Among the Plains Indians of North America, the men painted figurative scenes or abstract decorations on bison skins and other objects. For the women, porcupine quill embroidery was the principal mode of artistic expression. The difficult technique took years to master. The quills, which vary in length and strength depending on the part of the animal they come from, first had to be flattened, softened, and dyed. The women then had to learn to bend them, tie them in knots, braid them, interlace them, and sew them. Their sharp tips could cause cruel wounds.
This geometric embroidery, purely decorative in appearance, had a symbolic meaning. It consisted of messages whose form and content the embroiderer had considered at length. She often received them as a revelation: the embroiderer saw in a dream the complicated motif she would have to render; or it appeared to her on a rock or the side of a cliff; or it came to her in its finished form. The supposed originator of the revelation was a two-faced deity, mother of the arts. Once she had inspired a woman to create a new motif, other women copied it, and it became part of the tribal repertoire. But the creator herself remained out of the ordinary.
“When a woman dreams of the Double Woman,” an old informant recounted nearly a century ago, “from that time on, in everything she makes, no one excels her. But then the woman is very much like a crazy woman…. She laughs uncontrollably and so time and time again, she acts deceptively…. So the people are very afraid of her. She causes all men who stand near her to become possessed…. For that reason these women are called Double Women. They are very promiscuous…. But then in the things they make nobody excels them. They do much quill-work. From then on, they are very skillful. They also do work like a man.”
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This astonishing portrait of the artist far outstrips the imagery of romanticism and that of the accursed poet or painter that emerged later in the nineteenth century, with all its pseudo-philosophical variations regarding the relation between art and madness. Where we use figurative expressions, societies without writing speak literally. We have only to transpose their words to recognize that these societies are not so different from our own, or that we are closer to them than we might think.
On the Pacific Coast of western Canada, painters and sculptors belonged to a distinct social category. They were designated by a collective noun that implied they were surrounded by mystery. In fact, any man or woman, or even any child, who caught them at their work was immediately put to death. These were extremely hierarchical societies, and the position of artist was passed on from one generation to the next within the nobility, but commoners whose gifts attracted notice were also admitted. In all cases, aspiring artists were subjected to long and harsh initiation rites. A predecessor had to cast his supernatural power into the body of the one called upon to succeed him, who, ravished by the protective spirit, then vanished into the sky. In reality, he remained hidden in the woods for a variable length of time before reappearing in public, vested with his new powers.
The masks, in fact, which only sculptors had the right and talent to make, were formidable entities. Simple or articulated, they represented different sorts of spirits. According to the account of an educated Indian in the early part of the twentieth century, the mask of a supernatural protector named Boiling Words
has a body like that of a dog. The chief did not wear it on his face or on his head, because the mask had its own body, and it was considered a very terrible object. Its whistle was very hard to blow. Nobody now knows how to do it. It is not blown with the mouth, but it is squeezed on a certain mark on the whistle. All they knew about this being was that it was living in a rock of the mountain. They had a song of this mask. It was always kept hidden, and no common people knew about it, only the children of the head chief and the children of the head man of Dzēba′sa’s tribe. The children were very much afraid to hear the voice of Boiling Words. It was a very terror among the common people, and it was a great cause of pride among the princes and princesses to be allowed to touch it. It was very expensive to obtain the right to touch it.
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Artists also decorated moveable partitions and the façades of houses. They carved poles (wrongly called “totem poles”) and made ritual instruments. Above all, it was their responsibility to design, fashion, and manipulate the theatrical machines that in this region of North America gave religious ceremonies the appearance of spectacular performances. They took place outdoors or in the vast residences made of wooden boards. These buildings consisted of a single room in which several families lived, and it could accommodate a large number of guests.
An indigenous narrative dating to the nineteenth century describes a session at which the hearth in the center of the room was suddenly flooded, as at the end of
Twilight of the Gods, with water rising up from the depths. A life-size cetacean surfaced and shook itself, spouting water through its blowholes. Then it dived, the water disappeared, and on the reconstituted floor the hearth fire could be relit.
3The inventors and producers of these phenomenal machines were given no margin for error. In 1895 Franz Boas published the account of a ceremony whose star attraction, as it were, was supposed to be the return of a man, who had supposedly been living at the bottom of the sea, to his family. The spectators who gathered on the shore saw a rock rising up and splitting in two, and then the man emerged. The stagehands hidden in the woods maneuvered the contraption from a distance by means of ropes. Twice the operation succeeded. The third time, the ropes became tangled, the artificial rock sank, and the hero drowned. Unfazed, his family announced that he had chosen to live at the bottom of the ocean, and the celebration continued as planned. But after the guests had left, the deceased’s parents and those responsible for the disaster bound themselves together and threw themselves into the sea from the top of a cliff.
4The story is also told that, to represent onstage a female initiate’s return to earth, artists constructed a whale out of seal skins, operating it with ropes to make it swim and dive. In the interest of realism, they came up with the idea of boiling water inside the whale using red-hot stones, so that steam would spout from the blowholes. A stone fell off to one side, burning the skin, and the whale sank. The organizers of the ceremony and the inventors of the machine committed suicide, knowing that otherwise they would be put to death by the keepers of the secret of these rites.
5All these narratives come from the Tsimshian Indians, who live on the coast of British Columbia. Their Haida neighbors on the adjacent Queen Charlotte Islands speak of wondrous villages at the bottom of the sea or in the heart of the forests, populated entirely with artists, from whom the Indians who met them learned to paint and carve.
6 These myths too affirm that the fine arts are supernatural in origin. Nevertheless, in these few examples of religious ceremonies, everything from beginning to end is obviously artifice. First there is the solemn session when the initiator claims (but does he not believe it to a certain extent?) to be visited by his supernatural protector: wresting the spirit from his own body, he casts it violently into that of the novice, hidden under a mat, while at the same time a whistle blows, the sonorous emblem of the spirit in question. Then comes the fabrication of the articulated masks and automatons, which are supposed to manifest the presence and actions of the spirits; and finally, the spectacles, like those that were described by some of the last witnesses.
The aesthetic feeling experienced when observing a successful spectacle validated retrospectively the belief in its supernatural origin. Admittedly, it did so even in the minds of the creators and actors for whom that connection had, at best, only a hypothetical reality since they were aware of the tricks: “It was therefore true, since, despite the many difficulties that we ourselves faced, it succeeded all the same.” Conversely, a failed spectacle, which brought the deception to light, ran the risk of destroying the conviction that there was a continuity between the human and supernatural worlds. That conviction was all the more necessary in that, in these hierarchical societies, the power of the nobles, the subordination of the common people, and the submission of slaves were sanctioned by the supernatural order on which the social order therefore depended.
We do not inflict physical death (economic and social death perhaps?) on those we consider no-talent artists incapable of elevating us above ourselves. But do we not still establish a link between art and the supernatural? That is the etymological sense of the word “enthusiasm,” which we readily use to characterize the emotion we feel in the presence of great works of art. One used to speak of the “divine” Raphael, and, in English, the language of aesthetics includes the expression “out of this world.” In that case as well, we need only convert from the literal to the figurative those beliefs or practices that surprise or upset us, to recognize a certain family resemblance to our own.
As it happens, that same region of North America where the artist’s condition appears in a rather sinister light—though he is placed high on the social ladder, he is devoted to trickery and is killed or forced to commit suicide if he fails—has provided us with a charming and poetic portrait of the artist. The Tlingit of Alaska, immediate neighbors of the Tsimshian, recount in one of their myths that a young chief of the Queen Charlotte Islands had a wife whom he dearly loved. She fell ill and, despite the care showered on her, she died. Her husband, inconsolable, searched high and low for a sculptor who could reproduce the features of the deceased. No one was able to do so. But a very illustrious sculptor lived in the same village. One day he ran into the widower and told him: “You go from village to village, and you don’t find anyone to create a likeness of your wife, am I right? I saw her often when you were walking together. I never studied her face with the idea that one day you’d want a representation of her, but if you’ll allow me, I’ll do my best.”
The sculptor obtained a red-cedar log and set to work. When his carving was completed, he dressed it in the dead woman’s clothes and summoned the husband. Filled with joy, he took the statue and asked the sculptor what he owed: “Whatever you like,” replied the other, “but I did it out of sympathy for your sorrow, so do not give me too much.” The young chief nevertheless paid the sculptor very well, in both slaves and a variety of riches.
An artist so famous that even a prominent man did not dare ask for his favors; who, before setting to work, believed it was normal to have studied his model’s physiognomy; who did not allow people to watch him work; whose works were very valuable; and who, on occasion, knew how to act in a humane and disinterested manner: Is that not the ideal portrait of a great painter or sculptor even now? We would certainly like all our artists to be like him. But let us continue with the myth.
The young chief treated the statue as if it were alive. One day, he even had the impression it was moving. All his visitors went into raptures over the resemblance. Much later, he examined the body and observed it had become just like a human one. (The rest can be surmised.) In fact, a little later, the statue emitted a noise like wood cracking. The statue was lifted up and a little red cedar was discovered growing underneath. It was allowed to mature, and that is why the red cedars of Queen Charlotte Islands are so beautiful. When someone goes looking for a beautiful tree and finds one, they say: “It’s like the baby of the chief’s wife.” As for the statue, it barely moved and no one ever heard it speak, but the husband knew through his dreams that it was communicating with him and what it said.
7The Tsimshian (from whom the Tlingit, who admired their artistic talents, readily commissioned works) tell the story of the wooden statue differently. It is the widower himself who carves a statue of the deceased. He treats it as if it were alive, pretends to converse with it by asking it questions and providing the answers. Two sisters slip into his hut one day and hide; they see the man kissing and hugging the wooden statue. This makes them laugh: the man discovers them and invites them to dinner. The younger sister eats in moderation, while the elder consumes greedily. Later, while she is sleeping, she is overcome with diarrhea and soils herself. The younger sister and the widower decide to marry, each making a pledge to the other: he will burn the statue and never mention the elder sister’s shame; and she will not tell anyone what he was doing with the wooden statue.
8The parallelism between the (quantitative) abuse of food and the (qualitative) abuse of sex is striking, since in both cases it is an abuse of communication: to eat in excess and to copulate with a statue as if it were a human being are behaviors that, though in different registers, are comparable. That is especially true in that the languages of the world (including our own, though only metaphorically) often employ the same word for “eat” and “copulate.” But the Tlingit myth and the Tsimshian myth do not treat the motif in the same way. The Tsimshian myth finds the confusion between a human being and a wooden statue reprehensible. It is true that the statue is the work of an amateur, not a professional, and we have seen the mystery that surrounded the works of Tsimshian sculptors and painters. To pass off art as life was both their privilege and their obligation. But since the aim of the illusion created by the work of art was to bear witness to the connection between the social order and the supernatural order, it would not have been acceptable for a private individual to make use of that illusion for his personal benefit. In public opinion, represented by the two sisters, the widower’s behavior appeared scandalous or at the very least ridiculous.
The Tlingit myth proposes a different conception of the work of art. The widower’s behavior does not shock public opinion: everyone rushes to his house to admire the masterpiece. But in this case, the statue is that of a great artist, and (in spite or because of that) it remains halfway between life and art. Plants produce only plants, and a wooden woman can only give birth to a tree. The Tlingit myth makes art an autonomous realm: the work finds its place beyond and on the near side of the artist’s intention; the artist loses control of it as soon as he has created it. It will develop in keeping with its own nature. In other words, the way the work of art perpetuates itself is to give birth to other works of art, which to contemporaries appear more alive than those that preceded.
Seen from a millennial vantage point, human passions become indistinguishable from one another. Time adds nothing to and takes nothing away from the love and hatred human beings feel: their commitments, their struggles, their desires. Then and now, they are always the same. If we were to omit at random ten or twenty centuries of history, our knowledge of human nature would not be appreciably affected. The only irreplaceable loss would be that of the works of art those centuries brought into existence. Human beings differ from one another, even exist, only through their works. Like the wooden statue that gave birth to a tree, these works alone provide evidence that, over the course of time, something has really happened among human beings.