Celebrating Inuit Art

Lavishly illustrated with over a hundred colour reproductions, this new paperback edition of Celebrating Inuit Art is an impressive photographic tribute to an art form that is regularly featured in major art exhibitions worldwide. Born out of economic necessity, Inuit art has captured the imagination of art lovers since 1948, when it was first exhibited. Celebrating Inuit Art showcases sculpture from the period when Canadian Inuit abandoned their nomadic lifestyle to settle in small villages across the Arctic. During this tumultuous time, in a society threatened with acculturation, art played a critical social role, preserving and expressing the culture's rich oral history. The works of art in this book are organized by geographic area, to illustrate the strong regional styles of this unique art form. In a major and invaluable essay by the late James Houston, a timeless and passionate champion and respected authority on Inuit art, his experiences and observations of over 70 years of contact with the Inuit people are recounted. Beginning with his first Arctic trip in 1948, Houston collected the works that formed the first exhibit of Inuit artworks at the Canadian Guild of Crafts in Montreal. Maria von Finckenstein, former Curator of Inuit Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, retraces the experiences of the artists through interviews, showing how the creativity of the Inuit helped them during a period of painful adaptation to a new way of life.Clarkson, Adrienne is the author of 'Celebrating Inuit Art ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781552638033 and ISBN 1552638030.