Indian Totems, 1938
Jack Shadbolt
Indian Totems, 1938
charcoal and ink on paper
125.5 x 98.0 cm
BG711

Like Emily Carr, who had documented and painted poles in Northern B.C. before the First World War, Jack Shadbolt's work contains many references to the First Nations art of the west coast. Both Carr and the young Shadbolt believed that modern art could never be authentic on the coast without attaching itself to First Nations traditional arts.

In the thirties, both artists would have considered First Nations traditional art to be part of the past. This was during the potlatch ban and before the native arts revival of the 1960s. Therefore, this is a picture of a ruin.

Shadbolt reads (or projects) some First Nations art as an expression of primal terror — an interpretation not supported today. Instead, we now see this as a projection of non-native anxiety around the issues of territory and ownership.

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