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Title: First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art by Bruce Bernstein, Gerald McMaster, Donald Kuspit, Margaret Dubin ISBN: 0-295-98403-1 Publisher: National Museum of the American Indian Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)
Rating: 3
Summary: If you have "Native Paths" already, you don't need this one!
Comment: The 3 stars are for the superb photography, the impeccable book design, and the exquisite material in the Diker Collection.
Otherwise, rather meaningless essays that may tickle the ears of some gallery-hopping audience, but they hardly connect with the objects in the collection. If writers have to trouble philosophers such as Hegel or artists such as Kandinsky in footnotes to make their choice of words understood, they probably don't know what they really talk about and hope that no reader will see through the "emperor's new clothes."
The curators/writers try very, very hard to lift the objects from the "primitive" to the highest levels of "Art writ large" which is a perfectly legitimate goal. But then, a buyer and reader should expect a better and more carefully done documentation, and not one that is full of errors and that lacks almost all important information. Where captions seem too poor and too meagre, they are blown up with meaningless ballyhoo and arty bla-bla.
Dimensions often are given incorrectly which may be a minor aspect; but it DOES make a difference if a blanket strip is 3 millimeters (0.3 cm) thick or 3 centimeters as given in the book! Another example of careless documentation: Catalogue number 22 on page 78 features a magnificient blanket strip perhaps made by a Nez Perce or Cayuse woman. The yellow rosettes employ the rare technique of horsehair coils wrapped with colored porcupine quills, sewn down to a hide foundation with each wrap of the quills! This important horsehair is not mentioned at all which makes me think that the writer of the captions had no idea of what she was writing about! From the rosettes' centers buckskin thongs hang down, carrying little brass hawk bells. Probably "brass" was too mundane for the writer so she pepped it up to "copper alloy" -- is that the sort of information that should help broaden the viewer's/reader's understanding of American Indian art? No, it does not add one iota more of information than "brass" would do, but this ethnocentric gallery and museum chic arrogance helps to deceive the buyer of this book.
If you have "Native Paths", the first catalogue that was published about the Diker Collection in 1998 and has a lot of the same photographs, you won't need this book. If you don't have, buy "First American Art" and enjoy the beautiful objects. But you better turn off your inner ears and let not spoil your visual feast by arty and meaningless gobbledygook!
And let's not forget: the shirts and the moccasins and the bags and the baskets did serve some utiliarian or ceremonial function when they were still owned by their makers -- the Nez Perce boy shirt with the flamboyantly beaded strips and rich fringes, hanging in the stark whiteness of a Bauhaus style living room, can never be pure, functionless art, as a Mark Rothko painting or Calder mobile is. I had a chance to see that boy's shirt in such a setting and it struck me more than any Rothko would!
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Title: Art of the Osage by Garrick Bailey, Daniel C. Swan, John W. Nunley, E. Sean Standingbear ISBN: 0295983876 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Small Spirits: Native American Dolls from the National Museum of the American Indian by Mary Jane Lenz, Clara Sue Kidwell ISBN: 0295983639 Publisher: National Museum of the American Indian Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art by Ralph T. Coe, Eugene Victor Thaaw, J. C. H. King, Judith Ostrowitz ISBN: 0300101872 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
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Title: Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit by Sharon Busby, Ron Reeder ISBN: 0295983175 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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Title: Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark's Indian Collection by Castle McLaughlin, Mike Cross, Hillel S. Burger ISBN: 0295983612 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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