Layers of meaning in a Kwakiutl potlatch figure
Date
2003
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Using material culture methodology and Clifford Geertz’s technique of cultural analysis, the author analyzes the various meanings a Native American wooden sculpture has held during the course of its existence. Standing four feet two inches, the sculpture is a depiction of a man holding a shield to his chest. He wears a headdress and face paint, and an animal is painted on the shield. The sculpture was carved between 1885 and 1895 by a member of the Kwakiutl tribe, whose constituents inhabit the islands off the coast of present-day British Columbia. The sculpture was intended for use in a potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony and feast which celebrates a chiefs authority or other significant events, and it communicated a variety of ceremonial and symbolic meanings. Between 1894 and 1901, the sculpture was acquired by D. F. Tozier, a government agent who used his contact with Native Americans to buy artifacts and resell them to anthropologists and museums for profit. George Gustav Heye, founder of the Heye Museum (today renamed the National Museum of the American Indian), bought the potlatch figure as an ethnological example of Kwakiutl craft. Later seeking to refine the scope of his collection, Heye exchanged the figure with the German Surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen, then living in Mexico. Paalen admired its ‘primitive’ qualities and believed that it represented philosophical values espoused by the Surrealists. Paalen sold the potlatch figure when he returned to Europe, and the Taylor Museum, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center acquired the sculpture in 1951. During its time at the Taylor Museum images of the potlatch figure became widely published. When the Taylor Museum re-focused their collections, the potlatch figure was sold to Eugene Thaw, a dealer in Old Master prints and drawings. Thaw made it a central piece in a collection of Native American art that he donated to the Fenimore Museum (Cooperstown, New York.) The exhibit called the Native American artifacts “masterpieces.” and viewed them through Western aesthetic standards. Thus, in its differing contexts, the Kwakiutl potlatch figure has been understood as a ceremonial object, anthropological specimen, primitive expression, and artistic masterpiece.