The artist's of tribes of the Great Plains left their paper trail for centuries on rocks, cave walls, and buffalo robes and other animal skins. After contact with the white man the Native American artists began to use paper from the ledger books that traders used for record keeping, thus the term "ledger art".
The drawings were characteristic of the style that had persisted for centuries and culminated with the end of the proto-modern era of the Native American art movement.
It was at the end of this era and the beginning of the Modernistic era of the movement that Dorothy Dunn was teaching at the Santa Fe school. During her tenure she encouraged her students to continue the traditions of their predecessors in the "flat", or "primitive" art style. Here one can cite Dunn's unique concept of "primitive", and even more so her concept of "primitive art".
Anthropologists use the term "primitive" as a general category to describe cultures which had not achieved a certain standard (define modernity). For Dunn, a primitive was not a certain type of culture, but described individuals and objects indigenous to any, every, culture. The primitive subject was that gifted individual, or "seer" whom was able to discern the primitive objects relevant to their culture. These objects were also "primitives", and represented the signs, icons, or symbols of a culture. Thus, for Dunn, "primitive art" was the one to one relationship between the seer and the perceived set of primitive objects of their culture. Primitive was not a certain type of culture, but a certain set of variables occurring in every culture, and primitive art was an event that portrayed the values, or what was of importance in that culture. Thus, Dunn encouraged her students to carry on the tradition into the Modernist era.
Dorothy Dunn's concept of primitive art yields a definition that adequately depicts the problems and ambiguities in the usage of the term "primitive." She agrees with Boas' observation that in the broadest sense, every age has its primitives, its own interpreters and seers, and the assignment of the term primitive to these individuals is relative to the point of view based upon the knowledge of the observer. At the same time, she also cites Ralph Linton who denounces the commonly accepted connotation of the term "primitive" as assigning all primitives to the "childhood of art," but she seems to differ essentially from Linton's assertion that the "primitive" in "primitive art" is a relative term. Relational perhaps, but relative only in the sense that each culture defines its primitives according to its own set of values. The relational aspect is that primitive art occurs in every culture as an event between the seers, and that set of symbols, signs or designs which are iconic to that particular culture as its own set of primitives. The relationship is complex and is manifest in every society. This relationship defines the absolute in "primitive art." She summarizes this position in the statement that "Primitive is a relational term, conditioned by time and place, yet maintaining constant universal elements pertaining to frontiers."
Dunn notes that "Indian painting is the first art in history to have sprung, full-fledged, from the primitive into the contemporary world at a time when it was peculiarly compatible with both. Although it has won recognition as modern art, a consideration of some facts and assumptions in regard to primitive art may evaluate certain qualities of modern Indian painting which place it in a position of being old and new, primitive and contemporary." The reference to an absolute in primitive art is evident here, even though for the sake of communication she has to stumble over the common usage of the term "primitive" which she is trying to minimize.
In this regard Dunn states that the term "primitive art" calls for qualification. The qualification that Dunn employs is one that synthesizes the contrast between a diachronic and synchronic perspective of the term. In her usage of such terms as "time and place" and "frontiers" in contrasting the relative and universal aspects of primitive art she is indeed searching for a definition that would satisfy Fabian's demand for "allochronic determinations." If one were to isolate all instances of "time and place" diachronically (in linear, historical or temporal sequence) and apply them laterally, across cultural lines and the boundaries of possible worlds synchronically, and then abstract an intensive, characteristic notion
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