Charles Wilkinson’s portrait of renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson doesn’t start where you might expect – not in the village of Masset, where Davidson grew up, nor in the artist’s studio just outside Vancouver.
Instead, the film begins by bouncing along on the back of a tractor in New York’s Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden, where masters of the form – Moore, Rodin, Giacometti and Calder – share space with Davidson’s totem poles.
The point is implicit – Davidson is as much the master of 20th century art as his American and European counterparts. As Davidson explains: “I have my foot in two cultures – in Haida culture and Western culture.”
Director Charles Wilkinson (photo by Tina Schliessler)
Born into a family of artists, Davidson started carving when he was 13. When he moved to Vancouver to finish high school, a stint demonstrating argillite carving at Eaton’s led to an encounter with Bill Reid, who invited him to his studio to be coached in design and technique. This immersion in classical Haida art and culture was augmented by Davidson’s discovery of the large collection at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology.
When Davidson returned home to Haida Gwaii, little traditional material culture remained. The forest of totem poles, seen in photos of Old Masset, had been cut down and burned at the behest of the Christian church.
Davidson went door to door, asking people in the village if they had anything that had survived the dark days. All he found was a single bentwood box.
This devastation prompted Davidson’s decision to carve the first totem pole in almost a century. With no experience working on such a scale, the 22-year-old enlisted the help of his father, grandfather and younger brother, Reg.
It was his grandmother who suggested he talk to the elders, an experience he describes as “opening the door.” The knowledge of Haida culture hadn’t been lost. It had survived in the hearts and memories of the old people and was awoken once again.
A scene from “Haida Modern” shows Robert Davidson painting. (photo by Tina Schliessler)
On a bright summer day in 1969, the Bear Mother pole was raised in the old way with members of the Eagle and Raven clan working together, heaving and straining to lift the massive pole skywards until it stood tall and straight, facing the sea.
From the ground zero of cultural oblivion, Davidson’s act of resistance and rebirth helped bring about a renaissance of Haida art and culture.“The totem pole was actually a catalyst,” he says, “to make a statement: ‘Hey! We’re alive and we want to be part of this world.’”
Despite his stature in the art world, Davidson is a humble guy, prone to easy laughter, obsessed with coffee, a loving father and grandfather. Wilkinson, who also made the 2015 documentary Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World, doesn’t shy away from Davidson’s darker moments – the drinking, failed marriages and parenting struggles – along with the all-consuming dedication to art.
A close-up of Robert Davidson at work. (photo by Tina Schliessler)
Although the 85-minute film takes a deliberately soft approach, with occasional over-indulgence in syrupy slow-motion shots of bears and ravens, it is Davidson’s art that most enthralls. Knife-finished carvings and painted lines so precise they appear almost computer-generated are captured in close and exquisite detail.
Now 72, Davidson continues to stretch the boundaries of contemporary Haida art, creating work that uses traditional formline but also injects new vocabularies.
Davidson’s Haida name, Guud Sans Glans, translates as "Eagle of the Dawn." It’s a fitting descriptor of the role he has occupied throughout his career.
Activism has become an increasingly critical part of Davidson’s life. In a fractured and broken culture, he says artists can act as steersmen, setting a course towards a better, more integrated place. “There’s a Haida belief,” he says, “that whatever we can imagine, we can create.” ■
Haida Modern premieres Oct. 1 at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival.
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