Land of the Setting Sun. Indian America in contemporary art

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Long ago, there were no asphalt roads, no cities with glass skyscrapers, no gas stations and supermarkets on the endless prairies of America. There was only sun and earth, grass and animals, sky and people. And these people were Indians. Their old wigwams have long been trampled to ashes, and only a handful of the natives of America remain; so why do they still live in culture and art? Let's try to solve the riddle in this review.

Totems and shamans

Indian America is a world steeped in magic from head to toe. The spirits of strong animals and wise ancestors merged into one whole - the worship of a generic animal, a totem. The wolf-men, the deer-men and the wolverine-men met astonished Europeans in the forests of wild North America.

But the mystical connection with the spirits of animals and forefathers cannot be maintained without a Mediator - a shaman. His power is enormous, and is second only to the power of the leader - unless he combines both of these roles. The shaman makes rain and scatters clouds, he makes sacrifices and protects from enemies, he sings and conjures peace.

Shamanism and totemism, long forgotten by Europeans, shocked white people: it was like a return to the deep childhood of humanity, almost obliterated in the memory. At first, the newcomers from Europe scoffed at the "savages"; but centuries later they recognized themselves in the Indians thousands of years ago, and the laughter gave way to awe at the ancient mysteries.

The mystical culture of America is still alive today. It was she who gave the world the great shaman Carlos Castaneda - and at the same time cocaine and hallucinogens. In the visual arts, Indian America is imbued with witchcraft; translucent shadows and animals with human eyes, silent formidable shamans and dilapidated totems - these are the favorite images of art on the Indian theme.

Someone else's eyes

The art of any great civilization is especially unlike other traditions. In America, there were several great Indian civilizations - and all of them were surprisingly different from everything known and familiar in Eurasia and Africa.

Wonderful and strange Indian style did not interest the gold-hungry conquistadors; when they were a thing of the past, people of art looked with curiosity at the paintings and decorations, at the temples and attire of the aborigines of America.

You can't tell right away what is the key to this style. Perhaps this is "primitive" minimalism: there are no superfluous details in the paintings of the Indians, their sketches are striking in their brevity and incredible convincing power. It seems as if some gods discard little things, leaving the very essence of their creations in their original form: the intangible ideas of ravens, deer, wolves and turtles …

Rough and angular lines combined with the brightest colors - this is another sign of Indian art, adopted by modern stylists. Sometimes such creations resemble something between a rock painting and a peacock's wedding dance.

Nostalgia for the Golden Age

But all this still does not explain the attractiveness of the heritage of Native American America for contemporary art. To get an answer, we will have to go further.

The most important and terrible disappointment of ancient mankind was the transition from free hunting and gathering of fruits to agriculture and cattle breeding. The world, built on the attitude to nature, as to a mother, has irrevocably collapsed: in order to feed themselves, people had to turn the earth into a milk cow, forcibly plowing it and mercilessly cutting off the stalks of wheat.

Man, hitherto free and inseparable from the world around him, became its master - but at the same time a slave. Bitter lamentation over the loss of a trusting relationship with nature and God is the content of all the myths and legends about the bygone Golden Age, about the lost paradise, about the eating of sin and the fall of man.

But the Indians did not fully experience this catastrophe, as inevitable as parting with childhood. When the Europeans came to them, the simple-minded aborigines were much closer to the face of pristine nature; they still could and had the right to feel like her beloved children. And the Europeans had only to envy and destroy.

The artistic world of Indian America is the last gift of a primitive culture that has passed away forever. We can only keep it carefully. Just as our distant descendants will preserve the last paintings and films with animals and trees - when we finally destroy nature on the planet and begin to cry about the lost green world. After all, the history of mankind is a history of inevitable losses and constant sunset: without this there would be no dawn.

But don't worry; better listen to this song.