Frances K. Smith Public Talks in Canadian Art: The Canadian Group of Painters Up Close, 11 May, 2013.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.
This exhibition sheds new light on the artistic and social impact of the Canadian Group of Painters in the first and most dynamic decades of its existence, from 1933 to 1953. Canadian Group of Painters exhibitions travelled across Canada and into the United States, stirring excitement, reflection and debate on the state of Canadian art and society. The Canadian Group of Painters emerged from the Group of Seven, but it became much more. Its engagement with modern life during the turbulent times of the Depression, World War II and postwar reconstruction made it a vital force. As one critic raved in 1949: “Go up to the gallery … and have your eyes blasted.”
A Vital Force: The Canadian Group of Painters is the first major exhibition to focus exclusively on this important artistic group. Bringing together works from public and private collections across Canada (forty-eight paintings by forty-eight key members), this exhibition conveys the richness of the group’s practice: new visions of landscape, bold depictions of people and fresh experiments in abstraction. Represented are artists as diverse as André Biéler, Jack Bush, Emily Carr, Paraskeva Clark, Lawren S. Harris, E. J. Hughes, Jack Humphrey, Prudence Heward, A. Y. Jackson, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Jock Macdonald, David Milne, Lilias Torrance Newton, Goodridge Roberts, Carl Schaefer and Marian Dale Scott, among others.
This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, in partnership with The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, and Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, and with the generous support of the Museums Assistance Program at Canadian Heritage, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund and Janet Braide Memorial Fund, Queen’s University.
www.aeac.caFrances K. Smith Public Talks in Canadian Art: The Canadian Group of Painters Up Close, 11 May, 2013.
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario. …
Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript.
0:00
good afternoon everyone and welcome to the acme center tnark center i’m pat sullivan public programs officer here
0:07
and i think we’re all delighted to see such a great turnout for this afternoon’s event and i’m going to
0:14
outline how it will unfold our program today is part of an ongoing
0:20
series which we call the francis p smith public talks in canadian art
0:26
it was just a month ago that this very space held a reception after the memorial service for francis
0:32
paceman the first curator of the arts center her indomitable spirit was spelled then
0:39
and we appreciate it now as we prepare to enjoy an enlightening program made
0:44
possible through her generosity and support for canadian art today’s event the canadian group of
0:51
painters up close relates to the exhibition of my own force the canadian group of painters
0:58
which opened in march and runs to july 14th this important exhibition organized by
1:05
our curator of canadian historical art alicia boulier brings together 48 paintings by 48 key
1:13
members of the canadian group of painters cgp for short
1:18
when the cgp burst upon the scene in 1933 it emerged from the group of seven but
1:25
became much more it was the first group to aspire to cross-country representation of
1:32
modernist artists including women and its members were involved in the social
1:37
and political issues of the time the cgp’s vehicle for reaching the
1:42
canadian public was its organization of a biennial jury exhibition which often
1:49
started in maine centers like toronto or montreal but traveled to smaller cities
1:54
like saskatoon all the works in this show were exhibited at an exhibition in the two
2:01
decades 1933 to 1953 the period when the cgp was truly a
2:07
vital force in canadian art i hope you’re all staying for our reception at 5 00 pm tonight when you
2:14
will hear more of the exhibition from alicia i’ll just mention that it is accompanied
2:20
by a catalog which is on sale in our shop at a special discount today
2:26
my brief remarks i hope have set the context for our program this afternoon which i’ll outline now
2:33
we have chosen to focus on four artists represented in the exhibition
2:38
ay jackson paris david clark peggy nichol mcleod and andre buehler
2:45
we’ll be doing that in two ways four four art historians who i’ll introduce as they come up will each give
2:52
a 20-minute talk on one work included in the exhibition we’re delighted that agnes leighton anna
3:00
hudson and laura brandon accepted our invitation to join alicia ludolair in
3:05
giving these presentations today our program contains another element for
3:11
which i must acknowledge alicia’s creativity we’re going to hear from each artist as
3:16
well but through their writings to that end we are also pleased to have with us two students from the drama
3:23
department at queen’s paul dick and rithis keenan read those short pieces
3:30
i’ll introduce each reading and then the speaker as the program unfolds
3:35
we’ve allowed some time for a very short q a after each talk and we’ll have a 10
3:41
minute break after the second talk however refreshments are available on
3:46
the table at the back of the chairs throughout the afternoon so please feel
3:51
free to help yourself at any time you’ll notice that we are recording the
3:57
program this will be an audio recording which we’ll post on our website
4:03
so let’s get started
4:08
our first reading is from a letter by ay jackson pictured here
4:13
to lionel le moyne fitzgerald in 1933 about the first canadian group of
4:19
painters exhibition in toronto both are former members of the group of seven and founding members of the cgp
4:28
let’s hear from ay jackson
4:35
studio building toronto november 7 1933. my dear fitzger the big show is on
4:43
and it looks good and promises to be still better next year some of the reactions from it are
4:49
amusing people who used to deplore or condemn the old group now regret that it is no more
4:55
they think of its unity in definite direction which they only realize now by contrast with all the diverse views
5:01
represented in this outfit i like it myself the original members have made less
5:06
effort than usual colgate has a small nude very beautifully painted which i hope our
5:12
gallery here will block harris has only old stuff lismer a still life of milkweed
5:18
and a lake right up to his usual castle and carmichael both a little subdued and barley nothing but a candice
5:25
left out of last year’s academy there is a lovely head of a child by
5:31
prudence heward and three very happy things by sarah robertson the nuns garden is naive and full of imagination
5:38
a portrait of mrs mccall by lilius newton is fine a landscape by carl schaefer and a very much stylized study
5:45
of dead trees by isabel mclaughlin i find very interesting your three small ones are very much in
5:51
mind particularly the apples one of our members miss mclaughlin would
5:57
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
6:04
we got into a mess a large nude by lilius newton very cleverly painted the gallery would not
6:11
let us hang and immediately call the show off but it is a municipal gallery and they
6:17
are always afraid of doing anything to imperil their annual grant the show will open in montreal right
6:23
after christmas and probably break up after that unless another exhibit goes to the u.s
6:29
i have just returned here after kicking around for four months up north in spite of bad times the artists look pretty
6:35
well fed and very cheerful and full of great intentions and all swear they’re going to do a big
6:42
canvas for the next show how big a space will you won’t reserve with all good wishes nor sincerely alex
6:49
jackson
6:58
thank you paul our first speaker is atkins label agnes completed her m.a in art history
7:05
of queens where her thesis was on the 1927 and 1930 trips that jackson made to
7:12
the eastern arctic archipelago with banting and harris respectively
7:18
she is continuing that topic in her doctoral studies now agnes contributed significantly to the
7:24
research for the exhibition and will speak on ay jackson’s radium mine please
7:30
welcome agnes
7:46
upon returning from his 1927 sketching expedition to the arctic archipelago in
7:52
mike jackson provided a sounding challenge to young canada to be even more canadian than it has been and to
7:58
put themselves at the head of the big adventure of discovering canada’s vast northern empire hitherto left to
8:05
expeditions principally from great britain the united states and scandinavia
8:11
as jackson believed traveling north and experiencing the land firsthand was not only a worthwhile adventure but was
8:18
necessary in order for canadians to make their own distinct contributions to arts and science that was an opportunity to
8:25
land an expression to a region that was still relatively unexplored by canadians
8:32
while jackson’s call to canadians was part of the groundswell of interest in the far north that had emerged as a
8:37
result of sovereignty concerns at the time he also developed a deep affection for
8:42
northern canada that would draw him to the arctic circle and the canadian northwest a number of times during his
8:49
career for jackson the northern landscape was not only a means to seek fresh
8:56
inspiration and freedom from convention to develop individuality in canadian art
9:01
as he proclaimed but was also the place where canadian consciousness could be discovered through painting
9:09
it is therefore not surprising that when gilbert adelaide levine a canadian prospector who discovered pitch blend on
9:16
the shores of great bear lake in the northwest territories invited jackson to visit his eldorado radio mine in 1938 he
9:24
eagerly accepted a decade earlier jackson had traveled by rail to great slave lake with insulin
9:30
co-founder and amateur artist dr frederick banting and geologist dr james mcintosh bell visiting fort resolution
9:38
and yellowknife but as jackson noted he always had a hearing to see what kind of country
9:43
they’d be on considered to be one of canada’s last
9:49
frontiers at the time the remote region surrounding great bear lake situated 440
9:55
kilometers north of yellowknife would become one of the most exciting developments of the 20th century
10:02
as canadian journalist donald martin devoured succinctly put it in 1951 the
10:07
story of the development of a mine about or almost around the arctic circle was
10:13
one of the most thrilling stories of all the thrilling history of mining
10:18
it was there along the eastern shores of great bear lake at echo bay where levine made his dramatic finding pitch blend in
10:25
1930. the bean who spent the summer of 1929 in
10:30
the northwest territories but there were excellent possibilities of finding cobalt and silver ore deposits around
10:37
the lake and decided to return to the area the following spring during levine’s 1930 expedition while
10:44
exploring an island some distance off shore he suddenly looked over to the mainland and noticed a great wall on the eastern
10:51
shore of the lake that was stained with cobalt bloom and copper green although he had found all the associated
10:58
pores of cobalt including silver he also found a tiny piece of ore about the size
11:04
of a large plum which levine discovered was pitch blend while he later realized that he had
11:10
stumbled across a very rich deposit of uranium ore there were relatively few uses for
11:16
uranium at the time however radium which is also found in pitch blend was commonly used in the
11:23
production of luminous paints and more significantly in medical research and cancer treatment which therefore created
11:30
the demand for the substance historian robert bockwell explains that
11:36
although the beans company el dorado gold wines limited was a small well-managed
11:43
speculative mining venture the rise of the el dorado radio mine at april bay and onset of the great bear
11:49
lake rush were the product of private initiative and government encouragement
11:55
in fact shortly after the beans discovered pitch blend the department of mines in ottawa took a vested interest
12:01
in his mining operation in december 1932 the industrial
12:06
information bureau bureau of canada announced that a new commercial process of radium extraction was successfully
12:13
developed by the department plans were therefore made to transport pitch blend ores from the beans mine on
12:20
great bear lake to canada’s first radiant refinery which was being established at port hope ontario at the
12:27
time in 1936 when the first ounce of radiant from el dorado was firmly sealed at
12:33
court hope for firing dr banking was present during the landmark event proclaimed that the
12:40
production of radium was a great romance of science and a triumph in research
12:46
yet it can also be understood that levine’s discovery of pitch blend was also a great triumph for canadian
12:52
industry as historian liza piper actually points out turn of the century dances in
12:58
chemistry and medicine made pitch blend the more valuable companion to silver to the silver and the rocks that were being
13:05
originally searched for on great bear lake indeed at the time of the beans
13:11
discovery in 1930 the only other known source of rain was in the belgian congo
13:18
with a market value of 70 000 per grand in 1930 the discovery of radium would
13:24
have certainly provided a wealthy news to the canadian economy during the great depression
13:30
but as also suggests the real significance of the discovery pitch blend on great bear lake was that
13:37
it heralded the arrival of international capital interested in sub-arctic resource exploitation
13:43
which ultimately facilitated the rise in canadian urban development and the industrialization of the
13:50
northwest it was this newly industrialized
13:55
northwest that would provide the backdrop to jackson’s visit to port medium in late august of 1938
14:03
shortly after he returned from a two-week sketching trip on georgian bay jackson gathered his supplies and headed
14:09
west to edmonton where the bean had arranged for jackson to be flown up to the el dorado line on the company plane
14:16
on what would be jackson’s first long-distance flight after boarding the plane at cooking lake
14:22
which was loaded with groceries steel pipe and other supplies for the mine and several finish miners
14:29
he traveled to fort smith then on to great slave lake before finally arriving at the fort media mining settlement on
14:35
august 26th shortly after his arrival jackson wrote
14:41
a quick note to this quick note to his niece naomi jackson describing his first
14:46
impression of the area which he noted was surrounded by big rocky hills and open patches of spruce
14:53
while jackson explained to naomi that he expected to spend approximately three weeks at port radium he would in fact
15:00
spend six weeks from august into october sketching around the settlement but grew
15:06
up around the el dorado line which he described as a little center of industry and a great empty wilderness
15:14
with the mining manager’s little scotch terrier susie at his side jackson set off each morning wandering
15:21
over the rocky hills in search of subjects often stopping to make quick annotations in the sketchbook
15:28
the fluid and forgiving nature of drawing enabled him to later adopt the northern landscape into a more
15:33
comprehensible form and helped facilitate the quick studies that jackson made during his rambles which
15:40
later served as notes when he worked up his drawings into oil sketches and paintings
15:45
this particular sketch entitled alvarado mine is one of the several studies that
15:50
jackson made of the mine at the rugged headland of levine’s point on echo bay
15:55
and served as the basis for his 1938 painting radiant line
16:03
while johnson’s depiction of the mining site serves as a stark reminder of the little center of industry in the
16:09
wilderness with its buildings barrels logs winding road and utility pole neatly
16:15
laid out in the composition the present canvas which measures 82
16:21
centimeters also captures the idyllic beauty of the canadian northwest and autumn with its
16:27
diffused autumnal sunlight sunlight his characteristic rich earthy palette
16:32
of browns and ochres provide a strong contrast to the lighter grays moves and
16:38
pale yellows that are laid out in various rhythmic contours and patterns on the snow and on the glinting surface
16:44
of the lake lending awareness and atmospheric quality to the impression
16:50
the patches of bears come to trees and the rhythmic pattern of rocky rolling hills which generally extend toward the
16:57
expansive horizon also convey a sense of the region’s vastness and of the north’s profound
17:03
solitude interestingly jackson found the region
17:08
surrounding the mind monotonous at first by mid-september the trees were there of
17:14
thieves and winter sea break was set in however the more he explored the area he
17:20
discovered among the patches of spruce and small birch and muskego lakes and almost magical quality surrounding the
17:26
stark wilderness region of northwestern canada as jackson would later explain
17:32
what people in the more developed parts of canada do not realize is the bewildering beauty of the arctic
17:39
the strong contrasts in color and topography the uniqueness of a clear sky that lends
17:45
a crispness to contours that cannot be observed in the more subtle regions of canada
17:53
johnson’s 1938 visit to great beer lake had made such a favorable impression on him that he would return to the area
18:00
several more times over the course of the next two decades i guess unlike a compass always heading
18:06
north he later explained to his niece to naomi i really do belong to the caribbean
18:12
country not the cow country for jackson painting cannabis north was
18:18
not only an opportunity to lend expression to a region that was still relatively unfamiliar to canadians
18:25
but was an opportunity to define it as unique and distinctly canadian as he proclaimed
18:32
yet while it can be understood that jackson’s northwestern sketching expedition was part of his ongoing quest
18:39
to pictorialize the nation jax’s painting gradient mine also marks an extraordinary period in
18:46
canadian history not only did el dorado line provide the
18:52
world a new source of radium for medical research and treatments but the mind would also become a source of uranium
18:58
for weapons as the world marched toward the atomic age at the beginning of world war ii in 1939
19:07
or from the eldorado mine was used in some of the first chain reaction experiments that have produced nuclear
19:12
energy although the mine initially shut down in 1940 because the war closed europe to
19:19
radio sales from canada therefore making it no longer profitable to operate the
19:24
money el dorado was secretly expropriated and reopened in 1942 by the canadian
19:30
government a major crown corporation
19:35
while johnson did not visit to the mine during the war years it was not until 1949 when he was able
19:41
to return to port radium and the great bear lake region at the invitation of the department of resources and
19:47
development one can consider that there was also an underlying darker subtext to his image
19:53
of the line the uranium extracted from el dorado a
19:58
year after jackson’s 1938 visit would eventually become part of canada’s key contribution to the manhattan project
20:05
during the second world war although it’s not entirely certain that
20:11
uranium from the mine was used in the atomic bombs detonated over the cities of hiroshima or nagasaki in japan in
20:17
1945 as the united states was also using sources from the belgian congo at the
20:23
time uranium from el dorado was used in early atomic bomb developments and continued
20:30
to be extracted and used from the mine until supplies were eventually exhausted in 1916.
20:40
canadian writer carol joe gande notes that for many canadians the wartime mining of uranium came with the symbols
20:47
of our huge northern spaces the image and sound of the pit can hammer against the hard rock of the
20:54
pre-pavery and shield the tall pines in that cold isolated place and the dark pinks greens and
21:00
blacks of cobalt copper and pitch blend indeed it is through images such as
21:07
jackson’s painting radiant line but symbols of the canadian wilderness landscape and industry ultimately
21:13
converge to reveal one of the most enduring narratives about canada’s contribution to both arts and science
21:21
however as montreal critic robert era mostly most aptly put it after viewing the
21:27
montreal opening of the eli jackson retrospective exhibition in 1954
21:33
in the past half century with our growth and development as a nation we have learned to take on the errors
21:39
and graces of the sophisticated world but this is only possible because of the
21:45
wilderness and our energy and exploiting it jackson is not a documentary painter
21:52
he does not narrate the story of exploitation he shows us the country we have to deal
21:57
with what it looks like what it feels like
22:03
cooped up in our cities though we read about the duke and angara
22:08
we’re not always aware of that overwhelming henchman that is canada
22:13
jackson keeps it in our consciousness thank you
22:28
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
22:35
question fragments at this point
22:46
my question is did jackson say anything about the coming war in any of the
22:51
correspondence with naomi in this period no he hasn’t had that point
22:59
anyone else okay i i know there was more than one painting of this series from this subject do you
23:06
know how how big a scope like how much did he make of that project do you know the number of works or the
23:13
range of works from that site there were at least two different uh paintings of that site there was one on on option or
23:20
just recently it was sold it was just uh showing without the mine of course but
23:27
it was showing the same region with just the rocks and the trees um there are
23:33
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
23:40
one that i showed off the line the other one there’s a area actually there would have been three pages
23:46
there’s one painting of an aerial view of the mining site not just through aerial
23:51
view but he’s on top of the rock looking down and you just see the the mining site from afar
23:59
what was there he was the only artist there he actually uh
24:05
caused luck didn’t cause sensation but people thought he was uh a little bit of a novelty when he was there because uh
24:12
the miners just thought well what’s this guy doing they’re painting because a lot of the miners were just the rough and
24:18
tumble sort of type there and they just didn’t really understand so they kind of left him alone while he was
24:24
painting during the time maybe one more quick one and then
24:31
in the bottom right hand corner are those boats where are those logs there’s
24:37
balls but there is one boat just a little to the upper right of those logs
24:42
this one both there but i think of vlogs would be more for for building but i
24:49
don’t see that there are that many trees so i wonder where yeah
25:02
the landscape did have trees they were very stunted certain trees uh pines and spruce that were around there so
25:10
they’re really good for fire because they’re very dry i remember reading an account how the trees were quite dry
25:16
there they call them little sticks jackson called the little sticks standing up in front of her out of the
25:21
rocks okay thank you very much
25:41
for our second reading we’ll hear from paris david clarke a russian-born artist
25:47
who felt frustrated with the dominance of landscape that she saw in canadian
25:52
painting her words come from the article come out from behind the pre-cambrian shield
26:00
published in 1937 paris favorite one
26:07
mr frank other hill states that the finer spirits among the european artists are deciding one after another that in
26:15
our troubled generation the artist must be red or dead
26:20
the roughness of this definition of the artist’s duty towards society made one of the finer spirits among canadian
26:26
artists artists elizabeth weinwood expressed publicly her annoyance at the
26:32
use of such vulgar and early words red or dead in connection with the
26:38
divine nature of the artistic personality red art has for miss wood only the
26:44
conventionally standardized meaning of endless portraits of blennan and stalin
26:49
the russian proletariat standing on the fallen coast a modern saint george and the dragon
26:56
castles in spain crumbling miss woods aloofness and that of others
27:01
like her from the real life of their country makes them all oblivious to what
27:07
is going on around them artists of the pre-cambrian shield it is
27:13
time to come down from your ivory tower to come out from behind your pre-cambrian shield and dirty your gown
27:20
in the mud and sweat of conflict it is all very well to lie on a rock
27:26
between sky and water brooding over thousands of men in different parts of the world throughout all the ages who
27:32
have lived in peace and happiness and creative energy but if thousands lived in that peace and
27:39
happiness questionable attributes to any genuine creative artist it was because other thousands suffered
27:47
so that they might do so and you artists of the pre-cambrian shield have been
27:52
born unfortunately for your dreams into an age when what one desires is not
27:58
handed to one on a silver spoon but has to be fought for more grimly as
28:03
each month goes by it is to enable you to lie on a rock that castles in spain are tumbling
28:12
think of the human being take actual part in your own times find
28:17
their expression and translate it help your fellow man in the struggle for
28:22
the future and dream of the art which this future will produce
28:28
oh artists secure behind the pre-kangaroo shoe why these things not interest you
28:34
you whose soul and mind understands the secret life of the forms of trees and
28:39
rocks and skies and is moved to tears by them why do the people and their
28:45
struggles and their dreams not interest you are they considered unworthy to be
28:50
expressed to your creative ability there is more real happiness for you if
28:55
you remember that you are one of them and it is better to work out the destiny
29:01
of your human nature than to expect a divine one at the present time you wish to be left
29:08
alone not to be disturbed with requests to be either red or dead quietly looking
29:15
upon the hysteria of those who are giving their lives for a new social
29:20
order and condescending to reassure them that you will welcome this new order if
29:27
and when it comes and if it comes you will be on the outside your welcome would be useless
29:34
for you would not understand the language of this new order
29:47
thank you paris clark painted the most overtly
29:53
political work in a vital force it will be addressed by dr anna hudson
29:59
who is the associate dean in the faculty of fine arts and an associate professor
30:04
of art history and visual culture at york university toronto anna will speak
30:09
on paris david clarke’s painting patricia please welcome anna hudson
30:21
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
30:27
read out loud because uh what paris david clarke meant by that is a
30:32
perplexed i would say me and probably many of my fellow artist orients for a long time
30:38
and so what i want to talk about today is to try to share with you how i’ve
30:43
come to understand what she meant to be engaged in her time and
30:48
to mobilize an artistic practice towards social good i have quite a few images
30:55
um so i will try not to click them too quickly to give anybody vertigo
31:01
okay so um it’s true this is the most uh
31:07
um obviously socially conscious uh painting of the decade and paris gave a
31:14
clark shows herself to the left of the podium uh and i believe that’s you clive as a
31:20
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
31:33
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
31:59
that parascala clark remembers as something that inspires her to
32:06
consider the suffering of humanity in the relationship of art to humanity
32:12
on the back of the painting was the clipping
32:18
of five steel strikers uh killed in a clash with chicago police
32:24
so this was in the toronto daily star june 1st 1930 seven
32:30
oops all right and this is my first kind of clue and
32:36
it’s um it’s been known for a long time that she was inspired by this clipping and yet
32:43
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
32:55
photographers would try to make their photographs look like paintings or
33:01
reference painterly aesthetics and then we have certainly in the 1930s
33:07
painters very interested in what it meant to reference photography what was photography doing to stress painting uh
33:15
distressed paintings primacy to stress artists to begin to imagine
33:22
what are the images that are beginning to inhabit people’s mind and influence them in certain values particularly when
33:29
one considers that as you saw from that newspaper page photography now begins to populate the popular press
33:36
so just a decade prior it wasn’t going you weren’t going to see so many photographs with the
33:43
handheld uh camera of 1925 the leica 35 millimeter
33:48
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
34:02
photojournalist from montreal named conrad poirier who i became very interested in because i just wasn’t
34:08
aware of the kind of photojournalism that had begun to emerge
34:14
in canada this is a newsstand in montreal so you can just see there that um the kind of
34:21
imagery that we’re we’re getting used to now and that is accelerated in terms of the internet
34:27
name age um there was already a kind of battle beginning to take place for privacy on
34:34
the newsstands with the spectacular uh images this is a
34:40
conrad foreign itself now so there’s the the emergence of
34:47
photography and then there’s the the standard of political propaganda and i
34:53
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
35:04
leftist leaning uh art journal in toronto but this was the kind of
35:10
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
35:28
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
35:42
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
No results found