Native North American

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Description: Experience
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00193
In his noteworthy theoretical essay “Experience,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that humans by nature cannot fully grasp life as lived. If this is so, how capable are we of expressing our experiences in works of art? Despite this formidable challenge, for the past thirty years, scholarship in American art has assumed that works of art are coded and has analyzed them accordingly, often with constructive results.

The fourth volume in the Terra Foundation Essays series, Experience considers the possibility of immediacy, or the idea that we can directly relate to the past by way of an artifact or work of art. Without discounting the matrix of codes involved in both the production and reception of art, contributors to Experience emphasize the sensibility of the interpreter; the techniques of art historical writing, including its affinity with fiction and its powers of description; the emotional charge—the punctum—that certain representations can deliver. These and other topics are examined through seven essays, addressing different periods in American art.
Author
Print publication date October 2017 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780932171634
EISBN 9780300256840
Illustrations 72
Print Status in print
Description: Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00064
Along the Ohio, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers, the archaeological remains of earthen pyramids, plazas, large communities, and works of art and artifacts testify to Native American civilizations that thrived there between 3000 B.C. and A.D. 1500. This fascinating book presents exciting new information on the art and cultures of these ancient peoples and features hundreds of photographs of important artworks, artifacts, and ritual objects excavated from Amerindian archaeological sites.

Drawing on excavation findings and extensive research, the contributors to the book document a succession of distinct ancient populations in the pre-Columbian world of the American Midwest and Southeast. A team of interdisciplinary scholars examines the connections between archaeological remains of different regions and the themes, forms, and rituals that continue in specific tribes of today. The book also includes the personal reflections of contemporary Native Americans who discuss their perspectives on the significance of the fascinating and beautiful prehistoric artifacts as well as their own cultural practices today.
Author
Print publication date October 2004 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300106015
EISBN 9780300225600
Illustrations 430
Print Status in print
Description: Humans
BOOKHumans
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00289
Humans are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of concepts and practices. Humans explores competing versions, constructs, and ideas of the human being that have figured prominently in the arts of the United States. These essays consider a range of artworks from the colonial period to the present, examining how they have reflected, shaped, and modeled ideas of the human in American culture and politics. The book addresses to what extent artworks have conferred more humanity on some human beings than others, how art has shaped ideas about the relationships between humans and other beings and things, and in what ways different artistic constructions of the human being evolved, clashed, and intermingled over the course of American history. Humans both tells the history of a concept foundational to US civilization and proposes new means for its urgently needed rethinking.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Print publication date December 2021 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780932171726
EISBN 9780300267594
Illustrations 50
Print Status in print
Description: Objects of Exchange: Social and Material Transformation on the Late...
Aaron Glass (Editor)
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00276
The late nineteenth century was a period of rapid colonization and dramatic change for the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast of America. Objects of Exchange approaches the material culture of the period as visual evidence of shifting intercultural relations. Drawing on the collection of the American Museum of Natural History—from decorated clothing to containers, ceremonial regalia to trade goods—this book reveals the artistic traces of dynamic indigenous activity whereby objects were altered, repurposed, and adapted to meet the challenges of the time. Rather than treating the period as a climax of “traditional” art and culture, the authors suggest that we view its objects as witnesses to the dawn of an indigenous modernity. This remarkable book includes an intimate family portrait of the renowned Haida artist Charles Edenshaw; a discussion of the use of silver in economic and ceremonial contexts; and an exploration of the ways in which Tlingit women adapted beadwork to crest display as well as the tourist trade.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Author
Aaron Glass (Editor)
Print publication date February 2011 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300174427
EISBN 9780300265989
Illustrations 152
Print Status out of print
Description: Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00273
As nations in the Americas gained independence in the early nineteenth century, a pictorial landscape tradition emerged. By 1840, landscape painting had become the primary medium for articulating conceptions of land and nation in the development of North and South American cultural identity. Picturing the Americas offers the first comprehensive treatment of this genre on both American continents, bringing into dialogue the landscape traditions of artists practicing between 1840 and 1940.

The book includes works by U.S. artists Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, and Georgia O’Keeffe; Canadian artists Joseph Légaré, Frances Anne Hopkins, and Lawren Harris; Mexico’s José María Velasco, Uruguay’s Joaquín Torres-García, and Brazil’s Tarsila do Amaral, among many others. Leading scholars offer a Pan-American perspective on these landscape traditions: essays consider the emergence of modernism, as well as how the development of landscape imagery reflects the intricately intertwined geographies and sociopolitical histories of the peoples, nations, regions, and diasporas of the two continents.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Author
Print publication date August 2015 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300211504
EISBN 9780300265835
Illustrations 236
Print Status in print
Description: Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00214
This important publication is the first from the Yale University Art Gallery dedicated to Indigenous North American art. Accompanying a student-curated exhibition, it marks a milestone in the collection, display, and interpretation of Native American art at Yale and seeks to expand the dialogue surrounding the University’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and their arts. The catalogue features an introduction by the curators that surveys the history of Indigenous art on campus and outlines the methodology used while researching and mounting the exhibition; a discussion of Yale’s Native American Cultural Center; and a preface by the Medicine Woman and Tribal Historian of the Mohegan Nation. Also included are images of nearly 100 works—basketry, beadwork, drawings, photography, pottery, textiles, and wood carving, from the early 1800s to the present day—drawn from the collections of the Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The objects are grouped into four sections, each introduced with a short essay, that center on the themes in the book’s title. Together, these texts and artworks seek to amplify Indigenous voices and experiences, charting a course for future collaborations.

*This eBook is exclusive to the A&AePortal*
Print publication date June 2019 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780894679827
EISBN 9780300259063
Illustrations 112
Print Status in print