Blog # 48...August 2015

We all grew up with the Group of Seven...their paintings were in the principal's office, the bank,sometimes even on our stamps. The McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg is the spiritual home of these artists who began to explore the Canadian landscape in the 1920's. Tom Tomson's iconic The Jack Pine  is always associated with the Group although he wasn't actually a member...weird.
                                                                 


                                               
A current show, featuring another group of seven, explores a totally different kind of  landscape.  The newer  group originated with Daphne Odjig and Norval Mossisseau in the early 60's in northwestern Ontario and Manitoba.
                                                                                            

Motivated by feelings that aboriginal artists were marginalized and stereotyped, they wanted to present their perceptions of the Canadian landscape, both physical and psychological, as equally valid to those of Lismer and Varley. The existing notion of “Indian art” limited and failed to express their skills and sensibilities ; their techniques and themes were original and they deserved to be recognized in the mainstream art world.

I was particularly struck by Alex Janvier's work...incorporating traditional forms in an abstract style....with deeply political overtones.

He expresses himself movingly, "Art is old, but new, born every time the artist brings it back to life."



Joined in 1975 by Jackson Beardy, Eddy Cobness and Joseph Sanchez (the only American) they formed the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc and continued telling stories that are non western and that connect them (and us) to their traditions.These stories often instruct us how to act in the world, respecting the myriad beings in the environment around us. From Wounded Knee in 1890 to Moresby Island almost a century later, native people have risked their freedom and their lives to defend their land and their way of  life. These artists remind us of our debt to these brave souls.

I'm always aware of copyright issues when taking images from the internet...I couldn't find attributions for the ones I've shown here, so if I've crossed the line and anyone lets me know, I'd be sure to correct it next time.

Blog # 47…July 2015

We often take things for granted…rights and freedoms that people are dying for in other parts of the world. Who knew that as recently as 1962 it was illegal (and the law was enforced rigorously too) to read poetry in public right here in Toronto. They might still be hauling poets off to the slammer if not for the courage and determination of Milton Acorn who defied the ban in front of the statue of Robbie Burns on Sherbourne Street, resulting in the law being changed.

Honey Novick tells the story and  honours and thanks Milton in a piece she created that's currently being performed in locations in Quebec and Ontario – she’s also a poet and musician who recently acknowledged. another Toronto icon...these lines are from  Raccoon on Spadina Road.

..."the raccoon never forgets this was his land and

it was his territory, his land encroached upon 

he is called “thief” for his masked face

“robber” for taking food where he finds it

“the clean one” for washing his paws 

“clever” for deciphering ways to open locked garbage cans."...

Street art of various kinds is proliferating, surrounding us with reminders that our environment is much more than the clamour and fumes of traffic. Artists are encouraging us to notice our cities in a different way, refreshing our spirits as we go about the daily grind.

photo by Sara Shettleworth

Walking down a lane between Huron and St George Streets, south of Bloor  (outside Coach House Press), if you watch carefully, you'll see bpNichols' words in the pavement.  He and Milton Acorn both died much too young - we're lucky that both of them gave us so much pleasure while they were with us.


Nearby, on St George Street, across from the subway entrance is a plaque with a poem called Essentialist by Ken Babstock
"...snug underground in the civic worm burrowing west...surfacing at St George, I cupped my hands and blew bodies scattering among museums, bank towers, campus rooms and shops...on the surface of the earth are us, who look in error and only seem."

Toronto's fourth poet laureate George Elliot Clarke,
(a shout out to you if you can name the previous three) was commissioned by  CBC's Metro Morning to write about the peacock who escaped from the High Park zoo last month.  He was the talk of the town (the peacock not George) as he strutted through alleyways, climbed onto porches, flew up into trees and generally captivated our attention. We were filled with glee at the thought of an escaped prisoner and relieved when the zoo let him go back in his own time.

He (George and the peacock) made us realize for a little while that "your habitat doesn't have to be just potholes and taxes" ...also why we have a poet laureate.  Listen to the poem online when you have a minute.

Blog # 46…June 2015

Ah music, that most evocative, soothing and spirited art form. We’re lucky that we can listen how and when we like, and some of us can play a bit too.  Not so with musicians in some parts of the world where it’s seen as subversive and politically dangerous.

At the recent HotDocs festival in Toronto, I saw a moving account of some courageous and committed musicians in Mali (a large landlocked country in the bulge of west Africa) who responded to the banning of any form of music by going underground. 

Since 2001, Mali had been the site of Festival au Desert, held outside Timbuktu in the north, attracting world attention. Following the concert in 2012, fundamentalist jihadists adopted a strict interpretation of Sharia law, burning instruments and destroying radio stations. Many musicians refused to be silenced and either disappeared or went into exile, waiting and watching for a chance to re emerge.

The film I saw, They Will Have To Kill Us First,  is a battle cry of defiance. That spirit led Khaira Arby (The Nightingale of the North) - who’d been biding her time for a couple of years - to convince her fellow vocalist Disco to risk a small concert in a town square as a rallying cry to her fellow citizens. As I watched her determined organizing of the staging for the concert and the eager gathering of the crowd, there was a scary sense that guys with guns would arrive and it would end in violence.  Happily not, the crowd gathered a bit tentatively, soon started smiling and quickly erupted into dancing and singing along. Khaira speaks of peace and unity with tears in her eyes…most of the people in audiences on both sides of the screen had them too.

Songhoy Blues, a gritty blues band took another route and went into exile in the south. Equally committed to freedom they continued to keep the spirit of their music alive, attracting the attention of the African Express Team who invited them to a recording session when they came to Bamako. That led to a  collaboration with Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeah which got them an international tour that’s going on now…they were at The Garrison in Toronto on June 6.

Louis Armstrong was also brave in the face of political pressure.  In West Berlin, during a world tour in 1965, at the height of the Cold War and of racial tensions in the US south, he crossed unofficially to East Berlin and gave an impromptu concert. Pressed to comment on the situation of blacks in his country and conscious of the sensitivity of his position, he chose to answer with the song What did I do to be so Black and Blue? 

February 2015 brought a cease fire in Timbucktu, we’ll hope that it leads to peace and  a resumption of  Festival au Desert…and as you enjoy your playlist, give a thought to our brothers and sisters who risk their lives to keep their music alive. A huge shout out to Satchmo, Khaira and Disco and Songhoy Blues…

Blog # 45…May 2015

Toronto has a  new landmark…the Aga Khan Museum is significant for the majesty of its architecture, as well as the quality of the exhibits, lectures and performances.  Set on a large site in the north east of the City (a bus from the Eglinton subway stops right at the front door) with an adjacent mosque, the museum brings a Muslim presence to Toronto in an open accessible way that manages to engage the public subtly and effectively in learning about Islam. I hope it captures many hearts and minds as it did mine.

The art comes from all over the eastern world.
The first major show -  unfortunately over now -  The Lost Dhow,
contained relics from an Arab sailing ship that transported goods along the Maritme Silk Route. The ship foundered in the Indian Ocean sometime in the 9^thcentury, spilling its cargo of silver and bronze articles, vessels once filled with spices, and thousands of ceramic bowls and ewers onto the ocean floor where it rested until discovered by a diver in 1998.  The ceramics are incredibly well preserved, quite astonishing that they sat at the bottom of the sea for 1400 years; there are a few cardamom seeds that survived too. The show is back at home in Singapore now...if you happen to be there.

Arriving in June is A Thirst for Riches, a show of carpets from the east in paintings from the west... coming from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

,

Iran, 16th century court poets

Turkey, Isnik tile

The permanent collection occupies the main floor gallery and covers a broad geography from Spain to Southeast Asia.  It contains some of the most important artistic and scientific works of Muslim civilizations.



In the permanent gallery, the rise of Islam around the world is described, extending from the birth of the prophet Mohamed in 570 CE to the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW1   It doesn’t include contemporary centres like Bradford, Paris or Calgary but what it does do is erase our instinctive images of beheadings and fundamentalist mullahs when we hear hear the words Muslim or Islam and replaces them with softer visions of textures, colours and design from centuries of artists and artisans throughout the Muslim world.  The staff do an immensely good job of welcoming inquiry and encouraging appreciation of the museum in particular and Islam in general. .The Aga Khan Museum  is an exercise in public relations as well as a beautiful collection of art of the Muslim world and will delight your senses as well as your soul. 

Blog # 44…April 2015

Post traumatic stress disorder is in the news a lot these days, usually with particular reference to soldiers. A strange paradox is that many of them feel it was the best time of their lives with its camaraderie and sense of purpose. It’s a complicated and very individual phenomenon with far reaching effects into society. I’ve been noticing lately that attention is increasingly being focused on the families, who are equally traumatized, sometimes even more so. 

We always feel for the people who lose their loved ones in a war, also for those who survive. Why do we think that homecoming will be a happy event and life will pick up smoothly where it left off…nothing could be further from the truth.  It’s become the stuff of a number of dramas across a range of media, the wildly popular Downton Abbey for one.

Back in 1946, The Best Years of our Lives won the best picture Oscar for telling stories of the scarred veterans returning to society after WW2.  A few years later, Marlon Brando in The Men played a man who came home from the war paralyzed and struggling to find his place in the world he’d left.  The effects of the pointless and evil war the Americans launched in Viet Nam was examined in The Deer Hunter and Coming Home.

What’s emerging now, in several TV series on specialty channels (where the best drama is to be seen these days) is a fascinating look at the families and friends who are the observers (also casualties) of  the effects war has on combatants.  Everyone who watched Homeland will remember the poignancy of Brody’s return home, the painful awkwardness of life that never seemed to get better. The inspiration for that show was an Israeli series, Prisoners of War  that deals with the situation in a much more nuanced and sensitive way…maybe because war in general and the taking of prisoners in particular has been a constant presence in that country for over half a century.

Basetrack live is a multi media performance piece currently touring US stages.  Brutally frank and gritty, it was created by some photo journalists who were imbedded with a US Marine corps in an active war zone in Afghanistan, others were at home, interviewing the people closest to the soldiers…mothers, girlfriends, fathers, brothers. They also link the two groups for live conversations that are gripping and poignant, almost too painful to watch.

There are so many victims of war – increasingly innocent civilians, including children, seem to be not just collateral damage but specific targets. Wars have always been with us, and probably always will be despite the claim 100 years ago of “the war to end all wars”. No need for pictures to know the  horror, but important to keep reminding ourselves how lucky we are to live where and when we do… and calm down next time the raccoons upset the garbage bins…  

Blog # 43…March 2015

Art has the power to connect us with our past, whether by images, words or music. Even the coolest young hipsters can get misty-eyed at a photo of great grandparents in their wedding gear, a sewing machine that runs by hand or a Glen Miller tune. The shadows of the past surround us, waiting to pull us back at the slightest reminder…well, some of us anyway.

My grandparents worked a small general farm when I was a kid, I spent summers with a few cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, a couple of horses and even a goat. Imagine how I enjoyed the Waterloo Regional Museum where I saw a cream separator, butter churn and lots of other familiar artifacts that were my grandmother’s everyday tools of life.

It used to be possible to see how things worked (and sometimes understand too) and there’s an interesting form of artistic expression evolving that shows us the components of machinery that used to be hand crafted. As our lives become more complicated and many things are out of our control, there’s both art and comfort in looking back at times that were more human in scale.

Recently, as part of its annual Winterfest, Hamilton honoured its rich industrial history with On the Waterfront, a series of installations that referenced the processing and manufacturing activities that had gone on around the harbour, close to transportation on the Great Lakes

The use of children for jobs in factories was whimsically evoked by Carey Jermigan and Julia Campbell Such near where the Gartshore and Cowie Iron Works operated from 1870 to 1904. Wooden patterns were made there, then used to make molds for the metal gears and other parts that drove machines. Stories from the workers who built a monumental steam powered pump there formed the basis for their piece…many of the workers were children, small enough to crawl in and out to oil parts and retrieve lost bolts.

 

The small chairs at the top of the poles moved up and down with the turning of the gears, just as the children used to love to seesaw for fun on the pistons that ran the pump they helped to build.
No helicopter parents around to watch those shenanigans. 

I’ve recently fallen in love with Hamilton and am looking forward to visiting a couple of museums that pay tribute to the City’s working past. Used to be that as we got older we knew more about how things work,  part of what’s called wisdom… now it rests in the hands of a few young dudes writing codes in southern California. At the Museum of Steam and Technology it's possible to see how many things work - including the 70 ton cast iron steam powered pump mentioned above - as well as getting a peek into life at the beginning of Canada’s industrial revolution.

And the City’s pride in its industrial roots continues at the Customs House that’s home to the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre. Stories of work and working life (good and bad old days) presented in this beautiful historic building give some context for the issues we're facing now. Working conditions are generally safer and wages are higher but the lack of enough decent work matching workers' skills has devastating economic and personal effects here and around the world. Knowing where we've been should guide where we're going. Watch for more about this after I've been to Hamilton again..

                                                Thanks for the pics to Michael Fliess and John Bilodeau

Blog # 42…February 2015

 

I’m not often conscious of being proud of things Canadian but every time I visit the National Gallery in Ottawa I feel my chest swell and I get a bit taller.  It’s so enormously impressive as a structure, never mind what’s on display  inside.

With the current main attraction, we (and art history) owe a debt to the psychiatric profession for the work of Jack Bush.  Spending four decades as a highly skilled  commercial artist, he was also moving in the vanguard of abstract painting. His style and his life is  summed up by one of the headings at the show…”He had the soul of a rebel with the habits of a conformist.”                                   
 This conflict plagued Bush for most of his life.  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

photo Craig Boyko

I'm  a traditionalist in my taste - a lover of the Impressionists -  and it’s a stretch for me to relate to abstract art. My interest in the backstory for Bush’s life and how it informed and influenced his work  caught my attention though and nudged me up a level in  appreciation. His painterly skill  is so evident and undeniable and there’s no “I could have done that,”   that occasionally accompanies a black line  across a canvas.     

Hard to choose a favourite but Pinched Orange is high on my list.                                             

Magazine illustration

Yesterday

Bush battled extreme anxiety throughout his life and the  sessions with his longtime therapist are recalled in carefully kept journals.   Despite  a successful career as an illustrator,   he struggled constantly to reconcile the three worlds - home, work and art -  he felt were pulling him apart.  He felt he kept advancing and retreating from his painting and during the early years titles like Panic, Tangled and Weary, reflected his inner anguish.  He began psychotherapy in 1947 and a major breakthrough started to occur when his psychiatrist,  Allan Walters, recommended that he start painting in a looser more raw style, breaking out of the restraints of his day job as a commercial illustrator.  Although he was always recognized as a highly competent and original artist, something was keeping him from realizing the full power of his talent

Following Walters’advice, he began to create large impressive canvasses which are prominently featured in the National Gallery show.  There’s also an extensive look at early portraits and a generous sampling of illustrations for magazine stories, childrens’ books and advertisments.  It’s sometimes difficult to imagine that the same artist created such varied and remarkably distinct pieces.

In 1968 he left the world of Molson’s Export, Philishave, billboards  and  magazines to paint full time.  His  colour field paintings  prompted words of encouragement from critic Clement Greenberg who told him, “You haven’t yet realized there’s nobody on earth, including me, who knows more about painting than you do. Your colour is going to town.”  

The story has a happy ending, in 1973, Bush wrote in his diary,"What a wonderful life I've had."

Before he died in January 1977 recognition came: he was chosen to represent Canada at the biennale in Brazil  in 1967, inducted into the Order of Canada and had a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario. He realized at last that  his shows did what he longed for…they went “Pow, pow, pow”

So many people in all fields die without sensing the appreciation people have for them and their work, I was warmed by the peace and satisfaction he felt at the end of his life…we should all be so lucky.