The last in Frederick Dockstader’s trilogy of works on native American art, after Indian Art in America (on Canada and the United States) and Indian Art in Middle America (on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean), covers the continent of South America. In plan and format it follows its predecessors, with the result that the entire range of Indian artistic production in the hemisphere is now uniformly treated in three large and beautiful books.
Prepared for nontechnical readers but with great care devoted to text and illustrations, this work may stand as a model of popularization. Its larger part consists of 250 plates representing objects from all parts of the South American continent, superbly photographed by Carmelo Guadagno, and reproduced in good size with commentary and indication of provenience, date, and dimensions. The quality of the color plates is particularly noteworthy for the polychrome vessels, textiles, and gold objects. Peru inevitably receives a certain emphasis, but a notable feature is the inclusion of items from Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, and other areas. Most of the originals are in the collection of the Museum of the American Indian in New York, and the book may serve in part as a magnificent catalogue of this portion of the Museum’s holdings.
Historians who deal with native civilizations in their lecture courses, but whose primary attention is devoted to other matters, may profit equally from the concise and informative text. This treats the Indian primarily as an artist, but in the process it confronts the related historical questions of chronology, origins, tribal relations, native empires, and quantitative populations. The colonial period and the nineteenth century are almost wholly omitted from this work, which concentrates on precolonial and modern materials, and it thus neatly supplements the historian’s usual concerns. There is an unannotated but extensive and well-chosen bibliography.
