ART AND ARTIFACTS

Art and Artifacts: translation

Artis a contested term, but the production of visual culture is consistent across shamanisms. Examples might include the impressive visual display ofSiberianshamans’costumesand maps ofspiritrealms onSaamishamans’drumscollected by early ethnographers for display in museum collections. Art in the West tends to be understood as paintings “in the frame” and sculptures “on the plinth” in galleries and museums. Although such a view is Eurocentric, perhaps more fitting to this view of art are the kaleidoscopic paintings of visionary experiences byAmazonianayahuascerosandvegetalistas.

Many indigenous peoples consider the objects and sometimes their decoration to beother-than-human personsin their own right.While never forgetting the constructed nature of artifacts (e.g.,drums, masks,medicine bundles, andsuckingtubes) with which they work, they perceive another more active and personal dimension to them. Greg Sarris’s writing about thePomobasket weaver anddoctorMabel McKay provides some excellent examples of ways in which “object-persons” may be treated respectfully. From prehistory, artistic traditions associated with shamans include a number ofrock arttraditions that have been linked to thevisionsand othertranceexperiences of shamans, fromcave artof theEuropean Paleolithicperiod andSouthern Africanrock art to the megalithic art ofNorthern Europe. In indigenous contexts, some of the most celebrated of shamanic art includes the brightly colored yarn paintings of theHuichol(Wixáritari) Indians in Mexico and the splitrepresentationperspectiveart of North America’sPacific Northwestcoast. Such indigenous shamanic art traditions have been appropriated into the Western dealer-critic system, with Huichol yarn paintings and Pacific Northwest wood carvings, for example, fetching high prices on the “primitive” art market.

A number of modern artists have associated themselves with shamanism or have been labeled shamans by others. The most famous example isJoseph Beuys(1921–1986), who depicted shamans in many of his works and madealtered states of consciousnessan integral part of some of hisperformancepieces. Less well known, though no less significant, are occultist and artistAustin Osman Spare(1887–1956) and contemporary artistMarcus Coates. Marc Chagall (1887–1985) and Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944) have also been labeled shamans, usually based on the influences of occultism, mysticism, and folklore on their work (as discussed in work by Michael Tucker and Mark Levy), but such sweeping interpretations tend to pay little or no attention to the diversity and contexts of shamanisms, preferring monolithic characterizations.

See alsoCalifornian Rock Art; Siberian and Central Asian Rock Art.