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Welcome-Nunavut Art Exhibition
Exhibition at the Arctic Institute

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Included in this exhibit are drawings from log books made on voyages to and from seamen's artists home post. Most of these artworks are from seamen not trained as artists. They were making drawings for information about their travels and to be used by those who would follow. A few of the explorers were interested enough to go beyond the data they came to collect. A few painted scenes because of the beauty that moved them. We know now with our advanced technique of exploration that some of the "artist" seamen exaggerated these subjects. Especially so when they returned to their home posts and reported their findings to the professional artists engravers. This reminds one of the early graphic works of H. Bosch and P. Breughel who were great artists at the time these explorations were being made by the English, Dutch, Russian and Spanish.

Some of our early engravings date as early as the 1500s and many are from the 1600 and 1700s. Take a close look and you will see the spurts of talent in the explorer's psyche.

Two examples are the engravings made by the Dutch engravers and the seaman de Bry. Together they made possible a fantasy portrait of the incident. Look at the competence of the Beechey drawings and watercolours. Both artists conveyed the exploration scenes in their own way.

Few seamen artists made little or no mention of Inuit artifacts. They were doing their job of exploring. The missions, whalers and others bartered with the Inuit in the 1600s. Collections exist that date them early and earlier. But the status came late for Inuit art. WWII opened some doors and dealers as early as the 40-50s took stock. In fact Art History for the Inuit wasn't made until well after WWII. Dealers took what they could get. Some good Inuit art that is being made now is so commercialized there is a point of no return. Craftsmanship is gone, in favour of production. Hopefully craftsmanship can come back. Witness Indian art of the past and Indian art today. Indian artists do not like to be called "Indian artists" - they want to be called artists, period. The same will be true of Inuit artists.

Leo Bushman
Research Associate
Arctic Institute of North America

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