Word: capes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Pagan's measured pronouncements, serialized in the largest Afrikaner newspaper, Die Landstem, brought in a flood of approving letters, including some from unknown farmers pleading with Fagan to lead a political movement. In his airy house outside Cape Town, Old Boer Fagan referred all callers to Jacobus Basson, 41, the fiery, redheaded Nationalist M.P. who was expelled from the party last fall. He had protested Prime Minister Verwoerd's decision to end the last semblance of black representation in Parliament: whites voting in the Africans' name. Last week, after meeting with some 50 other Nationalists who think...
...Even the terminology reflects this attitude. The word for a carving is sinun-guuak (a small thing-you-make); a print is titokuuak (marks you make with your hand). This humility results in the softest sells in all art history. An Eskimo who has journeyed for days to reach Cape Dorset will tell Houston: "I brought a block for a print along. It's no good, of course. I'm ashamed of it. As a matter of fact, I think it fell off the sled." While he is pro testing, his wife will go out, dig the block...
...artists live a more hazardous life. In the last year, two of Cape Dorset's twelve printmakers have met death on the ice fields. One of the deaths has given the new art form its first legend. Niviaksi-ak, 39, was already a famous carver when he took up prints. Of all the subjects he portrayed, the one that preyed most on his mind was bears. During the last months of his life, he pondered deeply on the soul of the great, inscrutable polar bear...
...next day, when Niviaksiak's companion and others returned to bury him, they found his body unmauled; the bear had not even come near him. Among Cape Dorset people there was only one explanation: Niviaksiak's art had probed too near, had offended the spirit of the great polar bear...
Today half of Cape Dorset's income derives from the sale of art works. This is just the way Jim Houston intended it. Not even Cape Dorset will remain in violate forever; sooner or later it will be drawn into the modern world where other Eskimos have fared so poorly. Says Hous ton: "Their art is the one thing that can preserve their pride in their Eskimo identity. So long as their art remains true and vital and coveted by the outside world, they will be saved from hopeless apathy in the face of the onslaught of the almighty...