A Wealth of Thought. Boas Franz
motifs we now call constricted eyelids, ovoids, ⋃ forms, and the like, pointing out that some of these are decorative fillers devoid of meaning, while others have deep significance for the artist and his audience (pp. 251–57).37 That some fully abstract designs have symbolic significance and others are purely decorative contradict neat and simplistic schemes on the relationships of imagery and meaning.
Boas also points out that although Northwest Coast art is primarily representational (with the exception of women’s art), geometric elements are not entirely absent, because short parallel lines, cross-hatchings, and circle-and-line patterns appear on some artworks. This brings him to several conclusions: that geometric design “may be recognized even in this highly developed symbolic art,” that some motifs have no meaning at all but are used for “purely ornamental purposes,” and that the exuberant and baroque symbolic style was developed only relatively recently, pushing out these geometric designs that were probably more widely used in the past (p. 279). With this, Boas begins his proposed reconstruction of Northwest Coast art history.
Although in much of Boas’s art history he does not venture too deeply into the broader sociological significance of art, he does touch upon the relationship between Northwest Coast art and social structure. Refining a point he made in 1896, Boas points to the overwhelming importance these Indians ascribe to display of rank, especially by means of artistic renderings of totemic emblems. This, he suggests, demonstrates a dialectical relationship between the development of the use of totemic emblems to symbolize social standing and the development of an exuberant artistic spirit in the region. Totemism provided the incentive for artistic development of a symbolic style which gradually subsumed the earlier, more geometric style by introducing greater numbers of animals and limiting the geometric designs. However, he also suggests that the importance of artistic representation in this culture doubtless stimulated and enhanced the social significance of heraldry (pp. 280–81).
As early as 1888 in “The Development of Culture in Northwest America,” and one year later in “Tattooing of the Haida,” Boas had attempted to reconstruct the history of the development of a regional style, such as the supposed Kwakiutl origin of the totem pole. Now in 1927 he is suggesting that the center of the Northwest Coast symbolic decorative style, which will be referred to here, following Holm’s terminology, as the formline style, originated in northern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. By comparing the art of the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and northern Northwest Coast Indians with that of the Coast Salish, Interior Salish, and the Eskimo, pointing out similarities and differences, Boas presented a historical reconstruction of Northwest Coast style, based on his theory that the geometric style is older and that the formline style developed in response to social factors. The people of Vancouver Island, he proposed, maintain the older geometric style in their trays, boxes, and baskets. Illustrating a series of Nootka clubs made of whalebone described in his 1908 essay, Boas pointed to the “fixed art style” characteristic of the more ancient Northwest Coast regional style also found among the Salish (1927: 283–86). During the nineteenth century, the Indians of northern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska invented a more complex formline style. As a result, among the Tsimshian, Haida, and Tlingit one finds far less use of geometrical ornamentation than among the Nootka and the Coast Salish, and far richer ornamentation with motifs such as the eye design, double curve, and slit design. All the tribes have vestiges of the antique style in the women’s arts of basketry and matting.
Between those northern Northwest Coast groups and the southern Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbian peoples are the Kwakiutl, who use a version of the formline style for heraldic purposes, but use geometric ornamentation for objects of everyday use. Boas asserts that the formline art was indeed a recent introduction to the Kwakiutl, for old informants claim that before 1860 the houses and their decorations resembled those of the Coast Salish (p. 289). Boas characterizes Kwakiutl art as having “distortions in painting [that] are, if anything, more daring than those of the Haida,” but little of the interlocking of animal images typical of the northern region (p. 288).
To complete his historical survey, Boas compares Northwest Coast art with the art of the neighboring peoples. Wood carving from the Columbia River area and northern California, although different in style, displays similarities in terms of woodworking techniques, while north of the Tlingit, among the Alaskan Eskimo, an abundance of masks suggests a Northwest Coast influence. But that influence is reciprocal, for the Tlingit may have adopted from the Eskimo the idea of attaching little animals to the features of the mask (p. 295). Then, drawing on his collaborative work with James Teit (1900b), Boas points out the dissimilarity between coastal art and that of the Interior Salish, which has much closer affinities with Plains Indian art.
After an interesting excursion into the topic of literature, music, and dance, Boas concludes Primitive Art with a summary of its major points.38 He reiterates his premise that art arises from both technical endeavors and from expressive needs, but actually does favor the former. Since certain elements—symmetry, rhythm, and emphasis on form—are practically universal, they can be assumed to be most ancient, most fundamental. But other than those antique foundations, it is simply not possible to assume any kind of universal causation of artistic development; the pattern of artistic expression, the type of geometric motifs, the treatment of the decorative field, and the degree of realism in any art style cannot be attributed to strict, unilinear processes. Moreover, even within the art of a single culture, uniform style is not always the rule. Those who excel in technical activities become the community’s artists, whether they are men or women; in those situations where both men and women produce different things, two distinct art styles can emerge, as is the case on the Northwest Coast. Once again, however, Boas points to the fertility of female activities as inspirations for art styles: “It is … more frequent that the style of the dominant industry may be imposed upon work made by other processes. Weaving in coarse material seemed to be a most fertile source of patterns that art imitated in paintings, carvings, and pottery” (p. 355).
Boas asserts that “the pattern of artistic expression that emerges from a long, cumulative process determined by a multiplicity of causes fashions the form of the art work” (p. 354), thus one cannot conclude anything on a grand and abstract scale. His detailed analysis of actual case studies of particular art styles, his focus on the creative process, and his privileging of history all support his rejection of unprovable theories. In Primitive Art, Boas systematically rejects such theories by demonstrating cases in which they do not apply, and proposes a variety of different explanations for the invention and dissemination of artistic images including both cultural conservatism and creativity. In his Northwest Coast chapter, Boas offers an alternative approach to the study of art, by first identifying the principles of representation and then suggesting a historical reconstruction of the art style, drawing on the art of neighboring peoples. This last point is worth stressing. Many twentieth-century scholars of Native art believed that without support from written documents, it was impossible to reconstruct a history without access to “permanent” artworks made of stone or metal. Since so much of primitive art is made of wood and natural materials that decompose over time, many art historians felt bound to an ahistoric analysis of nineteenth-century objects. By using Boas’s historical approach, art historians could include greater time depth in their studies.39
Characterizing Boas’s contributions to art historical scholarship is no easy task, as he premised his studies on the tremendous complexity of the artistic process that makes simple explanations impossible. In his efforts to avoid imposing predetermined unicausal factors in the creation of art styles while consciously purging Native art history of a racist bias, Boas produced a rich body of literature which, as the concluding chapter of this book will demonstrate, profoundly influenced much twentieth-century work on Native art.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF BOAS’S ART HISTORY
Boas was not a scholar who merely challenged a point of view with which he disagreed. Although his social activism is best known from the period after he left the American Museum and settled into the Anthropology Department at Columbia University, Boas seems early in his life to have had strong social sentiments. Thus one can argue that his treatment of primitive art, in addition to being an interesting analysis of that subject and an attack on what Boas felt to be a wrong-headed theory, was a challenge to a mode of thought which at the end