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good afternoon everyone and welcome to the acme center tnark center i’m pat sullivan public programs officer here

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and i think we’re all delighted to see such a great turnout for this afternoon’s event and i’m going to

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outline how it will unfold our program today is part of an ongoing

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series which we call the francis p smith public talks in canadian art

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it was just a month ago that this very space held a reception after the memorial service for francis

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paceman the first curator of the arts center her indomitable spirit was spelled then

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and we appreciate it now as we prepare to enjoy an enlightening program made

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possible through her generosity and support for canadian art today’s event the canadian group of

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painters up close relates to the exhibition of my own force the canadian group of painters

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which opened in march and runs to july 14th this important exhibition organized by

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our curator of canadian historical art alicia boulier brings together 48 paintings by 48 key

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members of the canadian group of painters cgp for short

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when the cgp burst upon the scene in 1933 it emerged from the group of seven but

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became much more it was the first group to aspire to cross-country representation of

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modernist artists including women and its members were involved in the social

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and political issues of the time the cgp’s vehicle for reaching the

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canadian public was its organization of a biennial jury exhibition which often

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started in maine centers like toronto or montreal but traveled to smaller cities

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like saskatoon all the works in this show were exhibited at an exhibition in the two

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decades 1933 to 1953 the period when the cgp was truly a

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vital force in canadian art i hope you’re all staying for our reception at 5 00 pm tonight when you

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will hear more of the exhibition from alicia i’ll just mention that it is accompanied

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by a catalog which is on sale in our shop at a special discount today

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my brief remarks i hope have set the context for our program this afternoon which i’ll outline now

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we have chosen to focus on four artists represented in the exhibition

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ay jackson paris david clark peggy nichol mcleod and andre buehler

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we’ll be doing that in two ways four four art historians who i’ll introduce as they come up will each give

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a 20-minute talk on one work included in the exhibition we’re delighted that agnes leighton anna

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hudson and laura brandon accepted our invitation to join alicia ludolair in

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giving these presentations today our program contains another element for

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which i must acknowledge alicia’s creativity we’re going to hear from each artist as

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well but through their writings to that end we are also pleased to have with us two students from the drama

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department at queen’s paul dick and rithis keenan read those short pieces

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i’ll introduce each reading and then the speaker as the program unfolds

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we’ve allowed some time for a very short q a after each talk and we’ll have a 10

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minute break after the second talk however refreshments are available on

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the table at the back of the chairs throughout the afternoon so please feel

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free to help yourself at any time you’ll notice that we are recording the

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program this will be an audio recording which we’ll post on our website

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so let’s get started

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our first reading is from a letter by ay jackson pictured here

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to lionel le moyne fitzgerald in 1933 about the first canadian group of

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painters exhibition in toronto both are former members of the group of seven and founding members of the cgp

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let’s hear from ay jackson

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studio building toronto november 7 1933. my dear fitzger the big show is on

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and it looks good and promises to be still better next year some of the reactions from it are

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amusing people who used to deplore or condemn the old group now regret that it is no more

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they think of its unity in definite direction which they only realize now by contrast with all the diverse views

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represented in this outfit i like it myself the original members have made less

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effort than usual colgate has a small nude very beautifully painted which i hope our

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gallery here will block harris has only old stuff lismer a still life of milkweed

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and a lake right up to his usual castle and carmichael both a little subdued and barley nothing but a candice

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left out of last year’s academy there is a lovely head of a child by

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prudence heward and three very happy things by sarah robertson the nuns garden is naive and full of imagination

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a portrait of mrs mccall by lilius newton is fine a landscape by carl schaefer and a very much stylized study

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of dead trees by isabel mclaughlin i find very interesting your three small ones are very much in

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mind particularly the apples one of our members miss mclaughlin would

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like to own it but it is not marked for sale if it is could you let me know how much she could have it

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we got into a mess a large nude by lilius newton very cleverly painted the gallery would not

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let us hang and immediately call the show off but it is a municipal gallery and they

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are always afraid of doing anything to imperil their annual grant the show will open in montreal right

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after christmas and probably break up after that unless another exhibit goes to the u.s

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i have just returned here after kicking around for four months up north in spite of bad times the artists look pretty

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well fed and very cheerful and full of great intentions and all swear they’re going to do a big

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canvas for the next show how big a space will you won’t reserve with all good wishes nor sincerely alex

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jackson

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thank you paul our first speaker is atkins label agnes completed her m.a in art history

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of queens where her thesis was on the 1927 and 1930 trips that jackson made to

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the eastern arctic archipelago with banting and harris respectively

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she is continuing that topic in her doctoral studies now agnes contributed significantly to the

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research for the exhibition and will speak on ay jackson’s radium mine please

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welcome agnes

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upon returning from his 1927 sketching expedition to the arctic archipelago in

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mike jackson provided a sounding challenge to young canada to be even more canadian than it has been and to

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put themselves at the head of the big adventure of discovering canada’s vast northern empire hitherto left to

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expeditions principally from great britain the united states and scandinavia

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as jackson believed traveling north and experiencing the land firsthand was not only a worthwhile adventure but was

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necessary in order for canadians to make their own distinct contributions to arts and science that was an opportunity to

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land an expression to a region that was still relatively unexplored by canadians

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while jackson’s call to canadians was part of the groundswell of interest in the far north that had emerged as a

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result of sovereignty concerns at the time he also developed a deep affection for

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northern canada that would draw him to the arctic circle and the canadian northwest a number of times during his

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career for jackson the northern landscape was not only a means to seek fresh

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inspiration and freedom from convention to develop individuality in canadian art

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as he proclaimed but was also the place where canadian consciousness could be discovered through painting

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it is therefore not surprising that when gilbert adelaide levine a canadian prospector who discovered pitch blend on

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the shores of great bear lake in the northwest territories invited jackson to visit his eldorado radio mine in 1938 he

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eagerly accepted a decade earlier jackson had traveled by rail to great slave lake with insulin

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co-founder and amateur artist dr frederick banting and geologist dr james mcintosh bell visiting fort resolution

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and yellowknife but as jackson noted he always had a hearing to see what kind of country

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they’d be on considered to be one of canada’s last

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frontiers at the time the remote region surrounding great bear lake situated 440

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kilometers north of yellowknife would become one of the most exciting developments of the 20th century

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as canadian journalist donald martin devoured succinctly put it in 1951 the

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story of the development of a mine about or almost around the arctic circle was

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one of the most thrilling stories of all the thrilling history of mining

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it was there along the eastern shores of great bear lake at echo bay where levine made his dramatic finding pitch blend in

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1930. the bean who spent the summer of 1929 in

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the northwest territories but there were excellent possibilities of finding cobalt and silver ore deposits around

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the lake and decided to return to the area the following spring during levine’s 1930 expedition while

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exploring an island some distance off shore he suddenly looked over to the mainland and noticed a great wall on the eastern

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shore of the lake that was stained with cobalt bloom and copper green although he had found all the associated

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pores of cobalt including silver he also found a tiny piece of ore about the size

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of a large plum which levine discovered was pitch blend while he later realized that he had

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stumbled across a very rich deposit of uranium ore there were relatively few uses for

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uranium at the time however radium which is also found in pitch blend was commonly used in the

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production of luminous paints and more significantly in medical research and cancer treatment which therefore created

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the demand for the substance historian robert bockwell explains that

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although the beans company el dorado gold wines limited was a small well-managed

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speculative mining venture the rise of the el dorado radio mine at april bay and onset of the great bear

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lake rush were the product of private initiative and government encouragement

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in fact shortly after the beans discovered pitch blend the department of mines in ottawa took a vested interest

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in his mining operation in december 1932 the industrial

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information bureau bureau of canada announced that a new commercial process of radium extraction was successfully

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developed by the department plans were therefore made to transport pitch blend ores from the beans mine on

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great bear lake to canada’s first radiant refinery which was being established at port hope ontario at the

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time in 1936 when the first ounce of radiant from el dorado was firmly sealed at

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court hope for firing dr banking was present during the landmark event proclaimed that the

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production of radium was a great romance of science and a triumph in research

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yet it can also be understood that levine’s discovery of pitch blend was also a great triumph for canadian

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industry as historian liza piper actually points out turn of the century dances in

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chemistry and medicine made pitch blend the more valuable companion to silver to the silver and the rocks that were being

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originally searched for on great bear lake indeed at the time of the beans

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discovery in 1930 the only other known source of rain was in the belgian congo

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with a market value of 70 000 per grand in 1930 the discovery of radium would

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have certainly provided a wealthy news to the canadian economy during the great depression

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but as also suggests the real significance of the discovery pitch blend on great bear lake was that

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it heralded the arrival of international capital interested in sub-arctic resource exploitation

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which ultimately facilitated the rise in canadian urban development and the industrialization of the

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northwest it was this newly industrialized

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northwest that would provide the backdrop to jackson’s visit to port medium in late august of 1938

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shortly after he returned from a two-week sketching trip on georgian bay jackson gathered his supplies and headed

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west to edmonton where the bean had arranged for jackson to be flown up to the el dorado line on the company plane

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on what would be jackson’s first long-distance flight after boarding the plane at cooking lake

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which was loaded with groceries steel pipe and other supplies for the mine and several finish miners

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he traveled to fort smith then on to great slave lake before finally arriving at the fort media mining settlement on

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august 26th shortly after his arrival jackson wrote

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a quick note to this quick note to his niece naomi jackson describing his first

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impression of the area which he noted was surrounded by big rocky hills and open patches of spruce

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while jackson explained to naomi that he expected to spend approximately three weeks at port radium he would in fact

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spend six weeks from august into october sketching around the settlement but grew

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up around the el dorado line which he described as a little center of industry and a great empty wilderness

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with the mining manager’s little scotch terrier susie at his side jackson set off each morning wandering

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over the rocky hills in search of subjects often stopping to make quick annotations in the sketchbook

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the fluid and forgiving nature of drawing enabled him to later adopt the northern landscape into a more

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comprehensible form and helped facilitate the quick studies that jackson made during his rambles which

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later served as notes when he worked up his drawings into oil sketches and paintings

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this particular sketch entitled alvarado mine is one of the several studies that

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jackson made of the mine at the rugged headland of levine’s point on echo bay

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and served as the basis for his 1938 painting radiant line

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while johnson’s depiction of the mining site serves as a stark reminder of the little center of industry in the

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wilderness with its buildings barrels logs winding road and utility pole neatly

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laid out in the composition the present canvas which measures 82

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centimeters also captures the idyllic beauty of the canadian northwest and autumn with its

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diffused autumnal sunlight sunlight his characteristic rich earthy palette

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of browns and ochres provide a strong contrast to the lighter grays moves and

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pale yellows that are laid out in various rhythmic contours and patterns on the snow and on the glinting surface

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of the lake lending awareness and atmospheric quality to the impression

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the patches of bears come to trees and the rhythmic pattern of rocky rolling hills which generally extend toward the

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expansive horizon also convey a sense of the region’s vastness and of the north’s profound

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solitude interestingly jackson found the region

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surrounding the mind monotonous at first by mid-september the trees were there of

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thieves and winter sea break was set in however the more he explored the area he

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discovered among the patches of spruce and small birch and muskego lakes and almost magical quality surrounding the

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stark wilderness region of northwestern canada as jackson would later explain

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what people in the more developed parts of canada do not realize is the bewildering beauty of the arctic

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the strong contrasts in color and topography the uniqueness of a clear sky that lends

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a crispness to contours that cannot be observed in the more subtle regions of canada

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johnson’s 1938 visit to great beer lake had made such a favorable impression on him that he would return to the area

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several more times over the course of the next two decades i guess unlike a compass always heading

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north he later explained to his niece to naomi i really do belong to the caribbean

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country not the cow country for jackson painting cannabis north was

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not only an opportunity to lend expression to a region that was still relatively unfamiliar to canadians

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but was an opportunity to define it as unique and distinctly canadian as he proclaimed

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yet while it can be understood that jackson’s northwestern sketching expedition was part of his ongoing quest

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to pictorialize the nation jax’s painting gradient mine also marks an extraordinary period in

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canadian history not only did el dorado line provide the

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world a new source of radium for medical research and treatments but the mind would also become a source of uranium

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for weapons as the world marched toward the atomic age at the beginning of world war ii in 1939

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or from the eldorado mine was used in some of the first chain reaction experiments that have produced nuclear

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energy although the mine initially shut down in 1940 because the war closed europe to

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radio sales from canada therefore making it no longer profitable to operate the

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money el dorado was secretly expropriated and reopened in 1942 by the canadian

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government a major crown corporation

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while johnson did not visit to the mine during the war years it was not until 1949 when he was able

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to return to port radium and the great bear lake region at the invitation of the department of resources and

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development one can consider that there was also an underlying darker subtext to his image

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of the line the uranium extracted from el dorado a

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year after jackson’s 1938 visit would eventually become part of canada’s key contribution to the manhattan project

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during the second world war although it’s not entirely certain that

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uranium from the mine was used in the atomic bombs detonated over the cities of hiroshima or nagasaki in japan in

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1945 as the united states was also using sources from the belgian congo at the

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time uranium from el dorado was used in early atomic bomb developments and continued

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to be extracted and used from the mine until supplies were eventually exhausted in 1916.

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canadian writer carol joe gande notes that for many canadians the wartime mining of uranium came with the symbols

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of our huge northern spaces the image and sound of the pit can hammer against the hard rock of the

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pre-pavery and shield the tall pines in that cold isolated place and the dark pinks greens and

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blacks of cobalt copper and pitch blend indeed it is through images such as

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jackson’s painting radiant line but symbols of the canadian wilderness landscape and industry ultimately

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converge to reveal one of the most enduring narratives about canada’s contribution to both arts and science

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however as montreal critic robert era mostly most aptly put it after viewing the

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montreal opening of the eli jackson retrospective exhibition in 1954

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in the past half century with our growth and development as a nation we have learned to take on the errors

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and graces of the sophisticated world but this is only possible because of the

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wilderness and our energy and exploiting it jackson is not a documentary painter

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he does not narrate the story of exploitation he shows us the country we have to deal

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with what it looks like what it feels like

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cooped up in our cities though we read about the duke and angara

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we’re not always aware of that overwhelming henchman that is canada

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jackson keeps it in our consciousness thank you

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thank you very much agnes um as i said we will contain time for one or two questions so is there anyone who has a

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question fragments at this point

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my question is did jackson say anything about the coming war in any of the

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correspondence with naomi in this period no he hasn’t had that point

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anyone else okay i i know there was more than one painting of this series from this subject do you

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know how how big a scope like how much did he make of that project do you know the number of works or the

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range of works from that site there were at least two different uh paintings of that site there was one on on option or

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just recently it was sold it was just uh showing without the mine of course but

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it was showing the same region with just the rocks and the trees um there are

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he did several sketches around the area but he only made two paintings as far as i know of of that site and this is the

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one that i showed off the line the other one there’s a area actually there would have been three pages

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there’s one painting of an aerial view of the mining site not just through aerial

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view but he’s on top of the rock looking down and you just see the the mining site from afar

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what was there he was the only artist there he actually uh

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caused luck didn’t cause sensation but people thought he was uh a little bit of a novelty when he was there because uh

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the miners just thought well what’s this guy doing they’re painting because a lot of the miners were just the rough and

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tumble sort of type there and they just didn’t really understand so they kind of left him alone while he was

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painting during the time maybe one more quick one and then

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in the bottom right hand corner are those boats where are those logs there’s

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balls but there is one boat just a little to the upper right of those logs

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this one both there but i think of vlogs would be more for for building but i

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don’t see that there are that many trees so i wonder where yeah

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the landscape did have trees they were very stunted certain trees uh pines and spruce that were around there so

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they’re really good for fire because they’re very dry i remember reading an account how the trees were quite dry

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there they call them little sticks jackson called the little sticks standing up in front of her out of the

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rocks okay thank you very much

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for our second reading we’ll hear from paris david clarke a russian-born artist

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who felt frustrated with the dominance of landscape that she saw in canadian

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painting her words come from the article come out from behind the pre-cambrian shield

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published in 1937 paris favorite one

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mr frank other hill states that the finer spirits among the european artists are deciding one after another that in

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our troubled generation the artist must be red or dead

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the roughness of this definition of the artist’s duty towards society made one of the finer spirits among canadian

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artists artists elizabeth weinwood expressed publicly her annoyance at the

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use of such vulgar and early words red or dead in connection with the

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divine nature of the artistic personality red art has for miss wood only the

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conventionally standardized meaning of endless portraits of blennan and stalin

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the russian proletariat standing on the fallen coast a modern saint george and the dragon

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castles in spain crumbling miss woods aloofness and that of others

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like her from the real life of their country makes them all oblivious to what

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is going on around them artists of the pre-cambrian shield it is

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time to come down from your ivory tower to come out from behind your pre-cambrian shield and dirty your gown

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in the mud and sweat of conflict it is all very well to lie on a rock

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between sky and water brooding over thousands of men in different parts of the world throughout all the ages who

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have lived in peace and happiness and creative energy but if thousands lived in that peace and

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happiness questionable attributes to any genuine creative artist it was because other thousands suffered

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so that they might do so and you artists of the pre-cambrian shield have been

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born unfortunately for your dreams into an age when what one desires is not

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handed to one on a silver spoon but has to be fought for more grimly as

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each month goes by it is to enable you to lie on a rock that castles in spain are tumbling

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think of the human being take actual part in your own times find

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their expression and translate it help your fellow man in the struggle for

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the future and dream of the art which this future will produce

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oh artists secure behind the pre-kangaroo shoe why these things not interest you

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you whose soul and mind understands the secret life of the forms of trees and

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rocks and skies and is moved to tears by them why do the people and their

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struggles and their dreams not interest you are they considered unworthy to be

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expressed to your creative ability there is more real happiness for you if

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you remember that you are one of them and it is better to work out the destiny

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of your human nature than to expect a divine one at the present time you wish to be left

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alone not to be disturbed with requests to be either red or dead quietly looking

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upon the hysteria of those who are giving their lives for a new social

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order and condescending to reassure them that you will welcome this new order if

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and when it comes and if it comes you will be on the outside your welcome would be useless

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for you would not understand the language of this new order

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thank you paris clark painted the most overtly

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political work in a vital force it will be addressed by dr anna hudson

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who is the associate dean in the faculty of fine arts and an associate professor

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of art history and visual culture at york university toronto anna will speak

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on paris david clarke’s painting patricia please welcome anna hudson

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it’s funny i’m still nervous every time i’m getting up in front of people so it’s it’s actually great to hear that

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read out loud because uh what paris david clarke meant by that is a

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perplexed i would say me and probably many of my fellow artist orients for a long time

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and so what i want to talk about today is to try to share with you how i’ve

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come to understand what she meant to be engaged in her time and

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to mobilize an artistic practice towards social good i have quite a few images

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um so i will try not to click them too quickly to give anybody vertigo

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okay so um it’s true this is the most uh

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um obviously socially conscious uh painting of the decade and paris gave a

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clark shows herself to the left of the podium uh and i believe that’s you clive as a

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little baby or it’s not and uh that’s that’s what we talk about amongst our historians anyway and ben

31:27

nearby but you’ll see um echo in the crowd

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the raised fist of the popular front essentially an international organization um behind supporting

31:41

communism and on the podium that rises from the center of this urban square

31:47

the battle between capital and political power and the

31:52

victim being the worker petrucha is a russian folk tale

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that parascala clark remembers as something that inspires her to

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consider the suffering of humanity in the relationship of art to humanity

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on the back of the painting was the clipping

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of five steel strikers uh killed in a clash with chicago police

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so this was in the toronto daily star june 1st 1930 seven

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oops all right and this is my first kind of clue and

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it’s um it’s been known for a long time that she was inspired by this clipping and yet

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it’s taking me forever to sort of appreciate that what she was beginning to do

32:48

was to consider photography and consider the relationship between painting and photography so we’re aware that early

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photographers would try to make their photographs look like paintings or

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reference painterly aesthetics and then we have certainly in the 1930s

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painters very interested in what it meant to reference photography what was photography doing to stress painting uh

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distressed paintings primacy to stress artists to begin to imagine

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what are the images that are beginning to inhabit people’s mind and influence them in certain values particularly when

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one considers that as you saw from that newspaper page photography now begins to populate the popular press

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so just a decade prior it wasn’t going you weren’t going to see so many photographs with the

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handheld uh camera of 1925 the leica 35 millimeter

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we have amateur photographers growing in numbers camera clubs growing in numbers and photographs entering the

33:56

popular press this is actually a photograph by a

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photojournalist from montreal named conrad poirier who i became very interested in because i just wasn’t

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aware of the kind of photojournalism that had begun to emerge

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in canada this is a newsstand in montreal so you can just see there that um the kind of

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imagery that we’re we’re getting used to now and that is accelerated in terms of the internet

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name age um there was already a kind of battle beginning to take place for privacy on

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the newsstands with the spectacular uh images this is a

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conrad foreign itself now so there’s the the emergence of

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photography and then there’s the the standard of political propaganda and i

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had long assumed in trying to understand the patricia painting that an image like

34:59

this which is a bolshevik poster from 1922 which was reproduced in the canadian forum a

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leftist leaning uh art journal in toronto but this was the kind of

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imagery that periscope clark was thinking of with that worker rising from the center and

35:15

you can see uncle sam shrinking away and working the media shrinking away and that raised fist of the population

35:23

and in communist in the soviet union the right

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relationship of painting to photography uh was already emerging in a strong way you see the

35:35

photograph below of lemon in the square and the painting above translated and i was interested in the fact that

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painting moves at a different speed than photography what would have been the purpose of this artist

35:49

memorializing a photograph in painting and what’s the different choices that the

35:55

artist would make to change the photographic image when translating it

36:01

into painting and that’s something that i wanted to think about for here at the periscope floor

36:07

this is a portrait of mao from 1938 and by this point

36:13

she had become friends with norman bethune and norman bethune was one of the

36:19

advocates in canada for the spanish republic and encouraging support for the spanish republic when the spanish civil

36:26

war broke out in 1936 and when uh franco rallied a group of

36:32

rebels essentially to try to topple that government with the idea that it was the rebels the

36:39

franco’s rebels the nationalists who would preserve culture and it was a republican culture

36:45

republican government excuse me ostensibly who would take uh would eradicate tradition

36:51

uh by welcoming onearity what you’ll see in the back there behind the image of mao is a poster

37:00

um that the thunder must have sent to paris and so this was the kind of

37:07

entrance of photography into political propaganda now so

37:12

realizing that photography just had that capacity to up the ante in terms of

37:20

overwhelming you with a sense of reality that this must be true because you’re seeing it because it’s a um it’s an

37:26

image of uh you know it’s a it’s a it’s not constructed

37:32

um i was fascinated by what virginia woolf described and she was writing on the emergence of

37:40

photography in newspapers and saying what a strange experience this was to be able as a

37:47

woman to read your newspaper in the morning and essentially become

37:52

on par with all the men who had ran politics because you were there

37:59

brought into the moment of world conflict and she appreciated the fact that

38:06

photography had democratized politics um and it also had brought the horrors of

38:11

the world into people’s uh personal lives in in a way that

38:17

was absolutely new so this was a republican uh poster um

38:23

against what uh frank those rebels had started in the civil war uh franco’s

38:30

rebels eventually won in 1937 what an incredible year

38:36

um i think it should just be a book just on 1937. uh this is an image of the paris world’s fair it’s the same year as

38:43

as patricia and we’re looking at uh across the sun to the um

38:48

soviet pavilion on the left and the german building on the right so it’s the farmer and industrial worker

38:55

um absolutely at odds with the eagle representative here of emerging

39:02

nazi government so there was something about

39:08

photography and the battle of for people’s minds

39:16

and the the cultural struggles that began to be played out on the artistic front

39:22

um that paris david clarke was very aware of and which must have inspired

39:28

her come out from behind the pre-candidate shield

39:33

so just another angle about how important this world exposition was

39:38

to have governments um supporting culture to such an extent

39:45

because they realized it was those um intangible values that way of seeing the

39:51

world that way of deciding what’s true what’s false what’s reality that artists were playing for

39:57

the spanish pavilion most interesting in relation to paris david clarke

40:02

it was the republican pavilion for the republican government it was very high modern as you can see

40:09

with the abstract sculpture and a heavy emphasis throughout the pavilion of photo montage

40:15

so art and photography coming into a dialogue with one another most indicative of this is picasa puerta

40:24

the famous painting done after the bombing of the basque town

40:30

by franco’s german allies and this is the piece that was most

40:38

important for um paraspena clark she did end up seeing the painting in new york city after this

40:44

uh toured internationally afterwards and it’s a black and white

40:51

uh enormous mural why would picasso choose to use black and white well there’s definitely

40:56

the photographs in newspapers it has a newspaper collage quality to it

41:03

and it really pushes that point about way that painting selects extends and

41:09

memorializes in a way arguably that photography cannot

41:15

i think she was identifying very much with the idea of the modern woman

41:21

and that that modern woman was a force in uh national life of a militia woman

41:28

active politically as she includes herself in that image

41:34

i was always fascinated by the little sketch and sorry for the poor quality image here a little sketch where you see

41:41

in the where the dead tree had been in the back above the

41:50

play patricia play now we see a pine tree in an earlier version of the composition

41:56

referencing group of seven certainly i think there must have been some thought there about how the group of seven’s

42:02

time had passed or the time in which you could paint these kinds of images of wilderness was no longer relevant

42:10

at the same time when we think about that’s thompson’s jackpine these are other images by thompson

42:15

there’s something about thompson his kind of retinal quality of painting the way that he uh captures light capsule

42:23

captures color captures an accuracy of a vision

42:29

that certainly is maintained in the following generation but in a

42:35

different way now there was a made more complex by understanding what popular culture had done to that vision

42:43

to color it to change it to bring certain ideas to it i was curious too but images like this

42:50

as we see in the leisure’s exhibition and the louis woolstock images of a doorway why would would an artist these

42:57

this canadian group of painters who are all socially conscious want to paint doorways but of course this was eugenic

43:04

j’s a popularization in the 1920s of images of doorways in paris which the

43:11

surrealists championed and it was something about what the surrealists understood about photography that they

43:18

was always what was beyond the frame what was framing your vision what was framing your attitude and that the way

43:23

that the camera lens could focus on something could suddenly bring it into a new

43:29

revelation similarly her colleague briton brooker

43:36

and this is a seated nude from 1935 and it’s it’s

43:42

what went to i mean there’s a little pocket in the 1930s where there were lots of nudes painted very curious why

43:48

was that the time in canadian art when when nudity became so important and i think it had a lot to do with the fact

43:54

that at these camera clubs a lot of nudes were being photographed and the difference between the

44:00

photograph nude and the painted move seems the most effective to me in

44:06

understanding the difference between the two there’s something about that the happenstance of the of the

44:13

photographed image the fact we actually see the dressed man adjusting the lights

44:18

and then the naked woman in the foreground something about that composition changes dramatically about

44:24

the uh dynamics of that composition what’s going on what’s taking place

44:30

similarly through stewart’s uh painting of playing this is a family snapshot and

44:36

yet she blows it up in the larger composition and memorializes it in paint

44:44

so painting operates as a different speed representational painting during this period why i mean the question

44:51

often is why wasn’t abstraction advanced why was there this seeming interest in

44:57

tradition representational painting evokes the temporal intersection

45:03

of self with history with tradition and of collective humanity

45:09

and it can do so most effectively i argue when there’s a reference

45:14

to photography

45:21

the other main point i wanted to make is this idea of time so there’s a deep time the deep

45:28

time of human humanity that that painting preserves and deals with and then there’s the instantaneous time of

45:34

photography and there’s something about

45:39

an image like this one that where we see the server whistling and the man the the

45:46

client with his cigarette we can imagine that you know the momentariness of that

45:52

that there was an interest in the invincibility of time and that needing to to stop it to visualize it so that we

46:00

could begin to understand that it was in those moments when we try to make sense of a world that

46:05

in 1937 was an absolute chaos and the future of humanity of great concern

46:13

that if you could concentrate on what the process of perception was how

46:19

we think how we make sense of the world that we do so by narrating to ourselves but we look at the newspaper we look at

46:25

the sunday we look at the coffee we look at them and we’re creating stories in our mind about what the scene is

46:31

and once we come to a conclusion or aware of how things are coming together that

46:36

suddenly we can make meaning out of it then time stops and we come to a deep understanding of the moment of ourself

46:43

in the moment and this is an interest in musical um

46:49

subjects in this time period also and here we have this guitar player really a very innocuous seemingly insignificant

46:57

kind of subject but he’s lost in melody

47:02

and there’s something about that complete absorption in melody time marches on theoretically um

47:10

but um in this period also when einstein’s theory of relativity was

47:16

turning around um notions of reality in terms of what’s

47:22

real time what space particularly particularly in terms of quantum and the fact that electric electrons could

47:28

disappear by jumping levels and suddenly you realize that you can’t account for the world in the

47:35

way that you used to think you could that you can’t explain everything there are things that are inexplicable that

47:40

the intangible can suddenly become more important than it’s those moments of human perception and human understanding

47:47

however intangible they might be in mysterious that becomes the most important subject matter for the

47:53

painting this ends i argue by the early 40s

47:59

when an artist like lauren p harris is taking this images of tanks

48:04

very photographic in its references but it’s an image of paranormalism

48:09

and that moment um suddenly loses its innocence

48:15

and when i thought you know there’s always a big question how come there was this couple of decades of representational

48:21

painting that persisted when in quebec for example they got on with abstraction there’s ultimates on

48:27

why did other artists stay with the traditional references to painting and then why after about 1950

48:36

um was there a general switch to abstraction even paris gave a player for stealth moves to obstruction

48:42

there was something that was lost during the second world war in images like these

48:49

finally this is apparently the clerk’s essentials of life um

48:54

and where she references through scandals and the brevity of time

49:01

and about the role of the artist in society when society is

49:08

historically in turmoil but ferris state clark’s patricia makes

49:15

her most important contribution and hopefully this is the beginning of a new appreciation of what she was imagining

49:22

imagining is the power of the relationship of painting to photography

49:28

thank you

49:39

thank you very much anna and i wonder if anyone has a question for anna right now

49:45

uh yes and i’m going to repeat the question so everyone can hear me well when um perezkeva clark was doing

49:52

her sort of new order agit prop and calling it adjective prop i mean no

49:58

disrespect to ms clark or to hatchet prop for that matter but surely she had more in common with what

50:06

was going on say in the weimar republic once of max beckman and people doing

50:11

things like that than she does with any member of the group of the canadian

50:16

so-called group of painters was there any interaction that becomes almost the question was the

50:23

canadian group of painters really a group at all except they were contemporaries and they knew one another

50:29

and they showed together i mean she seems unique is that true okay so i’ll

50:34

uh i mean in the group in the group so the speaker’s asking if um paris gave

50:40

the clark’s agit prop work has anything in common with what was going on in um

50:46

uh weimar republic and if um and what she has in common with the

50:52

canadian group of painters it’s a really good question a really difficult question

50:58

i think that the canadian group of pagers was a group in the decades that

51:06

are isolated from this show i think the 1930s and 1940s i think they all shared

51:11

i mean they all shared a desire to see themselves as active active members

51:18

of society so they all believed in the power of art to make change and

51:23

um at least were part of the league for social reconstruction so they were all

51:28

you know a partially leftist or or communist there was there was a range there

51:35

but yes her approach to composition her awareness of european uh practices uh

51:42

her training all did set her apart but the one thing that i was trying hard to

51:47

understand um i continue to try hard to understand is what was different about north

51:52

america or what was different about canada um and that was an interest in science so

51:59

let’s say in europe what what i think she must have brought with her to canada was a very strong sense of

52:07

tradition but her sensitivity was towards what we saw in

52:13

the spanish pavilion which was tradition evolving so you understand the power of

52:19

traditional artistic practices um but you change them and leverage them uh for

52:24

the future whereas say uh you know not to pick on them but the royal canadian

52:30

academy of arts or something like that at that period of time must you know less less aware or interested in that

52:38

and um what plays as the connecting force i think um

52:43

in north america and canada was humanism and it was a humanism based in science

52:49

it wasn’t a humanism based in european traditions but in north america one based in science and and

52:56

with increasing interest in trying to understand how the mind works and how we perceive and

53:03

pragmatist philosophers and i think that

53:08

she found her niche that way so that that was the connection for

53:13

example between her and virtual broker i mean there’s there’s a catch of them that are very close she and carl

53:18

schaefer and richard brooker and you know there’s a there’s a strong core in toronto the fact that canadian group of

53:24

patriots was national um you know it starts to stretch it’s it’s it’s tightness um but there was

53:31

certainly a very strong core toronto and i probably didn’t answer your question

53:39

i just like to say that i perceive sometimes that it hurts as this

53:45

and i’m coming from the position of ignorance and just looking and listening

53:51

and the focus at the beginning was that she

53:59

and you know there’s a group of us that still love the north

54:05

and want to love what’s pure and wonderful in the norm and if she’s coming from europe

54:13

where life has gone on for millennia and comes to canada

54:19

and we’re still living in our ivory tower of space and

54:25

beauty and newness and new beginnings i think she’s just wanting us to wake up

54:32

to join the world so the question is

54:49

well here’s the other perplexing thing is that she painted a lot of landscapes and um you know painted uh

54:56

pine pine scapes god forbid so that was sort of confusing what did

55:02

she mean by coming out from behind the bucandian shield as i understand it now

55:07

it doesn’t mean rejection of landscape all that means is understanding

55:13

the kind of visual culture that one’s surrounded by

55:20

um and that’s what you see in front of you but that’s also what you um see in a gallery what you see in a

55:27

newspaper and for us now it will be you know multiplied um more and more and

55:32

more it’s an awareness

55:37

and i think that awareness she was pushing for because it was a battle quote unquote

55:44

for men’s minds it was a battle um

55:49

to see art survive um to see support from the art survive

55:55

um and the thing that the canadian group of painters did was they they were the ones responsible

56:02

in my view for creating a canada council for the arts so it was their agitation

56:08

um beginning in the 30s and then with the

56:14

war art program during the second world war that ultimately led to the government saying government of canada

56:19

saying yes we need to support our artists

56:24

good comment hey if there’s no more questions right

56:30

now and so on and for really stimulating

56:41

so we’re at the halfway point in our program and we have time for a 10-minute

56:46

break so let’s get started with the second half of the program i hope you had a nice break

56:54

our third reading is from a letter by peggy nichol mcleod pictured here

57:01

when she lived in belleville new jersey and it’s to heron mccurry of the

57:06

national gallery of canada it was written in the months leading up to the canadian group of painters

57:12

exhibition at the 1939 new york world’s fair peggy nicholl mcleod

57:22

sometime in 1938 the baby is more beautiful than ever talks like donald duck and has more

57:29

friends in new jersey than ever i shall i might be in bell’s corners it is a

57:34

very small town though the empire is seeing looms at the foot of the streets i have an illustrating job ferrara and

57:42

reinhardt and i’m doing a removable mural over my entire apartment

57:47

when you come to the world’s fair think of us large beds especially for canadians

57:54

november 1938 here is a nice july shot and two but the local habit is to sweep up the leaves as

58:02

fast as they fall as if they were a kid do you ever hear of any scholarships or

58:08

such that provide people with paint it’s all i need i feel bursting to paint and

58:13

i’m preparing yards of canvas but that’s much too long do you ever i do drawings of jaina every

58:20

day so that i might catch for elusive beauty june 1939

58:27

in regards to the world’s fair show i’m delighted to be invited i’ve sweated blood over a picture which succeeds in

58:34

looking over lighthearted oh the aching dreary canvases three

58:39

discarded in its wake i guess i was over thrilled at the invitation the picture is called

58:46

children and cleophil and i do hope that you will like it it is my baby in a pleo

58:52

film rain cake flying over the streets full of similarly coated kids

58:57

i was working on a big one of it 69 by 59 inches when the notice came so i did

59:03

it again on a smaller canvas the material clio film is endlessly

59:08

lovely i think the fair is divine do let me know if i take the picture by hand there or ship

59:14

it to toronto yours peggy mccloud

59:24

thank you dr laura brandon our next speaker is the

59:31

historian of art and war at the canadian war museum in ottawa a graduate of queens where she did her

59:38

masters in art history she is the author of several books among them a biography

59:43

of the artist’s picture here peggy by herself the life of peggy nichol mcleod

59:49

canadian artist she will speak on peggy nicholl macleod’s painting children in theory

59:55

please welcome laura brandon

1:00:04

okay i’ve got gadgets in my back up here and i’m hanging on to this so i hope i can you hear me

1:00:15

i am actually going to speak about peggy’s relationship with another artist in the

1:00:21

show marion scott this was not planned it evolved as i was reading the

1:00:27

excellent catalogue and because when i first did my work on

1:00:32

peggy nichola cloud which began in 1981 we didn’t have the internet and the internet has transformed the

1:00:40

ability of art historians to do cross-artist research of a visual kind

1:00:47

when i was working on peggy nicholl mcleod you had to go and visit everybody in their homes and look at each

1:00:53

individual picture or every gallery to look at the pictures get even getting a snapshot from agaria was hard

1:01:00

um peggy was not known marian scott was well known esther trepanier had not done

1:01:06

her work and i really didn’t think about marian and peggy other than i knew that they were good friends

1:01:12

and that was a mistake and if i was doing my peggy research again there would probably be a lot more about marion but i’m going to try and redress

1:01:18

it today because the exhibition which you have all seen i imagine tells us very much about

1:01:26

their relationship to each other and to canadian art and i’m going to start with a quote from marion scott’s diary from

1:01:33

1938 which speaks to the scene which you can see up there which is correspondences

1:01:39

it’s about the writing to each other and about the correspondences and the art they did throughout their lives

1:01:47

so this is marion peggy arrived last night at 10 o’clock and left for ottawa again this afternoon

1:01:55

as usual i feel fertilized last night with beer and chocolates we

1:02:00

looked over drawings and watercolors she had brought down their quality their free abandonment and

1:02:07

joyousness kindled those sparks the true and beautiful sparks within me

1:02:13

and the world was strange and wonderful ready to be explored and created

1:02:19

true there was none among all that quantity that you could pick out as absolutely satisfying

1:02:25

most of them were patchy only here and there a beautiful theme or an exciting discovery

1:02:31

most of them left balance but many made my arduously balanced and sought out compositions look so pompous

1:02:39

dead and tight her method is the method of nature her self for joyous prolificness

1:02:47

content that out of the hundreds produced a few shall survive

1:02:54

so what was the basis of the relationship between peggy nichol mcleod and marion dale scott

1:03:00

well it started at art school they both went to art school in montreal in the 20s

1:03:07

and became friends and stayed in touch there’s a voluminous correspondent in the archives in ottawa

1:03:14

and other correspondents scattered through institutions in canada they stayed in touch from

1:03:21

their early 20s to peggy’s death in 1949 and

1:03:26

their life journeys having children peggy’s abortion all these things were discussed through

1:03:33

correspondence but they also painted their lives into their paintings

1:03:38

and one thing that the canadian group of painters did for them was provide them

1:03:44

a forum in which they could essentially come out from behind the pre-cambrian shield

1:03:51

and move away from the landscape tradition that had so dominated both of them in

1:03:58

their their younger days the traditions associated with the group of seven

1:04:07

so this is a painting of the area the point in time i’m going to look at them is in the 30s so i put on a picture

1:04:13

of peggy nicole mcleod in 1934 painting a set at heart house in toronto one of

1:04:19

the occupations she took up when she was living in toronto and this is a painting of marindale

1:04:26

scott that i couldn’t find a date for but i’m taking a guess that she’s around is around 1930.

1:04:32

i was struck by their similarity which i’d never even thought of before

1:04:38

because they were so entirely different as personalities marin scott was quite reserved petite

1:04:43

and peggy was a much more bohemian outrageous person

1:04:49

very much less constrained by the class and culture within which marion

1:04:56

operated in montreal and this is where they came from and

1:05:02

this is a comparison of two paintings they both did in montreal around 1930 and i was struck when i put them on and

1:05:08

this is the wonders of the internet we just look at a lot of images at how close they were and i’d never

1:05:14

seen them as in the slightest bit close as artists which is strange since they

1:05:19

came from very similar backgrounds in terms of their training and obviously from the

1:05:25

anglo-canadian dominant school of art

1:05:32

so 1933 the claiming group of pages is formed it has 28 members and nine are

1:05:37

women and that’s important because the group of seven even when it had

1:05:43

the seven changed were all men and although their exhibitions included women artists it

1:05:48

wasn’t male organizations the canadian group of painters is very important for introducing in

1:05:55

large measure women artists peggy joins in 1936

1:06:01

marion joins in 1942 peggy had already exhibited with the

1:06:06

group of seven before they disbanded and the cgp followed them

1:06:14

this is not painful

1:06:22

okay so the first canadian group of painters exhibition at the art part of toronto in 1933

1:06:28

is notable for this painting that was referred to earlier in the letter from a.y jackson about the

1:06:33

lineus torrance newton that nearly got the show cancelled and this is the painting the noon of

1:06:40

1933 and donald buchanan an art critic uh wrote about it by

1:06:46

saying that uh the problem that the art gary had with it was it wasn’t the

1:06:52

nice nude lying on the shades long her legs crust but she had the frontery to be wearing

1:06:58

green shoes unacceptable well peggy nichol mccloud was also

1:07:04

affronted but for very different reasons and she painted a response to uh

1:07:10

lydia’s foreign painting called the descent of lilies which is found in the national area of canada

1:07:16

and she paid it to self-portrait she’s got the lady in red obviously with her back to the viewer but she’s

1:07:24

naked from the waist up she’s wearing red shoes she’s got red nail polish on

1:07:29

she’s surrounded by very phallic looking um bits and pieces and uh

1:07:35

sexual symbolism symbolism of one kind and another which you can read about if you read my book i won’t go into that

1:07:47

it’s a critique of where canadian art was and how it has to move forward and

1:07:55

in many respects why explains why she joined creating wheels and painters

1:08:02

it’s also very much about who she is and she was a very sexual being she’s

1:08:07

gone down in our history as a bohemian who had a number of partners and she used the traditions of canadian art as

1:08:14

they were then and played with the symbolism so in this self-portrait she

1:08:20

has a new lover and she’s painted herself in the past with

1:08:25

flowers a traditional subject matter of art but here she plucks the flower

1:08:34

she then has gets pregnant and she’s not married and this is something we don’t talk about

1:08:40

you don’t write about um you discuss it with your friends but you can paint about it

1:08:47

so she paints it into this portrait which is closely resembles the one before

1:08:53

but she’s replaced the idea of the plucking of the flower with a bouquet of flowers which include

1:09:00

a considerable amount of rhubarb and there’s been much debate about the significance of rhubarb but it is

1:09:06

something that cleanses the body and even my mother would tell me in the spring to eat my rhubarb because i had

1:09:11

to flush my body out when i was a child

1:09:20

marion at the same time is also painting flowers but they do not have um the connotation and i’m struck again by

1:09:28

jackson’s dismissive um comment on the painting of milkweed because here’s marion painting milkweed too

1:09:38

and in 1939 peggy nicole mcleod is in new york uh living there permanently

1:09:44

except for the summers when she goes back to fredericton new brunswick and she’s had her baby jane

1:09:52

and this is a self-portrait with jane and if you think of the succession she’s now gone from the rhubarb to the baby

1:09:58

and it’s the same self-portrait that we saw in the first painting where she’s plucking the

1:10:05

cyclone flower

1:10:16

round about the the time that peggy has jane marion scott

1:10:22

becomes very keen on georgia o’keeffe and this is a painting of george r keeps

1:10:29

called jack in the pulpit from 1930 and it’s a very different way of looking at

1:10:36

images of flowers

1:10:41

but marion dale scott takes to georgia o’keeffe

1:10:47

with great enthusiasm and i think you’ve just you’ve got this painting this painting is in this

1:10:53

collection tulip from around 1939 so peggy’s in new york in 1939 having had

1:11:00

jane world’s fair is there children of cleophil which we will get

1:11:06

to is there and marian is in montreal painting two inspired by georgia o’keeffe

1:11:15

but i would argue that peggy got there for her this is on the right is a detail from

1:11:22

the scent of lilies which was the painting i showed you where the peggy painted in response to lilius

1:11:29

torrence newton’s nude rejection and i was struck

1:11:34

by how the lilies in peggy’s painting resembled

1:11:40

the jack and the pulpit by georgia o’keeffe but the thing that struck me was quite

1:11:46

clearly marion and peggy were talking a lot about art and they were talking a lot

1:11:53

about georgia o’keeffe there are snippets in the letters but nothing very extensive and what i find so interesting is that

1:12:00

you have you have the letters telling you about what they’re interested in but then you have the evidence of what they’re interested in coming out

1:12:07

in their paintings not necessarily the same year or the same month but within related

1:12:13

time spans they are communicating about the things they’re interested in art in writing and in paint

1:12:22

so we get the children in clear film and um i love this painting but i want to be

1:12:28

technically correct because people always want to know what cleo film is

1:12:34

and i haven’t what i wrote in the book a lot of research on tfl

1:12:39

um actually i didn’t do very much research it wasn’t too difficult to find out it was developed in 1934 by the

1:12:46

goodyear tire and rubber company and it was a rubber based clear

1:12:52

and later dark green plastic later used to protect equipment

1:12:57

especially weapons from water and sand during blue day landings in june 1944.

1:13:04

so off the bat cleo film has some significance to peggy

1:13:10

and um we know that marion scott was a pacifist we know that

1:13:17

they are both asked to contribute art to a poster program during the second

1:13:23

world war and i have in the letters that peggy said she would

1:13:28

give a painting of jane asleep because the idea was that children needed protecting and the idea of a

1:13:35

child in need of protection was about why you went to war why you fought

1:13:41

so that’s in if she’s writing that it sort of explains why she has her daughter floating in the protective

1:13:47

covering of military clear film in this painting it also explains why

1:13:55

the people below are also protected in the same material

1:14:04

but there’s another element to this which is which is very important

1:14:09

and that i think comes out of the conversations with marion scott and i hope you’ll be

1:14:15

able to look at the paintings because it is possible to see them simultaneously we stand in the right part of the

1:14:21

galleries and the connection comes with a painting

1:14:26

in the show of marion scott’s atom bill and embryo which is painted four years

1:14:32

later and is painted as far as marion is concerned

1:14:37

as her how she sees the war and again it’s about protecting life

1:14:44

because in this painting you have a cell dividing in the middle inside a womb-like egg-like shape

1:14:51

this is where i’m supposed to use this so there’s this dividing cell there’s the the

1:14:57

uterus essentially there’s the pelvis so you’re looking down as though the head was you’re looking down through the

1:15:04

head towards the feet and then she’s thrown in these forms here which is

1:15:13

of the atoms all coming towards the cells and she’s connecting

1:15:18

science and life and evolution in this this painting and

1:15:24

evolution is according to her biographer lester trepanier something that was

1:15:30

critically important to marion scott from the age of 12. and if it was

1:15:36

important to her from the age of 12 it was undoubtedly something that she talked about with peggy nicole mccloud

1:15:42

so they were both fascinated they married and had a child heavy had had a

1:15:48

child and we’d also not had a child so these are very female

1:15:53

subjects that they’re dealing with up until now there wasn’t much of

1:15:59

a place that you could talk about it but you could paint it and maybe some

1:16:05

people would understand what you were going on about i recently read a biography marie stokes

1:16:10

who was a very influential on peggy maybe acted in a play that was

1:16:17

based on some of her work in the 90s late 1920s

1:16:23

marie stones was best known as the author of married love and

1:16:28

terrifically important for for women in the early 20th century in terms of understanding their own sexuality so

1:16:36

marion and peggy being modern women would have been up to speed on this and it would have

1:16:41

been of interest to them and they would have thought it was important to paint it and i believe they did paint

1:16:47

into their works some of these ideas that were whizzing around in their female universe that hitherto had not

1:16:53

been and they had hitherto not had a place to show them

1:17:02

so one of the things that struck me when i went into peggy’s painting of 1945 which

1:17:08

comes just after marion’s painting of adam film and embryo

1:17:13

this is called the peace bird it’s um in the art area of greater victoria

1:17:18

and it’s painted by peggy painted in new york in response to the end of the

1:17:24

second world war and you have here the peace bird

1:17:30

here’s jane these are the tenements on east 88th street on both sides

1:17:36

and you can see the the fire escapes here and you’re along with jane everyone’s looking down

1:17:43

to the street where there are returning soldiers and their families greeting them peace bird is obviously very significant

1:17:50

but then look up here the women who are leaning out looking down

1:17:55

on the scene have come almost like the cherubs in the renaissance painting but here you have a woman and child

1:18:03

there’s another child here with a woman but this woman is particularly interesting because she’s encased in a

1:18:09

kind of oval bubble she’s even in 1945 she’s protected it’s not so obviously clear

1:18:16

film but there is peggy’s written message about

1:18:23

the child being what must be protected that’s why you go to war

1:18:28

um represented yet again in a post-war painting which is

1:18:33

about the future world the peaceful world that everyone hopes will come after 1945

1:18:42

and i put these two together this is 1943 and this is mario scott with the

1:18:48

dividing cells and her ovals and so on next we’re taking nikola cloud with that

1:18:54

same oval shape this is not a dividing cell it’s a child this is not

1:19:00

a pelvic floor it’s a mother but it’s two artists thinking and being

1:19:06

concerned about the same things as they have been throughout their lives expressing them in different ways in

1:19:12

their art and we can see those two expressions which don’t look at all alike in the exhibition is actually

1:19:18

flowing from very much the same personal ideology that they held in common all their lives

1:19:25

and this struck me um as interesting because to me this is marion scott in 1946

1:19:32

responding to what pagan has been doing in 1945 in response to what she’s doing with her

1:19:38

um images of of um of um

1:19:46

embryos so here in this 1946 marian scott painting

1:19:51

you have you still have this sort of swirling um atomic kind of structure

1:19:57

and uh something vaguely kind of i guess you have to say scientific thing

1:20:04

science based um in some way shape or form but she’s

1:20:10

actually introduced a body into it that sits in the middle it

1:20:15

i wouldn’t say that it’s protected in any way shape or form in the same way that peggy’s figures are but there’s a

1:20:21

commonality in the way they’re envisioning female experience ways of presenting women and

1:20:27

women’s experiences and this is just after the the second world war

1:20:33

as you can see we’re still in the dark ages but i think that might not be very fair um

1:20:39

when i put the two together i’m sorry that this slide here is um very fuzzy but by the time you get a detail

1:20:46

of it it’s hard to make it very focused but again you see you have a similarity

1:20:52

of concern about the figure within a swirling environment as you have here

1:20:58

coming from different places but the best way of describing is that they’re riffing off each other’s way of

1:21:04

painting in my opinion

1:21:10

peggy nick on the cloud is shown here in 1948 she died

1:21:17

a year later in 1949 of cancer

1:21:23

bowel cancer she never got um

1:21:29

the paintings like the peaceful which i just showed her were are her leg masterpieces

1:21:35

um that that particular period that 1946-47 period before she got hill is when her

1:21:41

most important works were done marion went on to paint

1:21:46

one of the big debates about peggy is whether if she had lived would she have become an abstract painter

1:21:54

she has was certainly interested she felt that she could not paint like the great

1:22:00

abstract painters she was encountering in new york but there was no doubt she was

1:22:05

interested and as marion slowly moved in an abstract direction there’s probably no doubt they would have talked about it

1:22:12

and they would have painted it very differently but in

1:22:17

an approximation of in tandem and it’s interesting at this point to

1:22:24

end with one of marion’s last paintings which is

1:22:30

completely abstract and to consider in the context of their conversations

1:22:37

what peggy nichol mcleod would have done in response to this particular work of

1:22:43

art by her closest friend thank you

1:22:58

thank you very much laura and i wonder if anyone has a question or two for

1:23:03

laura

1:23:17

jane is still alive she lives in washington state on the west coast with her husband

1:23:23

aristides close to her son macleod and

1:23:29

his daughter whose name i can’t remember but they’re and aristide’s son macleod married an

1:23:36

artist so they kept that in the family

1:23:41

anyone else have a question

1:23:48

uh one right at the back so you’re gonna have to project please laura i’ve always been intrigued by

1:23:54

scott um her painting tennis as you pointed out to be correct

1:24:00

women’s issue of sexual issues when you consider that she’s living with frank scott who’s pumping out

1:24:06

literature of poems essays and dates throughout the 1930s you would have

1:24:12

thought her painting would have been much more like periscope and clarke so class

1:24:19

was there no kind of conversation within that marriage about these issues

1:24:24

i wish i could answer in in detail and they certainly frank and mary were living in what was determined in open

1:24:30

marriage and mariam to the best of my knowledge was not

1:24:39

only tied to frank she would say but i i’m not an expert on marion scott

1:24:45

so i can i i’m i’m curious as to why her work is much more sterile in that

1:24:51

sense but i don’t know why i don’t know enough about her art i started this just thinking

1:24:58

why didn’t i look at murray and scott more closely because of the the formal relationship between their

1:25:04

their works but i would suspect that and there’s nothing in the letters between them that suggest that marion is

1:25:11

particularly upset with frank at any point in time but then the letters that

1:25:17

only go till 1948 so and they are very separate in many

1:25:23

respects and they are meeting regularly in montreal or ottawa when peggy comes back

1:25:29

so perhaps that kind of thing is in the discussions that they have between each other

1:25:35

um perhaps an analysis of marion’s paintings would show more

1:25:41

but i have not done that so i can’t speak to that

1:25:47

one more question was peggy nichols watercolor

1:25:53

style influenced my hands often um was thinking nicole’s watercolor

1:25:59

style influenced by his very financial hi tom

1:26:04

i can’t ask that i’ve never seen any evidence of her expressing the influence

1:26:09

of hans hoffman but if she had seen any of his work in a book

1:26:15

or a show and thought it was great there’s no doubt

1:26:20

she would have probably tried to be influenced but i’ve never personally seen any direct relationship

1:26:28

lucy jarvis took courses from hoffman and jarvis and they can take over i just

1:26:34

wonder if there’s any kind of a cross fertilization peggy and lucy didn’t get on very well

1:26:42

so i don’t think they would have had the kind of conversations that marion and peggy clearly had

1:26:48

but that i would i would have thought that peggy knew who hans hoffman was but whether he had any

1:26:54

profound influence i can’t say okay um thank you very much laura and um

1:27:22

our last reading comes from the pen of someone known to kingstonians andre

1:27:27

feeler the first director of the arts center in june 1937 he addressed the conference

1:27:34

on canadian american affairs held here in kingston his talk was titled

1:27:40

national aspects of contemporary american and canadian paintings

1:27:45

hear an excerpt from it now andre healer

1:27:52

to summarize the contemporary aspects of art on this continent is difficult partly because of its complexity and

1:27:59

largely because of the rapidity with which it changes hardly has a new school been launched and

1:28:04

after a hard struggle accepted by at least an interested minority then in the out of the way place a small group has

1:28:10

already formulated the new theory and is launching a new movement upon the world of art

1:28:16

the aspect of the art world today is as confusing as the view of an impressionist painting at close range at

1:28:22

a distance the painting takes on form as a whole and in parts distance from our age however has not

1:28:28

yet been reached until very recently art in canada consisted of the adoption of ready-made

1:28:35

theories from abroad but as we were emerging from this crazy quilt pattern of colonial expansion painting was one

1:28:42

of the first elements of our cultural life to show the way to national consciousness and unity

1:28:48

as we know from the past new ideas new tendencies in art are essentially international but as these ideas are

1:28:55

adopted they are more or less altered to fit the national pattern rubens for example goes to italy adopts

1:29:03

the technique composition and color of the italians but with all these surface qualities of the venetians his paintings

1:29:09

remain essentially flemish in character in canada we have had our barbazons our

1:29:15

impressionists our english landscapists but these were just importations of recipes essentially foreign to our soil

1:29:24

in 1919 a group of painters realizing the futility of these adaptations left

1:29:29

these behind went to the north to work out their own salvation feeling within themselves that if canada was to have an

1:29:35

art distinctly its own unnatural heart they had to feel the earth the sky the

1:29:42

trees with which they were living they had to have their feet on the ground

1:29:47

today the artist is returning to the study of life people working the crowds of city streets the social

1:29:55

aspect which is so much of our time in its large outlines the pattern of

1:30:01

modern art but repeats the pattern of contemporary life

1:30:12

thank you paul it’s now my pleasure to introduce the last speaker of the afternoon my

1:30:17

colleague alicia berlier the curator of canadian historical art at the arts center

1:30:23

as i said at the beginning alicia is the curator of the vital force the canadian group of painters a huge project several

1:30:31

years in the making while many of the works are borrowed from museums across canada it also

1:30:37

features some paintings from our collection one of which is andre buehler’s wartime market alicia will

1:30:44

discuss that work now please welcome alicia lulu

1:31:02

thank you pat

1:31:07

andre dealer exhibited wartime market with the canadian group of painters

1:31:13

in 1944 the exhibition opened in montreal then

1:31:19

showed in london ontario toronto and ottawa before touring various galleries

1:31:25

in western canada at the art gallery of toronto

1:31:30

today the art gallery of ontario the canadian group of painters

1:31:35

or cgp was a one was one among five different canadian art groups

1:31:42

showing at the same time worthless market was chosen to represent the cgp

1:31:48

in the brochure it was an acknowledgement of sorts that velar and

1:31:53

his work exemplified what the cgp was all about

1:31:59

not much has been said about the alerts membership in the canadian group of painters

1:32:05

francis k smith did not discuss it in her authoritative book on theater

1:32:11

upon which i rely heavily and certainly one could argue that there

1:32:17

really isn’t much to say about his canadian group of painters membership it is just

1:32:23

one among several memberships that are usually listed at the end of an artist’s biography and certainly it was not the

1:32:31

only artist group with which he was involved but i would like to suggest that feeler

1:32:37

in many ways was the ideal cgp member

1:32:43

not because he was heavily involved at an organizational level

1:32:48

he only served on the executive once as a vice president in 1950

1:32:54

rather theater was the ideal cgp artist because of the beliefs he advocated the

1:33:01

type of art he produced and the critical response it received

1:33:07

the artist and teacher represented what was at the heart of the canadian group

1:33:12

of painters fostering inclusivity and individual modern expression

1:33:20

seeking a national bond while at the same time displaying a progressively

1:33:26

internationalist outlook when the cgp held its first exhibition

1:33:32

in toronto and montreal in 1933-19 it invited a number of non-member guest

1:33:40

artists to exhibit with it including wheeler who was living in montreal at

1:33:45

the time the cgp would do this for every exhibition include invited contributors

1:33:52

to encourage new talents in modern forms of art quote the significance of the first

1:33:59

exhibition wrote the montreal art critic of robert ayer is that it sums up the

1:34:05

growth and development of the liberal spirit and demonstrates what a vital

1:34:10

force it is the younger men and women have brought a new energy and a new vision not only are

1:34:17

we moving toward human life away from landscape but in growing up we are beginning to show the effects of the

1:34:24

profound disturbances in human affairs which has shaken the world social

1:34:30

implications are creeping in robert air saw this new energy and new

1:34:35

vision this movement toward human life in the work of andre dealer and the cgp saw it too

1:34:44

at the 14th of december 1935 meeting of the cgp the founding members discussed new

1:34:51

membership the montreal members thought that andre baylor quote should have been an

1:34:57

original member as the minutes for the meeting record it was agreed that he should but no vote

1:35:04

was taken in the catalog for the second group of painters exhibition in 1936 on

1:35:11

revealer’s name appears as a member replacing thorough mcdonald the son of

1:35:17

group of seven artist j h mcdonald bueller was the first member to be added

1:35:23

since the group’s foundation there was no real election no ratification as would happen later on

1:35:30

with other members it was as if healer was a founding member all along

1:35:37

as the montreal members had wished at the time that gila joined the cgp a

1:35:43

big change was imminent he had just moved to saint hidal north of montreal with his wife and their

1:35:50

first child natalie and for a number of years he had been an active member of the arts community in

1:35:57

montreal where he had many artist friends who were included in this exhibition fritz brantner prudence

1:36:04

heward edwin holby lily’s torrence newton

1:36:09

these times served him in good stead when in 1936 he was invited to become

1:36:14

the second artist in residence at queen’s university

1:36:22

the first resident artist was lubridge roberts whose position was funded by the

1:36:28

carnegie corporation fielder’s position was slightly different first of all it was funded by agnes edmonton through a

1:36:35

request she had received from her brother george taylor richardson for quote the stimulation of art at queen’s

1:36:42

university edmonton nurtured that bequest through

1:36:48

saudi investing and used it to fund various university and community art

1:36:53

projects the george taylor richardson memorial fund still exists today and in fact

1:37:00

partially funded the exhibition that’s on right now another difference

1:37:06

is that with the second resident artist was responsible for a university credit

1:37:12

course as approved by the faculty of arts which included art history lectures and studio

1:37:18

work there were very few university art courses in canada at that time

1:37:26

on top of that bueller was expected to teach studio classes to all sections of

1:37:31

the community from children to adults arrange exhibitions and deliver public

1:37:37

talks in 1939 indicative of wheeler’s strong

1:37:42

montreal ties he was invited to join the newly formed contemporary art society

1:37:49

the contemporary arts society shared a similar idea with the cgp to promote

1:37:54

contemporary art but it had an almost exclusive quebec membership

1:38:01

it did not necessarily aspire to cross canada representation but on the other

1:38:07

hand it was more successful than the cgp in gaining francophone members

1:38:13

feeler however declined the invitation the contemporary arts society

1:38:19

constitution stated that quote all professional artists who are neither

1:38:24

associated with nor partial to any academy are eligible as earnest members

1:38:32

as viewer wrote to his friend fritz brander who was a member of both the cas

1:38:37

and the cdp fielder said it seems a pity to divide ourselves in many groups and secondly to

1:38:45

incorporate in the constitution the old and useless war against the royal

1:38:50

canadian academy of arts science the contemporary arts society

1:38:56

the canadian group of pages was formed to be a modern alternative to the more

1:39:03

conservative royal canadian academy lauren harris who was the first cgp’s

1:39:09

president felt that the cgp quote should keep free from all internal politics and

1:39:16

fill a real need in inviting all decent-minded free spirit spirits who

1:39:22

have something to say and paint in canada up to today continuing the quote

1:39:29

there has been no such society in canada every other art society has some kind of

1:39:35

axe to grind and therefore is not free to be genuinely generous

1:39:42

but the cgp never insisted that an artist couldn’t be members of both groups

1:39:48

amy jackson tried to insist upon that but no one took him up on the idea from

1:39:54

the from the beginning the cgp had only one real stipulation members were

1:39:59

requested to reserve their best works for cgp exhibitions

1:40:04

it would be united modernist force of the highest quality

1:40:12

once in kingston mueller bridge the two provinces of ontario and quebec

1:40:17

maintaining his montreal connections and returning regularly to quebec to paint

1:40:23

he soon became an important conduit nationally and to a certain extent

1:40:28

internationally in 1941 wheeler was the prime organizer

1:40:35

of sorry this is uh just a view of the old arts building um which is where the

1:40:41

school of religion is today and in those upper windows andre buehler conducted

1:40:46

his classes and had a studio

1:40:52

okay so in 1941 wheeler was the prime organizer of the conference of canadian

1:40:57

artists at queen’s university which many canadian group of painter members attended dug the kingston

1:41:05

conference it brought together about 150 artists and other cultural workers from

1:41:10

across the country to discuss their role in relation to society and to explore new techniques

1:41:17

and medium a new artist group was formed as a result of the conference called the

1:41:23

federation of canadian artists and baylor was the first president

1:41:29

as laura carney has pointed out sca was not an exhibiting group but a union with

1:41:35

local branches designed to influence national policy many cgp members joined the sca

1:41:45

what the cgp did with exhibitions the fca did through lobbying and and

1:41:51

fundraising as national bodies with regional groups both the fca and

1:41:58

canadian group of painters sought to raise the profile of the contemporary canadian artist and this would

1:42:04

eventually lead to the canada council as anna had pointed out earlier the sa fca granted had more branches

1:42:12

branches from the cgp across canada but it also had startup carnegie corporation

1:42:18

funding like the kingston conference in the 1940s

1:42:24

builder and his colleagues moved in an increasingly organized canadian art

1:42:29

world this mobilization was influenced in part by activity to the south the creation in

1:42:36

1935 of the federal art project in the u.s under franklin d roosevelt’s works

1:42:43

progress administration which supported thousands of american artists

1:42:49

the canadian group of painters was made well aware of this when it exhibited at the new york world’s fair in 1939 across

1:42:57

the way in sort of makeshift space across the way from the exhibition american art today

1:43:04

which had its own purpose-built pavilion at the kingston conference several

1:43:10

american artists were invited to speak and lead workshops such as the renowned

1:43:15

regionalist thomas hartman buehler was also interested in fostering

1:43:21

artistic communities locally in the summer of 1942 he was involved with the

1:43:27

inauguration of the queen’s university summer school of fine arts inspired partly by the kingston

1:43:33

conference and also teaching me at dundas summer school

1:43:38

biela directed the painting and drawing sessions and invited a number of artists as

1:43:43

instructors over the years it lasted for many years and i had this later painting a

1:43:50

photograph of the students working outdoors some of those instructors included edwin

1:43:57

holgate carl schaefer kevin atkins jack humphrey will overlea stanley cosgrove

1:44:04

and

1:44:10

mornings were devoted to studio work and while in the afternoon students

1:44:15

sketched and painted outdoors along lake ontario beside the penitentiary or in

1:44:21

the marketplace schaefer’s own view kingston

1:44:27

of kingston penitentiary portsmouth and from 1948 in this exhibition came out of

1:44:34

one of his sessions as a summer school instructor in houston

1:44:42

for wheeler it was important that the artists paint and love people and at the same time be seen by people

1:44:49

he was comfortable organizing crowds teaching crowds and being in crowds as

1:44:55

well as painting crowds which brings me back to wartime market which i want to focus on for the rest of

1:45:02

my talk in the late i’m going to start with the formal qualities

1:45:09

in the late 1930s and 1940s there was a renewed interest among canadian artists

1:45:14

in in experimenting with and reviving traditional painting materials and

1:45:22

methods and anna touched a little bit um on this on this return to more mature um

1:45:28

traditional subject matter and neil was at the forefront of his experimentation

1:45:34

while all on campus would remain the dominant media for most works exhibited by canadian group of painters members

1:45:41

there were many who began to use what was called mixed technique as feeler did in wartime working

1:45:48

and this resulted in a dramatically different look in many canadian paintings at this

1:45:54

period away from the bold colors and lush and pastel of group of seven post-impressionism or the tom thompson

1:46:01

paintings that anna has shown in her shop very different feel very different effect

1:46:08

in getting to this look velar built upon different painting approaches through the preceding decades

1:46:15

bueller first experienced traditional methods of painting when he apprenticed under his uncle ernest fielder in 1922

1:46:22

in switzerland alfresco commissioned by the town of velopha

1:46:28

switzerland for their town hall ernest steeler revolved and worked in

1:46:34

the renaissance method of pure fresco brown powder pigments were mixed with

1:46:40

water and then applied to wet plaster feeler paint would later paint his own

1:46:45

fresco mural and i’m sorry pictures of this entitled saint christopher and the christ child of 1931

1:46:53

on the facade of his home of a home owned by his brother jacques in st sober

1:47:00

the montreal star called it probably the first true fresco

1:47:05

in canada as distinguished for mere mural paintings

1:47:10

in fresco the pigments bond with the plaster and producing almost chalky surface effect which feeler would

1:47:17

exploit later in his own painting in summer 1927

1:47:23

in search of a location that could stimulate his talent as well as east his asthma fielder rented an old house in

1:47:30

saint family where he lived in relative isolation until 1930 drawing upon the local

1:47:37

landscape architecture and people for subject matter in the first winter his father sent and

1:47:44

sent him a recently published book on which inspired wheeler to develop a

1:47:50

method of combining stencils or porsche for color with woodlot for lime

1:47:58

as francis k smith has pointed out the book gave him new insight into a technique which velar continued to adapt

1:48:05

to his own vision any stencil would have prints such as

1:48:11

nephews or the spinner feeler overlapped opaque and transparent colors and also

1:48:18

left passages open between the stencil color shapes to allow the ground the

1:48:24

paper to show through in his watercolor painting velar

1:48:30

developed a technique that produced a similar effect to the stenciled wood cuts for example in double crossing of

1:48:37

1940 like the spaces between the stencils in

1:48:42

the prints the figures in the watercolor are outlined in a kind of reverse

1:48:48

poisonism an absence of color rather than a black or dark line

1:48:55

we’ve mixed technique which feeler began exploring the late 1930s he brought together the effects of

1:49:03

previous artistic forays field wrote an article on mixed technique in the year that he painted

1:49:09

wartime market based on that article we can recognize that velar first painted an overall cool

1:49:17

gray nail or thin wash on his board as an undertone and then built and then

1:49:24

built the picture wartime market on top of that in stages first using dry pigments mixed with a

1:49:32

medium for the underpainting then local color or natural color overlaid in a

1:49:37

series of glazes for which feeler often used to oil colors

1:49:43

which and then the final stage highlighting these with an opaque white

1:49:49

which is was usually a zinc white mixed with an egg medium again these white highlights in wartime market

1:49:56

have a similar effect to the exposure of paper in its earlier prints and watercolors

1:50:02

in the fall of 1946 after the canadian group of painters exhibition wartime

1:50:08

market was featured in a solo exhibition entitled paintings and mixed technique

1:50:13

at eaton’s college street fine art galleries in toronto the overall effect is like that of

1:50:20

fresco as one calgary created reviewed and reviewed the 1944 canadian group of

1:50:26

painters exhibition she noted the mural-like quality of wartime market and called it one of the

1:50:34

most satisfying mature works in the show throughout his career viller was

1:50:41

interested in depicting human activity in all its business busyness

1:50:46

having studied at the art students league in woodstock new york state he was familiar with american social

1:50:52

realism early in his career in 1940 the art critic robert ayer wrote

1:50:58

a dealer as a painter he likes people because their bodies their clothes the things

1:51:05

they do and the things they do them with make pictures so first of all

1:51:12

crowds appeal to velar because of their formal qualities in wartime market the figures are

1:51:18

layered becoming pastiche of color with a focus on pattern and rhythm the faces

1:51:24

are minimal not detailed their personalities are not important what is

1:51:29

important is the visual effect of the gallery this is underlined by the

1:51:35

presence of green man by painting the figure in one color i

1:51:41

thought a lot about this green man unlike the other figures by painting the

1:51:47

figure in only one color feeler makes this area of the painting more crowded and fulsome without making it more

1:51:54

chaotic the figure is like a shadow

1:52:00

when i first started thinking about wartime marketing i wanted to figure out exactly where it was i wanted to see if

1:52:07

i could stand on that spot the other painted and drew markets in several paint places throughout his

1:52:13

career in switzerland in quebec and ontario and later in mexico

1:52:19

here he is painting and drawing in kingston markham and in war-time market mueller makes a

1:52:25

composite of sketches that he would have made on-site in this way

1:52:31

the green man oh and here’s just for fun um an image of kingston market in the

1:52:37

1940s at christmas time

1:52:43

in the painting the green man that i just talked about comes from this sketch

1:52:50

you can just barely see him his raised arm is there

1:52:56

bueller also changed the orientation of the truck cap

1:53:05

in the painting this the first sketch gets layered with this sketch of a horse-drawn cart or caravan

1:53:11

and you can do it this sign in the back which maybe says cafe it’s hard to tell

1:53:17

and then perhaps he took elements from or was at least inspired by this sketch with the swags of the market stall

1:53:25

awnings the jungle of objects on the ground now this sketch

1:53:30

does present a recognizable view in kingston looking from the corner of market street

1:53:36

in king street southwest down king street with st george’s cathedral in the

1:53:43

distance but the finished painting wartime market though made up of elements sketched in

1:53:50

kingston mark is not really a recognizable place it is not as clear as for example in this painting of kingston

1:53:57

market with city hall in the background

1:54:03

not so much a particular place that is important here it’s what the market represents

1:54:10

a communal gathering at a time most necessary during the difficult times of world war ii

1:54:17

fielder liked to paint groups of people not only because of their visual qualities the lines colors and shapes

1:54:23

that they made he liked to paint crowds for what they stood for so to speak

1:54:29

for the 1944 canadian group of painters exhibition the membership was urged to

1:54:34

submit paintings about canadian life in its relation to war

1:54:41

they always submitted at least two works to the jury but wartime market was the painting accepted at all exhibiting

1:54:48

venues there is ordinary orderliness to the groupings of people which speaks perhaps

1:54:56

to sobering times everyone waits patiently in line this is in contrast to another market seen by vr

1:55:03

in which chaos ensues when a pig runs a mock

1:55:12

in reviewing the 1944 canadian group of painters exhibition one edmonton critic

1:55:17

wrote the people who have painted these pictures have shown that they are not they are not insensitive to the trend

1:55:24

and thought the trend of thought and feeling of our time observe the impatience and weariness of

1:55:32

the crowd that stands in the queue in andre wheeler’s wartime market

1:55:38

the scene itself does not necessarily provide clues that this is wartime but

1:55:43

titling the wartime market would have made visitors to the 1944 canadian group

1:55:49

painters exhibition look at the painting in this light and interpret the importance of the marketplace during war

1:55:56

as a place to share a news to feel socially connected and of course to buy products

1:56:02

food was the subject of many wartime policies citizens were encouraged to consume more canadian grown foods to can

1:56:11

and to preserve and to make the most of the food that was available

1:56:16

a 1942 saturday night magazine article read canada has determined to change the

1:56:22

eating habits of a nation because she has learned that efficient production of food is only half the victory it takes

1:56:30

efficient consumption too to give full meaning to the slogan food will win the war

1:56:38

really the main objects within the painting that particularly situate it

1:56:43

within a certain time period aside from the maybe the clothing of the figures

1:56:49

are the vehicles second to people dealer liked to paint

1:56:54

vehicles horse parts automobiles boats often to convey technological transition

1:57:03

in the center we have what appears to be a 1940s truck cab beside a much older

1:57:09

form of conveyance the red horse-drawn market cart or caravan

1:57:15

vela was drawn to the lines that the shafts of those parts made and it might

1:57:20

might not be too obvious there but it says two spokes sticking up in front of the red the red part there

1:57:28

the lines that the shafts of this part made when propped up after the horse was removed to rest to be watered and fed

1:57:36

and to make more room for market goers you can see them in this early print a

1:57:41

saint rosch market on the left echoing the jaunty hydro poles nearby

1:57:48

another version is in a late view of the quebec city market where the shafts accentuate the diagonal

1:57:55

to the right and just for fun here’s an image of a quebec city market where you can see similar shafts shafts

1:58:03

sticking up in the distance to the right

1:58:10

back to wartime market those shafts not only add a compelling formal element

1:58:17

they also take on the symbolic weight of a passing lifestyle much later dealer preferred to sketch in

1:58:25

the marketplaces of mexico because he felt that they retained a communal

1:58:30

aspect that the kingston market had lost as he said in the 1971 interview

1:58:38

i like to sketch people to see them in groups and so on and there’s no better

1:58:44

place in the world than mexico for that the marketplaces are very important and

1:58:49

it’s a lost thing our kingston market was like that at one time

1:58:54

but now the cars and the parking and so on it’s practically lost

1:59:02

beeler remained in the king scenario for the rest of his life here is a portrait of healer that his

1:59:07

friend lily’s towards newton painted while visiting him in kingston and this

1:59:13

painting is also the exhibition having been shown at the 1950 canadian group of penis exhibition

1:59:20

eventually baylor became the founding director of the admiral sotherinton arts center in 1957

1:59:26

where he oversaw the gallery’s first addition to the admin house in 1962

1:59:33

before his retirement and here’s a view of the entrance of the gallery when it

1:59:39

used to be invader lane theater also remained a member of the

1:59:44

canadian group of painters until it folded in the late 1960s

1:59:49

what made the canadian group of painters such a vital force in its early decades was its engagement with modern life in

1:59:57

subject matter artistic approach and social activity against the background

2:00:02

of the depression world war ii and post-war reconstruction

2:00:08

cgp exhibitions regularly toured the country between 1933 and 1953

2:00:14

from victoria to saskatoon toronto to montreal sackville to charlottetown

2:00:20

stirring excitement reflection and debate on the state at canadian army

2:00:25

society bueller was one of them 62 cgp members who exhibited in those years there were

2:00:32

many more later and one to wartime market was but one of the many vital cgp paintings that people

2:00:40

would have seen and been excited about in those exhibitions thank you

2:00:56

thank you alicia i think we can take a minute maybe for just one question before we wrap up does anyone have one

2:01:03

burning question for alicia uh laura my burning question is was 1944 the only

2:01:09

time they had a themed exhibition was 1944 the only time that cg team had

2:01:15

a human exhibition as far as i know yes and then in 1945 they had a special

2:01:22

a number of canadian group of painters artists were commissioned as official war artists of course you know laura

2:01:29

and in the 1945 exhibition exhibition they made a special section

2:01:35

four works by those official war artists and their absence in the 1944 exhibition

2:01:44

was keenly felt and i think in anticipation of their absence so many of

2:01:49

them were overseas and 44 are just sort of getting back into the groove

2:01:55

they decided to solicit this theme from members and it’s interesting because

2:02:02

mary and dale scott the scots painted adam embryo for example was a pacifist

2:02:09

response to that call okay thank you very much

2:02:25

this concludes our program the canadian group of kangaroos i’d like to remind

2:02:30

you and invite you all of course to stay for our reception to celebrate the exhibition which uh starts in about

2:02:38

seven minutes in the same space uh we do need to do a bit of rearranging so i

2:02:43

invite you all to stroll into the galleries where our speakers will be i hope and chat with them and look at the

2:02:50

exhibition we do anticipate having remarks here at the reception around 5

2:02:56

15 so please return here by then before we leave i want to ask for two

2:03:02

big hands first of all to our two actors for their live readings

2:03:14

and a final thank you to our core speakers who have provided such insight into the works of art which you can

2:03:20

enjoy just a short distance away thank you for coming and i hope you enjoy the reception

2:03:30

you

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