0:09

good afternoon everybody so I’m Pat

0:15

Sullivan public programs manager here at the agnes and i’d like to welcome you all to this year’s francis k smith

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public talk in canadian art an event named in honor of the first curator at

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the agnes this program relates to the exhibition a story of canadian art as

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told by the heart house collection which is on view now in our galleries the

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exhibition was organized by the justina ambar naka gallery located in hart house

0:45

at the university of toronto we acknowledge the government of canada through the museum assistance program

0:52

for their support of the exhibition’s production and its national tour for our

0:59

program support were grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Kingston

1:05

Arts Fund a story of Canadian art is finishing its tour and as it’s a

1:12

collection belonging to a university it complements the exhibition the Agnes held last year namely mind heart and

1:20

spirit the Queen’s University art collection just as our nascent art

1:25

collection needed the vision of dedicated alumni and friends to start buying Canadian art for an eventual

1:31

campus gallery so the University of Toronto at an earlier period required

1:37

the foresight of vincent massey canada’s first native-born Governor General

1:42

brought harthouse into being as a social cultural and recreational venue for

1:48

students and encouraged the formation of a club that would acquire works of art

1:53

the exhibition provides us with an opportunity to discuss not only the reputation of this collection but also

2:00

to take a fresh look at one of the female artists included in it emily carr

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our title iconic canadian art today curating the heart house collection and

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emily carr sums up the topic i’ll introduce our two speakers in a moment

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but first i’d like to deal with that term iconic i think it refers

2:23

to a work that to borrow the ideas of curator Doris Shadbolt has staying power

2:28

not only because of its artistic quality and sociological significance but due to

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a unique blend of events that renders the work memorable such works become

2:39

standards by which others are judged exhibition and reproduction in books

2:45

contribute to a works iconic status but i’ll leave the elaboration of that point to our two speakers in the early 21st

2:53

century these paintings while iconic are no longer contemporary how can we relate

2:59

to them today I’ll introduce our two speakers now they will each give a

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20-minute talk I’ll follow up with some questions then we’ll open it up to the floor dr. Christine boyanov ski is an

3:13

independent curator writer and lecturer based in Toronto she has curated many

3:19

exhibitions and written extensively in the field of Canadian art history she is

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the curator of a story of Canadian art as told by the heart house collection the catalog for which is available for

3:31

sale in our publications lounge among her current projects is a study of

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cultural decolonisation in the settler societies of the former british empire between the two world wars sarah Milroy

3:47

is a toronto writer and art critic she was the co-founder of the Canadian Art

3:52

Foundation and served as editor and publisher of Canadian art magazine from

3:57

1991 296 and was the chief art critic for The Globe and Mail from 2001 to 2010

4:04

miss Milroy has contributed two publications on the work of Gothic fog Jack chambers Greg Colonel and Fred

4:12

hertzog and is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail Canadian art border

4:18

crossings and the walrus recently she co-curated from the forest to the sea

4:24

emily carr in british columbia which appeared at the dulwich picture gallery in london england and at the Art Gallery

4:31

of Ontario where it closed on August ninth she will discuss Emily cars legacy

4:36

today our first speaker is dr. bono ski who will address the heart house collection

4:41

please join me in welcoming her Thank

4:54

You Pat and welcome everybody thank you for coming out on such a beautiful day one of the one of the employees here

5:03

said all they were waiting they were hoping it would be a mild drizzle so that people would be encouraged to come

5:09

in but it’s really nice to see you all here I don’t know that this is going to take 20 minutes but we’ll we’ll see what

5:17

happens I was asked to curate the show of the heart house historical collection

5:24

originally for the art gallery of Alberta the works of that you see in the

5:30

show are not usually visible they’re usually held in storage they no longer

5:36

hang in on the walls of heart house as was originally intended and that has to

5:42

do with a menace later on that has to do with the conditions the environmental

5:48

conditions in hart house and the fact that these works become a revalue much

5:53

more valuable of course now than they were in the 20s and 30s it in terms of

5:59

financial worth so they are held mostly

6:04

in storage so this is a very unique opportunity to see these works together

6:10

as you know together and look at the way

6:15

that the collection has evolved over time so I was I was really excited to to

6:22

be asked to curate this show and I knew the I knew the the collection well I was

6:28

an undergraduate at U of T so that was in a period when these works of art work

6:34

actually hanging on the walls of heart house and I says after 1972 because

6:39

before nineteen seventy two women undergraduates were not permitted entry

6:46

22 heart house unless they were accompanied by a male undergraduate or there was a

6:52

special event or and I think there was one day a week where they could where

6:57

they could go so you know they were like old friends to me and then when I was a

7:03

curator at the Art Gallery rancheria when I began in the early 80s lo and

7:08

behold the the works of art were there of being refurbished and awaiting the

7:15

new just in a partner key gallery which I think opened in 1983 which did have

7:20

environmental controls and all of that and so the works could return so when I

7:25

was asked to to curate this show I thought oh this is wonderful i know these works and they indeed are are like

7:32

old friends that i’m sure many of you are familiar with them as well so i’ll

7:37

give you a little bit of information about the collection to give an indication of why they’re well known or

7:44

how well known these works are this is the the installation in Edmonton of the

7:51

first the first venue of a story of Canadian art by the way I didn’t get at

7:56

the title I had some kind of academic title that didn’t go over well with the marketing people so they came up with

8:03

this and I actually quite like it because as we all know histories can be

8:08

told in different ways and this is just one the story that I’ve chosen to tell through the works of art it’s just one

8:16

way that these works could be could be displayed it’s one of the best

8:22

collections of Canadian art from this period that’s 1922 1950 and it’s been

8:28

written about there’s a there was a catalog of the collection first

8:33

published in nineteen fifty-five written by Russell J Harper who did his master’s

8:39

thesis on the collection and Russell Harper went on to write the history of

8:44

painting in Canada and Paul Kane and Craig Coffey was very well-known

8:51

Canadian art historian Jeremy Adamson who’s also had a curatorial career

8:58

published a book in 1969 on the on the collection bring it up today

9:03

and then the most recent example of

9:09

example where all the works were brought together was in the 1980s and the

9:14

exhibition was called prevailing influence which looked at the influence of the group of seven on the collection

9:21

but there hasn’t I don’t think has ever been since that time an exhibition that includes more than just a few pieces now

9:32

in the 1970s the Canadian conservation Institute identified 59 treasures that

9:39

these were considered to be the kind of the treasures or the you know the best

9:44

of the of the collection that we’re actually in danger physically in danger

9:52

because of the environmental conditions there’s there’s no air conditioning in hard house there still isn’t to this day

9:59

the windows are open there there’s the dry heat so the the humidity levels

10:07

fluctuate quite a bit in in the in the house so it was recommended that these work to be removed from the walls many

10:16

of those treasures are in the show you’ll be glad to know there are also many icons and that was I liked your

10:24

your definition Pat I defined it as works that stand for more than

10:30

themselves that they have taken on a meaning other than as as a picture as a

10:37

view or whatever a portrait they become associated with Canadian identity and on

10:44

one of my many talks and tours i followed the show around from the beginning through the last couple of

10:50

years and visitors most I would say all people are really excited by these by

11:00

these works and one woman said you know it’s because they are us and she identified on a very personal level with

11:08

many of the works in the show and you may agree with that I’d also it’s also

11:14

interesting to note that they have kind of non specific titles Liz MERS Isles of

11:26

spruce for instance doesn’t give the title as sand lake which was where he

11:32

painted it and young Canadian which is a portrait of Carl Schaefer is known as

11:37

young Canadian so I think that the the way that these works have become known or the way that they were entitled by

11:45

the by the artists themselves add to that iconic status because then it’s

11:50

it’s it’s sort of every man or every young artist or every young Canadian

11:58

this is one of the newspaper articles that appeared when the show opened in

12:05

Edmonton and you can see that’s you know even now there’s still this these works are still identified with with Canada

12:13

what they say about the the country many

12:20

of the the works in this the story of Canadian art have represented Canada at

12:27

exhibitions abroad and here we have Carmichael snow clouds and edward whole

12:33

gates fire ranger both of which were sent to the philadelphia sesquicentennial in 1926 they were

12:40

purchased from shah a show at the art gallery of toronto i think no two

12:46

separate shows that they are elder of toronto which was kind of a one of the

12:52

one of the venues which they generally looked you know to purchase works from

12:58

but before they even hung on the walls of heart house they were shot down to Philadelphia to be in the Canadian

13:06

representation of that show so that that was this is kind of the works that show

13:14

the kind of art that was being that was representing Canada at the time so they

13:20

become they become more more Canadian I suppose by being sent beyond the country

13:28

and they in fact are helping to create a brand and I think that that’s that branding

13:33

which is happening in the early 20s at the same time as hard house has just

13:38

been established itself create a kind of that there’s a sympathetic goes a symbiosis that’s happening between them

13:47

now Hart House is a well-known is well-known to many alumni of course all

13:53

men until nineteen seventy-two and and they students used it or the male

13:58

undergraduate students used it as a house they lived in it as a house and you can see here’s a photograph from

14:06

1963 and you can see some of the well-known works just displayed and in

14:13

the workspace and so you know students studying or whatever in one of the common rooms and I’ve explained why this

14:20

what is no longer is the case and there are the tudors isolation peak by lauren

14:27

harris and isles of spruce on the right by and by arthur isamar the original and

14:36

there’s there’s an early shot of heart house in 1920 just soon after it it

14:41

opened but the original intention of an art collection was not create the

14:50

collection we know today it was simply to decorate the house it was known as

14:55

Hart House it was known as a recreational and cultural facility where undergraduates could speak you know

15:02

could have chats with their with their colleagues with their professors with graduate students so you know but there

15:09

was no pretension of creating a great collection of Canadian modern or

15:17

contemporary art at that time and I was really kind of puzzled when I saw this is an early interior shot of one of the

15:23

one of the rooms of heart house one of the public rooms and they were paintings on the wall that I know belonged to

15:30

other galleries so over the mantelpiece you see a painting a triptych by Mary he’s to read co castles in Spain well

15:37

you know I thought what’s going on what happened was they needed something to hang on the walls it was a very stark

15:44

kind of neo-gothic building and they needed something to put on the wall so

15:49

they borrowed from the artists who belong to the Ontario Society of artists so if the group of seven had not existed

15:57

if Vincent Massey and Bergen Bickerstaff

16:03

and Lauren Harris and I why Jackson had not been on the scene the collection

16:08

would look very different today it would have been like a hodgepodge of Ontario

16:14

Society of artists you know the artists were working in all different various kinds of styles from kind of Barbra Jean

16:20

and Dutch influence to impressionism etc and but this was a moment of modernism

16:27

in Canada and a moment when the dominant

16:34

ideology was nationalism and all of these things did not just in the in

16:39

painting and sculpture but in music in poetry in literature so it was it was

16:47

everywhere it was all pervasive and and these these some these phenomena coming together at the same time and having the

16:54

people there and the situations and the opportunities gave rise to this collection as it is today and of course

17:03

of Vincent Massey this is a portrait by Fred Varley was painted in 1920 as a

17:11

gift it was commissioned by friends of Massey to give him on the opening upon

17:16

the opening of heart house to celebrate it so it’s this is a huge painting I think sarah said that when she first saw

17:22

it in the in the flesh so to speak she was amazed at the scale so it’s also

17:28

very important for these these kinds of exhibitions so you can see the the works of art sure we now have very good JPEGs

17:36

we know we have digital images that we can access so easily now but there’s no

17:44

nothing like seeing the the works themselves so Vincent Massey it was of

17:51

course his idea to build heart house in the first place 20 to honor his his grandfather heart

17:59

masse and so therefore heart house and he was also a great supporter of the

18:04

Arts he later was a on the board of trustees at the national gallery and he collected art himself separate from from

18:12

from the heart house collection so he was he was working behind the scenes that’s very interesting when I was doing

18:18

the research I went through all the minute books of the art committee and the art committee was the the group that

18:24

students and faculty advisors who

18:30

purchased the works of art who ran lectures who did programming like Pat

18:35

does and there there are things missing very interesting so I think there was a

18:40

lot going on behind the scenes with Massie and Bergen bickersteth and other people to make sure that this was going

18:47

to be an excellent collection of Canadian art and this evolved very quickly Barker fairly was the first

18:57

chairman of the the art committee this is another portrait by Varley again in

19:02

1920 he was a professor of German literature he was a great friend of group seven there he is with his pipe at

19:11

the end of the table beside him on his right is lauren harris and that at the

19:17

top of the table is a wide Jackson inez three men were very important in in the

19:23

collection so the first picture which was purchased when Barker fairly was

19:30

chairman was this work Georgian Bay November of 1921 it was purchased from

19:35

the nineteen twenty 20 SI Ontario Society of artists exhibition at the art

19:42

gallery of Toronto and it was this that set the precedent this was the first

19:47

painting by the group of seven apart from the the Varley portrait of Massey which came into the collection so the

19:56

history of the excuse me of the group of seven is well known it’s been the

20:01

subject of recent exhibitions and so I didn’t want to incur

20:09

this exhibition do the same show that has been done before many times and that

20:15

could be chronological history may be focusing on individual artists you know

20:22

there have been very various approaches to this kind of work so I thought well

20:28

how can I approach it in a different way sorry very drawing here so my

20:41

methodology which is reflected in the installations was that I decided to

20:48

explore the mechanisms through which these works enter the collection and then gain cultural currency this isn’t

20:56

always a parent and as I said it doesn’t always appear in the minutes no usually

21:02

it’s recorded when a work of art is is brought in when it’s purchased how much it purchased for but they were

21:08

interesting examples where there was silence such as the wonderful 1947

21:15

painting by by david milne of Temagami

21:22

there’s no mention so I don’t know I had to speculate on how it came into the collection but how these these works

21:30

gained cultural currency how they became icons well Pat’s mentioned there’s exit through exhibitions through

21:36

reproductions through books all of those things so I’m you know I thought well a look at not the works themselves so much

21:43

as how they got into the collection and what was done with them I have done my

21:51

my doctoral research was looking at exhibitions of Imperial art or Imperial

21:57

exhibitions from this same period which included Wembley the exhibition where

22:03

the art exhibition where Canada was first praised so much by British critics

22:10

and this of course was laid back in Canada and kind of put us on the map and

22:17

made Canadians aware of this new new movement in art and I also looked at how

22:25

countries were positioning themselves relative to each other and Great Britain how they were promoting their own brands

22:31

so I thought it would be very interesting to look at the exhibition’s in in in which these particular works

22:39

that were hanging appeared and these were sent time and time again to

22:45

represent Canada abroad and there’s Wembley there’s the contemporary

22:53

contemporary paintings or paintings by contemporary Canadian artists that when all through the united states in the in

23:00

1930 organized by the american federation of arts and then in 1938 the

23:05

Tate Gallery mounted big exhibition called a century of Canadian art and

23:10

interestingly enough Vincent Massey was behind the second 2 in 1930 he was the

23:17

first minister representing Canada in the United States and the second time he

23:23

was Canadian High Commissioner at the time of a century of Canadian art so Vincent Massey is in there he’s making

23:30

his he’s connected with thee with the arts community with everybody that needs

23:36

to be talked to about this and he promotes Canadian art in these in these two places so that’s that’s very

23:44

important that there’s so many collections that were so many works of art in they in this show that that were

23:52

borrowed and continue to be borrowed during the course of this small

23:57

exhibition over two years works have been borrowed for other exhibitions for

24:04

instance the Emily car which is here was loaned out to Sarah’s show so that’s

24:10

that shows you the popularity and what and the demand even today for these for these iconic works of art and there’s

24:21

Bergen bickersteth he was they this is after he retired he was warden of heart house from 1921 to 1947 and hugely

24:29

influential and important and I think a lot of Allah behind-the-scenes activities happened if

24:37

there was there was never very much money often students were asked to donate a small amount of money each to

24:45

raise to buy paintings but you know if they couldn’t afford something suddenly

24:51

money would appear out of the wardens fund and I have a feeling it might have come from the Massey foundation but you

24:57

know none of this is recorded of course it’s it’s a speculation so what if one

25:04

of the points I suppose there were three things that I tried to say with this with this show is that the collection

25:11

was shaped in a specific way it was very

25:18

carefully thought through which works of art would be included and on the 1925 a

25:25

collecting policy no this is only after about four years a collecting policy was

25:30

established and there were artists advisors who helped in in choosing the

25:38

pictures and the first committee was composed of lauren harris and a jackass

25:46

on the second committee of a why Jackson and Casson again and then a more

25:53

conservative painter so that there would be it would be fairly distributed between the moderns and the the more

26:00

conservative artists so here’s a here’s a case in point this is Isles of spruce

26:07

very hot this was in demand this picture was both the art gallery of Toronto and

26:16

Hart House both wanted to purchase this picture from one of the exhibitions at

26:22

the art gallery of Toronto in fact they both went through both their committees unbeknownst to each other so there was a

26:29

little bit of a conflict there and of course these you know the art community

26:34

was small me all wanted to be on good terms with each other so bickersteth

26:40

about a stern letter to Haines who was the curator at the art gallery of Toronto saying that we need this picture

26:46

you know we don’t have a major picture will neither did the art gallery Toronto have a major picture of Liz nurse and

26:52

he’s agreed to lower the price for us and this was this was true that artists

26:57

would give harthouse a lower price because it was going to heart house and

27:03

in fact it has all the trademarks of Canadian art it was as it was being

27:09

defined at that time it’s a northern wilderness landscape it’s algoma it was

27:14

painted by Liz mer etc etc so it was very odd this kind of picture was very highly sought after so bickersteth

27:24

argued for the for the painting here’s a little sketch for that work which is in thank you for installing it beside the

27:31

the canvas of Alicia because I think it’s important to see the two together and this was given to bickersteth biol

27:39

is merr when the work was acquired by heart house so that goes to show you i think the the importance of the role

27:46

that bickersteth played and there’s a silkscreen that was produced in 1943 for

27:52

enlisted men’s barracks and buildings of

27:59

souls that this was a silkscreen project during the war so of course the these

28:04

works are continuously being put before the public there’s there was also as the

28:13

collection grew and it grew slowly a sense of of history a sense that they

28:20

were building something important and and they where did they fit into the

28:26

history and what you know that they were they started to see oil okay things are missing from the collection they didn’t

28:32

have a major Thompson canvas so here they they went after there so that will

28:39

be trying to fill in gaps so you can see that that now that the collection starts

28:45

to take shape so they went after this very well-known picture the pointers

28:51

which has I always say it’s traveled more than any of us it’s been everywhere it was in the dulwich

28:57

exhibition of Tom Thompson in the group seven and it was purchased from from the

29:03

late Tom Thompson sister the same with jeh macdonald when he died in 1932 there

29:11

was no major a canvass of him to represent the in the collection and this

29:18

this was purchased from hit the estate from his son Thoreau and also because of

29:26

Harris’s involvement with with the collection they wanted to represent him

29:32

very fully but this picture wasn’t which was painted in the 20s was not actually acquired until the 40s I think they had

29:39

trouble with this when it was getting a little abstract and definitely this one

29:46

would not have probably gone over very well except that it was Harris and Harris had to be well represented so all

29:53

aspects of his career another important

30:00

thing to consider is that they can continue to collect during the

30:05

Depression and I think this is again where where massey and bickersteth were

30:11

made a difference there was some money given through the Massey foundation to

30:16

the hard house collection in order that they could still purchase works of art and this is one of the examples this is

30:22

the young Canadian which of course is one of the icons and there’s that that

30:27

picture by mail that I mentioned that suddenly appeared in the in the collection in 1947 Massey had owned it

30:35

in his own collection since the 1930s but suddenly when there was a show of

30:42

mills in 1947 organized by Douglas Duncan I guess Massey realized that

30:47

there was no major Milne so he gave this picture but again there’s no no

30:54

documentation just quickly here is I’ve

30:59

probably exceeded my time have I or am i okay two minutes okay the fact that the

31:06

these were these pictures were shown abroad this is the first X dition the british empire exhibition at

31:13

wembley the canadian one of the canadian galleries and you can see about halfway

31:18

down the wall on the left the Varley portrait of Massey in the exhibition by

31:26

contemporary Canadian artists that went to the United States the Emily Carr kid Wan cool totems was included and also in

31:36

that exhibition was comforts prairie road which is amazing piece of art for

31:41

this time it was not in the collection but it was it was it was acquired soon

31:47

after so then not only were works being borrowed from the collection to send

31:53

overseas but the the collecting committees at hart house were picking

31:58

things works from these international exhibitions so as the history of

32:05

canadian art was being written through the the exhibitions as the work was

32:10

being produced hard house was being written into by purchasing these works

32:15

by owning them by displaying them was being written into the history so i see

32:21

the being interwoven partly because as canadian art was developing in the 20s

32:27

and 30s so was the collection so that’s kind of a different way of looking at at

32:35

the collection at least that was my intention and and there’s the the poster

32:40

for the British transfer a london transport poster for the century of

32:46

canadian art with whole gates portrait of Lou Devine and I think it’s interesting that now the end of the 30s

32:52

there’s a portrait of it is a portrait it’s not just strictly landscape wilderness landscape and there’s an

33:01

installation shot from that take gallery

33:07

exhibition which and the purpose of that exhibition was to show that Canada

33:12

wasn’t just the group of seven but we had a much longer history of art well they didn’t really have a very good

33:18

understanding because you’ve got a combination of sort of

33:24

westernized portraiture with french canadian wood carving with argillite

33:33

carved totem poles and a choke with ceremonial blanket from from the west coast so this was all just so oh yes we

33:40

go a long way back through the through our native peoples and that may be something that Sarah realized we have to

33:47

be rectified because there was this growing sense of yes Canada does have an

33:53

art history and they wanted to write it and those are just those are two of the

33:58

pictures of which were in the Tate exhibition this is a article that

34:04

appeared in the 1940s in Canadian art about written about the collection and

34:10

then of course Jay Russell Harper 1955 rights rights the catalog so and the

34:17

story continues because as long it the works keep being requested for

34:24

exhibition they’re put in new contexts and they continue to gain a history and

34:30

that that gives them more meaning and so on we go thank you thank you christine

34:45

for that great look at the heart house collection i’ll just open up Sarah’s

34:54

PowerPoint here okay so please welcome Sarah Milroy to talk about Emily Carr

35:03

thanks so much thank you I was saying um

35:09

just before we started to Christy that one of the great things about today was the chance to come on the train from

35:15

Toronto with Christine spend the day with her and go back to Toronto with her again tonight because we’ve never really

35:21

had a chance to sort of hang out and talk about Canadian art together and now we’re having a whole wonderful day of it

35:27

thanks to all of you and the folks here who have invited us I I wanted to start

35:37

by just responding for a second to what Christine showed us because I think one of the things that I found so moving

35:43

about this show when I saw it in Toronto was this sense of a time in Canadian history when art was seen as such a

35:51

fundamental and important part of how a nation would express itself you know the

35:56

confluence of extreme wealth and influence with artistic practitioners at

36:04

the very highest level with institutional buying of the university that made Canadian culture a high high

36:10

priority like it’s funny to think we think we progress in Canada you know but

36:17

they had something in the 1920s and 30s in Canada that we still wish we had

36:22

today just as we had many many

36:27

television shows and radio shows about Canadian art and culture in the CBC in

36:33

the 1960s and 70s whenever I do primary research I’m always struck by the amount

36:38

of material that is accessible through archives about the art practice of those times and I think obviously the

36:46

consolidating work of heart house was really important in those periods and so we need to remain activists about

36:52

insisting that our governments and institutions continue to do what institutions like the CBC and heart has

36:58

did so well so I mean for me that was one of the really sweet and bitter sweet

37:04

things about your exhibition it demonstrated that so beautifully and they are I don’t know how many art

37:10

history students are here today but it really was a huge thrill for me too I can and see that Varley portrait of

37:17

Massey it is I mean I was looking at it again today thinking you know is it the best portrait that’s ever been painted

37:22

in Canada it’s certainly one of the top five I mean what would you put there because you know it but you know

37:30

harris’s Salem bland and I mean there wouldn’t be a bleak are a self-portrait maybe there wouldn’t be many contenders

37:36

it’s just an astonishing thing so thank you from for everyone in the Canadian art world for making all these things

37:42

available to all of us again in this beautiful way so Emily Carr iconic yes

37:52

and also beloved and one of the things I

37:58

wanted to talk about today is the fact that when someone is beloved as Emily Carr is that can be a blessing of course

38:05

because people are interested in seeing the pictures but it can also be a kind of curse or at least a challenge because

38:12

people think that they know this person and I used to get two kinds of reactions

38:18

from people when I would say I was doing an Emily Carr show when I started working on it almost four years ago now and that was either oh Emily Carr I love

38:26

Emily Carr and her monkey and she was just so great and fabulous and she was

38:31

at one with native people and you know I’m her biggest fan and you kind of go okay who got some work to do here or

38:39

else you’d be talking to a contemporary art colleague and they’d say Emily Carr really like that boring you know like

38:46

we’ve all what could we possibly learn about Emily Carr like isn’t she sort of done to death so it was this familiarity

38:52

thing that that you know presented really two conflicting types of challenge and I just gathered some sort

39:01

of horrendous examples of ways in which car has perhaps been characterized at

39:07

caricatured historically this is Joseph ards a vocation of the artist in front

39:16

which stands in front of hassles appropriately a temple of Commerce in yorkville and which catches her in a

39:24

seriously bad hair day with apparently her flesh decomposing but never mind and of course the monkey riding high on

39:30

the back this is this is what happens when you become iconic beware this is in

39:39

Victoria again car with the monkey on her shoulder on her back you could even

39:45

say the monkey on her back of fame and her beloved dog but i think you know

39:52

there’s another from fard here the picture of her again with a dog looking even more scowly than she did before so

39:59

clearly two things are being emphasized here her sort of frumpy old bag lady

40:08

persona but also her her as a kind of

40:13

caretaker of animals and you know in fact the interesting thing about car is that she was of course a pioneering

40:19

artist a feminist who didn’t wouldn’t probably have thought of herself as a feminist but definitely a feminist and

40:24

just in the fact that she wanted to live her own life and one of the main ways in which she achieved that was by not in

40:30

fact being a nurturer with most of her time she was not a mother she was not a wife she very deliberately chose not to

40:38

be and I find it very interesting that persistent image of car is as a nurturer it’s almost as if that corrective has to

40:44

be given kind of in a way that is almost punitive in in historical hindsight I’ve

40:50

become very interested in in car and her monkey and Frida Kahlo and her monkeys

40:55

but anyway that’s someone else’s PhD thesis women who didn’t have babies and had made art instead and yes I mean it’s

41:04

really extraordinary we wanted to lift off these the sort of carapace of

41:12

narrative that had kind of accumulated around car and sometimes by virtue of

41:18

her own writing car was not insensitive to how to become a national icon and her

41:25

writing is really some of it is absolutely wonderful I’m going to read you some of it from her journals as I

41:31

conclude but a lot of her writing is very self-consciously positioning herself as a national icon as the feisty

41:38

you know apple doll of Canadian art like she was not she knew how to do that she knew

41:44

what she needed to be and do to become a national treasure and so she’s partly to blame for this but we wanted to strip

41:53

away that and allow people to have a fresh look at the work i’ve i’ve

41:59

included here the crazy staircase which is the work that recently sold through

42:05

hassles for 3.4 million dollars what’s what’s really interesting about this is that it’s not a very good painting in

42:14

fact one of the really hard truths about Emily Carr is that she is one of Canada’s most uneven artists which is

42:21

something that no one really dared ever say because everything ever made by

42:26

Emily Carr was a work of genius this I don’t believe is a work of genius it’s very crudely painted it has a certain

42:32

bombastic tone about it this is made after she comes east in 1927 when she

42:38

has the sudden sense of an audience for the first time in her life in eastern Canada and she makes a series of

42:44

paintings a few of which like Caitlin cool totems are jams and again my

42:49

apologies for having to Filch that from your tour but it really is one of the signal accomplishments of her career

42:54

that picture but most of the pictures from this period have this kind of near hysterical histrionic tone and are

43:03

actually quite woodenly painted a lot of the time but are nonetheless seen as national treasures we wanted to strip

43:10

all this away and really look carefully at the work and get back to who this

43:16

wonderful human being was with all of her all of her awareness of the gulf

43:22

that separated her from the indigenous people that she was so fascinated by a

43:27

woman who was prescient enough to be able to understand the problems of the

43:33

residential school system and and actually advocated to some aboriginal

43:39

women that she knew not to allow their children to be taken she who understood that the missionaries were the

43:45

uncivilized ones that were exhibiting such a lack of compassion and insight

43:51

into people over which they had been given charge and she was very unusually intelligent

43:58

in terms of her ability to be introspective about the cultural biases of her own culture and really unusual in

44:06

her willingness to be curious and friendly and open-minded about a world that everything in her society was

44:12

telling her to disparage so who was this person and how could we bring people closer to her I love this picture

44:19

because there’s a missionary girl sitting behind her with her she sort of emblematic of you know someone who’s trying to keep the elements away from

44:25

her you know trying to the umbrella serves as a kind of prophylactic against anything you know penetrating her

44:31

consciousness you know and then this Aboriginal woman who was her guide on the other side be like Oh crazy white

44:37

folks you know and and car in the middle just looking like she couldn’t possibly be having a better day with Billy her

44:44

dog just you know anything was better than staying at home in Victoria with her sisters who were so uptight and

44:50

disapproving of her if she just was always in her element we became you know

44:56

in contrast to the kind of crazy staircase type of work that abounded the

45:03

oils on canvas that abounded particularly after 1927 in de Chardin who was the co-creator of the show at

45:09

the delicate picture gallery Ian and I became very interested in the works on paper in which car often reveals herself

45:16

as a much more I don’t know humble and

45:21

and open and sensitive recorder of the world around her we find a beautiful

45:27

sense of inquiry in this this oil painting of course it shows that she’s been to France she’s been exposed to

45:34

post-impressionism she got herself to to London to art school to San Francisco to art school to Paris to art school this

45:41

is a single woman travelling in the first decades of the 20th century it’s really quite extraordinary the luckiest

45:47

break that ever happened for Canadian art is that Emily cars two parents died when she was in her teens and this meant

45:54

that she inherited just enough money that she could get herself she could direct her own life and she fortunately

46:00

had an executor who respected her enough as a person to you know endorse her

46:06

doing that but you can see here that she’s been to Europe and been trained we love here’s

46:13

her actually making sketches for the work in tanu you can see her figure just right here kind of crouched down in the

46:26

weeds making her sketches of that site

46:31

we thought these were a revelation the works on paper you don’t this was in a private collection we went back 40 years

46:38

and tried to find every work that had traded through the auction houses and then tracked them all down and find

46:43

images of them and then start the begging process which was prolonged but we actually found people very very

46:50

excited about the idea of a different take that emphasized the works on paper and this one is particularly

46:56

extraordinary and it’s a sort of expressionistic sweep of that foreground very bright colors again a lot of these

47:02

things were not very highly prized because their works on paper so they SAT in storage or they were wrapped or they were thrown in in cupboard somewhere in

47:10

the dark and so a lot of them were just fresh as fresh can be and we were able to show them for the first time in decades and decades this is another

47:17

example where the you know the loose brushwork in the in the the grasses in

47:24

the forefront really give you that sense of the wind moving through the trees and everything being interconnected with

47:31

these forums and again I think this is a way in which her way of painting what we tried to explore was that the

47:37

interconnectedness of things and these watercolors very much like when you look at the composition of northwest coast

47:43

objects where wolf gives way to beaver gives way to whale there’s a kind of way

47:49

in which everything sort of sings together and that her way of looking at the world really was quite quite

47:56

harmonious with that view even though she came from a completely different cultural tradition obviously she wanted

48:02

to give all of her watercolors of the coast to the province of British Columbia as a gift well first she wanted

48:10

to sell them to the government then she wanted to gift them to the government of British Columbia and they declined the

48:15

gift saying that they were too colorful to be of any value as an ethnographic record okay the next slide is going to

48:20

be a picture of this Joe installed in in London and you’ll see that it’s not just an exhibition of

48:29

Emily cars paintings that what we did was actually go to the collections of

48:35

North West Coast art that were in the music in the museums in the UK such as the British Museum the Pitt rivers in

48:42

Oxford the horniman in South London Edinburgh and switch and so on and

48:49

borrow these extraordinary objects that had been taken from the coast in the in

48:55

some cases as early as the late 1700s we had a gull mask from Captain Cook from

49:01

the first British landfall on British Columbians soil in 1778 at Nootka sound that was included in our show we went to

49:09

the mall because we knew that we didn’t want to make a show that that showed an Emily Carr painting and beside it a mask

49:16

that looked like it which had been kind of what had happened with Emily Carr shows in the past is that there was a sort of a strenuous desire to suggest

49:24

kindred pneus between the two and while there were some things about the world view that seemed to be echoes of each

49:31

other they were totally different worlds and in fact car very clearly understood that not all the critics of the time

49:37

understood that and she was often sort of treated like an honorary Aboriginal person by the press of her day and still

49:43

today but in fact she understood that this was a great mystery to her how this culture worked and you know the belief

49:51

systems and customs of Aboriginal people and so what we did is to put the space back between indigenous culture that was

49:58

in fact her inspiration and her paintings actually physically put in the objects in the middle of the room we did

50:04

this in Toronto as well put in the objects in the middle of the room and then placing place in the paintings in

50:10

their own zone further out so here you’ll see some iconic works that have been kind of recontextualized here the

50:18

mask in the middle that faces you is a woman of high rank mask from the hyda people and we wanted there to be the

50:24

woman of high rank mask when you walked in because Emily Carr is a woman of high rank and so we were playing with kind of

50:30

subliminal messaging here you’ll see on the back wall totalement forest and beside

50:35

Indian church which are kind of speaking of two different systems of belief systems cultural systems that the white

50:43

geometry of the European Christianity and the more integrated into the

50:48

landscape totemic shape of the of the totem pole we were not having a lot of

50:54

success getting the British Museum’s to play ball with us but we were not

51:00

getting our phone calls returned we were trying strenuously to explain how excited we were about this and how great

51:06

that these objects were there in England and and you know we’re just getting nowhere so by chance I had the

51:13

opportunity to spend some time with jim hart who was a aboriginal hereditary

51:18

chief and master carver incredible artist who was carving his big double

51:24

screen for Michael odain at the Vancouver Art Gallery at the time on the fourth floor and every time I would go home to see my father in Vancouver he

51:31

would i would go the bag and he would be there and finally one day we got to talking he said what are you doing

51:36

because he was we were talking always about what he was doing well doing this show on Emily Carr he said oh my car he

51:43

said yeah she’s terrific if she used to come up and stay in my great-grandfather’s guesthouse and

51:48

massive I was like you don’t say so he started talking about that he said yeah she made a really great painting I think

51:55

it’s called totalement forest which of course is cars masterpiece it’s my family’s pole you know and then he

52:02

started talking about the story on the pole and the fact that the pole is actually still in Masset it’s a monster

52:08

of a pole it’s like eight feet across at the base and it’s wrapped up in plastic and mass it right now in a shed where it’s quite safe but you know it’s still

52:16

there and he had this very first hand relationship to it and so I thought what

52:22

an incredible addition to an exhibition on car to be able to have a voice like that talking about looking at cars work

52:28

as an Aboriginal person and in particular from his own you know family position so you’ll see we also found

52:35

like to the right of the woman of high rank mask is you can just see kind of a brown mass that’s up under the wall

52:41

labeled beside India church that was a raven mask that was by Jim’s account

52:48

given by one of his great-great-grandfather’s who was a shaymin to a British missionary in the

52:55

1860s and it’s been sitting at the pitt rivers museum we went to visit it we

53:01

looked at the tag and the the information he was it will say oh yes my own great granddad you know me the

53:07

curator almost dropped dead with excitement so anyway it all worked out wonderfully well and we we in the end

53:13

got every single thing we wanted when Jim came back to London with me we did those visits again and that’s why we

53:19

were able to do so well so Jim was you know an essential part of our success and this is just to show you some of the

53:26

here’s his family poll which tells the bear mother story and which I won’t go

53:32

into it it’s a doozy if we have time at the end and just to show kind of what

53:37

you know we did it with a with a light hand but just to show the way in which you know carving traditions did affect

53:44

did certainly affect car in the kind of you know reduce the gesture make a clear

53:49

decision about line the the kind of disciplined use of color you know there

53:54

are there are real harmonies there to be to be explored without reducing anything

54:01

one of the other things we really wanted to deal with was the notion of of car as a kind of creature of emotion sort of

54:09

swooning in the back of a canoe having epiphanies you know we wanted to to

54:15

really show people that Emily Carr was a very hardworking person who really

54:20

struggled to educate herself and so one of the things we included was a series of of drawings that she actually made in

54:28

eastern Canada visiting museums when she came East for the 1927 show that she was

54:34

in that was so pivotal in her life she spent hours drawing from objects that

54:39

were in the museum and also drawing from anthropology textbooks of the day particular bow ave and swanton she would

54:49

come slavishly try to figure out how to make those ovoid forms and have them fit together so when we did the show in

54:55

toronto we we offered the audience clipboards and paper and pencils to try

55:00

to to do what she did which to make really kind of uninspiring dries I mean they’re not in the show because

55:07

they’re great drawings there in the show because they show her struggling with the image and struggling to do justice

55:13

to something that she understood was beyond her capacity to really truly grasp or achieve in a formal level we

55:22

also wanted to kind of disabuse people of the idea of her as a Canadian artist in a Canadian context only and our hero

55:30

and our Emily in fact you know I mean that’s just as a feminist that was one of the other things that everyone calls

55:36

her Emily even the exhibition team in England I had to reprimand from calling

55:41

her Emily because she’s car you know we don’t save tom for Thompson we don’t say Fred for Varley you know why are we

55:48

saying Emily for car so anyway um she you know car traveled as I said

55:57

extensively to receive her artistic training and she also got herself to New York in 1930 where she met Georgia

56:04

O’Keeffe who was showing the jack in the pulpit series of that time Georgia

56:09

O’Keeffe also turned her on to D H Lawrence while she was there and in cars

56:16

journal she writes about she doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about D H Lawrence because all he writes about

56:22

his sex and he’s a pervert and he really should be ashamed of himself and then she goes home and paints this so it’s

56:30

really kind of intriguing to me but it’s also you know such an extraordinary image around sexuality to me it’s like

56:38

both sort of late labia like at the bottom and phallic so it’s this kind of

56:43

by gendered object that takes you know Keith’s insight and extends it into kind

56:48

of any kind of sexual variants that you could imagine I think it’s really an

56:54

extraordinary an extraordinary painting and we were lucky to have it in both in both shows but so Emily cars and

57:01

international artists interacting with international art not just getting you know the high five from lauren harris

57:07

and you know heading for the barn there’s more to the story than that we wanted to make that clear we also know

57:14

that she saw desean’s nude descending a staircase was with liz mer actually when she was on that trip

57:21

to New York and the big task of the whole latter part of her career was

57:27

depicting motion in a static object and you know I really do think that you can

57:33

feel a sense of the Dashon precedent in that the faceting it’s a very peculiar

57:38

picture of a tree it’s a funny color it’s blonde in a way that it doesn’t really bear relationship with with the

57:46

environment itself and it has a kind of you know faceted sense of movement in

57:51

the tree trunks on the bottom that to me is highly suspicious so this could be a an example of fancy on my part or it

58:00

could be you know really important but I think it’s there and we know that you

58:05

mean she took note of seeing the painting it’s in her journals as being an important thing to have seen and she says that Liz Merced it was very

58:11

feminine the douche aw so that’s we need to digress and talk about Liz mer but

58:17

not today the other thing we wanted to show people was that her inspirations

58:22

were not just north west coast art and not just the art visual art made by other visual artists but also literature

58:29

was very very important to her she was an avid reader of poetry all the way through her life for example and Whitman

58:37

when you go to BC archives and Victoria there are boxes of her books that she had at the end of her life she has five

58:44

different editions of Whitman they’re all of them annotated with with either

58:49

with red pen and the margin indicating her favorite poems this one miracles is always and you can you can read the text

58:56

there it’s basically about being in a sense of wonder and astonishment I mean

59:01

the relationship between Whitman and car is very interesting both I think utterly

59:09

gendered other Lee sexualized and both

59:14

having an unusual affinity with First Nations people Whitman writes about the

59:20

Isle of Manhattan and is always kind of insisting upon the aboriginal presence in America in his writing and both I

59:28

think probably certifiably manic in their

59:35

dispositions they both were given to extraordinary mood swings I mean keeping that we really have to saddle up when

59:41

you when you read Emily cars journals because the highs are so high and the lows are so harrowing lilo characterized

59:49

by that painful self-doubt that is so much a hallmark of that that mental

59:54

illness but boy when they rave they rave and that I think she felt a special

1:00:00

affinity for Whitman so there’s another PhD thesis that someone needs to write but to me every hour of the light and

1:00:07

dark is a miracle every cubic inch of space is a miracle see as a continual miracle the fishes that swim so you know

1:00:15

this really is could be car writing these things and just for those who

1:00:20

speculate about cars sexuality it was one of the private person you know personal favorite finds in the archive

1:00:27

from the song of myself oh the Horseman’s and horse woman’s Joy’s the saddle the gallop the pressure upon the

1:00:33

seat the cool gurgling by the ears and hair and she writes in the margin I’ve felt it so I think that’s a wonderful

1:00:41

thing to come across in the library and here she’s feeling it looking at

1:00:48

happiness this was Ian des jardins favorite painting in the show and indeed the British critics went crazy for this

1:00:54

period of car in the 30s when she’s working with oil and gasoline the gasoline to thin down the oil paint so

1:01:01

that she can move the brush like watercolor but still have the opacity and and the brilliance of oil paint

1:01:07

these are spontaneous quick studies made in the field they’re large and scale very unusual to make works on paper of

1:01:14

that scale and she would make it you know dozens a day and throw away the ones she didn’t like a whole room full

1:01:22

of these ocean and sky studies that again were very warmly received in the

1:01:28

UK and we had many many people come to us and Toronto and say we didn’t know these works we didn’t know these works

1:01:34

we knew you know we knew crazy staircase and you can’t go because these are just among the most

1:01:40

gorgeous works of art that I’ve ever been produced in Canada and they were on paper which partly you know explains why

1:01:46

they were not as well known this glorious late late work on paper which

1:01:52

is you know beacon hill park where car you know she started her life there as a

1:01:57

young girl running around in the fields she ended her life they’re usually in a wheelchair being pushed out to the end

1:02:03

of her street Beacon Hill is right at the end is on the bluff at the end of her street in downtown Victoria but she

1:02:08

was at this point you know she had as Whitman would have put it you know had all the worlds within her already she

1:02:14

could take that you find that euphoric state of connection to the natural world wherever she went and we had this at the

1:02:21

end of the show in both venues because it just is evidence of a life an imagination a human being that was able

1:02:28

to against all odds completely express everything she had inside her and I

1:02:33

think we’re probably are we at the end of our time I think I want to stop there but thank you so much for your kind

1:02:39

attention of your forbearance about our technological difficulties and thank you

1:02:45

for being here today

1:02:53

so you’ve both talked about the process of disentangling Emily Carr or any other

1:03:00

artists from their their canonization I wondered if if there was anything else you each wanted to say about that that

1:03:08

process how one goes about it and and makes that disentangling apparent to to

1:03:14

an audience who’d like to go for well first of all why would you want to

1:03:20

disentangle well like sort of like Sarah said if the canonization in yet just

1:03:26

wanted to to clear away some of the stuff that had accumulated around the

1:03:32

work that maybe was making people unable to see it in a fresh way well because I

1:03:37

think that part of the history it is yeah i think but you know to make to make people see things in a new way but

1:03:42

i think it’s also important to acknowledge those those those messy bit

1:03:48

yeah the history of the discussion around them it’s right because yeah that’s that comes out of a pajama period

1:03:54

or oh so interesting is that like in London we were presenting a person that we really did want to strip down and

1:04:01

show fresh because they had never heard of her before so we wanted to give them as the least hackneyed precooked version

1:04:09

of her that we could you know and showed what we thought was the best work and so on in Canada you have to deal with both

1:04:15

histories and then the discourse that has gathered around her and in particular in relationship to her

1:04:21

treatment of First Nations themes so it almost had to be two completely different like you have to conceive of

1:04:28

it completely differently for the two venues and yet still make one publication that serves both audiences so that was I found that challenging um

1:04:40

Sarah you in showing us the Emily Carr exhibition you talked about the

1:04:46

inclusion of First Nations objects in in that show what did you learn a lot

1:04:53

through the course of making this exhibition about your own ideas about First Nations people well I think you

1:05:01

know I think one of the things that you you have just been finishing writing this week about Kent mont- is a you know

1:05:07

contemporary Cree anglo-irish Canadian artist and you know you when you work as

1:05:16

a white person with First Nations material you’re always self-consciously going you know analyzing your own

1:05:23

instrument of perception and I think you

1:05:28

know certain ideas that flow in Canadian culture and settler culture such as the

1:05:34

idea that you know Aboriginal people are somehow more connected to the natural

1:05:42

world and other kinds of people like some Aboriginal people claim that other people so that’s a racial stereotype so

1:05:49

you actually you realize how complicated your own place is as a speaker with in

1:05:55

that discussion I think you become more self conscious in a way then and more self scrutinizing so you know in writing

1:06:02

about Kent muckman who’s making a diorama at the gardener ceramic Museum which will open next week have he’s

1:06:07

building a buffalo jump for mischeif inside the gardener ceramic museum but you know I ended up really going back

1:06:15

and thinking about dioramas and how dioramas teach young people and then I suddenly realized wait a minute I I went

1:06:22

repeatedly to the diorama in bath which is one of the most egregiously you know

1:06:27

racial caricature dioramas you could ever hope to find repeatedly all the way

1:06:33

through my childhood have been completely forgotten that and then I started to write about that and about what what I might have learned from that

1:06:39

experience so you’re just constantly and then you know then you’re thinking well yeah actually I remember women from the

1:06:46

first nation across the water from where our cabin was and the summer used to come and sell baskets and what was that

1:06:51

like for me as a child looking at those children and you know the stuff that you don’t even know you know or things that

1:06:57

you don’t even know that you’ve incorporated you start to examine and become aware of so there was enormous

1:07:03

learning there and hopefully some enlightenment yeah thank you um

1:07:08

Christine my last question is for you you conclude your essay in the heart

1:07:13

host along by saying that new ways of engaging with the collection will evolve

1:07:19

in the future so a collection that’s usually in storage how do you see that

1:07:24

happening do you care to speculate on on these new ways well I’d have to speculate because I’m not a resident

1:07:32

curator at a hard house or that the distant of arnica gallery has just been

1:07:39

newly incorporated or the to have the new tack has been brought together with

1:07:44

a Justin of arnica which makes it possible for them to show not just contemporary work which has always been

1:07:50

they the Mandate of the heart house art gallery AKA justina bar turkey but also

1:07:57

historical work and when the this show came to Toronto it showed in new tech it

1:08:03

showed in the not the justin of our turkey but the other other venue so they

1:08:09

have all kinds of ideas I’m sure about what they’re going to do personally I feel the technology will probably be

1:08:16

more used to personalize the experience of being there in a meaningful way I you

1:08:24

know I don’t think it’s always done with a lot of with a great deal of thought but also to make it because it’s a

1:08:31

social thing we can we can look at art on our own but I think part of the excitement or the learning experience is

1:08:38

to go with someone else and you know maybe you’ve all come with someone today so that you can talk about things and

1:08:45

the energy that you you create discussing the work and looking at it I always find it’s interesting to go

1:08:50

through with practicing artists because they see things that I don’t see and so

1:08:56

yeah I think it will be more a more personal I hope that that it doesn’t that museums don’t just disappear I you

1:09:05

know the Creator the curators are still you you know are so useful in

1:09:11

well i think in museums because sometimes you just don’t know that but

1:09:17

when you say personalized you being interactive like that the the gallery goer would contribute in some way in the

1:09:24

show or what do you mean by personalized um well I would say that you you get

1:09:31

something out of it as an individual and I’m not quite sure how that would I guess we were talking on the train

1:09:36

coming on coming up here and I did a project in 1996 called reading pictures

1:09:42

Pat you probably remember that because we worked closely when tab was also at the AG 0 and we invited contemporary

1:09:50

writers to respond to works of art in the collection so they would write something we recorded them reading the

1:09:58

work and then they were all compiled on to a tape onto it acoustic guy so the individual visitor could walk around

1:10:04

with the map you know you could make do your own guided tour you could go to the works in whichever order and then you

1:10:11

have this reading by a writer who are often very sensitive to two works of art

1:10:17

visual art and suddenly the works reveal themselves in different ways that to me

1:10:24

is you know because you’re you’re with the writer and you’re seeing the work

1:10:29

through their eyes or through their interpretation so it has it has a personal resonance for you I don’t think

1:10:36

it’s about writing your comments in a comment bull or no I like your idea of the drawings they Mabel like and I’m

1:10:42

like a tartness oh that’s interesting we wanted people to have the humbling experience of trying to do it because it’s like you get halfway through an

1:10:49

ovoid and you realize a way out of my dad’s I can’t even imagine how to fit

1:10:55

these shapes together so it the young people in particular ended up loving it because there were a lot of masks in the

1:11:01

show in toronto and they the kids were pretty engaged by them a huge Kwakiutl

1:11:07

whale mask and some wonderful bears and i like the things with the string is the

1:11:12

movable part yeah if i didn’t realize that they’re worn during a dance and you could they’re almost like marionettes

1:11:19

you pulled pieces and the Finns go up and down I mean we actually had some interesting discussions about that because there

1:11:24

were masks that we in Toronto we borrowed from the museum of anthropology which is a great and very progressive

1:11:30

institution very generous and we had a choice often between masks that were really pristine and you know polished

1:11:40

and not no dings on them and then there were other maths that have clearly been used they were more recent they had all

1:11:46

their rope rigging was still attached to them and their they’d been banged up because they’ve been used and we ended

1:11:53

up you know I thought what is it going to look like to put these which interested me more into the museum case

1:11:58

you know are they going to look like kindling that you know what what are we

1:12:03

doing with these things here in the museum but in fact they really held their own and they really I think did express a sense of objects that were of

1:12:09

use that that had seen a lot of heavy weather and still had all this personality but there was a moment of

1:12:17

like will they survive the translation from the storage vault in a museum where they’re so alive to the to the more to

1:12:23

the more kind of rarefied atmosphere of a museum display but thank goodness they

1:12:28

did they I think they look wonderful okay thank you rashes but vivid thanks I

1:12:36

think now we should I should open things up to the audience so I hope some of you have questions and because we’re

1:12:43

recording this event we have Bruce and Alicia who each have a handheld mic so

1:12:48

if you put your hand up and make your yourself known as questioner one of them will come to you and if you could hold

1:12:55

the mic close to your chin will be sure to hear your question hi I just want to

1:13:01

thank you both for giving the wonderful presentation today I really enjoyed it and the question I have is about you

1:13:08

were talking about emissary we’re talking about Emily Carr and how she’d offer to donate her art to the province

1:13:16

of British Columbia and they declined it and you were unable to finish the story because of the technical interruption oh

1:13:21

yeah a swimming Wellington was that she first of all wanted to sell it to the bc and they didn’t express any interest

1:13:28

and finally she was willing to gift it as my recollection and they still wouldn’t receive it because they said

1:13:34

because it was so highly colored and so expressionistic it could not be seen as

1:13:40

a valid record of the traditional villages of the coast and at that it was

1:13:45

that moment you know she bends and Cisco she’d been to London she’d been to Paris she was you could make a strong argument

1:13:52

she was the most advanced artist in Canada at that time in terms of her awareness of international art or

1:13:58

certainly one of them she kind of hit the wall and decided that this wasn’t

1:14:03

going to work and she would maybe be a Sunday painter but she became a landlady she took a little bit of her inheritance

1:14:09

she built a boarding house and she became a landlady for 15 years making

1:14:15

some paintings and showing intermittently in the odd exhibition more of like artist society type of

1:14:22

shows rather than Museum shows but she’d kind of given up on this particular

1:14:28

ambition to have this be her professional life when news of her if he

1:14:35

had all the work in her studio in storage and racks up in the attic and

1:14:40

news of her work came to the attention of curators in eastern Canada who who

1:14:46

took an interest in her and came to Marius barbeau and Eric Brown barbeau was at leading ethnologist of the time

1:14:52

had done a lot of work on the northwest coast and they heard about her he came to see her barbeau then sent Eric Brown

1:14:58

he went oh my god this is extraordinary and she went from being like not on

1:15:03

anyone’s radar to being the toast of the town in 1927-28 went and then she rien

1:15:10

gages with her career as an artist again but in this other in this in this other kind of language which is much more

1:15:16

large-scale monumental oil painting meant for discipline you know intended for display and in homes are in museums

1:15:23

or in institutional context she was addressed in a completely different audience and she makes those big

1:15:30

showpiece paintings for three years like the crazy staircase or the

1:15:35

wonderful kit one cool totems or big Raven or you know totalement forest many

1:15:41

of the most important pains that car makes are made in that three-year window immediately after and also some of her

1:15:46

most showy and and garish paintings are made during that period and eastern Canadian captains of industry bought

1:15:53

them all off just the same without apparent discrimination she then which I

1:15:59

find very suspicious stops painting that’s kind of paintings all together and stops painting totem poles and

1:16:06

villages and goes and starts making the oil and gasoline paintings in the woods like happiness or sunshine and too old

1:16:13

and other pictures and she was encouraged to do that by harris interestingly and by another artist Toby

1:16:19

that she was close to from Seattle but it’s almost I feel almost as if she sort

1:16:24

of paints herself into a corner and besides this is not feeling great and

1:16:30

makes a complete rupture and breaking her past and goes into making the the oil and gasoline tree paintings and then

1:16:37

those rapturous oil sea and sky or on gasoline payments that were showed you

1:16:42

at the end of the slides so it’s a fascinating period but yeah she gave up to 15 years a long time didn’t actually

1:16:50

reimburse to make all of her important work until she was 56 and all the

1:16:56

important work that we look at us being the canonical emily cars after she’s 56 57 years old so power granny yet they’re

1:17:05

not over till it’s over do we have maybe

1:17:12

one more question from anyway

1:17:20

uh thank you Christine would you bring us up to date on the Massey family

1:17:26

and/or the Massey foundation in terms of their current role with the messy with heart house I have no idea no I just not

1:17:33

at all sorry looks like there’s a

1:17:39

question it back it’s getting lady here house one day hello Hart House cartons

1:17:46

been in many the news the last few years I which one what chip in you did you think was the best and what did you

1:17:53

leave out of that sorry could you repeat that I didn’t yes the the heart house

1:18:00

collects has been all over Canada so what gallery look at the collection look

1:18:06

the best in and what did you leave out of them out of this show oh the

1:18:12

assignment ask that today what did I gave out it’s hard for me to say I don’t think there’s a best I I did not

1:18:20

actually install any of the editing of the venues and that’s because I’m not I

1:18:27

was a taking on as a contract carrier that the Jacinta Bartok he has no because it’s a contemporary gallery it

1:18:35

doesn’t have a historical curator on staff so I was asked to curate the collection so I I was kind of I went in

1:18:42

and did my my work and then you know went out again I’ve been on the road

1:18:47

with the show giving talks and tours as as the galleries would like me to but I

1:18:52

hadn’t i gave i gave direction through through the staff there how I wanted it

1:18:59

installed but you know everybody has done it differently so I can’t say it

1:19:04

looks better in any in any one place and I would always do it differently so

1:19:09

we’re all it’s a very individual individual thing and making certain juxtapositions and so on and what did I

1:19:18

leave out there the plums are in the show basically it’s I think although all

1:19:23

the pieces that are most recognizable to people who know the collection are in it

1:19:31

and because i was looking at the the exhibition’s abroad in which these works

1:19:37

represented canada i think that the all the major works were in it are included

1:19:44

i mean i would put lots of Milnes in the the collection has a lot of great mills

1:19:49

you improve the facts so it won’t always be great to put in in mills and I thought if the show were had been bigger

1:19:56

I would have liked to have included some of the work that was collected before the 1925 collection mandate was was

1:20:08

taken up before they brought in the Advisory Committee of artists so Harris

1:20:13

and later Jackson and what were the students when the students had a little more say what were they you know what

1:20:20

were they acquiring and the works they were requiring were smaller they weren’t as important they might have been the

1:20:26

innate in the wilderness northern wilderness kind of idiom but they

1:20:31

weren’t great works of art and so there were a couple of lover offs and TG green

1:20:40

you know so it wouldn’t that would have been interesting to show you know what was what was being created at the same

1:20:47

time in the same spirit but not at the same level of quality and that would

1:20:56

have been I think a more in-depth look at at the collection Lucien lady in the

1:21:04

front here yeah did you have a question just the Mike’s coming I was just

1:21:12

wondering why do you think cars pieces really resonated with particularly Canadians why did she

1:21:18

become ara well that’s a really complicated questions and I mean on the

1:21:25

most superficial level I think you’d say that obviously they’re very formally

1:21:31

beautiful the best of them are very formally exceptionally strong works of art in terms of composition color the

1:21:38

way in which she’s able to evoke the feeling of the landscape but that I don’t think fully does justice to the

1:21:44

politics around her art and its deployment in the Canadian nationalist

1:21:50

enterprise and I think I’ve come to feel that there was a way in which loving

1:21:56

Emily Carr kind of and extolling Emily Carr in our national museums and on in

1:22:03

our national the boardrooms of our leading corporations or in the houses of our leading most wealthy citizens in a

1:22:11

way actually was a kind of wishful act of exoneration from the responsibility

1:22:17

for the near extermination of indigenous people I think we extolled cars paintings of Aboriginal people at the

1:22:23

same time that the country was setting about to dismantle their way of life and this is still something we see today

1:22:30

when Aboriginal people are used as an attraction of our nation when we when we

1:22:36

market our country to the world and even with internally to ourself in terms of our own notion of what our national

1:22:43

identity means at the same time that you know ninety-five percent of the communities in Canada that don’t have

1:22:49

potable drinking water or Aboriginal communities so she her work exists

1:22:55

within this discussion and I think there’s there aspects of this that you

1:23:01

know the car is in no way responsible for I mean out the good artist is responsible for the ways in which their work is deployed and I think a lot of

1:23:08

the critique around car in the 1980s in particular confused car with her

1:23:14

perpetration of the people who perpetrated a certain kind of use work in an international discussion and

1:23:19

what we were hoping to do in the show was kind of separate those things I would say you know what what really could car see and understand and her gay

1:23:26

that was this that was deeply wise as well as intelligent and prescient and to

1:23:32

what uses has her work and put in the years afterwards okay I think we’d

1:23:38

better wrap up now I invite you all to visit the exhibition and thank you for

1:23:44

your questions and i also invite you to enjoy the refreshments at the other end of the room i’m sure our guest speakers

1:23:50

will be happy to chat with you there thanks for coming and before you you go

1:23:56

please join me in thanking christine and sarah for a very stimulating discussion

1:24:11

you

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