The decorative art of the Northwest Pacific Coast Amerindians is one the great art styles of the Americas. It is impossible to view this art without seeing some similiarity with other art forms of the northern Pacific region. The parallelism however does not mean there is any genetic connection. Two art styles in the same region may be responding to the same features in nature. There might be the same response to satisfying the same conditions of good design. For example, two unrelated art styles may abhor leaving blank spaces in decorative art. Or two parallel art forms may be derived from a common source rather than one from the other.

Leonhard Adam, after studying the decorative art of the Northwest Coast Amerindians, concluded that there are eight principles involved in the art:

• 1. The representations are stylized rather than realistic.
• 2. There a schematic characterization (symbolism) as involved in the artistic representation of objects either through accentuating certain characteristic features of the object or adding attributes. As an example of this latter characterization Adam cites the depiction of a beaver holding a stick in its paws.
• 3. The practice of showing a body split into two.
• 4. The practice of dislocating the details of the split bodies.
• 5. The practice of representing one animal by two profiles.
• 6. The symmetry of the representations.
• 7. The practice of using a part of a body to represent the whole.
• 8. The practice of making illogical transformation of details. For example, two toes of a paw being also a bird's beak with a joint oval becoming the bird's eye.

The Haida painting of a fish, called a dog-fish, illustrates some of the above principles. It is symmetric and involves a split of the fish showing two profiles. There are also dislocation of features.

Below is wall mural from a Haida house which depicts a mythical being named Qonaqada. It demonstrates a number of the above principles of the art including the eighth one in which parts of the creatures body are also the beaks and eyes of birds.

These principles also show up in Asian art. In particular the decorative feature of ancient Shang dynasty bronze vases called the tao tieh is very similar in structure to the art shown above. Here are a few examples:

This is simultaneously a shamanistic mask and pictures of dragons and birds.

A more elaborate version is given below.

The relation of the taotieh motif to a shaman mask is illustrated in the image below of such as a shaman mask.

Leonhard Adam suggests that the mask originated from the shamanistic use of animal heads.

(To be continued.)

Sources:

Leonhard Adam, "North-West American Indian Art and Its Early Chinese Parallels," Man, (January, 1936), pp. 8-10.

Bill Holm, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1965.