There is little question Emily Carr misappropriated the sacred art of the First Nations people of British Columbia. The most egregious example of this was in making clay pots, bowls, and rugs with First Nations designs. Carr must have known she was doing this. It is certainly possible that a First Nations woman, Sophie Frank, told her she was stealing what wasn’t hers, though if so, Carr very likely would not accept that criticism.
Carr, a second generation Canadian whose father was very British, Europe, hit upon the idea of documenting “Indian” art – poles, welcome figures, blankets, etc. before the First Nations culture vanished. Carr believed, as most settlers at the time did (and some do now) – the First Nations way of life would disappear because it was the inevitable as civilization marched on. The primitive would give way to the more civilized. Natives would be Christianized and assimilated into modern society.
Carr’s sketches and drawings made during many trips during her lifetime throughout Vancouver Island, up the BC mainland coast, and over to Haida Gwaii (then the Queen Charlottes) are picturesque, but, I would argue, not the art that makes her great. Only some of the paintings that came after her last trip, usually done in studio, are what she’s best remembered for. And the really good works came after she stopped trying to freeze “so-called” dying art in charcoal and oil.
I would say that her painting Big Raven (1931) was one of her first great works. It shows a raven totem, black and bold, towering above a whorl of green, abstract trees, a purple mountain, and a complex dark sky with light streaming down behind it. Carr had documented the raven totem decades before in Haida Gwaii. Cumshewa (1912) was done in the then-abandoned village of Cumshewa, which had been devastated by the smallpox epidemic of 1862-3. The earlier painting is interesting, but lacks the force, the defiance of the later one which is not merely record of a pole on Haida Gwaii.
Carr was 59 when she painted Big Raven, finally an artist who didn’t need to appropriate First Nations art. Another painting completed this year after numerous studies in charcoal was Red Cedar. The subject is the trunk of a large cedar tree in a forest. Its green is fairly abstract as is the forest floor behind it. What to me is remarkable is the luminous nature of the cedar’s trunk, which really can only be properly appreciated looking at the painting itself. It shines with a glowing yellow and red highlight with the brownish bark. Carr dropped all direct First Nations design – though one can make out a natural half-oval shape at the base of the tree.
In her last paintings, Carr turned her attention to what her own culture was engaged in, logging. Industrial clear-cut logging leaves a forest in an ugly state, but Carr’s paintings during this period show that there can be a sort of beauty even there. She focussed much on skies she had seen to create transcendence. The sky could be wild, as in Above the Gravel Pit (1937). The painting I love most also comes from witnessing the industrial exploitation of the forest landscape, Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky (1935). Again no appropriation, but a celebration of lone spar trees, left after all other trees had been clear cut. The sky sanctifies a lone survivor. Surprisingly to me, my eyes get misty when I look at that picture.
It is only after Carr dropped appropriation of an earlier culture, not her own, and dealt with on what was happening in her own that her paintings come alive. One can appreciate another’s culture, if done with respect, but I don’t think one can do great art by using the symbols and ideas of another’s culture. Not only is it abuse to misappropriate, it just doesn’t work, not even by an artist as talented as was Emily Carr.
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