Bruce Nauman (born 1942) US, #24/200 Times List of Top Artists 1900-2012

Bruce Nauman is recognized as one of the most influential, innovative and provocative contemporary artists along with John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Yoko Ono. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. … ” Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art. A survey of his diverse output demonstrates the alternately political, prosaic, spiritual, and crass methods by which Nauman examines life in all its gory details, mapping the human arc between life and death.” The work of artists Greg Colson and Rachel Whiteread is influenced by Bruce Nauman.

Iconography: empty chair, hands, neon lights

Empty Chair: “The chair, a recurring Nauman motif for almost 30 years, is a surrogate for the human figure in many of his sculptures, and it serves that function in ‘Green Horses’, where it is also a self-portrait of sorts. Compared with the rare views of the artist on horseback in the video imagery, which we watch from different removes, the chair allows us viscerally to identify with Nauman’s process, to take up his place. He sits in such a chair near such video monitors, surveying the contents of his studio, or looking away from it all, just reading. Sitting still, as he does, allows us to assume his gaze, a regard that casually but deliberately moves around the space, searching and scanning fragments, relating parts to the whole. Nauman constantly confounds the security of classical one-point perspective, favouring the shifting, pivoting glances of the wall-mounted video surveillance camera.”

Neon Lights: The 1960s saw a high point in activity, with artists such as Flavin, Bruce Nauman, and James Turrell creating sculptures and environments out of diffuse light or radiant fluorescent and neon tubing. Examples of light art include works by Dan Flavin,[5] Olafur Eliasson,[6] James Turrell,[7] Waltraut Cooper, Aleksandra Stratimirovič, Austine Wood Comarow, Tim White-Sobieski and many others.

Hands:

““There was a picture in one of these art magazines we have in the house of a Goya drawing of hands that somebody had. A bunch of hands in odd positions is what they thought they had. Somebody else finally saw it and said, ‘Oh, signing.’ And so the drawing has become historically interesting because it was signing in whatever way Spanish was spoken at the time Goya lived. “Goya was deaf, or became deaf, and it was of some urgency that he learn to sign. So he made these drawings. And so – I don’t know if I can find this picture for you – some of them have these different positions. But when I looked at it, it was perfectly obvious what it was. It’s hard to believe somebody wouldn’t have thought of that until now.””

tags: self-reflexive, savvy, spiral, everyday life, speech, language-based, anagrams, installation, crass, spiritual, political, neon tubing, art history, presence of absence, performance art, art as process, body art, paired opposites, dichotomies, couplets, repetitions, Philip Glass, John Cage, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Greg Colson, Rachel Whiteread,

1941 Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1960-64 Bruce Nauman studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“It’s a “book of New York artists’ lofts, black and white photos” he says, which all the undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, had seen. Nauman, then making figurative and abstract painting and studying mathematics, physics and art, while also informally studying music and philosophy, remembers: “We all saw that and were impressed.” They compared such work spaces with those in Madison, the spare bedroom or the on-campus office, as the professional artists the students knew made their living more readily as teachers than from sales of artworks.”

1961 Dan Flavin made sketches for artwork using neon lights.

“In the summer of 1961, while working as a guard at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Flavin started to make sketches for sculptures that incorporated electric lights. Later that year, he translated his sketches into assemblages he called “icons,” which juxtaposed lights onto monochromatic canvases. By 1963, he removed the canvas altogether and began to work with his signature fluorescent tubes; and by 1968, he had developed his sculptures into room-size environments of light. That year, Flavin filled an entire gallery with ultraviolet light at Documenta 4 in Kassel (1968).”

“In November 1960, Caro caused a great deal of offense to older people by saying in a newspaper article that Moore’s achievement in sculpture was a matter of historical fact, but that (in so many words) the future lay with a new generation and a new kind of sculpture. This was thought to be very dreadful, and all the more so in that Caro had learned much from Moore and been received by him with all possible kindness. The truth is that only a very big man can block up the view, and only a brave and clear-sighted one can point out that fact and draw the right conclusions from it…it took Caro to say that Moore, though far from dead, had explored certain kinds of sculpture to a point beyond which no one else could carry them (John Russell, “Portrait: Anthony Caro,” Art in America 54, no. 5 (September-October 1966): 83).”

1963 James Rosenquist produced his installation entitled Capillary Action II (NGC). Media included oil, plastic, neon tubing, metal, and wood
266.7 x 193 x 177.8 cm maximum irregular.

1964 Bruce Nauman gave up painting to dedicate himself to sculpture, performance and cinema collaborations with William Allan and Robert Nelson.

1965-6 Bruce Nauman studied art under the tutelage of William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California, Davis.

1965 Bruce Nauman made ‘A Cast of the Space Under My Chair’. Throughout his career he uses the empty chair to represent his presence in absence in his works. The chair provides human scale in his work.

1965 “Nauman’s romance with light dates back to his years as a graduate student at UC Davis. For part of his thesis exhibition, in 1965, he performed a piece he called “Manipulating a Fluorescent Tube.” Excerpts from a videotaped restaging of the piece show Nauman sitting on the floor with his legs splayed, the bulb protruding from between them.” Nauman’s studio in San Francisco was a former grocery store with a neon beer sign remaining in the window that triggered his first neon works. The 1960s saw a high point in activity, with artists such as Flavin, Bruce Nauman, and James Turrell creating sculptures and environments out of diffuse light or radiant fluorescent and neon tubing.

1966? Bruce Nauman worked as an assistant to Wayne Thiebaud.

1966 Bruce Nauman cast a ‘Platform Made Up of the Space between two Rectilinear Boxes on the Floor’.

1968 Bruce Nauman met the singer and performance artist Meredith Monk.

1968 Bruce Nauman created an audio piece that “filled” an empty room with the sounds of his taped voice chanting “Get out of this room, get out of my mind”.

1968 Bruce Nauman signed with the dealer Leo Castelli.

1968-1969 Bruce Nauman received a surprise $5,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant. He used the money to finance a 9-month project based in the Southampton studio of Roy Lichtenstein and Paul Waldman. “This space was loaned to him with the proviso that he didn’t put any tape on or tacks in the walls. So he built his own freestanding walls in the centre of the room as props for the videos he made with the Portapak equipment loaned to him by Leo Castelli (also used by Richard Serra and Keith Sonnier, among others). The walls themselves then become the closely confined sensory environments known as Nauman’s “corridor” pieces.”

1960s and 1970s Bruce Nauman lived and worked in Los Angeles.

1966-1968 Upon graduation (MFA, 1966), Bruce Nauman taught at the San Francisco Art Institute.

1966 “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”

1967 Twenty-five year old Bruce Nauman produced his first and best-known neon piece entitled “The True Artist”. This spiraling neon sign has this slogan: “The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.” (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Like artists such as Dan Flavin, James Turrell, and Craig Kauffman, Nauman used neon lights to form figures and words.

1967 Twenty-five year old Bruce Nauman created his plaster sculpture entitled “Henry Moore bound to fail, back view” (1967–1970) in response to young frustrated sculptors of the 1960s trying to emerge from under the shadow of British sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) who was regarded in the early 1960s as one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century. While his cohort lashed out at Moore in public, Nauman created this sculpture in response to their criticisms. He made a plaster casting of himself wearing a suit jacket with his arms bound behind his back.” This is one of the early iterations of work that give physical expression to figures of speech “bound”, (straight jacket? used frequently at that time). In this case, the form itself becomes a kind of pun: the “back view” Nauman offers (based on a photograph of his own back) is the “face” of the work.” . In 2001, “Henry Moore bound to fail, back view” sold for $9 million at auction, one of the highest prices paid for Nauman’s work.

“[Henry Moore Bound to Fail] comes out two ways. It comes out “Henry Moore Bound to Fail,” and just “bound to fail,” which is more general. But there were several pieces that dealt with [the sculptor] Henry Moore about that time, and they had to do with the emergence of the new English sculptors, Anthony Caro and [William] Tucker and several other people. There was a lot written about them and they […] Some of them sort of bad-mouthed Henry Moore—that the way Moore made work was old—fashioned and oppressive and all the people were really held down by his importance. He kept other people from being able to do work that anyone would pay attention to. So he was being put down, shoved aside, and the idea I had at the time was that while it was probably true to a certain extent, they should really hang on to Henry Moore, because he really did some good work and they might need him again sometime (Lorraine Sciarra, Interview with Bruce Nauman (January 1972) in Janet Kraynak, ed., Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman’s Words (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003), pp. 159-160.).”

The original has been cast in iron. tags: embodiment, body art, references packaging: wrapping, framing, sculpture, modern, installation, conceptual art,

1968 Bruce Nauman produced a videotape entitled “Wall-Floor Positions” (Exhibited at Philadelphia Museum 2009).

1969 Nauman moved from Northern California to Pasadena.

1969 Untitled “Leave the Land Alone” (1969/2009) – premiered as a public skywriting project over Pasadena for the Armory Center for the Arts in September 2009, initiated by curator Andrew Berardini. This work connects with LAAIR as well as lambastes the Land Art movement.

1970 Bruce Nauman taught sculpture at the University of California at Irvine.

1970 Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies Grant Colorado.

1970 Bruce Nauman produced his language-based work in neon with the twinned phrases “None Sing Neon Sign.” The words appear casually handwritten, stacked one atop the other.

1970 Bruce Nauman produced his language-based work in neon entitled “Raw War” which consists of just the three capital letters in red, illuminated in reverse and then in their entirety to spell two words with a dark kinship. tags: anagram, language-based, neon,

1970 “Laair” A soft-cover artist’s book, featuring only 10 color illustrations [photographs] of the Los Angeles skyline. No text. “L.A. Air. [New York]: Multiples, 1970. Slim quarto, original wire-stitched coated white self-wrappers. First edition of this photographic satire of Los Angeles air quality, with ten full-page “images,” one of only 600 copies. Bruce Nauman’s tongue-in-cheek L.A. Air consists of ten “superbly colored skies (already polluted?)” (Les Musées d’art et d’histoire, Geneve). It is Nauman’s contribution to Multiples’ Artists and Photographs portfolio of 1970, limited to only 600 copies, with the artist’s signature printed on the rear wrapper.”

1971 “Nauman’s work in neon plays its reassuring vibrancy against the unease generated by its content. The two installations in the show are similarly seductive and destabilizing. “Green Light Corridor,” originally shown here in 1971, presents a narrow, free-standing hallway bathed in a lime glow. The passageway is passable, but not comfortably.”

1971 ““Helman Gallery Parallelogram” (1971) is also challenging to enter. Access is through a doorway set near the tight wedge formed by exterior walls enclosing the parallelogram space. A matching doorway is located at the opposite corner of the room. The central space is bare except for fluorescent lights that tint it green. The drama begins when you squeeze out of the room into one of the wedges, which suddenly appear soaked in violet. After absorbing the green light, when the eye moves to a neutral area it produces a retinal afterimage in the complementary color of violet. The illusion fades after a short while, leaving the mind to wonder what happened, what’s real, and to want the sensation back. The piece works like an optical fun house, a twisted Turrell. You can draw out the phenomenal performance only if you change positions. The piece can’t be perceived from a single spot or in a single way. Nauman’s work in light-based media is like that. It induces a fluid curiosity through its own refusal to be only one thing or another — tough or absurd, slight or profound, silly or sobering, comic or tragic.”

1972 Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized Bruce Nauman’s first retrospective.

1981-1982 Bruce Nauman produced his neon piece entitled “Violins violence silence” a play on words.

1983 “Human/Need/Desire”

1984 Bruce Nauman, “One Hundred Live and Die,” 1984. Neon tubing mounted on four metal monoliths. Collection of Fukake Publishing Co., Ltd., Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Kagawa, Japan Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York, © Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“One Hundred Live and Die is what many consider to be Nauman’s masterpiece. Sad and hopeful, One Hundred flickers through each possible flippant, mundane, and tragic way to live or die in a blaze of neon exuberance. Each phrase (“LAUNCH AND LIVE,” “FALL AND DIE,” “SPIT AND LIVE,” etc.) light the room with its orange, blue, white, or whatever color it may be. It paints the room and provides a surprisingly profound commentary on life, telling a story with each phrase, reiterating just how [f**] up life can be (which may elicit tears, laughter, or blank stares). In the end, One Hundred resonates with all one hundred phrases lit, blindingly beautiful and a little overwhelming. One Hundred Live and Die, like all Nauman work, play with neon and text, a physical space, and human emotion. They are absolutely beautiful and undoubtedly modern. Nauman is definitely an artist whose work you should do your damnedest to see: they are somber, they are fun, and they are inconic.”

“Other word pieces are more complicated and layered, choreographed dances of moral opposites, blinking warnings of racial prejudice. The most elaborate, “One Hundred Live and Die” (1984), marries declarative ease and an uncompromising toughness. Mounted on a black, free-standing wall are 100 phrases in vivid colored block letters, arrayed in four neat columns. The words in one column — “Eat and Live,” “Fear and Live,” “Pay and Live” and so on — are echoed in the next (“Eat and Die,” “Fear and Die,” “Pay and Die”). Nauman’s inventory of options sticks for the most part with verbs (sing, suck, scream, try, lie, kiss) but evolves into colors as well (“Yellow and Live”). Some of his choices form rhyming couplets (tell/smell) or paired opposites (come/go, rise/fall). They blink on singly and in patterns, and ultimately all are illuminated. The piece couldn’t be more clearly presented, but its meaning is neither fixed nor stable, so it has that spiral-like elusiveness. A verbal/visual chant, a recitation, a rant, it is dense with contradiction — a poem of existence constantly rewriting itself.”

c. 1985 Bruce Nauman primarily worked with sculpture and video. He developed disturbing psychological and physical themes incorporating images of animal and human body parts.

1986-1987 Good boy/Bad boy

1988 Vices and Virtues (1988) – Atop the Charles Lee Powell Structural Systems Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, San Diego as part of the Stuart Collection of public art: neon signs seven feet tall, alternating the seven vices and seven virtues: FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH, PRUDENCE/PRIDE, JUSTICE/AVARICE, TEMPERANCE/GLUTTONY, and FORTITUDE/ANGER.

1996 Bruce Nauman produced a video projection entitled “World Peace” which consists of five projectors or video players displaying four women and a man each speaking simultaneous monologues about world peace.

2009 Bruce Nauman, 67, representing the United States, won the Golden Lion award the best national participation at the Venice Biennale where 33 of his works were exhibited. Days” and “Giorni” formed the centerpiece of this mini-survey.

[H]is most talked-about work there was “Days.” Visitors walk through two rows of wafer-thin white speakers that played voices chanting the days of the week. At one space where the work was on view, the voices were in English; at the other, Italian.

““Days” and “Giorni,” two large, enveloping sound installations created by Mr. Nauman for the 2009 Venice Biennale. They are accidental choral works, reflective of Mr. Nauman’s interest in John Cage’s ideas about chance, it would seem, but also of the repeating musical structures of Philip Glass. Each consists of recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week and the equipment necessary to make them heard, either in English (“Days”) or Italian (“Giorni”). Both create corridors of sound and deliver epiphanies about time, space and humanity…Again, each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Phalanxes of levitating white squares emitting worlds of sound aren’t something you see and hear every day. Six stools scattered between the rows of speakers invite you to sit, listen and figure things out. It is quickly apparent that the voices are always slightly out of sync, and sometimes even saying different days, so that the echoing segues into contrapuntal Ping-Pong. But that is only the beginning. “Days” has a dizzying hum-of-the-universe buzz at first. It’s almost musical. Someone in the crowd seems to be singing the days rather than reciting them. As you move among the rows, you make out various female and male voices speaking at slightly different speeds, and sense different ages and personalities. The fastest speaker is a young boy in the middle, perhaps the source of the singing sound. At one end, a male voice has a gravelly Kirk Douglas roughness, as if the piece were a kind of life cycle. The sound is incessant, but always changing. The days are recited in units separated by pauses — all seven days, a smattering of days, or just one — as if they were measuring time passing at different speeds. Standing between a pair of speakers with the same voice bombarding each ear is like hearing someone who is “of two minds.” The voices dwindle to one pair reciting single days, but after this they all join in again, immersing the gallery and everyone in it in sound that seeps into adjoining rooms. “Days” never stops and doesn’t repeat: the recordings are different lengths and operate independently. But “Giorni” is a programmed loop of about 14 minutes, followed by a substantial pause. It is much more porous, as much about silence as about sound. The rich Italian voices are not so individual, perhaps because there is no child’s voice, but each gets more air time. At certain points the voices thin out. Several speakers on one side of the gallery fall silent as their partners keep going, then they reverse, and finally the group dwindles to a single voice, after which comes the pause, and the gallery rings with silence. Sound fills space in a much more precarious, unsettling manner. Mr. Nauman is a realist working directly from life, isolating one readymade, obvious aspect of it at a time, and retooling it into something both grand and mundane that forms a strange, disorienting world unto itself. The Philadelphia Museum owns Mr. Nauman’s earliest, best-known neon piece, which now hangs in a gallery near “Days.” It is a lighted spiral that says, “The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.” The words are typical deadpan Nauman, but revealing, as in laying bare, is what he does. And there is always something like the spiral that will get you every time.”

2009 Nauman is the first Art21 artist to appear on the Times list of the top 200 artists from the 20th century through today. He comes in at #24.

2010 Bruce Nauman porduced a video projection entitled “For Beginners”

“Bruce Nauman’s latest video projection, “For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers),” which stacks two immense images of his upraised hands on a double-height wall, makes it feel primal and dour, like an Egyptian temple. In the images his thumbs and fingers open and close in various combinations following verbal instructions that he recorded separately. The shifting positions of the fingers in reaction to the speech suggest some kind of coordination exercise or intelligence test, as well as a jumbled sign language (or, at this scale, semaphore) …Mr. Nauman, body artist par excellence, has once more made something out of almost nothing, and has again revealed a kind of power struggle between words and actions, the mental and the corporeal. In the past he has made sculptures from casts of his hands in various positions. Here they become his performers. Who needs angry clowns when you’ve got your own hands to boss around, enhanced by looming scale?.”

‘For Beginners’ is for children learning to play the piano but of course it is also a way of getting back to the basics about art, the perfect conceit for an artist frequently referred to as complex.” The towering video depicts Mr. Nauman’s hands enacting all the possible combinations of the four fingers and thumb — 31 positions in all — accompanied by his verbal enumeration of each finger combination. Inspired by piano pieces for children, commonly labeled “for beginners,” the work employs Mr. Nauman’s trademark use of repetition as a means of emphasis. “As I contemplated it, it was such a simple image, yet like all his work it is about the bigger subject of art and creativity,” Mr. Govan.

2011 Vogel, Carol. 2011-07-07. “2 Continents, 1 Work and 31 Hand Positions.” New York Times.

“Competition to acquire “For Beginners (all the combinations of the thumb and fingers),” Bruce Nauman’s latest video and sound work, was fierce from the moment it went on view at the Sperone Westwater Gallery on the Bowery last fall. Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, wanted the work because he said it “sums up the history of art.” Only trouble: François Pinault, a big collector of Mr. Nauman’s work, wanted it too. Mr. Pinault, the luxury-goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, is constantly on the prowl for great new art to put in his two spaces in Venice, the Punta della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi.”

1979-2012 Bruce Nauman lives and works in Galisteo, New Mexico with his wife, painter, Susan Rothenberg.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/n/bruce_nauman/index.html

“Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1941, and studied art under the tutelage of William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. He worked as an assistant to Wayne Thiebaud, and exhibited with Leo Castelli in the 1960s. He currently lives and works in New Mexico with his wife, Susan Rothenberg. He has exhibited at multiple Whitney Biennials, and represented the United States in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. His work has been exhibited worldwide.” http://artobserved.com/2010/12/dont-miss-bruce-nauman-for-childrenfor-beginners-at-sperone-westwater-through-december-18th-2010/#more-39584

Noruz Films: Plastic Bag (2009) existential crisis narrated by Herzog

When I worked at the National Gallery of Canada as contract art educator in the 1990s I remember viewing an art clip in which the videographer chased a plastic bag in a mundane urban setting as it was picked up by the breeze and eventually carried out over the waters. The sound track consisted of transient noises including the videographer’s breathing and footsteps which increased in intensity when the breeze picked up.

This Noruz film directed by Ramin Bahrani entitled Plastic Bag (2009) expands on this concept into a 20 minute saga narrated by Werner Herzog who gives a dramatic rendering of the journey from its creation, discovery of its purpose, the meaning of its existence, finding love and freedom, then eternal entrapment in the plastic vortex with 100 million plastic objects in the Pacific Ocean.

Blue Gold, Calgary

This spot on the Bow River is familiar to Parkdale residents and to those who regularly bike, jog or walk the Bow River pathway. The CP train runs along the edge of the escarpment where the two bare poplar trees stand. This painting was technically challenging. I wanted to capture the intensity of sunlight through autumn clouds and reflected in the water. I wanted the Escherian Three Worlds effect in the pebbles and rocks seen on the dry shore, in shallow water, underwater and interrupting light reflections on the surface of the water. The red branches of the Arctic dwarf willow were important to me not just aesthetically but also for their essential ecological role in the protection of the shoreline. Poplar and aspen trees are ubiquitous on the Calgary landscape. Fallen poplar leaves lie on the shore and in the water. The photograph of the original painting was taken by VERDI Photography.

Maureen Flynn-Burhoe, Blue Gold, Calgary, Acrylic on Canvas, 24" x 36",

A Golden Moment

Federation of Canadian Artists Juried Exhibition Human Figure:

Federation of Canadian Artists Gallery
1241 Cartwright Street, Vancouver, BC Canada V6H 4B7 Map
February 8 – 20, 2011
Gallery is located on the east side of Granville Island, across from the Granville Island Hotel and Performance Works, 1241 Cartwright Street.
Regular Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10:00am – 4:00pm

Golden Moment

Maureen Flynn-Burhoe
2010
Acrylic on canvas
22" x 24"

Some Thoughts on Inuit Art 2002

Geographic situation of inquiry into the Inuit art knowledge community

The geographic space encompassed by this stage in my research project stretches north and south to include northern hinterlands and southern heartlands. The producers of Inuit art reside mainly in hamlets that sparsely dot the landscapes of Labrador, Nunavik, Nunavut and the Western Arctic. There are some organizations, institutions and activities in the North that produce and disseminate narratives that contribute to the Inuit art knowledge community. In the North, oral presentations, museum exhibitions, Nunavut Arctic College, commercial dealers produce information, documentation that informs that Inuit art knowledge community. Some researchers communicate with Inuit artists by telephone, email and through other distance communications. Others travel to northern hamlets to gather ‘data’ for theses, dissertations, reports and programs. However, most published material is produced, disseminated and consumed by and for outsiders in the south.

Dismantling the exotic myth of the North: The north as a relevant concept. Iqaluit is not really as isolated, as cold, as small as one might expect!

Iqaluit is only a three hour flight from Ottawa on a comfortable, First Air jet, with excellent service! As we travel north the aerial view reveals a rumpled snow blanket that covered everything. It was no longer white, but soft pinks and blues with touches of yellow where the late afternoon sun caught the snow drifts and snow‑covered hills. Hudson Strait was a flat, frozen white mass. Cliffs along the shore cast long, blue shadows like fingers stretching towards Baffin Island. Farther out over the straight I could see patches of openings in the ice where clear water was visible. As we approached Iqaluit, the landscape changed. Coastal winds from the eastern shore seemed to scrape the soft surface snow away revealing hard icy or rocky surfaces below. Nearer the town, antennas and satellite dishes, these contemporary inukshualuk, dotted the hills surrounding the airfield. As we landed I couldn’t tell where the warehouses, hangars and airport buildings ended and Iqaluit itself began. The architecture of many of the buildings was functional, not aesthetic,  more like army barracks that it used to host, than a capital city.

The descent into Iqaluit reveals a tiny capital spread out along four miles of Koosejee Inlet.  In spite of its relatively small population of seven thousand, the boom in population growth propelled by its status as Canada’s newest capital city, has provoked a housing crisis unparalleled in Canada. Today curved lines of houses, supported  on stilt‑like piles buried in the permafrost, trace irregular paths up the hills that surround the Inlet. Many homes and apartments, designed as single family dwellings, have been informally transformed to accommodate family members, friends and paying boarders. Even professionals open extra rooms to boarders who share scant housing.

The homes perched at the top of these hills enjoy a panoramic view of the islands in the Inlet and the Peninsula across the water.  These sections of town called Tundra Valley and the Road to Nowhere provide the best views of the surrounding area and are not surprisingly the area Iqaluitmiut identify as upper class.  Except in these newer areas, exclusive use of private property seems to be an ambiguous concept. In the areas inhabited by the lower classes, such as the Beaches, informal trails tightly encircle almost every home, providing bikes, snowmobiles and walkers with limitless shortcuts and making landscape and fence‑building a delicate negotiation.

Frobisher Bay: a colonialist not‑so‑distant past

Frobisher Bay was a highly segregated community. Apex to the east of town was the Inuit residential area. Only three decades ago young Inuit children walked the three miles to school from their homes in Apex to the elementary school in Iqaluit even in temperatures of ‑40 degrees! A contemporary northern myth affirms that the colonialism in the north was relatively benign. In reality Inuit have been cast into the minority status in Nunavut. In every social institution, Inuit values have been replaced by the dominant western value‑system.  This does not mean that the majority of Inuit have adopted these values. However, the modus operandi of northern institutions reflect the dominant values of the southern market economy. Education in the North does not respond to the real needs of the Inuit in the North. This leads to a cognitive and learning gap with widespread consequences. There is an assumption that there is only one way of perceiving progress and growth. It is more reflection of a corporate vision than an Inuit vision.

Iqaluit, Nunavut:

It is a desert region surrounded by water. Strong sunlight has become a concern. It is narrated as an exotic, isolated, pristine, northern frontier. The Road to Nowhere is officially marked on maps of Iqaluit and included on taxi tours of this northern capital. The self-mocking de-locational indicator  ‘nowhere’ is turned on its head becoming the Road to Everywhere, when viewed from the standpoint of a circumpolar map.  In reality Iqaluit is a hub of northern activities with a nonstop flow of expert outsiders, government workers, consultants, travelers, tourists and people on transit to other northern communities.

Many hamlets are still ninety percent Inuit. However, both Iqaluit and Cambridge Bay, are composed of 30% non‑Inuit. Iqaluit, Nunavut,  is a complex community governed by three layers of government. Indigenous peoples worldwide are watching Nunavut and the unfolding of this experiment in indigenous governance and sovereignty.  At the same time, deeply entrenched government bureaucracies challenge more equitable social change with paralyzing, counter productive responses.

There is an epidermic respect paid to the role of IQ in the Nunavut government. But the unwritten whispers in the hallways and over coffee call for a return of the ‘corporate dinosaurs,’ with quick, decisive action and a ‘firmer grip on reality.’ They question if there is a specific way of knowing that is IQ. They confide in each other the belief that the knowledge of the Inuit elders is outdated. The work of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, in educating and integrating IQ into everyday government operations, is a challenging, uphill struggle.  Their job is not only to convince the outside world of the validity of IQ in the contemporary northern landscape. They must also quell the murmurs that abound within the walls of Nunavut government offices. These myths that IQ is outdated, are reinforced by an overwhelming group think that maintains the status quo.

Grounding through sound: A Polyglot Community

In Iqaluit everyday life unfolds in a sound‑scape of three accent‑textured languages, Inuktitut, English and French.  Social classes span language and cultural lines. There are distinct social classes evident within the Inuit community.

Hearing diversity

Accents in three languages reveal newcomers geographic origins. Among Inuit, the varying levels of mastery of Inuktitut and English, flavoured with distinct accents in Inuktitut from smaller hamlets, separate a small community into even smaller nodes. English is lightened by the Inuit, Newfoundland, Maritime, Irish and Finnish accents. French is heard everywhere, in coffee shops, restaurants and stores, and frequently, in taxis, as most cab drivers are recruited in Quebec. It is ironic that Environment Canada’s weather channel which provides blizzard warnings was recently made available in French as well as English. It is not yet available in Inuktitut.

On alienation and belonging in a complex society

Iqaluit is not a homogenous community. Inuit now residing in Iqaluit come from communities across the north. These ‘outsiders’ may feel a sense of alienation and ‘otherness’ that plays out in schoolyard bullying, adult shunning, gossip and feelings of homesickness. Acquiring the status of ‘belonging’ in Iqaluit can be a lengthy process. One can remain there as a ‘tourist’ and outsider for several years before being recognized as a community member, insider or northerner.

The politics of naming

There are few street names. Every building is identified by a number that is not necessarily in numerical order. Taxi drivers learn them all. For some Iqaluit residents the concept of street names is a southern importation that is just another irritating example of the politics of naming.

The Inuit art market: producers, Co‑ops, dealers, consumers

The origin of northern co‑ops is linked to the Inuit art boom of the 1960′s. In a number of northern communities, co‑op’s continue to purchase carvings and drawings from local artists.

The changing of the guard

Terry Ryan remained as Co‑op manager in Cape Dorset for over three decades. His continuous presence and his quiet passion for Inuit art, provided a partnership with Inuit artists that helped the West Baffin Print Shop and Co‑op to flourish.

Arctic Co‑operatives: Groceries, snow machines, fuel, furniture

Contemporary Co‑Op managers are more likely to be interested in the more lucrative and less sensitive and demanding markets in commodities such as fuel, groceries, furnishings, etc. and less committed to Inuit art as an integral part of the Co‑op organization. Inuit artists, like any other artist, craftsmen or small businessmen, may not always be easy to work with!

Art‑while‑you‑wait, tourists and cruise ships

In some cases dealers, local customers and tourist‑collectors, request very specific subjects. Tourists off the cruise ships who arrive for very brief visits in small hamlets, have very specific ideas of what they want to purchase. They will make specific requests, for example for Sedna carvings or polar bears. In the case of dealers they may also request specific forms and poses for example in the shape of the wings of a bird or the angle of the neck of a bird.

Art dealers, commercial galleries and stables of artists

Art dealers and commercial galleries operate by maintaining close working relationships with specific artists. In the best arrangements, both dealers and artists benefit. The price of a work of art is split with about 60% going to the dealer and 40% to the artist. The high cost of maintaining expensive commercial gallery spaces, art show openings, invitations, on‑going press coverage, advertisements, etc. and the risk that the artist’s work might not sell, is compensated in the high commission the dealer receives.  In some cases, commercial galleries produce exhibition catalogues and information about the artist’s life, career and individual works of art. The prestige of the artist, and therefore the value of her/his work, is increased by this association with reliable, recognized professional art dealers. It provides the artist with a sense of security and a focus for production. Galleries demand a certain number of works from the artists in their stables.

Shopping centre‑style commercial art galleries

Galleries and dealers vary. There are the shopping centre‑style commercial galleries whose focus is purely commercial. These galleries insist on quantity and a certain predictable uniformity in the artist’s production. Mechanically produced reproductions are sold at prices similar to limited edition prints.

Fine Art galleries

Fine Art galleries attempt to varying degrees to diffuse works of art that contribute to some extent to the fresh and original. They are more comfortable with a continuity in style that evolves and changes rather than abruptly taking on completely new paths. The focus is still on sales. In some of these galleries, the framing is arranged by the gallery but the artists pay for the frames of unsold works. Frames for a medium‑sized art work can be as much as $500.

Art dealers and stables of Inuit artists

Some art dealers live and work from a northern base. Much like southern galleries, they maintain a stable of artists whose work they regularly purchase. They provide stone and tools. The size and hardness of the stone impacts on the size and nature of the carving.

The artists who are part of a stable, may feel that the price they are receiving is unacceptably low. In one case L. E. reported selling a piece for $200 that was sold almost immediately to a European collector for $700. They prefer to sell directly.

Inuit art on the menu and on the run

To the frustration of the professional art dealers and the delight of Inuit artists, the parallel market of direct sales is quite lucrative. Inuit artists are among the only Canadian artists who can produce and sell work on the same day. Artists sell their work from table to table in hotel restaurants, in lobbies of public buildings, at workplaces and/or door‑to‑door in Iqaluit, often through the intermediary of relatives and friends. These purchases which routinely sell for hundreds of dollars, are still a fraction of the cost of one of these works in a southern gallery.

Triage: Fine Art, gift or souvenir?

In the co‑op’s there is a system of subjective but informed triage. Certain works are sent to the more prestigious galleries, such as Dorset Fine Arts and southern auctions organized by Arctic Producers. There public and commercial galleries as well as individual collectors purchase the most expensive and the most valued works by the most highly recognized artists. Seasoned collectors also chose reliable galleries such as the Marion Scott in Vancouver, when making their purchases of Inuit art.  Even before carvings leave the North, certain works have been chosen for the larger market aimed at the tourist‑collector and often destined for gifts and souvenir shops. Prices for the carvings vary from $50 to $200. Artists, whose sustained production, has captured the attention of collectors, produce work that is sold in gallery settings for over $1000. Wall‑hangings average $800 for a large‑sized tapestry. Inuit prints routinely sell for $250 ‑ $500.

Myths and delusions: Inuit artists and their dealers

On the part of both management and artist, there seems to be little understanding of the larger workings of the world of art in which a sculpture or print can become an investment with the potential of increased value through time.

Art collectors: Motivations and standards for acquisition: the passionate collector, art as sound investment, the museum piece, the ideal gift for your Japanese business partner

Inuit art collectors: Inuit art is appreciated at home, in Nunavut.

Original Inuit art works now enhance the living spaces of private homes and public places in Iqaluit. Private collectors hold pieces that would be the envy of curators of public collections. The Nunavut Legislative Building takes pride in the tasteful exhibition and rotation of fine examples of contemporary Inuit art. Hotels and restaurants highlight prints, wall‑hangings and sculptures. The streets of Iqaluit are filled with walking art. Outer clothing, custom‑made by skilled textile artists in Iqaluit, reflects a heightened sense of design, innovation and creativity. Finely crafted silver, ivory, baleen and antler miniature works of art in the form of jewelry are sold in stores, on the streets, worn and admired.

Inuit art easier to purchase on the street than in a gallery in Iqaluit

Unfortunately, in Iqaluit there is no one accessible place where quality Inuit art can be purchased. There are two commercial galleries where the lack of interest of the staff perfectly mirrors the lack‑lustre collection of works for sale. There is one dealer who will show works by appointment. Nunavut Arctic College Arts and Crafts have begun a monthly sale which seems to be quite successful. Artists bring their own work to sell.

The consumers of Inuit art objects are part of a large international community with galleries in France, Germany, Belgium, the United States and Canada. There are a number of small but respected centres of teaching, learning and research with a focus on Inuit art.

The passionate collector

The passionate art collector who purchases works of art based on a resonance between the work and himself/herself is a gift to the art community. Public collections have been enhanced by inheritance of these collections intact.

The collector as investor

Collectors interested in purchasing a work that is not only pleasing to them, but potentially a sound art investment, depend on information about the market, the artist, the artist’s oeuvres gleaned from art dealers, exhibitions, art books and travel.

The dream of a lucrative investment

The highest purchase price for an Inuit print was over $50, 000.  The 1967 print Enchanted Owl by Kenojuak, heralded an era described by some as the golden age of Inuit art. Kenojuak’s prolific and unbroken career as a gifted artist spans three decades and has been well‑documented in film as well as in prized art books. Collectors yearn for the collectible that may one day soar in value. An artist’s death may be greeted with pleasure by dealers  and collectors whose collections increase in value as the rarity of the objects increased.

Inuit artists are aware of the discrepancy between the price received at the time of the initial sale and the price of certain works of art through appreciation.

Artists are dismayed that the work sold in the early years for a pittance is worth more than they would make in a year. There is a sense of mistrust between artist and dealer. The dealer may feel artists are not sufficiently appreciative of the art market and the value of ongoing promotion in which they are constantly involved. The artist feels he/she is being underpaid for their work. The subject matter of Inuit art work reflects an intense symbiotic relationship to the northern ecosystem. Artists take pleasure in discussing the tools with which they work, the choice of stones, the organization of their studios (if they are fortunate enough to have them), details of the geographic location and seasonal attributes, which inspired a particular work. But the actual working conditions under which the Inuit artist works, reflects a market mentality. They are also willing to discuss these conditions which embitter some artists and lead to mistrust of the Inuit art system.

Acquisition policies for public collections

Public museums and galleries, such as the National Gallery of Canada, have stringent policies for acquisitions. Collections are built around themes such as Early Canadian art, First Nations art, Modern Canadian art and Inuit art. Within each of these categories curators attempt to acquire works that reveal pivotal aspects of the theme around which the collection has been built. Similarly to academic work, the question is asked, “What has this artist accomplished and/or does this work represent that is new, original, to the field, that is new knowledge?” Within these categories specific artists are selected for a more in‑depth representation.

Canada’s professional visual artists: managing the contemporary career

Artists, whose works are finally collected by the National Gallery, have become part of the larger conversation about art, by actively producing and exhibiting in provincial, national and international venues. Their work is inserted into contemporary discourse in academia, in art reviews, in art journals. They have exhibited in juried exhibitions.

The role of documentation in the career of the contemporary visual artist

Usually contemporary artists substantiate their claim to professional artist status through a thorough documentation of their work. Applications for grants and submissions for exhibitions and competitions require text‑based and visual documentation. Slides of works are produced and stored. Press books are maintained. The artist’s curriculum vitae is kept up to date. Individual curators research the artist’s biography, including exhibition career, publications. The concern is not with the marketability of the work of art as much as the contribution to the ‘knowledge’ community in which the artist is working. Is the artist contributing to the production of new knowledge about art by providing a fresh idea or object that stimulates a fresh, innovative, original way of thinking, a new way of seeing, perceiving, reading and/or relating to his/her environment?

The profile of professional contemporary visual artists

Numerous artists graduate from art schools without a motivation to enter the commercial art market. The goal is to produce original works of art that contribute to a larger, more enduring conversation about art, a discourse that is tied intricately to theory, literature, philosophy… In reputable art schools, students study theory as much as techniques. Aspiring artists are challenged to think as artists not merely to produce works that look like art. These artists subsist by teaching art, working at a job that is not‑related to the arts, maintaining a studio production, applying for exhibition and project grants, and working as part of artists’ co‑operatives and/or alternative galleries. Visual artists are among the lowest wage earners in the country.

Why produce art?

It is astounding to witness the results of the Arctic Youth Arts Initiative, an ambitious project to bring painting into the lives of Inuit. Beth McKenty has been going into local schools and community centres in Iqaluit and Clyde River with good quality paints and paper in minute quantities. Using postcard size papers she encourages children, adults and elders to paint what they feel. Invariably the results are a visual feast. These artists can describe, using kitchen‑table poetry, complex feelings and imaginary worlds they inhabit or that inhabit them. They are no different from any art activity undertaken by any group where barriers to creativity have not yet been erected. The painting becomes addictive with groups requesting again and again for a repeat of the activity.

Art in schools in Iqaluit

Yet in Iqaluit, except for this volunteer initiative,  art is not actively encouraged in grade schools or high school. Drum dancing is being taught in one fortunate school where a well‑respected Inuit, knowledgeable in traditional ways, actively seeks to incorporate Inuit culture into the curriculum.

The profile of contemporary Inuit artists

While there are exceptions, many Inuit artists seem to be uni‑lingual Inuktitut speakers. This makes it more challenging for researchers who wish to interview the artists. The activity of carving is not considered as a career but as a way of making money. There is virtually no difference between the production of skilled craftswomen who design and sew sealskin kamiks, mittens, hats and jackets. The cost of living in Iqaluit is artificially high.  One of the local artists who was brought up by two very well‑known Cape Dorset artists, lived at the homeless shelter next door to where I was living. Everyday he worked outside in temperatures that ranged from ‑30 to 0 degrees. He sat on a piece of plywood and worked non‑stop for hours using stone provided by his art dealer, David. I could hear the buzz of power tools, and see him carving, sanding and polishing. I bought a couple of pieces that I later realized were not that good. I had the impression that his skill far outweighed the effort he made in these pieces. I looked up his name on the Internet. He was there with photos of his art work and a description of an exhibition in France!

The boom, government salaries and inflated prices

Federal and Nunavut public servants earn salaries two and three times what they could anticipate in southern urban centres. These employees also enjoy extended vacations in the south with in some cases, several round trips tickets a year. They are able to purchase the more expensive items while in the south and further cut the cost of living in the north. Federal and Nunavut governments provide housing for their employees and pay inflated prices for rents. For those who do not qualify for housing, the cost of rental is about twice the cost of a major urban centre. A house rents for $2500 a month, a room in a house for $500‑$1,000. The high costs are reflected in every purchase from clothing to food. Yet a single person on Social Assistance in the north collects less than $400 a month.

L’art, pourquoi faire?

Creating works of art for personal fulfillment, as a means of authentic expression, to enhance understanding of contemporary theories, to

Narrating Inuit art: Who is the intended audience?