the Northwest Coast where they borrowed certain art forms from their neighbors, others of whom lived on the plateau and were influenced by Plains Indians.28
Boas on Native American Art, from 1901 By the first decade of the twentieth century, Boas had at his disposal more materials with which he could dispute grand universalizing theories. These included Northwest Coast materials acquired during the Jesup Expedition by Teit, Livingston Farrand (1900), and John Swanton (1905); Siberian pieces collected during that same fieldwork by Berthold Laufer (1902), Waldemar Jochelson (1908, 1926), and Waldemar Bogoras (1904) in Siberia; northern Mexican art by Carl Lumholtz (1904); and Plains and California art described by Boas’s students, including A. L. Kroeber (1900a, 1901), Clark Wissler (1904), and Roland B. Dixon (1902). Confident in his grasp of the Northwest Coast, Boas could now expand beyond that culture area in his efforts to dismantle the false grand narrative of evolutionism. He also turned greater attention to the creative process, and to the psychological and cultural factors that influenced art production. His articles published between 1901 and 1916 thus represent his mature statements on art history as well as his final contributions to that discipline prior to the publication of Primitive Art in 1927.
In 1903, Boas expanded his study of primitive art beyond the Northwest Coast in “The Decorative Art of the North American Indians,” published in Popular Science Monthly.29 In this essay that analyzes the significance of a culture in determining meaning in art, Boas proposed history as a substitute for evolutionism. He begins by dismissing the realist/degenerationism of Haddon (1895) and then appears to accept the theory of Semper (1861–63), Cushing (1886), and Holmes (1888, 1890) that the origin of decorative forms can probably be found in technique. In particular, he favors the work of Schurtz (1900) and Hamlin (1898) who note that once a design is created, the group using it on its art “read in” meaning appropriate to their culture. In this case Boas tacitly positions himself in opposition to the number of scholars like Grosse (1897) and Hirn (1900) for whom the expressive and communicative aspects of art are primary. He qualifies this by adding that this origin has little relevance to the meaning ascribed to the image by the people who use it for decorative purposes.
Then, directing his words to those who preferred evolutionist to historical explanations, Boas asserted that if one group’s art style really arose in isolation from another group’s, as a result of either a technical/materialist or a realist/degenerationist process, the art of each group would be different. On the Plains, where art produced by many different ethnic groups is remarkably uniform, this was clearly not the case. According to Boas, history, not evolution, explained the presence of certain images in art. As an example of the diffusion of a motif, Boas charted the appearance of a rather complex geometric design found both on ancient Pueblo art and among many different Plains people. This motif, Boas proposed, originated on Pueblo pottery and spread northwards. Interestingly, what the image meant to various Plains groups differed considerably. Stressing the significance of culture in these historical processes, Boas explained that when new motifs enter into the artistic vocabulary of a people, they ascribe meaning to them appropriate to their values and world view.
In this same article, Boas notes the coexistence of realistic and geometric imagery on the Plains, where relatively realistic designs often decorated sacred, ceremonial objects while more geometric images appeared on secular pieces used every day. He ascribed to this the culturally determined differences in the purpose of the art: “In ceremonial objects the ideas represented are more important than the decorative effect, and it is intelligible that the resistance to conventionalism may be strong” (although he acknowledged that in other cases, the need for secrecy may result in obscure representations) (1903:485).
In addition to becoming both more assertive and more universal in his objections to evolutionist art history, Boas became more sensitive to the subtleties and complexities of the artistic process.
We conclude from all this that the explanation of designs is secondary almost throughout and due to a late association of ideas and forms, and that as a rule a gradual transition from realistic motives to geometric forms did not take place. The two groups of phenomena—interpretation and style—appear to be independent.… the history of the artistic development of a people, and the style that they have developed at any given time, predetermine the method by which they express their ideas in decorative art; and … the type of ideas that a people is accustomed to express by means of decorative art predetermines the explanation that will be given to a new design.… The idea which a design expresses at the present time is not necessarily a clew to its history. It seems probable that idea and style exist independently, and influence each other constantly (1903:497).
Whereas a style can result from historical factors in which imagery and design diffuse into a group from the outside, the meaning the accepting culture ascribes to the new style must resonate with the concepts that constitute that group’s culture. Thus, a people’s culture, which influences everything they do or say, affects their art as well. In this essay, Boas noted the occurrence of an artistic phenomenon both in the primitive and civilized worlds, a theme to which he returned several times in subsequent essays. He gave the following example. As is the case in the Plains where conventionalized and stylized images appear simultaneously, in modern architecture, domestic stained glass tends to be geometric, while in churches it is usually representational; wallpaper in the home tends to be abstract, whereas wallpaper in public settings has more symbolic representations.
After this 1903 article, Boas continued analyzing Native American art, posing questions on style, symbolism, and history, trying to test prevalent art historical theories. In a guide booklet to the American Museum of Natural History’s exhibitions of primitive art (1904), Boas took the opportunity to communicate his ideas on art and culture to the public by leading the visitor through displays of Northwest Coast, Plains, Eastern Woodlands, California, and Mexican Indians. Here he repeated his point that certain groups borrowed motifs from others and, in the process, ascribed different, culturally specific meanings to the same artistic image.
In 1907 Boas made substantial contributions to George T. Emmons’s Chilkat blanket monograph in the Jesup series. Most bibliographies list “The Chilkat Blanket,” volume three of the Publications of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, as being written by George T. Emmons; some but not all give the complete title of the volume, “The Chilkat Blanket; with Notes on the Blanket Designs by Franz Boas.” In this monograph, Emmons wrote twenty-one pages, mostly on techniques and usage of these textiles (Emmons 1907:329–50), while Boas analyzed their imagery in his forty-nine-page “Notes on the Blanket Designs” (Boas 1907:351–400). Boas used these highly abstract textiles to compare and contrast imagery and meaning, once again concluding that form and meaning are not always connected, and that culturally imposed rules limit the freedom with which an artist can represent a particular image. Although in 1897 Boas had carefully listed the identifying features of Northwest Coast imagery, here he pointed out that sometimes the nature of the abstraction characteristic of Chilkat blankets obscures those features so thoroughly that even the Natives themselves disagree on what they represent.
The basic composition of most Chilkat blankets is tripartite, with the central field being the largest. That central field contains the principal representation of the animal or animals depicted, while the two symmetrical flanking fields illustrate the sides and back of the central animal (split down the middle), its den, or smaller animals. Boas compared this composition to that on boxes and dancing aprons. One interesting phenomenon Boas noted is that Emmons and Swanton interpreted the same blanket in very different ways; this, he suggests, is because “no fixed time of conventionalization exists” (1907:386–87) within the parameters of this particular kind of art. Because the weaver must depict the subject matter in a consistent fashion determined by the culturally imposed formal rules of Chilkat blanket manufacture, regardless of the animal intended to be represented, images sometimes become extremely abstract. Not only are the principal subjects of these blankets sometimes difficult to identify definitely, some of the decorative elements on them are obscure. The various abstract motifs found on these textiles fluctuate in meaning; the so-called red-winged flicker
