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Artworks
JOE DAVID (1946-) NUU-CHAH-NULTH
Ulth-ma-koke, 2008red cedar, acrylic, cedar bark, feather, cotton thread, and metal, 18.25 x 13.75 x 17 in (46.5 x 35 x 43 cm)
signed and dated, "J. DAVID / '08'".
LOT 89
ESTIMATE: $5,000 — $8,000
PRICE REALIZED: $6,000.00Further images
The artist’s commentary in the Challenging Traditions (op. cited) catalogue reads, Ulth-ma-koke is a wild man of the forest and is the one to enter the big house ceremony after...The artist’s commentary in the Challenging Traditions (op. cited) catalogue reads,
Ulth-ma-koke is a wild man of the forest and is the one to enter the big house ceremony after the wolves of Tlu-qwanna have exited. Ulth-ma-koke is crude and even mean and feared and would seem the direct opposite of the host, Wicaninnish.
I have made it my life’s work to properly portray Ulth-ma-koke, and it’s been a struggle. I believe it would take an artist… of wild nature to harness the energy required to pull an image into society that would do justice to the true nature of Ulth-ma-koke. Many modern artists have tried, and failed, and maybe a few times come close. I carved the two masks in an ancient style because it’s been only the ancients who have been successful in the execution of these portraitures, and the success is due to the simple fact that, at the time, these people lived their examples… It takes sacred energy and wild energy to portray the sacred and the wild.
References: Ian Thom, Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009). For a similarly-themed mask by the artist see Gary Wyatt, Seekers and Travellers: Contemporary Art of the Pacific Northwest Coast, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012), p. 49. For a discussion of the artist and his masks see Joe David, “Notes on Masks” in Robin K. Wright and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, eds., In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Contemporary Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013), pp. 59-67.
Provenance
Private Collection, British Columbia.Exhibitions
Kleinburg, ON, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast, June - September 2009, no cat. no.Literature
This work is reproduced in Ian Thom, Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast, (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009), reproduced in colour p. 20.
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