PUDLO PUDLAT (1916-1992) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
Ecclesiast, 1969 # 52
Printmaker: LUKTA QIATSUK (1928-2004) KINNGAIT (CAPE DORSET)
stonecut, 21 x 24.5 in (53.3 x 62.2 cm)
2/50

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Australia.

In Marie Routledge's analyses the evolution of PudloÂ’s imagery, she singles out Ecclesiast for special mention, writing, "Around 1968 or 1969 Pudlo's images of women become focused in a group of drawings that combine female and angel imagery with playing-card motifs. The best-known example is the 1969 stonecut Ecclesiast. The woman in Ecclesiast, garbed in a long, robe-like dress and wearing what appears to be a tight-fitting headdress that frames her face in a triangular opening, is reminiscent of a playing-card Queen" (1990 pp. 23-24).Jean Blodgett, too, in Grasp Tight the Old Ways: Selections from the Klamer Family Collection of Inuit Art (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983) discusses Ecclesiast in relation to Pudlo's later imagery. Blodgett writes, "While, PudloÂ’s recent graphics of airplanes are seen by some as 'un-Eskimo,' Pudlo has for years incorporated western elements into his work. Like shamans, spirits, or arctic animals, they are part of his Panofskyan 'cultural equipment' and as such they are raw material for his creativity. [...] The visual transformation of these subjects is all part of Pudlo's working process in which the drawing of one thing leads to another" (p. 136).Nancy-Lou Patterson describes Ecclesiast as, "One from a series of winged images identified in other titles as 'angels,' this metamorphic figure translates the ancient Western concept of the angel [...] into an Eskimo [sic] shape of enormous energy. It is a stone-cut in a linear pattern and printed in black, blue, yellow and red." As Marie Routledge singled out Ecclesiast, Patterson so too holds this print in high regard, announcing it to be "The most beautiful" from this series of winged images.References: This image has been extensively exhibited and reproduced, including in The Inuit Print (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1977), cat. 50.; Nancy-Lou Patterson, Canadian Native Art : Arts and Crafts of Canadian Indians and Eskimos, (Don Mills, ON: Collier-Macmillan Canada, 1973), fig. 55, reproduced p. 170; Marie Routledge and Marion Jackson, Pudlo: Thirty Years of Drawing, (Ottawa : National Gallery of Canada, 1990), fig. 11, p. 24.