This thesis examines the conflicted relationships between the construction of a national culture
and identity located in landscape painting and the continuing presence of Native art and identity
in Canada in the 1920s. It contends that the first was predicated on the assumed disappearance of
the second. The first of five case studies examines and questions the validation of the Group of
Seven at the imperial centre: the British Empire Exhibitions held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925,
from which Native presence was excluded. The critical responses, collected and republished in
Canada, are analyzed to show the unspoken influences of British landscape traditions, the means
by which Group paintings were used to re-territorialize the nation, and to destabilize the myth of
an essential Canadian national consciousness. The first confrontation between Canadian native
and Native art occurred when a small group of Northwest Coast carvings was included within a
related exhibition in Paris in 1927. The French critical responses validated the Native pieces but
withheld recognition of the Group's works as national and modern. The reviews were collected
but suppressed. The third study examines the work of the American artist Langdon Kihn. He
was employed by the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways to work with the
folklorist/ethnologist Marius Barbeau in producing images of the Stoney in Alberta and Gitksan
in British Columbia. His ambiguous works supported claims to Native presence and cultural
continuity, which ran contrary to repressive government policies, but were critically disciplined
to ensure a message of discontinuity. The fourth investigates a program to restore the poles of
the Gitksan, while changing their meaning to one signifying cultural decrepitude. Gitksan
resistance testified to their agency, cultural continuity and identity. The fifth examines a program
fostered by Barbeau to turn the Gitksan and their poles into the subjects of Canadian painting as
"background" for the emerging nation's identity. This confrontation, which included Jackson,
Carr and others, foregrounded all the problems. The exhibition which resulted in 1927
unsuccessfully attempted to join Canadian native and Native art and effect closure on the
"narration of the nation".
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/12940 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Dawn, Leslie Allan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds