The details of Anguhadluq’s life (see lot 131), as relevant as they are to the images that the artist depicted, do not account for his ability to create sophisticated images composed of powerfully stark forms and outstanding colour. In The Young and the Old, we encounter a swarm of more than sixty faces that fill nearly the entire sheet. (This is even more the case in Anguhadluq’s original drawing; see Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre, p. 44.) Anguhadluq’s distinctive treatment of simplified facial features, evident in so many of the artist’s drawings and prints, absolutely commands our attention in this compelling work.

Anguhadluq outlines some faces in black, but many in bright colours: yellow, blue, mauve, and green. These lively hues appear at intervals and follow no specific pattern, but the sequencing and juxtapositions of competing colours tease out an undeniably rhythmic push-and-pull. There is no context from which the faces emerge, but we can imagine various interpretations of this image: perhaps the faces are a census-like depiction of the individuals that inhabit the growing settlement of Qamani’tuaq; possibly they represent ancestors or relatives from Anguhadluq’s memory. Or maybe they are a crowd of onlookers, mesmerized by the beat of the shaman’s drum. Perhaps they symbolize the actual beat of the drum itself! Note how the bottom three rows alternate all female, all male, all female - while in the top two rows the sexes alternate one face to the next. Fascinating.

Literature: The best introduction to the art and life of Anguhadluq is Cynthia Waye Cook, From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1993); by the author see also “From the Centre: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq”, Inuit Art Quarterly (Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1995), pp. 4-15. For the original coloured pencil drawing for this print see Cynthia Cook, From the Centre (1993), cat. 26: The Drawings of Luke Anguhadluq (Toronto: AGO, 1993), cat. 26, p. 44; also illustrated in Darlene Coward Wight, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art (Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2012), cat. 59. For thematically related drawings by Anguhadluq see Cynthia Cook (1973), cats. 23, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 35, 40. Two related prints by the artist are Some Tribes of Inuit (1976 #16) and Shaman Entering the Drum Dance (1977 #1).