George Tataniq
![George Tataniq, Drum Dancer with Attendant Spirits, c. 1975
Stone, antler, 9 x 10 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (22.9 x 26.7 x 5.7 cm)
A massive drum dancer has two helping spirits in the form of birds on his shoulders.
In the 1986 catalogue for the exhibition The Keewatin Spirit, author and collector Norman Zepp speaks of “a purity of line [in Tataniq’s works] which elevates his sculpture beyond the purely descriptive.” Both Tataniq’s images of the empirically observable world and his images of the supernatural are characterised by a monumental weight, and as here, a purity of line, eye for plane and volume, and exceptional sure-footedness in his address of all three.
This sculpture is published in Harold Seidelman's and James Turner's 1993 text The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture.
A closely-related work to this sculpture was chosen for the cover of the 1992 revised and updated publication of George Swinton’s classic reference work Sculpture of the Inuit.
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George Tataniq, Drum Dancer with Attendant Spirits, c. 1975
Stone, antler, 9 x 10 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (22.9 x 26.7 x 5.7 cm)
A massive drum dancer has two helping spirits in the form of birds on his shoulders. In the 1986 catalogue for the exhibition The Keewatin Spirit, author and collector Norman Zepp speaks of “a purity of line [in Tataniq’s works] which elevates his sculpture beyond the purely descriptive.” Both Tataniq’s images of the empirically observable world and his images of the supernatural are characterised by a monumental weight, and as here, a purity of line, eye for plane and volume, and exceptional sure-footedness in his address of all three. This sculpture is published in Harold Seidelman's and James Turner's 1993 text The Inuit Imagination: Arctic Myth and Sculpture. A closely-related work to this sculpture was chosen for the cover of the 1992 revised and updated publication of George Swinton’s classic reference work Sculpture of the Inuit.
03563-1
