|
Q. How do I decide if an item is “authentic”?
PS, Albuquerque, NM
A. An excellent question, PS, but a very slippery one. I remember once when I was wandering the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and ran into one of my former professors from the University of California Anthropology Department. Looking at a contemporary Chumash basket on display, he remarked that such a basket was not authentic because the tradition of Chumash basket-weaving had been lost and the new generation of weavers were picking it up from books rather than learning it in the traditional way from their elders. I found this statement rather odd, on several counts. For one thing, it seemed somehow unfair to label the handiwork of somebody who had worked so hard to continue the traditions of their ancestors—even if they had not learned directly from them—as being “inauthentic”.
The simplest answer to your question—and, in my view, the best one—is that an item is authentic if it what it is purported to be. A hot issue right now in the American Southwest is the sale of rugs with Navajo designs that are actually woven in Pakistan and other countries. These Navajo-style rugs are typically sold at a fraction of the price of actual Navajo-woven rugs. Critics complain, rightly, that this practice undercuts the sale of the real thing and often misleads buyers who believe that the foreign-made rugs are authentic Navajo. Short of prohibiting the import of Navajo-style rugs that are not made by Navajo—an impractical step, for many reasons—there is little realistic hope of stopping the trade in imitations altogether. The best course, I believe, is to enforce “truth in advertising” and to educate potential buyers about the differences between real Navajo rugs and the foreign imitations. Certainly, there will always be some consumers may who will opt to buy cheap Pakistani imitations. But I believe that most well-informed buyers will either be willing to pay the extra money for authentic Navajo weaving in the knowledge that they are helping to preserve and promote the long tradition of Navajo weaving, or at the very least refrain from buying foreign-made copies that hurt the market for the authentic articles.
This brings us to the issue of tradition and authenticity. Many people think of these as being synonymous, but that is not necessarily so. If an art form becomes static then it ceases to be art. Modern artists often interpret the cultural traditions of their ancestors in new ways, using new materials, techniques, and subjects. The Hopi, for example, have begun producing a variety of new kinds of kachina dolls. Besides traditional-style dolls, which are often fashioned from single pieces of cottonwood root designed to be hung on the wall of a Hopi dwelling and painted only with locally-occurring natural pigments, one can now find the Hopi making more elaborate dolls painted with vivid acrylic paints, mounted on separate stands for collectors’ bookshelves and display cases, and depicted in decidedly non-traditional activities like operating computers. These latter dolls may not be traditional but there is no reason to say that they are not authentically Hopi.
It is important to recognize that artistic traditions are continually in flux—artists are by nature creative folk who are seldom content simply to copy what has been done before. They borrow from other traditions and combine them with their own to produce new and original work. To keep with our discussion of authenticity in Native American art of the Southwest, let’s return to the example of the Navajo and look at it from a new angle. Besides rugs, Navajo are famous for their work with silver, which has come to be regarded as a traditional Navajo art. Yet the Navajo learned this art from itinerant Mexican plateros with whom they traded in the nineteenth century. As Tom and Mark Bahti note in their excellent survey Southwestern Indian Arts & Crafts, tradition is a relative term and a great deal of what is currently regarded as traditional Navajo jewelry was considered to be novel and innovative not much more than a century ago.
My advice to those who are concerned with cultural authenticity and preservation of tradition is, first, to learn as much as you can about those traditions that interest you and patronize those artists and craftspeople whose work you feel best represents those traditions. There are also many organizations devoted to protecting, preserving and promoting indigenous artistic traditions that also welcome your support. The Indian Arts and Crafts Association (IACA), for example, was established to combat the growing problem of misrepresentation of American Indian arts and crafts in the marketplace. By supporting organizations like the IACA, you can help protect indigenous cultural property and promote ethical marketing and sale of work by indigenous artists and craftspeople.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
