Critiquing an American Indian's Work of Art

Last weekend, the National Art Gallery, Washington, DC, held a series of symposia on works of art of the American Indian genre.  To my mind the striking feature of American Indian art that came out from their analysis of the art discussed was its illusive ability to succumb to art criticism.  Any particular work of art cast in that genre appeared incapable of evaluation by the art critics that cited it except for a self-serving comment of how "perfect it had been wrought" by the artist.  Actually, because the creation of a work of art in American Indian style is simply a step among several leading to a curative condition of a patient for whose benefit the work came into existence/  Among the sequence is 1)identification of the patient's malady, 2) a recognition of the gods who should be invoked to provide remedies, 3) using sands, etc. create the likeliness of them onto a backdrop cloth through an artist's hands, 4) call for these gods in representation to evoke a cure upon the patient; and 5) record any positive effect upon him.  Any beneficial effect counts toward the physical response a cure.

My friend Chuck refers to the entire process 1-5 as enumerating the metaphysical critique of healing.  It acknowledges the curative effect wrought by the gods of the spirit world connected through the painting to achieve a miracle.  A work of art so adjudged becomes known as part of valid Indian art, i.e, the process whereby the spirit world of the psychical is.connected to the physical for purposes of healing the body and the soul of a living John Doe.  And referring to any one step in the sequence is merely calling forth a perfection in the execution of the whole, metaphysical procedure.  The procedure is  divine; and the cure is holy--accomplished through creating in the art a relation between the eternal and sublime; and the transitory by the artist's hands. 

Thus, only if the art work achieves the goal of a patient's health is it a true work of Indian art.