Ill 
PREFATORY NOTE 
BY 
E. Sapir 
(Chief of Division of Anthropology) 
Occidental artists are no longer content to confine themselves to the 
traditional legacy of what may be designated the highroad of European art. 
The exotic note has been struck in recent days quite frequently. At 
first, the more highly finished types of exotic art — more especially the 
decorative and pictorial art of China and Japan — were laid under tribute, 
partly by direct imitation or adaptation, partly, and even more fruitfully 
by the suggestion of new forms and more subtle nuances. Later, the 
exotic art of primitive peoples — of Polynesians, Peruvians, West Coast 
Indians — made accessible in museums and published illustrations, or directly 
studied in their home environment, opened up new and suggestive vistas 
to artists of a progressive temperament. What this art lacks in mechanical 
finish or execution is often more than made up by boldness of conception 
or an instinctive feeling for form and line. Industrial art, following in the 
wake of non-utilitarian art, has also felt the revivifying influence of exotic 
ideas. Primitive motives have already yielded gratifying results in the 
field of industrial application, though the possibilities of their utilization 
have as yet been barely tapped. This is due not so much to the inaccessi- 
bility of suitable material (museums and ethnological publications are 
crowded with valuable aesthetic suggestions) as to sheer inertia on the part 
of the industrial world and its failure to realize the fruitful possibilities 
that are inherent in so much of primitive art. The scientific students of 
primitive culture are no less to blame. They have been almost exclusively 
concerned with the purely scientific aspects of the study of primitive art. 
Paradoxically enough, they even seem to have forgotten that primitive 
art is art as well as ethnological material and have neglected the latent 
possibilities of suggestion and the invigorating influence of this primitive 
art on our own decorative art, which has so frequently been degraded to 
lifeless cliches. 
Aboriginal art in Canada, as the author points out, is by no means 
confined to the prehistoric remains. An even greater wealth of artistic 
material lies ready to hand in the decorated handicrafts of the living 
Indians. Although a certain proportion of this has undoubtedly been 
subjected to the influence of the whites, the greater part is still astonishingly 
true to aboriginal style and spirit and readily capable of industrial utiliza- 
tion along the lines laid down by Mr. Smith. Should the reception ac- 
corded the present volume warrant further publications of the same nature, 
it is the intention of the Division of Anthropology to prepare a series of 
albums dealing with what might be called the living art of the five great 
culture areas ordinarily recognized in aboriginal Canada. 
