At the same time, the new Museum of Anthropology at UBC, while providing an impressive record of First Nations' artistic achievement, also told, almost in spite of itself, a disturbing and sad story of cultural betrayal and disintegration. This book, with excellent photographs and drawings by Hilary Stewart, opened my eyes to the spirit of Northwest Coast art. They are ways of thinking, in the guise of ways of seeing. The eye can sometimes be satisfied with form alone, but the mind can only be satisfied with meaning, which can be contemplated, more consciously or less, after the eye is closed. Like McLuhan, Duff sought the inner logic of the medium at hand.
Sculptures become objects to think with.
They embody the riddles of life by analogy. If a club could be devised to kill death, it would be made of stone. Duff interpreted stone clubs, which often suggested a phallus, as images of power. Its metaphors are woman, rattlesnake, monster, seal, and Frog. Its logic is that of the paradox of the part that contains its whole.