Beau Dick

Beau Dick was a legendary presence on the Northwest Coast—a presence celebrated and also mourned in his posthumous retrospective exhibition at the Audain Art Museum (AAM). The Kwakwaka’wakw artist, activist, ceremonialist, storyteller, teacher and mentor died unexpectedly last year at the age of 61, just before his work’s international debut at documenta 14 in Athens. Still, he had achieved significant critical and curatorial acclaim before then, and he was also widely recognized for his generosity, his political and ceremonial commitments to his community, and the spirit of both respect and innovation he brought to the art of his Nation.

Curated by Darrin Martens, then chief curator at the AAM, and Linnea Dick, one of the artist’s daughters, the show surveyed Beau Dick’s 40-year career, from what may be his first ever work—a leather purse inscribed and painted with a double-headed serpent design—through the silkscreen prints he created in the 1970s and ’80s and on to the cycle of 18 Undersea Kingdom masks, which were exhibited at documenta. The show also documented the unbroken line of Kwakwaka’wakw carvers from Dick’s birthplace, Yalis (Alert Bay), including his father and grandfather, and surprised us with his ability to skilfully work in and learn from other Northwest Coast styles, such as Tlingit and Haida. It cited older artists he studied or collaborated with, such as Tony Hunt, Bill Reid and Robert Davidson, and younger artists whom he mentored. As well, the exhibition revealed some of Dick’s recurring themes and the supernatural beings who seemed to compel him, such as Dzunukwa, the hairy, red-lipped giantess also known as the “Wild Woman of the Woods”; and the ghostly sea spirit Pookmis, who captures the souls of the drowned. Although unremarked here, something also apparent in the show was how frequently Dick created depictions of human skulls, often in conjunction with other forms or entities, natural or supernatural. Placed within their jaws or beaks or forming their knee joints, the skulls suggested a prevailing theme of death-in-life that took on a personal and poignant aspect in this context.

Among the works on display were a large carved and painted feast dish in the form of a Wolf, small alder-wood spoons and ladles with delicately worked handles, a speaker’s staff, a dance apron, a striking ceremonial puppet of the war spirit Winalagalis, a Raven rattle and other objects of ceremonial origin or intent. With its erect penis and dangling testicles, the Winalagalis puppet can be read as blackly satirical, linking the human impulse to wage war with a stupidly priapic excess of machismo.

Dominating the show, and Dick’s oeuvre, were his masks, many of them life-size, executed in a recognizably Kwakwaka’wakw style and apparently intended to be danced. These included handsome and dramatic representations of supernatural entities, such as the man-eating birds of the elaborate Hamat’sa or Cannibal Dance rituals. Dick’s 1985 Moogums mask, which combines three aspects of the cannibal spirit, as well as two hanging human heads (victims of the bloodthirsty birds or initiates into the Hamat’sa secret society?), is one of the most spectacular and accomplished I have ever seen—historic or contemporary. Individually and in collaboration with other artists, Dick also executed some remarkable transformation masks, each one depicting, in exterior form, a local crest animal such as Sculpin or Raven and opening up to reveal a human face.

Strongly associated with—almost diagnostic of—Dick’s later career were his monumental, wallmounted masks, some of them as much as 140 cm in height and apparently intended for display and sale within the non-Indigenous art world. Innovative not only in scale but also in design and execution, they represent anthropomorphized natural elements, such as the wind, and, again, supernatural Kwakwaka’wakw beings, such as Dzunukwa, Pookmis or Bukwus, the “Wild Man of the Woods.” They are intensely characterful in feature and expression, their surfaces subtly modulated with adze marks, revealing rather than concealing their making. The paint application is distinctive, too: matte rather than glossy, with a ghostly palette of black, grey and white. The pigments appear to have been sparely applied and then carefully rubbed or sanded down, giving them an otherworldly appearance while also suggesting the patina of the ages.

In the documentary film Meet Beau Dick: Maker of Monsters, the artist speaks of the sense of oneness he experienced when he carved a block of wood taken from an ancient cedar. He reached the understanding, he said, that the object he was making was an ongoing part of the tree’s life. As form emerged through his carving, he felt that “something else was making this all happen. It wasn’t me—I was just part of it.”

I used this quote in an earlier review and I’m citing it again because it seems profound to me—so suggestive of how connected Dick was to his materials and the environment from which they came. That sense of connectedness particularly resonated at the Audain Art Museum, located as it is amid a forest of cedar and spruce at the foot of Blackcomb Mountain, in the resort municipality of Whistler. Quite distinct from most urban art museums, the AAM incorporates the splendour of its natural location into the experience of its exhibitions. Driving to Whistler from Vancouver, immersed in the spectacle of tree-clad mountains plunging into the blue waters of Howe Sound, also sets us up for something deeply attuned to the natural world.

The Beau Dick retrospective and its accompanying catalogue are stellar examples of what this young institution is capable of and what most suits its remarkable site as well as its permanent collection of First Nations and British Columbia art. Kudos to Darrin Martens and Linnea Dick for bringing the project into existence. ❚

“Beau Dick: Revolutionary Spirit” was at the Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC, from March 30 to June 11, 2018.

Robin Laurence is a Vancouver-based writer, curator and contributing editor to Border Crossings.