Latcholassie is among the first generation of Kinngait sculptors to develop a readily recognizable personal style, eschewing strict realism in favour of a distinctive, partly abstracted approach to carving. In doing so, he relinquished the demands of literal representation, freeing the forms to assume a new expressive force.

The apparent naïveté of his sculptures is part of their appeal. As with the work of the Primitive sculptors [1], the works of Latcholassie were embraced and celebrated for their apparent simplicity and freedom from academic convention, which could be read by Southern audiences as evidence of innocence, freshness, and authenticity. These qualities proved remarkably well suited to the emerging market for Inuit art, where distance from Western artistic conventions became part of the attraction. What might have been understood as simplicity was transformed into a virtue, and, commercially speaking, into a remarkably effective proposition.

Whether Latch’ was consciously playing to this Southern appetite or simply following his own instincts is, at present, impossible to know. We can, however, admire his work for what it does on its own terms.

In an article by Dorothy Eber in The Montreal Star in 1968, contemporaneous with the making of the present work, Eber described Latcholassie’s carvings as “birds and owls and men that look like owls” [2]. The phrase is wonderfully perceptive in its directness. Latcholassie’s birds often occupy a wonderfully unstable space between animal and human. In particular, their knobbed knees can read as distinctly more humanoid than avian and there has been temptation by some art dealers and auction houses to freely describe such works as “Spirits” or “Transformations,” although there is little evidence for either designation beyond the peculiar proportions of the figures themselves.

In this work, however, we feel extremely confident that we are, indeed, witnessing a transformation in the very process of taking place. The figure stands upright, one wing extended as though caught midway through its unfurling. Tucked tightly against the figure’s proper left side, however, is something unmistakably human: an arm ending in a small, mittened hand. Those familiar with Karoo Ashevak’s work will recognize the mitten as a recurring detail as it relates to Shamanism and will recall Jean Blodgett’s observations on the subject. Blodgett notes that, “another of the shaman’s accoutrements were his mittens,” worn in ritual practice, including as protection against evil spirits [3].

1. I mean the ‘capital-P-Primitivism’ that captivated European modernists such as Constantin Brancusi, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and others.

2. Dorothy Eber, “Cape Dorset carver,” Montreal Star, 14 Sept 1968, p. 4.

I have nothing but respect for Dorothy Eber but this article is a really fascinating document of the period. It refers to Kinngait as “The Athens of the Arctic” and describes Latcholassie’s sculpture in terms of an “Egyptian god-like form.” While the comparisons are seductive and even charming, they also reveal a tendency, common in the Southern reception of Inuit art at the time, to cast Inuit art and artists in the language of a distant and supposedly ancient past. Inuit sculpture could be praised for its apparent timelessness while simultaneously being removed from the contemporary world in which it was made. Again, I am fond of Eber and deeply grateful for her extraordinary contributions to the documentation of Inuit art but this particular language has had a long afterlife.

3. Jean Blodgett, Karoo Ashevak, (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1977), unpaginated.

ND