During the groundbreaking Charles Edenshaw exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2013, poet Colin Browne found himself returning often to study three large argillite platters carved by the Haida master in the late 1800s. Produced several years apart, each depicts an identical scene at the same moment: two frightened figures in a canoe appear to be on a mission. One is the Raven, in supernatural form, brandishing a spear; the other, in the stern, is a human-like figure with a circular head. On one platter he holds a paddle; on the other, his arms are raised in a state of panic. He is the helmsman, known as Fungus, or Fungus Man, or Biscuit Man.
The Raven and Fungus Man appear early on in the Haida epic poem "Raven Travelling," not long after the Raven releases human men from a clamshell. Their mission is to enable men and women to go forth and multiply. The three platters, celebrated not only for their craftsmanship but also for their insight into the psyche, are rarely brought together in one place, and the fact that Edenshaw returned, with a sense of humour, to this primal scene, suggests that the theme was as important to him as it was to his contemporary, Sigmund Freud.
Browne launches his unexpected journey of discovery with a simple question: "Who was Fungus, or Fungus Man, and why did he become the one responsible for the miracle of human procreation?" Every good story is an origin story and a mystery story and in Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw, Browne ranges through the fields of art history, literature, ethnology, and myth to discover a parallel history of modernism within one of the world's most subtle and sophisticated artistic and literary cultures.
The text is supplemented by an interview with visual artist Neil Campbell, whose recent paintings speak to Fungus Man's art-historical echoes and contemporary relevance.
About the Author :
Colin Browne has published five volumes of poetry. His most recent publications are Entering Time: The Fungus Man Platters of Charles Edenshaw (Talonbooks, 2016) and The Hatch: Poems and Conversations (Talonbooks, 2015). His books have been nominated for a Governor General's Award and the Dorothy Livesay Award / B.C. Poetry Prize. He is a celebrated filmmaker; his experimental documentary White Lake was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Feature Documentary. His recent exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, I Had an Interesting French Artist to See Me This Summer: Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paalen in British Columbia (2016), explored the brief encounter between these two Modernist artists in Victoria, B.C., in August 1939, and presented the first extensive exhibition of Paalen's work in Canada. His collaboration with composer Alfredo Santa Ana, Music for a Night in May, was presented at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in May 2018. Recent essays exploring the links between Surrealism and the art of the Northwest Coast have appeared in exhibition catalogues in the U.S. and Europe. He is currently working on new curatorial projects and preparing a collection of essays for publication. Until recently, he taught in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where he is Professor Emeritus.
Review :
“[Browne] is to be congratulated on treating Edenshaw’s work not as a separate ‘ethnographic’ art but as modernist hybrid work that mirrored what was going on in the Haida world in late nineteenth and early twentieth century B.C. Browne’s detailed discussion of Charles Edenshaw’s platters – and the political, social, and economic environment in which that creation took place – is informed by his dependence on the knowledge and insight of contemporary Haida scholars and artists and also by his extensive reference to academic discussion. … A delight to read and an accessible and lively introduction to the twists and turns of Haida mythology.”
—The Ormsby Review
