The enigma of emily carr

A Review Essay

LESLIE DAWN

Unsettling Encounters: Imagery in the Art of Emily Carr Gerta Moray : UBC Press, 2006. 400 pp. Illus. $75.00 cloth.

Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon Charles C. Hill, Johanne Lamoureux, and Ian M. Thom (Vancouver: Douglas & MacIntyre, with the National Gallery of and the , 2006). 336 pp. Illus. $75.00 cloth.

o Canadian artist has gen- struction of personal and na tional Nerated, or produced, more textual identities and the place of Aboriginal material than Emily Carr. That this peoples and cultures within them. is still true is evident from the two The exhibition catalogue contains books on the artist that appeared in eight essays by ten contributors from the summer of 2006. The National various disciplines, arranged more Gallery of Canada and the Vancouver or less chronologically. Ethnologists Art Gallery produced Emily Carr: Peter Macnair and Jay Stewart open New Perspectives on a Canadian by reinvestigating Carr’s 1907 tourist Icon, the catalogue for the latest excursion to , during which Carr retrospective. Concurrently, she formed the project for a UBC Press pub lished Gerta Moray’s documentary record of the poles of the long awaited monograph Unsettling Aboriginal villages of the Canadian Encounters: First Nations Imagery Northwest Coast. Contributing to the in the Art of Emily Carr. The two discussion on the veracity of Carr’s complementary studies combine the later autobiographical writings, they formats of lavishly illustrated coffee compare her published recollections table books with scholarly writings with archival records and the remaining that attempt defini tive statements on fragments of Carr’s missing Alaska this protean artist. Both address the journal, a humorous pictorial narrative contentious and complex concerns of the trip that Carr drew for her sister. cur rently surrounding Carr, which Their findings demonstrate that, at the now implicate such issues as feminism, time, Carr had neither the extensive postcolonialism, cultural appro priation, experiences nor the deep appreciation , primitivism, the con- of Aboriginal art which she later bc studies, no. 152, Winter 2006/07 97 98 bc studies ascribed to herself. This would support writings as well as on an invented the contention that, when she wrote her correspondence to search for clues to memoirs in the 1930s, she exaggerated the identity of Sophie Frank, Carr’s her early knowledge of and sympathy long-time Aboriginal friend. They too for Aboriginal peoples. question both Carr’s claim to having a Macnair and Stewart also reidentify special rapport with Aboriginal peoples the American artist whom Carr en- and the accuracy of her memoirs. They countered in Sitka and who served as problematize her relationships with a model for her enterprise. Unnamed Frank and the Russes, a Haida family in Carr’s memoirs, her biographer, who figure prominently in her writings , proposed Theodore as hosts and guides. They report that Richardson.1 Macnair and Stewart the latter relationship ended when Klee suggest a lesser painter, James Everett Wyck was published because the Russ’es Stuart, who is more in keeping with felt Carr’s account was “full of lies.” Carr’s description. Their research Bear and Crean also propose that Carr underscores the importance of critically adopted the position of a white, male rereading both Carr’s own fictionalized missionary because she was motivated accounts and the embroidered bio- by the precept that both poles and their graphies based on them, and taking owners were disappearing and that she neither at face value. treated her sources without “proper In the catalogue’s second essay, respect.” curator Johanne Lamoureaux reap- The intervening years between 1913 praises the next major stage of Carr’s and 1927 remain, as usual, neglected. development: her engagement with Only briefly represented in the works French modernism during her study illustrated, they have received scant trip to France in 1910⁄11. The author coverage. This lacuna supports the asserts that this episode has been (incorrect) contention that Carr marginalized in order to support only returned to painting after her the myth that the “discovery,” staged by the ethnologist developed independently of French and Eric Brown (the influence. Instead, Lamoureaux shows director of the National Gallery of how Carr’s project was Canada [ngc]) at the 1927 Exhibition inflected, albeit indirectly, by both of Canadian West Coast Art: Native primitivism and . Although and Modern – a focus of the current Lamoureaux’s semiotic terminology exhibition and catalogue. Bypassing may alienate the average reader, her this transitional period, during which study offers new insights into Carr’s Carr exhibited internationally, the fascination with, and representation ngc’s curator of , Charles of, Aboriginal poles. Hill, devotes his lengthy essay more to Working from their artistic per- the context of the 1927 exhibition than formance piece, First Nations artist to Carr herself. Although surrounded Shirley Bear and writer Susan Crean with a scholarly apparatus, the essay employ an innovative combination of is, as its postscript states, “deeply in- script and essay based on Carr’s own debted” to other sources.2 While glos- sing the research contained within 1 Maria Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography (: Oxford University Press, 1979), 2 Hill lists Anne Morrison, Marcia Crosby, 74. Sandra Dyck, and Leslie Dawn. The Enigma of Emily Carr 99 them, Hill appears, however, to have to the village of Kitwancool excised any conclusions that might (now Gitanyow). The community discomfit the ngc or other government was a well-known site of resistance institutions. For a more complete and to colonization. It restricted access to complex, if more contested, account the the area: both Barbeau and Kihn had reader would be better served turning been expelled in 1924, as had, at various to the originals. times, surveyors, settlers, and others. Also lacking is any commentary on Crosby addresses Carr’s recollections of the many illustrations of Northwest her trip and her encounter with Chief Coast Aboriginal art, presumably in- Miriam Douse Gamlakyeltqu (who cluded because the pieces were part offered her hospitality) in terms of the of the 1927 exhibition. This glaring intersection and gap between personal omission echoes the most reprehensible memory and public history. aspects of the original project by Crosby’s presentation raises several reaffirming the perception held then interesting questions. Carr reports that that the Aboriginal material had no she informed her host that she wanted intrinsic cultural meaning, that it was an to paint her poles because Aboriginal empty shell awaiting appropriation by youths were no longer interested in non-Aboriginal artists and institutions their traditional culture. Her remark as “Canadian” subject matter. was astonishingly impolitic. Gitanyow Hill does include the contribution of leaders took every opportunity to the American artist William Langdon educate non-Aboriginals on the con- Kihn, whose striking portraits of tinuity and vitality of their culture Aboriginal peoples, done in western and the validity of their territorial Canada in the 1920s while working with claims, as when they had forcibly Barbeau, testify to the continuity of instructed Kihn and Barbeau. Yet, Northwest Coast cultures by showing although Carr respected her host, living individuals in their traditional she did not remember nor report on a regalia. Having his long-neglected resourceful and powerful community work brought back to light is a welcome (or individuals) defying government addition. Note, however, that Kihn’s laws, maintaining its culture and Portrait of Ts’ilwa, George Derrick territories, and strategically organizing of the Raven Phratry, Medicine Man its activities; rather, Carr’s memoirs from Gitanyow, which Hill spells present the people of Gitanyow as inconsistently and cites as “whereabouts largely assimilated and motivated by unknown,” is in the the informal satisfaction of creature in Calgary. comforts, while her pictures show the Haida scholar Marcia Crosby takes village as being deserted. a different strategy from that of her Crosby also demonstrates that, polemical 1991 essay, whose frontal thematically, Carr’s Aboriginal nar- assault on the popular image of Carr ratives are morbid – especially prom- provoked many of the current debates.3 inent is the death of children. As a Here, Crosby examines Carr’s 1928 trip metaphor for the imminent extinction of Aboriginal cultures, this trope 3 Marcia Crosby, “Construction of the underwrites the assertion that their Imaginary Indian,” in Vancouver Anthology: art had no future and was vital only The Institutional Politics of Art, ed. Stan 1991 as a subject for non-Aboriginal artists. Douglas (Vancouver: Talonbooks, ), fi 267-91. This, in turn, justi ed Carr’s own 100 bc studies appropriations, which is what forms the change racist colonial attitudes towards theme of Crosby’s 1991 essay. ’s indigenous peoples. Andrew Hunter follows a line he Moray proposes that Carr’s Aboriginal has been pursuing for some time: that productions “challenged stereotypes” the Canadian national and “redressed the historical record” preferred by and the between Aboriginals and settlers Group of Seven were anything but and “championed” and “vindicated” untouched and were already logged the Indian, that she worked “in part- over and mined out.4 But in turning to nership” with Aboriginal peoples and Carr, he misses an essential point: in even asserted the “endurance of Native the mid-1930s Carr would have believed traditions.” that the national was figured While Moray acknowledges that within representations of virginal Carr may have been enmeshed in nature as it was consistently presented colonial discourse, any discussion as as such. Her early 1930s landscapes to how or where this was present in featured precisely such imagery. Her her productions, or by what means and subsequent depictions of sites close to for what reasons her position may have Victoria, which showed explicit signs shifted, is largely omitted in favour of clear-cut logging, abjured the icons of showing her ongoing resistance of Canadian national identity and were to colonial norms. Moray’s unified, painted against the image projected by if simplified, concept validates the the Group. The important, unasked culture of affirmation surrounding question is: what motivated her to Carr that has been challenged by resist the prescribed national format recent writings but tends to polarize and take up this openly oppositional the discussion into a positive/negative and alienated position? dichotomy that could eliminate nuance Both Ian Thom, curator at the and complexity. Vancouver Art Gallery, and art his- Fortunately, in her examination of torian Gerta Moray address Carr’s the complicated context within which later exhibitions. Thom examines Carr lived and worked, Moray avoids how critical writings from the 1945 this pitfall. She draws on a wide range and 1971 retrospectives and books by of ongoing discussions and summarizes , Edythe Hembroff- a large number of secondary sources, Schliecher, and Maria Tippett defined supplemented with archival research. her for the general public as a nationalist Her synopses are admirable for their figure identified with the landscape, breadth and depth, and serve as Aboriginal subjects, and the Group of reasonably complete introductions to Seven. Moray reviews the details of the their topic. 1945 and 1990 retrospectives. Moray’s “concentric,” non-chrono- Moray’s major contribution to Carr logical organization of these issues does studies, however, is saved for her own not immediately address Carr’s art; book. Here, she defines her purpose instead, Moray opens with a discussion clearly. In readable prose, she argues of Carr’s role in the 1927 Canadian that the artist consistently attempted to West Coast Art exhibition, her place in the formation of a national image,

4 and her reception as a modernist in the See Andrew Hunter, “Mapping Tom,” in 1930 1940 Tom Thomson, ed. Dennis Reid, (Vancouver: s and s. She then outlines the Douglas and MacIntyre, 2002), 19-45. interlocking discursive frameworks that The Enigma of Emily Carr 101 characterized colonial relationships evidence, including the drawings done during Carr’s early period in the late during the trip, as Moray admits, 1800s. She dissects the social, gender, indicates no such position. Although and racial hierarchies of Victoria’s Moray notes the discrepancy between society; the land claims issues in British the early visual representations and the Columbia; and the intersecting roles later textual recollections, she leaves of missionaries, anthropologists, and this gap unexamined. Indian agents. Where Moray excels is in her ex- Her reliance on secondary sources tended discussion of Carr’s 1912 forays does lead to minor errors. The Jeu into Aboriginal territories and villages, de Paume exhibition of Canadian art both deserted and inhabited, and in held in in early 1927 was not the reconstructing her experiences there. result of an invitation from France. Proposing a new itinerary, she gives This was a fiction concocted by Eric separate chapters to Carr’s visits to the Brown. Conversely, according to the Gitxsan, Haida, and Kwakwaka’wakw. archival record, the inclusion of the The detailed accounts of the activities of Northwest Coast material in that show Carr’s relatives in the area acknowledge was initiated by the French sponsors her connection to the region. Moray’s rather than by Brown, who was not reference to land speculation around an enthusiastic advocate of Northwest Hazelton suggests financial motives for Coast art. Moray also cites without Carr’s trip, particularly since she was question Carr’s memoirs of her 1907 looking for profitable places in which Alaska trip, reaffirming the latter’s to invest her diminished inheritance, claim to being “profoundly moved” but Moray does not examine this by the Aboriginal art she saw, as well possibility. She recounts the Vancouver as repeating Tippet’s suggestion that press’s attention to Gitxsan resistance Richardson was Carr’s model. These to colonization, which made the Upper are precisely the points Macnair and Skeena a contested landscape, one that Stewart dispute. Carr represents as reassuringly “serene.” Other small errors creep in. The claim Moray’s summary of colonial activity that “over forty” of Kihn’s in the region is thorough but says were exhibited in the Canadian West little about the potlatch ban, Gitxsan Coast Art show is supported by neither reactions to cultural suppression, and the photographs of the installation nor Gitxsan strategies for maintaining the catalogue. their culture, all of which would have Moray also resists discussing given balance to her discussion. Indeed, discrepancies between Carr’s later the Aboriginal viewpoint is largely self-constructions and her earlier absent. productions. She twice cites “”, But it is her intimate knowledge a story Carr wrote about a trip in 1899 of Carr’s entire body of Aboriginal more than thirty years after the event, images that allows Moray to show how as evidence of Carr’s early resistance Carr’s materials, working methods, to colonial attitudes. Ignoring Carr’s and approach to her motifs were inter- propensity for exaggeration, Moray related. Separated from the contextual concludes that Carr was “fascinated discussion, the analysis of the works by the people and their way of life and is primarily formal, emphasizing the felt critical of the missionaries’ attempt evolution of Carr’s brushwork, colour, to impose white ways” (49). Yet other 102 bc studies form, space, and line as she became ceremonies), except to mention their more adept with her subject. unique grave houses. The imbalance To contextualize Carr’s production, is significant. Despite these problems, Moray relies extensively on Carr’s Moray’s extensive knowledge of the 1913 public “Lecture on Totem Poles,” works from this period give them an which accompanied a large exhibition importance that has been denied by of her Aboriginal works in Vancouver.5 previous authors. Moray’s major problem is dealing Unsettling Encounters abruptly bi- with Carr’s opening statement that furcates the 1913 and the 1927 exhibitions, Aboriginal cultures and arts belonged divided by ninety pages of colour plates, to the past and were on the border some familiar but many rarely, if ever, of extinction. Moray circumvents reproduced. During the intervening this colonialist cliché by claiming, years, Carr turned to other subjects, somewhat disingenuously, that while especially pure landscapes. She took Carr saw indigenous cultures as dis- up her Aboriginal themes again in appearing, she saw Aboriginal peoples 1928 after returning from and as still surviving. As what, Moray does meeting the Group of Seven. Although not say. The implication is, however, Moray’s accounts of Carr’s later trips that with no identity, language, cer- are primarily drawn uncritically from emonies, territories, or art, they would the memoirs, and her analysis of the be completely assimilated; they would works produced are briefer than are have only a vague memory of the those of the pre-1913 excursions, she past and would disappear into non- does offer valuable insights into the Aboriginal culture, hence justifying meanings of Carr’s productions. Carr’s enterprise. But once again, Moray is confronted Although much of Carr’s essay is with Carr’s position on Aboriginal appropriated verbatim from ethno- culture. And again, she poses Carr graphic sources, her appreciation of as identifying positively with First Aboriginal art and culture is, as Crosby Nations peoples and “champion[ing] noted, framed by repeated images their traditions.” This is hard to of death that are Carr’s alone. Her support when it was precisely at this travel vignettes in the lecture touch time that the state was prosecuting obsessively on mortuary poles, infant the continuing potlatch among the mortality, burial practices, graveyards, Gitsxan, Kwakwaka’wakw, and others, and the like. Symptomatically, Carr and denying land claims – policies reported extensively on the Haida, in that, as Crean and Bear point out, whose deserted villages she found the Carr never seems to have protested. most evidence of cultural disruption. Moray nonetheless reads Carr’s 1929 She said almost nothing of her ex- McGill News essay on Aboriginal art periences among the Gitksan, who as testimony to her belief in Aboriginal had preserved their culture, still lived survival, although a case can be made to in their traditional villages, and were the contrary.6 For example, Carr – fully still raising new poles (with attendant cognizant of the potlatch ban – states that a potlatch must accompany the 5 Emily Carr, “Lecture on Totem Poles,” in Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings, 6 Emily Carr, “Modern and Indian Art of the ed. Susan Crean (Vancouver: Douglas and West Coast,” McGill News (suppl.), June MacIntyre, 2003), 177-203. 1929, 18-22. The Enigma of Emily Carr 103 erection of a pole. The implication is Carr clearly saw neither cultural con- obvious: no more potlatches, no more tinuity nor the possibility of a “revival,” poles, and no more art or culture, hence a position which Crosby points out her use of the past tense. Carr re-iterated in 1942. Either would To maintain her affirmative image of be inauthentic and debased. Aboriginal Carr, Moray must ignore a statement arts, cultures, and identities were dead. made by the artist in 1935. At the same By contrast, only non-Aboriginal time as Carr was writing about herself art – that is, her art – presumably as a champion of the Indian and their not painted for money, currently had arts, she was also stating publicly: this “something plus.” Charlie James, Mungo Martin, Willie Seaweed, and Why cannot the Indians of today many other active carvers of the period create the art that their ancestors would undoubtedly have had something did? Some of them carve well, else to say on the matter. but the objective and the desire While Moray’s research adds much has [sic] gone out of their work. to our knowledge of Carr, bypassing The “something plus” is there no these problematic areas in favour longer. The younger generations of reaffirming a simplified, heroic do not believe in the power of image of the artist does her subject the totem – when they carve it is a disservice. Carr was more complex for money. The greatness of their than this, and her relationships with art has died with their belief in her Aboriginal subjects and colonial these things. It was inevitable. discourses more conflicted. The book Great art must have more than needs to be read, but carefully, with the fine workmanship behind it.7 knowledge that there is still more to be 7 Emily Carr, “Talk on Art”, British Columbia said and discussed. Carr remains an Provincial Archives, MS 1077, box 17, file 3. enigma yet to be more fully defined. 8-9.