Almost every year when I was in high school, my class would hop a bus and be motored downtown to do a tour of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. The big highlight (because who really cared if the stain-glass windows there were shipped inside molasses-filled containers to guard against breakage?) was always the murals that decorated the rotunda. My favorite was this one, which depicts the construction of Fort Victoria by hot, half nekkid Indian chicks. The girls are hauling lumber, while Whitey (top left) looks on with a smugly satisfied air.
Well, after years of complaints by First Nation leaders, the murals are coming down, and suddenly people are squawking about censorship and the importance of art in culture and yada yada yada. As someone who supports the B.C. government's actions in this matter, I think it is important to clear up several misunderstandings.
1) The Issue for B.C.'s aboriginal community is not Nekkidness, as a few people have tried to argue. Rather, the issue is that the natives in the mural (male and female alike) are portrayed "as a conquered and subservient people". It isn't that Whitey is cavorting with luscious nekkid women, its that they're luscious nekkid slave women. Big difference.
2) The murals will not be destroyed, as this gentleman seems to be arguing, but "removed and preserved", at a cost of $280,000. There are also rumors that reproductions will be sold in stroke-book format at the legislature gift-shop.
3) They are not great art. They are not even really decent porn. If anything, they look a bit like cut-rate versions of Gauguin, who also specialized in Nekkid natives. So if they were to disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow it would not be an irreplaceable loss to mankind. What I think is most interesting about them is that they illustrate why corporate art (the paintings you are likely to see on the wall of a modern office building) has gone almost entirely abstract: if there is no representation, then there can be no offensive representations (although they'll always be the occasional nutter that thinks the gray blob on the wall looks like a vagina).
11 comments:
since those same natives ran a thriving slave trade of their own along the coast for centuries, I can see why they want to get any slavery evidence buried lest some enterprising journalist start to tell the truth about our holier than thee native brothers.
History will bite back eventually.
Oh, hush up, dumbo.
You're right about it not being great art, BCL. I thought most of the stained glass in the BC Legislature was kind of trite. I really only noticed it because the tour guide made such a production out of it. I remember ooh'ing and aah'ing just so she wouldn't feel bad.
I'm sure there's an argument to be made for keeping them, I just couldn't be bothered to come up with it. ;)
Why do you say they are slaves? Do you know for a fact that they were not being paid?
PC gone amuk. Kinda like the Taliban in Af'stan, destroy ancient art and artifacts from other cultures. History happened, taking down a picture doesn't change anything. Unbelievable PC stupidity.
British Colombia? Where's that, in South America or something?
Oh, right. You mean British Col*U*mbia.
Turd.
Kinda like the Taliban in Af'stan, destroy ancient art and artifacts from other cultures.
Yes, it's exactly like the Buddhas of Bamiyan, anonymous.
...Man, these people are insane.
I see you agree with me ti-guy.
No, I was being sarcastic. Stop dowloading Hentai and google the concept.
Hello BigCityLib;
I first wanted to respond to "howmuchforthebabe"'s comment:
Although the Native cultures of the west coast did have stratified societies that included slavery; the complaint is not that they objected to being enslaved, but that they were not enslaved and object to being portrayed as such.
Without seeing the whole work in place, it is hard for me to make a judgement about whether or not they Native peoples are portrayed as "subjugated" or "enslaved" in the composition, but I am inclined to believe the complainants' interpretation. It's kind of like believing someone who says they are in pain and need an aspirin; their pain cannot be proved or disproved by an observer, only believed or disbelieved.
I've found a page that lists some of the labour procured from, and payments made to the local people, during construction.
One more comment about Native "slavery"; the stratification of West Coast societies also allowed the evolution of an artisan class and the cultural explosion that the region still embraces.
BCL; I will post a link to your site at my page, Bingorage.
:Eric
Somebodies google hits about to go up.. heh heh
ti-guy, you're projecting your behaviour to others.
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