drawings have, for the most part, been retained by the cooperatives in Arctic communities; few have been publicly exhibited. This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of contemporary Inuit drawings and focuses specifically on the drawings of Baker Lake, Northwest Territories. The cultural and historical context for contemporary art developments are reviewed in chapters one and two. Chapters three through five present and interpret the findings of this particular study which is based on the critical examination of more than 2000 Baker Lake drawings as well as extensive field interviews with the 17 most prominent Baker Lake graphic artists and /or their relatives. Comparisons are made between drawings by artists whose sustained contact with Western culture came relatively late in their lives ("first generation artists") and drawings by younger artists whose contact with Western culture came much earlier in their lives ("second generation artists"). While similar culturally based subject matter unites these drawings, striking stylistic differences distinguish the drawings of the two generations. The concluding chapter relates these stylistic variables to the differing social and personal contexts in which artists of the two generations worked; it also poses a conceptual model for underst and ing the stylistic changes as evidence of an evolving consciousness of self-as-artist among Baker Lake artists and speculates on the broader applicability of this model in the study of the history of art.