THE MONTREAL AVANT-GARDE in 1948 by JUDITH LOUISE INCE BA

THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM: THE MONTREAL AVANT-GARDE IN 1948

by

JUDITH LOUISE INCE

B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1977

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

in

THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

(Department of Fine Arts)

We accept this thesis as conforming

to the required standard

THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

OCTOBER 1982

© Judith Louise Ince, 1982 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Department of 3lSUL (Xrto

The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3

Date /QOt&hU IB , i i

ABSTRACT

At the 1948 meeting of the Contemporary Arts Society, the

Montreal avant-garde polarized into two hostile sectors: the

Prisme d'Yeux, led by Alfred Pellan, and the Automatistes led by

Paul-Emile Borduas. The issue at the heart of the confrontaton

was central to the manifestoes issued by both groups that year,

as well as to the discourses of Canadian intellectuals and

politicians: freedom and its place in the Cold War world.

This thesis examines the positions adopted by the Montreal

vanguard on the issue of freedom; it explores the ideologies of

both groups through a close reading of their texts, the critical

reception accorded to them, and the historical conditions of

1948. Likewise, the aesthetic ideologies of the leaders of the

contending avant-gardes are located through an examination of

the style and content of two works produced by them in 1948,

L'homme A grave by Pellan, and Objet Totemique by Borduas.

The verbal and visual ideologies of the-Montreal

avant-garde were informed by a schism within their public,

French and English Canadian liberals, a schism which was

catalyzed by Cold War politics. The Prisme d'Yeux assimilated

and refracted the major tenets of francophone liberalism; in

contrast, in their 'refus global,' the Automatistes rejected

everything connected with the liberalism of' Quebec's

intellectuals, but in so doing, became aligned with anglophone

liberalism. By accepting everything and rejecting everything

the Prisme d'Yeux and Automatistes not only came to blows with iii

one another, but also, despite their avant-garde facades, became allied with the status quo, albeit different and contending ones. iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ii

LIST OF PLATES v

ACKNOWLEDGMENT vi

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE

The Avant-Garde in Conflict 20

CHAPTER TWO

The Liberalism of Pellan and Borduas 78

CHAPTER THREE

The Visual Ideologies of Pellan and Borduas 149

CONCLUSION

The Aftermath of the Conflict 186

BIBLIOGRAPHY 197 LIST OF PLATES

PLATE 1

Alfred Pellan, L'homme A grave . .

FIGURE 2

Paul-Emile Borduas, Objet Totlmique vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am grateful to both of my advisors for many reasons.

Doreen Walker's graduate seminar largely inspired this thesis, while her encouragement, patient rereading of its many drafts, and encyclopaedic knowledge of Canadian art helped me to complete it. Dr. Serge Guilbaut provided me with invaluable assistance on many aspects of the art and politics of the Cold

War, both in conversation and through his numerous publications on the subject; through his knowledge, enthusiasm, and criticism, I have learned much.

This thesis could not have been written without the assistance of Inter-Library Loans, U.B.C. Library. Many thanks are due Margaret Friesen (Head), who approved scores of loan

requests, and Alice McNair, who always obtained obscure publications for me with great speed and good humour.

I should especially like to thank Richard McMahon, for his

support at every stage of this thesis, especially the last, when

he and 'textform' printed it. 1

INTRODUCTION

In 1948, the Montreal avant-garde1 became polarized into two hostile factions: the Prisme d'Yeux2 led by Alfred

1 The term, 'avant-garde' is usually used to conjure up an image of a group of artists who: "[break] through all the confines, fly on ahead of the mass of their contemporaries to reconnoitre and conquer new terrain from which in due course advances can be made. These adventurous spirits constitute what we call the creative avant-garde. They are subject to no laws, cannot be directed where society wishes them to go, and so long as they remain truly creative can never be turned into establishment figures....The function of this avant-garde is to stretch the human mind and spirit, to pull man in new and unsuspected directions, thereby obliging him to overcome an innate tendency to lethargy and stagnation and to make himself free to rise to the supreme achievements of which he is capable" (Douglas Cooper, "Establishment and Avant-Garde," Times Literary Supplement (London), 3 September 1964, p. 823). Unlike Cooper, and most other chroniclers of modern art, I do not use the term 'avant-garde' in a qualitative sense; instead I use it to denote two groups of artists working in Montreal in 1948, which defined themselves as groups by adopting particular names (viz., 'Prisme d'Yeux,' 'Automatistes'), issuing manifestoes, and exhibiting together under the group's banner; which aligned themselves with modernity; and which coalesced out of their members' similar aesthetic and political preoccupations; and which saw themselves as vanguards in part because of their antagonistic relationship to one another. The seminal work on the internal dynamics and social function of an avant-garde is Renato Poggioli's The Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968). For a more critical approach to the social role of an avant-garde, see Nicos Hadjinicolaou, "Sur 1'ideologic de 1'avant-gardisme," L'Histoire et Critique des Arts, July 1978, pp. 49-79.

2 The founding members of the Prisme d'Yeux and the signatories to its first manifesto were: Louis Archambault, Paul Beaulieu, Leon Bellefleur, Jean Benoit, Albert Dumouchel, Gabriel Filion, Pierre Garneau, Arthur Gladu, Lucien Morin, Mimi Parent, Alfred Pellan, Jeanne Rh^aume, Goodridge Roberts, Jacques de Tonnancour, Rolland'Truchon and Gordon Webber. Jean Benoit signed the manifesto as 'Je Anonyme,' an anagram of his Christian name, according to Andre-G. Bourassa, in Surrealisme et litterature quebecoise (Quebec: Editions l'Etincelle, 1977, p~. 226) . The group gained a 17th member in May, 1948, when 2

Pellan, and the Automatistes3 led by Paul-Emile Borduas.

The two groups first clashed publicly at the 9th Annual meeting of the Contemporary Arts Society (CAS)" in

Andr§ Pouliot exhibited at its second exhibition. Although the manifesto of the group pointedly professes a desire to remain leaderless, Pellan was regarded as its informal leader by the press, largely because of his status as an established artist, and because many members of the group had been or were his students at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he taught from 1943 to 1952. For example, see: May Ebitt, "Mimi Parent, Artist," Fashion (Montreal), October 1948, p. 64; Louise Daudelin, "Gabriel Filion," Notre Temps, 23 October 1948, p. 4; Marcel Gagnon, "La femme peintre Agnes Lefort est bien loin de croire a 1'automatisme," Le Canada, 28 October 1948, p. 3.

3 Members of the Automatistes in 1948 who were signatories to its manifesto, the.Refus Global were: Magdeleine Arbour, Marcel Barbeau, Paul-Emile Borduas, Bruno Cormier, Marcelle Ferron, Claude Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, Muriel Guilbault, Fernand Leduc, Th§rese Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Maurice Perron, Louise Renaud, Francoise Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Francoise Sullivan. Although Borduas was never declared the official leader of the group, he functioned as its de facto head, because of his senior age and prestige, and because he had taught many of the Automatistes at the Ecole du Meuble, where he worked from 1937 to September 4, 1948. On this point see: "L'Automatiste," Time (Canadian Edition), 18 October 1948, p. 22; Rolland Boulanger, "Dynamitage automatiste a la Librairie Tranquille," Montrgal-Matin, 9 August 1948, p. 5; G§rard Pelletier, "Deux ages, deux manieres," Le Devoir, 25 September 1948, p. 8.

" The CAS was formed in 1939 by John Lyman, Paul-Emile Borduas, and 24 other artists, in order to "give support to contemporary trends in art" (CAS constitution, quoted in Christopher Varley, The Contemporary Arts Society: Montreal, 1939-1948 [Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, 1980], p. 39). For further information on the formation of the CAS, see pages 20-21 of this thesis, as well as Lise Perreault, "La Societe" d'Art Contemporain" (M.A. thesis, Universite de Montreal, 1975). Until the late 1940s, the Montreal avant-garde had presented a relatively unified public front; see, for example, a letter written by Borduas, Pellan, Muhlstock, Smith, Goldberg, Roberts, and Surrey to Charles Doyon, quoted in his column "Academisme et l'art vivant," Le Jour, 30 June 1945, p. 4. Within the CAS, however, there had been previous internal disagreements, but these were mild compared to the degree of hostility which erupted within it in 1948, nor did they divide 3

February 1948: when Borduas was elected President,

Pellan's group withdrew from the Society, a move which in turn provoked the resignation of Borduas and several other

Automatistes.5 The issue at the heart of the dispute was a familiar one, for it was not only a dominant motif of both vanguards' manifestoes, but was also the focus of the discourses of Canadian intellectuals and politicians in 1948: freedom and its meaning in the Cold War world.

This thesis will address the reasons why a schism occurred within the Montreal avant-garde at the moment in history that it did, and why the issue of freedom aroused such antagonism between various groups of people who all claimed allegiance to it. A close reading of the texts produced by the Automatistes and Prisme d'Yeux will illuminate why and how the Montreal vanguard became so irreconcilably divided; likewise, an analysis of contemporary historical events impinging on these texts, and an examination of the critical reception accorded to them, will clarify their relation to the social structure and its

the Society along "party" lines. See: Claude Gauvreau, "Revolution a la Societe d'Art Contemporain," Le Quartier Latin, 3 December 1948, pp. 4-5; Claude Gauvreau, "L'Epopee automatiste vue par un cyclope," La Barre du Jour No. 17 (January-August 1969): 48-96; Bernard Teyssedre, "Fernand Leduc, Peintre et theoricien du Surr6alisme a Montreal," La Barre du Jour No. 17 (January-August 1969): 224-270.

5 Charles Doyon described it as follows: "Le lendemain de son election, il [Borduas] demissiona. Deux autres du conseil le suivirent: Gauvreau et Riopelle. Il etait clair que si les cadres presents etaient maintenus d'autres defections suivraient infailliblement" ("Le C.A.S. n'est plus," Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe), 24 December 1948, p. 4). 4

concomitant ideologies. After exploring the verbal ideologies

of the two groups, the visual ideologies6 of the leaders

6 The term 'ideology' raises certain difficulties given the current debate on its meaning and application to literary and art history. This thesis uses ideology in a sense dependent upon the definition of it provided by Terry Eagleton in Marxism and Literary Criticism (London: Methuen, 1976): "From [the] economic base, in every period, emerges a 'superstructure'--certain forms of law and politics, a certain kind of state, whose essential function is to legitimate the power of the social class which owns the economic means of production. But the superstructure contains more than this: it also consists of certain 'definite forms of social consciousness' (political, religious, ethical, aesthetic and so on), which is what Marxism designates as ideology. The function of ideology, also, is to legitimate the power of the ruling class in society; in the last analysis, the dominant ideas of a society are the ideas of the ruling class. "Art, then, is for Marxism part of the 'superstructure' of society. It is...part of a society's ideology—an element in that complex structure of social perception which ensures that the situation in which one class has power over the others is either seen by most members of the society as 'natural,' or not seen at all. To understand literature, then, means understanding the total social process of which it is.a part....It is first of all to understand the complex, indirect relations between those works and the ideological worlds they inhabit--relations which emerge not just in 'themes' and 'preoccupations,' but in style, rhythm, image, quality and...form....This is not an easy task, since ideology is never a simple reflection of the ruling class's ideas; on the - contrary, it is always a complex phenomenon, which may incorporate conflicting, even contradictory, views of the world" (p. 5-7). cf. Nicos Hadjinicolaou's assessment of visual ideology, in Art History and Class Struggle, trans. Louise Asmal (London: Pluto Press, 1968): "Every picture is an ideological work independent of its quality. In this sense, the world that it reveals is the world of ideology.... The ideology of a picture is literally a visual ideology, and not a political or literary ideology; it can be found only within the limits of a picture's two dimensions, even though at the same time it has specific links with other kinds of ideology which may be literary, political, philosophical, and so on" (p. 16). See also: T.J. Clark, "Preliminary Arguments: Work of Art . and Ideology," Proceedings of the Caucus for Marxist Art History (College Art Association, Chicago, 1977); O.K. Werckmeister, "Marx on Ideology and Art," New Literary History 7 (1972-73): 501-519; O.K. Werckmeister, "From Marxist to Critical Art 5

of the clashing vanguards will be discussed through an examination of two of the works produced by them in 1948.

Finally, this thesis will establish the connections between the visual and verbal ideologies and their relationship to larger, dominant ideologies active in, and exerting pressure on many social levels.

The 1948 confrontation between Borduas and Pellan signals a major turning point in the history of Canadian art, yet it has not yet been adequately studied, even though various authors have advanced a variety of interpretations of the events of that year. Until the late 1960s, the acccepted version of the 1948 conflict was that presented by John Lyman in an exhibition catalogue accompanying the first (and posthumous) Canadian retrospective of Borduas' work.7 In his short essay, "Borduas and the Contemporary Arts Society," Lyman contends that the CAS dispute was inevitable, given the discordant and ego-centric personalities of Pellan and Borduas:

...as Paul developed, he began to expect of his companions the attitude of disciple....Pellan returned to Montreal, and he, too, with his followers joined the Society. Thus it became divided into two factions, each of which sought to prevail.8

History," Proceedings of the Caucus for Marxist Art History (College Art Association, Chicago, 1977): 29-30.

7 Evan H. Turner, Paul-Emile Borduas 1905-1960 (Montreal: Musee des Beaux-Arts, 1962) .

8 John Lyman, "Borduas and the Contemporary Arts Society," in Turner, Paul-Emile Borduas 1905-1960, pp. 40-41. 6

Despite the popularity9 of this interpretation, serious problems

exist with Lyman's assumptions and conclusions about the events

of 1948. First, Lyman refuses to acknowledge that the conflict

involved two entire sectors of the Montreal avant-garde, and not

these two men alone; while the concerns of the Prisme d'Yeux and

Automatistes found expression through their leaders, the members

themselves also participated in the conflict through attacks on

one another in their manifestoes and in the press.10 Lyman's

suggestion that ineluctable psychological determinism was

9 Authors who have adopted Lyman's theory that a personal clash explains the differences between Borduas and Pellan include Barry Lord, Painting in Canada (Montreal: Canadian Government Pavillion" Expo 67, 1967) ; Colin S. Macdonald, A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, 4 vols. (Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 197 7); William Withrow, Contemporary Canadian Paint ing (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972); Paul Duval, Four Decades: The Canadian Group of Painters and Their Contemporaries, 1930-1970 (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd., 1972); Guy Viau, La Peinture moderne au Canada francais (Quebec: Ministere des affaires culturelles, 1964); Guy Robert, Pellan, His Life and His Art (Montreal: Editions du centre de Psychologie et Pedagogie, 1963); and Germain Lefebvre, Pellan (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973).

10 See for example, Marcel Gagnon, "La femme peintre Agnes Lefort est bien loin de croire a 1'automatisme," p. 3; Claude Gauvreau, "De Mme Agnes Lefort et d'Andre Lhote," Le Canada, 8 November 1948, p. 4; Jean-Paul Riopelle, "En marge des propos d'Agnes Lefort," Le Canada, 5 November 1948, p. 4; Jean-Paul Riopelle, Marcel Perron, Magdeleine Arbour, Pierre Gauvreau, Francoise Riopelle, "Les surr£alistes nous 6crivent," Le Devoir, 13 November 1948, p. 9; "Ces temps modernes. Les automatistes cedent Gauvreau aux Prisme d'Yeux pour $3.25" (cartoon), Le Canada, 21 December 1948; Robert Cliche, "Ceux qui cadenasseraient volontiers l'atelier de Pellan," Le Canada, 14 February 1949, p. 4; Robert Cliche, "M. Cliche repond a MM. Ferron et Gauvreau," Le Canada, 28 February 1949, p. 4; Jacques Ferron, "Re"ponse a M. Cliche," Le Canada, 16 February 1949, p. 4; Jacques Ferron, "Peur du surre"alisme et la verite," Le Canada, 3 March 1949, p. 4; Claude Gauvreau, "Lettre ouverture a M. Robert Cliche," Le Canada, 22 February 1949, p. 4. 7

responsible for the conflict between Borduas and Pellan, is therefore so narrowly focused that it distorts the complex network of beliefs, relationships, and historical events which together produced the enormous friction between two sectors of the Montreal avant-garde in 1948. Lyman's recourse to factors of personality as the key to the conflict is so reflexive, however, because it is dependent on an assumption central to orthodox art history: namely, that the artist is ultimately a purely emotional being, whose actions, attitudes, and art are explicable through reference to his experience of the world at an emotional and psychological level alone. This accent on the primacy of the artist's psyche tends to implicitly discount the possibility that the artist is also a social being whose life and work are informed by social experience, which is also an historical experience. Committed to a position which refuses to consider the inevitable intrusions of history into the artist's atelier, Lyman cannot explain, nor does he broach the question of how the followers of Pellan and Borduas became subsumed by an ostensibly intra-personal dispute. Likewise, although Lyman perceptively comments that "aesthetic 1iberty... became the

instrument of sectarian contention,"11 he cannot explain the very real aesthetic, political, and moral differences which emerged between Pellan and Borduas over the issue of liberty, an

issue which is grounded in the matrix of the history of 1948, and therefore cannot be explained without reference to it.

11 Lyman, "The Contemporary Arts Society," p. 42. 8

Most writers in the 1960s subscribed to Lyman's account of the circumstances and causes of the 1948 conflict; nevertheless, unlike Lyman, most of these authors12 strove to minimize its significance by dismissing the hostility between Pellan and

Borduas as a lamentable failure of artistic goodwill, something to regret and to censure, but not to investigate further.

Writing in 1967, for example, Barry Lord quite characteristically mentions the * existence of tension between

Pellan and Borduas, but fails to provide an even cursory outline of the issues of dispute:

Pellan's role as a teacher and his formation of the Prisme d'Yeux group of artists in 1948 was unfortunately, due to personal differences, in conflict with another great liberating force in Montreal at that time, Paul-Emile Borduas.13

The propensity of writers like Lord to underestimate (or ignore) the importance of the CAS struggle, has been noted previously by Francois-Marc Gagnon, in his 1973 article,

"Pellan, Borduas, and the Automatistes: Men and Ideas in

Quebec":

the authors felt that in the perspective of the

12 See note 9 above. As Francois-Marc Gagnon has noted in "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistes: Men and Ideas in Quebec," Artscanada 29 (December 1972/January 1973), some authors "tend to delete the very memory of any conflict between' them" (p. 48). Most prominent in this category are J. Russell Harper, Painting in Canada: A History, 2d. ed. (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977); Jean Rene Ostiguy, Un siecle de peinture canadienne, 1870-1970 (Quebec: Les Presses de l'Universit£ Laval, 1971); and Evan H. Turner, Fifteen Canadian Artists (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 1975).

,13 Barry Lord, Painting in Canada, n.p. 9

present old quarrels may be forgotten and the two forefathers of modern art in Quebec treated per unnum.1 *

The key words of Gagnon's analysis are, of course, "the perspective of the present," for they suggest that art history is as fluid as history itself, and that as historical circumstances change, the perception of the past is also altered. Even a brief consideration of the history of the late

1960s, the period in which so many art historians fell silent about the events of 1948, indicates some of the factors responsible for their silence. At that time, both Pellan and

Borduas were widely regarded as the 'forefathers of modern art' in Quebec and Canada,15 who simultaneously fostered the growth of a modern culture in their province and country. That period, however, was also one of extreme tension between Canadian federalists and Quebec separatists, and analyses of the art and

1" Gagnon, "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistes," p. 48.

15 For example, in Un Siecle de la peinture canadienne, Jean Rene Ostiguy states" "Alfred Pellan et Paul-Emile Borduas demeurent les deux principaux instigateurs d'un renouveau des arts plastiques au Quebec" (p. 55). Guy Robert's comments are similar: "Pellan et Borduas, les deux piliers du pont qui permet a franchir au Quebec le fosse" qui la tenait retardataire et provinciale, on parcouru tous deux le long chemin des Ecoles des beaux-arts et du perfectionnement europ6en" (La peinture au Quebec depuis ses origines, p. 94). J. Russell Harper states, "attempts to liberalize artistic thought had been destined to failure from the outset for many years, but all shackles now were thrown off by Pellan, Borduas and Riopelle, and a whole new radical group" (Painting in Canada, p. 330). This trend has continued in political and historical tracts as well: "Quebec led in other ways as well. The painters-Alfred Pellan and Paul Emile Borduas had brought to Canada from Paris a post-impressionist experimental mood which rejected representational art" (Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and John English, Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics and Provincialism [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981], p. 173). 10

culture of Quebec became inflected with these tensions. The names of Borduas and Pellan were summoned by such writers as

Barry Lord in order to demonstrate, on the centennial of

Canadian confederation, that under the federalist system, an arguably 'Canadian' form of culture emerged;16 in Quebec, however, these artists, and especially Borduas, were characterized as specifically Quebecois heroes, who had created a culture and an aesthetic in opposition to anglophone norms.17

Because during the 1960s Pellan and Borduas were transformed into symbols of the greatness of both Canadian and

Quebec culture, Canadian federalism and Quebec nationalism, it became ideologically tricky for most art historians to inquire too deeply into the dispute of a generation before: to have focused on the fractiousness of 1948 would have diminished the sense of cultural solidarity that both Canadian federalists and

16 For example, in Painting in Canada, Barry Lord writes, "But the artists whom we are about to discuss have all painted works which have helped to characterize the mainstream of development in Canadian painting from 1945 to the present day" (n.p.).

17 This is particularly true of the treatment of Borduas; see, for example, Pierre Vadeboncoeur, "La ligne du risque," Situations (Special issue) 1962, esp. pp. 23-29. A critique of this adulatory rather than analytical approach has been advanced by Marcel Fournier and Robert Laplante, "Borduas et 1'automatisme," in Paul-Emile Borduas, Refus Global et Projections Liberantes (Montreal: Editions du Parti Pris, 1977), pp. 103-105. Nevertheless, these authors adopt the same attitude which they deplore in the first sentence of their article: "Peintre internationellement connu et dont le nom nous renvoie spontanement a l'4v£nement le plus marquant de la vie culturelle et intellectuel des annles quarante, Paul-Emile Borduas" (p. 103). 11

Quebec nationalists were striving to achieve through their celebration of Borduas and Pellan. Moreover, as this thesis will argue, the dispute between Pellan and Borduas in 1948 was, in part, related to the same set of issues that dominated

Canadian politics two decades later: conflict between predominantly francophone provincial nationalists and anglophone federalists. Thus by delving into the complexities of the conflict between Pellan and Borduas, art historians writing in the late sixties would have been confronted with a conjunction of politics, past and present; what began as an adventure in art historical research would have ended at the door of contemporary politics.18 In order to avoid arriving at this uncomfortable proximity of art and politics, Canadian art historians investigating the careers of Pellan and Borduas have simply avoided or trivialized the CAS confrontation.

In the late 1960s, the only writer to insist on the divergences between Pellan and Borduas was Claude Gauvreau, a member of the Automatistes who witnessed and participated in the

1948 dispute. In his article, "L'epopee automatiste vue par un cyclope,"19 Gauvreau rejects the hypothesis that personal

18 O.K. Werkmeister has commented on this situation: "Critical art history, by its own dynamic as a social science, is bound to turn against the ideological functions which art history is assigned in capitalist institutions. .It becomes one of the critical factors within this society" ("From Marxist to Critical Art History," p. 30).

19 Claude Gauvreau, "L'lpopee automatiste vue par un cyclope," La Barre du Jour, No. 17 (January-August 1969): 48-96. 12

jealousy provoked the split between Borduas and Pellan, and attacks this view as "mesquine et contraire a la verite."20

Gauvreau contends that the rupture between Borduas and Pellan was "provoqu6e par Borduas"21 for both political and tactical

reasons. According to Gauvreau, Borduas wanted to eliminate

Pellan from "des forces progressives"22 in Montreal, believing

that Pellan's presence within the modernist camp diluted its

unanimity and hence its collective strength, a major priority in

1948: "il etait necessaire de centupler l'efficacite

d'imposition de la tendance moderne la plus progressive en la

rendant autonome et homogene . "23 Gauvreau contends that Borduas

manipulated tensions existing between himself and Pellan in

order to force a confrontation and to oust Pellan from the

20 Ibid., p. 52. Gauvreau is referring primarily to Guy Robert, who, as Gagnon has pointed out in "Pellan, Borduas, and the Automatistes," has poured "oil on the fire" (p. 48) of the subject by emphasizing Pellan's dislike for Borduas by including the following comments in Pellan, His Life and His Work: "Borduas was a bad friend,' because he had no time for anyone unless they worshipped him. Borduas was a bad painter, because he was a weak 'figurative,' and not quite a convincing modern, who seriously impoverished the Automatiste approach. Personally, I regret not having been able to work with Borduas in the evolution of contemporary art here in Canada. We have worked each on our own, but it would have been more interesting to have combined forces instead of opposing them. Borduas behaved like a petulant and moody adolescent. I well understand his problems and I know his health was bad, but I do not understand his desire to regiment our painters under his banner, and I regret the myth that has been made of him, which can only introduce new confusions and new divisions" (p. 54).

21 Ibid., p. 52.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 53. 13

'progressive' sector of the Montreal avant-garde; in the struggle to establish his own version of modernism, Borduas regarded Pellan as an expendable obstacle. Almost as soon as

Gauvreau articulates this interpretation, however, he reverses his position, and declares that

Borduas a toujours souverainement m^prise tout tactique; il n'a su toute sa vie que dire sa pensee de la facon la plus directe. Cette franchise et ce courage expliquent le nombre considerable de ruptures qu' il traversa.2 *

On the one hand, Gauvreau admires Borduas' tactical acumen in strengthening the Montreal avant-garde by purifying its progressiveness through the elimination of recalcitrant modernists like Pellan; on the other hand, this acolyte of

Borduas is aghast at the notion of such manipulations, and wishes to preserve the notion of the artist as prophet, whose successes flow from a reserve of genius and moral purity. The contradictions of Gauvreau's position arise from the conflict between his belief in the incorruptibility of artistic genius, whose successes depend on the power of that genius itself, and the reality of the situation in Montreal in 1948, where Borduas adroitly manipulated events in his favour.

Despite the obvious problems with his work as art history,

Gauvreau's connection of Borduas' animosity for Pellan with the

tactics of an avant-garde aspiring for aesthetic hegemony, is an

orginal and valuable one; while an analysis of avant-garde

tactics would have illuminated a variety of issues underlying

2« Ibid. 1 4

the explosion within the CAS in 1948, Gauvreau neither develops this idea, nor specifically mentions the CAS conflict.

Gauvreau's silence on this most intense of avant-garde struggles

is startling, given his sensitivity to and understanding of avant-garde tactics. Gauvreau's vacillation between silence and articulation—between omitting the 1948 debate and focusing on the contentiousness between Borduas and Pellan--reveals the crucial importance of the very issue on which he remains silent: too important to ignore or to confront directly, the dispute of

1948 can only be approached as a conflict which took place at a hazy point in history, at a time so remote that the sharpest edges of dissent are smoothed over, but without quite obscuring

the issues at the centre of the conflict. The importance of

such insterstices in the writings of artists and critics have been aptly described by T.J. Clark as a kind of linguistic mimesis of the shadow boxing which occurs between the conscious and the unconscious:

Like the analyst listening to his patient, what interests us, if we want to discover the meaning of...criticism, are the points at which the rational monotone of the critic breaks, fails, falters; we are interested in the phenomena of obsessive repetition, repeated irrelevance, anger suddenly discharged--the points where the criticism is incomprehensible are the keys to its comprehension. The public, like the unconscious, is present only where it ceases; yet it determines the structure of the private discourse; it is the key to what cannot be said, and no subject is more important.25

In the case of Gauvreau, the relationship between the strategems

25 T.J. Clark, Image of the People (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society" 1973), p. 12. 1 5

of an avant-garde and the most contentious issues of 1948 are so interwoven, and so critical, that even 20 years later, they were literally unspeakable.

While reticent.about certain aspects of the hostility between Pellan and Borduas, Gauvreau is loquacious regarding their political positions. He quotes Borduas' autobiography,

Projections Liberantes26 to outline the major differences between the beliefs of the two leaders of the rival avant- gardes :

ACQUSRIR PASSIONNEMENT de NOUVELLES CERTITUDES en ENCOURANT tous les RISQUES ou CONSERVER a tout PRIX les CERTITUDES d'un PASSE RECENT et GLORIEUX.27

Although Gauvreau introduces politically charged language and concepts into his analysis of the antagonism between Pellan and

Borduas, his characterization of their political positions is as subjective and sentimental as it is simplistic. Gauvreau contends that commitment to the ideal of revolution brought

Borduas into conflict with Pellan; significantly, however,

Gauvreau suggests that Borduas' allegiance to revolution was primarily spawned by certain qualities of spirit, emotion, intellect, and morality that were absent in and in fact antagonistic to Pellan. For Gauvreau, factors connected with personal disposition determined Borduas' political position, and

26 Published by Mithra-Mythe, Saint-Hilaire, in 1949. The edition used throughout this thesis is the one contained in Paul-Emile Borduas, Ecrits/Writings 1942-1958, intro. and ed. Francois-Marc Gagnon and trans. Dennis Young (Halifax: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1978).

27 Gauvreau, "L'epopee automatiste," p. 52. 16

made conflict with Pellan inevitable:

le peintre revolutionnaire de Saint-Hilaire devait bientot l'emporter haut-la-main car son courant de pensee et sa peinture appartenaient, dans la logique rigoreuse de Involution, a une 6tape ult^riuere a ceux de Pellan.28

Paradoxically, although Gauvreau sees his article as a counter to the psychological explanations proferred by other writers, at the kernel of his own analysis is a dependence on the kind of reasoning he deplores. While Gauvreau uses a political vocabulary to characterize the differences between Borduas and

Pellan, he does not use any material historical evidence to corroborate his conclusions; on the contrary, for Gauvreau, political positions appear to be a function of the artist's psychological and spiritual orientation, with "good" men like

Borduas on the side of revolution, and not so good men, such as

Pellan, aligning themselves with the status quo.

The most cogent analysis of the confrontation within the

CAS in 1948 is that advanced by Francois-Marc Gagnon in his article, "Pellan, Borduas, and the Automatistes: Men and Ideas

in Quebec," and again, in somewhat more detail, in his biography of Borduas, Paul-Emile Borduas: Biographie critique et analyse de 1'oeuvre.2 9 Gagnon contends that the animosity between

Pellan and Borduas should really be considered as a function of a much larger set of antagonisms then current in Quebec,

specifically, the collision of two antithetical ideologies,

28 Ibid.

29 Francois-Marc Gagnon, Paul-jSmile Borduas: Biographie critique et analyse de l'oeuvre (Montreal: Fides, 1978). 1 7

those of "rattrapage" and "contestation." Gagnon associates

Pellan with

"the ideology of rattrapage... the destruction of academism and the denunciation of the old ideology of conservation on the one hand, and the pursuit of internationalism on the other."30

In contrast, Gagnon believes that Borduas "felt the necessity to contest the ideology of catching up and was obliged to oppose

Pellan insofar as he remained faithful to oppose this ideology."31 Gagnon's interpretation of the events of 1948 remains problematic, however, for he overlooks the specific questions of the history of the late forties, and substitutes nebulous generalizations in the place of historical analysis.

He fails, for example, to provide any detailed explanation.of the two 'ideologies' on which his interpretation is based, nor how they relate, in specific terms, to the artists who ostensibly partook in them, nor to the historical circumstances of 1948 and the art produced within their parameters. By

failing to investigate the relationships between these various

factors, Gagnon creates a distorted picture of both the artistic and political situation of the late 1940s. What emerges is a

linear conception of history in which events occur as a part of an evolutionary process moving towards some ubiquitous but

30 Gagnon, "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistes," p. 40. Gagnon's analysis and terminology are drawn primarily from Marcel Rioux's book, La Question du Quebec (Paris: Editions Seghers, 1969).

31 Gagnon, "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistes," p. 51. 18

unforseen goal;32 thus, Pellan's destruction of 'academicism' and his entrenchment of 'rattrapage' which is in turn demolished by Borduas' 'contestation,' which then becomes entrenched, are simply the result of an immanent historical process, with events and historical epochs succeeding one another after a period of

friction, but without apparent material causes. Gagnon's

reliance on the concept of ideology further complicates his assessment of the 1948 debate: while 'ideology' is used colloquially to signify a 'political doctrine,'33 in recent years it has been used more frequently in art historical analyses in a Marxist sense. The confusion which arises in

Gagnon's work is that he uses 'ideology' as if he accepted the colloquial definition of the word in order to perform an ambiguous, and distinctly non-Marxist social interpretation of

art in which art and history run on parallel, unconnected

courses. His vacillation between the two distinctly different

meanings of 'ideology' prevents him from performing that variety

of art history which explains the concrete relations between art

and history, namely critical art history.3"

32 On this point see Hadjinicolaou, "L'ideologie de 1'avant-gardisme," p. 60.

33 Current, standard dictionaries emphasize this element: the-Doubleday Dictionary (1975) defines ideology as "The ideas, doctrines, or way of thinking characteristic of a political or economic theory or system." Webster's New World Dictionary defines it as "the doctrines, opinions, etc. of an individual, class, etc."

3" See above, note 6. 19

Like the majority of art historians writing on the subject,

Gagnon does not analyze the ways in which the conflict between

Pellan and Borduas is illuminated by and contained within the paintings these artists produced in 1948; like most of his colleagues, Gagnon sees the struggle as a primarily verbal one whose skirmishes took place around, but never within the borders

of a painting. This thesis, however, will explore the visual

ideologies of these two artists, demonstrating the ways in which

the style and subjects of their work extend and develop their

verbal ideologies.

The conflict between Pellan and Borduas in 1948 is

legendary in Canadian art history, but like most legends,

half-truths and imprecise history have congealed around it. The

pages which follow attempt to penetrate through these

sedimentary layers, in order to reveal the verbal and visual

ideologies which came into conflict in 1948, taking as their

guide the contention that

facts are never isolated appearances, that if they come into being together, it is always within the higher unity of a whole, that they are bound to each other by internal relations and that the presence of one profoundly modifies the nature of the other.35

35 Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans, and intro. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 25. 20

CHAPTER ONE

The Avant-Garde in Conflict—the Fragmentation of the

Contemporary Arts Society and its Public

Aesthetic liberty...became the instrument of sectarian contention. -John Lyman 1

The Contemporary Arts Society served as the centre of avant-garde activity in Montreal since its inception in 1939.

Until its demise in 1948, the CAS remained faithful to its original goals, the destruction of academicism and the concomitant development of a modern movement dedicated to a multitude of aesthetics. The Society's constitution makes clear these preoccupations:

[The CAS has as its object] to give support to contemporary trends in art....All professional artists, born or resident in Canada, practicing painting, sculpture or any graphic medium, who are neither associated with, nor partial to, any Academy, are eligible as artist members.2

The Montreal public responded favourably to the advent of the

CAS,3 and by the mid 1940s, the Society was widely regarded

1 John Lyman, "Borduas and the Contemporary Arts Society," p. 42.

2 CAS constitution, quoted in Varley, The Contemporary Arts Soc iety, p. 39.

3 See, for example, reviews of its first two exhibitons held 13-18 May 1939 ("Art of Our Day") and December 1939 ("Contemporary Arts Society: Exhibition of Paintings by New Members"): Maurice Gagnon, "Peinture contemporain," Le Devoir, 21

as the centre of aesthetic audacity, but scarcely of dangerous radicalism.* At the same time that it assumed a dominant role in the direction of the Montreal art scene, the Society successfully concluded the battle against academicism, thus attaining one of its principal objectives. The defeat of academicism, however, ultimately had disastrous consequences for the CAS. Academicism's demise undermined the CAS's avant-garde posture, for it deprived the Society of an object for expressing animosity towards the status quo, and as Harold Rosenberg has noted, "opposition to the existing order is always implicit" in avant-garde activity;5 after the conquest of academicism,

however, this implication no longer applied to.the CAS, for it

became the existing order, and by virtue of that fact, ceased to

exist as a vanguard, or, indeed, be perceived as a vanguard.

While the victory over academicism momentarily jettisoned

the CAS to a more established position in the Montreal artistic

hierarchy, it also deprived the group of the only issue on which

10 May 1939, p. 9; Robert Ayre, "'Art of our Day' Attracting Attention by its Vigour in Design," The Standard, 20 May 1939; Graham Mclnnes, "Getting Together," Saturday Night, 25 February 1939.

" Paul Duval, "Montreal Artists Establishing New Landmarks in Canadian Art," Saturday Night 10 November 1945; Pearl McCarthy, "Montreal Group Worth Seeing," Globe and Mail, October 1945; Eloi de Grandmont, "La Soci£t£ d'art contemporain," Le Canada, 13 February 1945, p. 5; Charles Doyon, "Acad6misme vs.

Art Vivant," Le Jour, 30 June 1945, p. 4. 'c Q

5 Harold Rosenberg, "Collective, Ideological, Combattive," Art News Annual 34 (1968), ed. Thomas B. Hess and John Ashbery, p. 78. 22

its members agreed, and over which the group was able to establish a modicum of cohesiveness. Without the destruction of academicism as an objective, the CAS floundered; the last two years of the Society's brief existence were marked by numerous internal disagreements which intensified with the passage of time.6 The frequency and ferocity of the disagreements signified that the CAS had shifted its antagonistic stance7 away from the enemy without, and onto the enemy within. The dispute was partly catalyzed by a tacit realization that the CAS had outlived its utility as an avant-garde, and became simply a vehicle of jockeying for the position it once held in

Montreal, namely, that of the penultimate avant-garde. The two major contenders in this struggle were, of course, the Prisme d'Yeux and the Automatistes.

The pressures and conflicts within the Society became apparent when its 9th annual exhibition opened at the Art

Association of Montreal8 on February 2, 1948.9 As in the

6 The most severe disagreements occurred in 1946 when younger members of the CAS demanded that the Society grant its members automatic entry into its exhibitions and abandon its jury system; they also called for abolition of "junior" and "senior" designations. While the latter concession was granted, the former was not, and it remained a point of contention within the Society to its end.

7 Poggioli has commented that "antagonism [is] certainly the most noticeable and showy avant-garde posture" (The Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 30; for a full discussion of the concept of antagonism, see pp. 30-40.)

8 Known as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts after 1948.

9 The exhibition continued to February 29, 1948. No exhibition catalogue or list was published, although the following artists were mentioned in press reports: 23

past, many styles were in evidence, but in contrast to previous exhibitions, the artists in the 1948 show could be classified into three very distinct groups: seven Automatistes, six members of the Prisme d'Yeux, and twenty-one non-aligned artists. It was the hardening of 'party' lines, through the emergence of distinct factions based on stylistic and ideological divisions, which preoccupied and dismayed the press.

The only critic who gave the exhibition a moderately sympathetic review, Madeleine Gariepy, continued to perceive the CAS as a vanguard which truly challenged "les conventions trop rigides d'un art tig6 dans une forme ou autre d'un acade"misme";1 0 at the same time, however, she recognizes that this common goal does not mitigate the stylistic incoherence in evidence at the exhibi t ion:

Ceci ne manque pas de constituer un melange tres h^terogdne. On y voit c6te a c6te un Borduas et un Muhlstock, un de Tonnancourt [sic] et un de Magdeleine Desroches....Cette exposition etait done interessante a bien des points de vue, lors meme qu'elle manquait d'unite.11

Automat i stes: Marcel Barbeau, Paul-Emile Borduas, Pierre Gauvreau, Marcelle Ferron-Hamelin, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean-Paul Riopelle; Prisme d'Yeux: Louis Archambault, Leon Bellefleur, Lucien Mor in, Jeanne Rhe"aume, Goodridge Roberts, Jacques de Tonnancour; Non-Aligned: Jack Beder, Miller Brittain, Magdeleine Desroches-Noiseux, Fleurent Emery, Marguerite Fainmel, Mary Filer, Louis Gadbois, Eric Goldberg, Andre Jasmin, Mabel Lockerby, John Lyman, Louis Muhlstock, Serge Phenix, Jan Pier, Marion Scott, Philip Surrey, Betty Sutherland, Claude Vermette, Paul Wilson, Fanny Wiselberg, Piercy Younger.

10 Madeleine Gariepy, "A la Societe d'Art Contemporain," Notre Temps, 21 February 1948, p. 6.

Ibid. 24

It is significant that of the 34 artists in the exhibition,

Gariepy isolates and contrasts Borduas and de Tonnancour, for these two men not only created works that were different stylistically, but were also the authors of the manifestoes of the two groups poised for, but not yet locked in confrontation, the Automatistes, and the Prisme d'Yeux. Because she selects

Borduas and de Tonnancour to illustrate the stylistic disarray of the CAS, Gariepy reveals that it was not simply the Society's support for various styles which caused her agitation, but

rather that the lack of aesthetic cohesion was traceable to the

styles associated with the two groups attempting to prevail within it.

Other critics also regarded the absence of a single direction in the Society as a negative factor. The reviewer for

the Gazette (Montreal), for example, couples an adverse reaction

to the show with comments concerning the stylistic polarization

apparent in the works:

the offerings, in the main, do not seem to attain the usual level. There are items which will appeal, strongly to the devotee of the extreme in painting and in the collection, too, there are examples which will attract the casual spectator who prefers a dash of the representational in his art.12

The most highly negative reviews, those by Julien Labedan in Le

Canada, and Ren£e Normand in Le Devoir, clarified the nature of

the antagonism between the two poles of painting described by

the Gazette's anonymous critic. Labedan splits the CAS into two

12 "Variety in Offerings Mark CAS Exhibition," The Gazette, 7 February 1948, p. 22. 25

groups: the Automatistes, easily identified and grouped as the most interesting sector of the Society, and all the other artists, which he dismisses as a whole, homogenized by their mediocrity:

Aucun enthousiasme ne nous anime pour parler de la terne exhibition de la C.A.S La plupart des excellents artistes qui figurent dans cette societe n'exposaient la que des ouevres de quality moyenne et nombre de peintures m£diocres ou nulles ach&vaient de faire de cette manifestation une triste grisaille. Le seul int£ret de cette exposition rlside dans la matiere a conversation que nous off re 1'automatisme.13

Labedan says directly what Gari6py and The Gazette reviewer only

alluded to obliquely, namely that the schism within the Society

existed primarily between the Automatistes and the rest of the

group; by extension, therefore, Labedan aligns the Prisme d'Yeux

with the rest of the CAS. Labedan's antipathy towards the

exhibition was echoed by Renee Normand who saw the Society's

diversity as a principal source of weakness. Writing in Le

Devoir, she commented,

Le credo artistique de cette soci^te'—si tant est qu'elle en professe un--semble exclure a priori toute unit£ de presentation. Pareil systeme pourrait i premilre vue passer pour 1'Selectisme, mais il est a craindre que ce ne soit qu'une confusion organis6e.1 *

The reviews cited above were written by critics with very

different aesthetic perspectives, and who wrote for papers

representing divergent political positions, but significantly,

13 Julien Labedan, "La 'Contemporary Arts Society,'" Le Canada, 13 April 1948, p. 3, 2.

1" Ren6e Normand, "La Societe d'Art Contemporain," Le Devoir, 14 February 1948, p. 5. 26

they all concurred on the inability of the CAS to act as any kind of articulate spokesman for contemporary art in Montreal.

Their unanimous disdain for the degree of fragmentation of the

Society was prompted by a common desire for greater self-definition among the various sectors subsumed beneath the rubric of the group; their call for less 'confusion organisee' was at its core, also a demand that the different components of the Society choose clearly defined positions and separate out onto discrete territories.

The insistence on choosing sides, and defining one's position also dominated the politics of Quebec and Canada in

1948, and at both the domestic and international level, major political decisions cornered voters and politicians alike. A pivotal year in the history of the post-war period, 1948 stands as the first year in a new war, the Cold War, which gave birth to such institutions as NATO; in 1948, elections occurred in

Quebec, the three federal parties held national conventions, and the country gained a new prime minister as the result of a change in the leadership of the governing Liberal party. In the atmosphere of political crisis and tension which engulfed the country that year, every issue, whether trivial or significant, became transformed into a contest between good and evil, democracy and communism, freedom and tyranny. Enveloped by the politics of choice, the Montreal avant-garde, no less than its critics, urgently felt the need to redefine itself and regroup.

The stylistic schism so apparent to critics at the CAS exhibition emerged as political ones at the Society's annual meeting on February 9, only days after the majority of the 27

reviews of the show had been published; given the critical response to the exhibition, the Society was under a great deal of pressure to clarify its goals and aesthetic positions. At the meeting, Borduas was elected as President, despite oppostion

from the Prisme d'Yeux; he later wrote to Luc Choquette, however, that his victory was assured from the outset of the meeting because, "Il y a trois ans que je contr6le la majorite des voix a la CAS."15 Alleging that Borduas' accession to power threatened the pluralist character of the Society16--and along with it, freedom--several Prisme d'Yeux members withdrew.17

Meanwhile, Borduas' fellow elected officers failed to give him the support he felt was incumbent upon them to give him.18

15 Borduas to Luc Choquette, cited in Perreault, "La Societe" d'Art Contemporain," p. 88. Perreault says the letter was written on 3 February, 1948, but it appears more likely that it was written on 13 February, four days after the meeting was held.

16 Gagnon contends that the numerical dominance of the Automatistes within the Society provoked such a reaction: "Cette perspective ne devait pas etre envisageeavec beaucoup d'enthousiasme par les autres peintres qui ressentaient, comme de la pretention intolerable, l'attitude de plus en plus exclusive et intransigeante des automatistes" (Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 234).

17 Pellan and de Tonnancour resigned, but which other members of the group withdrew is unclear; Guy Robert, for example, comments "En fevrier 1948, lors des Elections a la C.A.S., Borduas est elu president de justesse, ce qui amene le groupe oppose, celui de Pellan, de Tonnancour et leurs adeptes, a se retirer a 1'association" (Borduas [Quebec: les Presses de l'Universite du Quebec, 1972], p. 99).

18 Borduas wrote quite bitter letters to those members of the Council who he felt had let him down: Marion Scott, Maurice Gagnon, Luc Choquette, and John Lyman. The letter to Lyman is one of the most interesting ones, for in it Borduas makes clear his sense of betrayal, as well as suggests that it came about due to Lyman's failure to approve of a text Borduas had written, 28

Faced with a council which waffled in its support for him, and a membership divided by both his election and the withdrawal of the Prisme d'Yeux, Borduas resigned on February 13,19 charging that the Society's failure to support him exposed not only its anti-democratic tendencies, but also its essentially moribund state:

Il n'y a done pour moi aucun plaisir, aucun interet a demeurer dans cette soci6t6 ou tout en contrSlant la majorite des voix actives il y a un poids mort contre lequel je ne sens aucun desir d'entrer en

likely a draft of the Refus Global: "Devant votre manque d'enthousiasme non a permettre, mais a realiser les r£sultats des Elections de lundi dernier, devant l'insulte involontaire mais reele, de votre appreciation litteraire du texte passe par amiti£ (texte en.gageant ma vie entiere sans echappatoire possible), je suis dans la penible obligation, pour sauvegarder mon besoin d'espoir et d'enthousiasme, a clore -mes relations longues de bientot dix ans avec vous" (quoted by Gagnon in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 235). He wrote similar letters to the other members of the Council; compare the above, for example, with the letter written to Marion Scott: "Pour mener a bien la tache reVolutionnaire qui s'impose a la C.A.S. il aurait fallu au-conseil une vitalite plus evidente. Devant son sentiment de peur, mon impuissance a lui communiquer mon enthousiasme, je suis dans l'obligation de lui offrir ma demission comme president et comme membre de cette societe". Un autre milieux plus vigoreux me reclame ou une action non equivoque sera entreprise" (quoted in Perreault, "La Societe d'Art Contemporain," p. 87).

19 A chronology of events is difficult to reconstruct as various dates for the resignations have been provided by different sources. Perreault gives the date of Borduas' resignation as February 3 in "La Socilt6 d'Art Contemporain," p.

88. In "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistesr" p. 54, Gagnon maintains that it occurred on February 7; however, in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 235, he notes that it occurred on February 13, a date which seems to be the most plausible one, as it was probably on this date that Borduas wrote the letters to Lyman Scott, Gagnon and Choquette, informing them of his wi thdrawal. 29

decomposition.20

Offended pride may partially explain why Borduas suddenly regarded the CAS as a dead institution, but the tactics of the avant-garde also clarify the reasons why he repudiated the

Society whose presidency he had only recently sought and secured. Borduas1 attitude of defiance towards the CAS is partly a reaction to the Prisme d'Yeux's largely successful campaign to be the new avant-garde. In any struggle for ascendancy, an-aspiring avant-garde must appear to be committed to the lonely pursuit of modernity, a priori 'ahead of its time,' and therefore necessarily at odds with the status quo; as

Renato Poggioli has noted, "hostility isolates, on the one hand, but on the other it unites. This principle facilitates the appearance of the sectarian spirit which afflicts avant-gardism."21 After the February 9 meeting of the CAS, the

Prisme d'Yeux had approximated these basic preconditions of avant-gardism more successfully than the Automatistes: through its dramatic exit from the CAS only five days after its inaugural exhibition,22 the "Prisme d'Yeux declared its antagonism towards the established aesthetic order, the CAS, as well as towards its nearest rival, the Automatistes. Moreover, because it had held its inaugural exhibition only a week before

20 Borduas to Luc Choquette, quoted in Perreault, La Societe d'Art Contemporain, p. 88-89.

21 Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 30.

22 Held February 4 at the Art Annex of the Art Association of Montreal; see below, p. 8. 30

abandonning the CAS, the Prisme d'Yeux was also in a strong position to be perceived as Montreal's most novel and autonomous artistic avant-garde. Borduas, as the leader of an ambitious vanguard outdistanced by another, had few options remaining to him. If the Automatistes were to displace the Prisme d'Yeux from its newly found position, and become established as the the penultimate avant-garde, it was imperative that Borduas and his group become disentangled from the Society which had been labelled as anathema to freedom by the Prisme d'Yeux.

Affiliated with the Society, Borduas would have had difficulty in arguing the case for the Automatistes' commitment to aesthetic novelty or to prove their distance from the aesthetic and political establishment. It was only a year later that

Borduas fairly candidly admitted that it was the necessity of creating sharp distinctions between the Automatistes and the rest of the Montreal art world which catalyzed the split within the CAS:

In short, the left and the right of the contemporary movement—positions which the public does not differentiate--had to separate out.23

The flurry of fulminating denunciations of and resignations from the CAS, however, remained at a certain level simply empty posturing, for neither the Prisme d'Yeux nor the Automatistes withdrew their works from the CAS exhibition. Such inconsistency is explained by both groups' attitude towards the work of art itself in relation to any theoretical or verbal

23 Borduas, Projections Liberantes, p. 94. 31

justification of it. Despite their often self-righteous declamations about aesthetic purity and artistic freedom, both groups cleaved art from its theoretical bases, and therefore also from their own rhetoric concerning it. For example, an article in La Presse on a lecture Borduas gave to psychology students reported:

Que definitions et abstractions ne signifient rien pour lui, qu'il ne s£pare pas les ide'es des objects....A quelqu'un qui a demand^ a M. Borduas s'il avait deja songe a ecrire ses theories sur la peinture, l'orateur a repondu en r6pe"tant sa repugnance pour toute theorie, et en referent l'auditeur a ses tableaux.2*

Similarly, Pellan separated his painting from the concepts underpinning it; in response to an interviewer's question regarding the relationship between his verbal theories and their visual incarnation, Pellan responded, "do not talk of theories.

I have none. I feel, I like, I disiike--that's all!"25 By articulating theoretical positions for their art, but also repudiating theory, Borduas, Pellan and their followers were able to use rhetoric to create certain images of themselves, while remaining free to discard it once it became an impediment to them. In the case of the CAS exhibition, the groups' verbal parries enhanced their avant-garde images, but to have carried their words to the point of withdrawing works from the show would have deprived them of one of the few opportunities to do

2" "Inconscient et Peinture," La Presse, 2 February 1948, p. 11.

25 Paul Duval quoting Alfred Pellan in "The Work of Alfred Pellan," Here and Now 1 (January 1949), p. 54. 32

what all artists must do, exhibit their works. In 1948, virtually no private gallery existed which was receptive to avant-garde art in Montreal, and many artists were forced to exhibit their work in private homes, in Montreal's 'progressive' bookstore, the Librairie Tranquille, or in rented space at the

Art Association of Montreal.26 Because of the paucity of exhibition space and the financial imperative to display and to sell their work, both the Automatistes and the Prisme d'Yeux were forced to contradict the forceful positions which they had adopted with respect to the CAS, and exhibit with the Society for which they claimed to feel so much contempt. Freedom and aesthetic purity were crucial questions for the Montreal avant-garde, but reaching their various publics was an even more pressing one.

The relationship of the Prisme d'Yeux and the Automatistes to their publics is one of the interesting questions connected to their careers and their quarrels of 1948. Both the Prisme d'Yeux and the Automatistes aligned themselves with

'progressive' culture, and with that sector of the public which

26 The Automatistes, for example, had been forced to hold several exhibitions in the apartments of friends or relatives, notably the Gauvreaus' apartment at 1257 Amherst (20-29 April 1946); at 75 West Sherbrooke (15 February-1 March 1947); and at the Viau brothers' studio, 425, oeust, boul. Saint-Joseph, 17 April-1 May 1948). Libraire Tranquille housed the second exhibition of the Prisme d'Yeux in May 1948, and sold copies of the Automatiste's manifesto Refus Global later that year. The only private gallery sympathetic to modernism was the Dominion Gallery, at that time operated by Max Stern; even so, the Gallery was reluctant to exhibit any members of the Montreal avant-garde in 1948. 33

was sympathetic to such culture; in Canada in 1948, this public consisted of the partisans of liberalism. Significantly,

liberalism at mid-century was undergoing a major metamorphosis, and, like the Montreal avant-garde, was polarized over the issue

of freedom, both aesthetic and political. Liberalism in Canada

fractured along linguistic lines following the war; anglophone

and francophone liberals were at odds over a variety of issues

which were all related, directly or indirectly to the question

of freedom, and therefore in the context of that year, to the

campaign against communism.

A lengthy analysis of the components of francophone and

anglophone liberalism is crucial, for the causes and nature of

the issues of dispute not only illuminate the divisions within

the Montreal avant-garde, but also reveal why each branch of

Canadian liberalism supported the sector of the Montreal

avant-garde that it did.

The nature of post-war•francophone liberalism was

determined by those intellectuals who wrote for and read such

periodicals and newspapers as Le Devoir, Notre Temps, and Le

Quart ier Latin.2 7 Because the universities were the locus of

27 For an analysis of Quebec periodicals' politics, see Andri Beaulieu and Jean Hamelin, Les Journaux du Quebec de 1794 a 1964 (Quebec: Les Presses de 1' Un i ver s i te" Laval, and Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1965), and Georges Vincenthier, Une Ideoloqie Quebecoise: de Louis-Joseph Papineau a Pierre Vallieres (Montreal: Hurtubise HMH, 1979). Le Devoir was a particularly influential journal because it was the only newspaper which consistently reported the debates in the provincial Legislative Assembly, an important service as there was no Hansard in Quebec at that time. 34

intellectual activity, but were largely controlled by the Roman

Catholic church, liberal opinions periodically apeared in unexpected places, such as ecclesiastical magazines like

Relations, Action Catholique, and Revue Dominicaine, as well as in the quarterlies issued by the universities themselves.28 The products of universities, francophone liberals largely belonged to that sector of society for which their education had prepared them, namely, the professions: liberals wrote for newspapers and journals; they argued in the law courts; practiced medicine in the hospitals; and formed the bulk of the provincial civil service.29 Liberal intellectuals saw themselves as political mavericks committed only to justice, truth, and above all, freedom; Gerard Filion's analysis of the newspaper which he edited, Le Devoir, the major vehicle for the expression of liberal francophone opinion in 1948, indicates the qualities

28 In part because liberal thought often appeared in eminently illiberal publications, and therefore often spoke in* a seemingly faltering voice, the importance of liberalism prior to 1950 has been seriously overlooked by Canadian historians. In books and articles on Quebec, liberalism is discussed as a phenomenon emerging with the appearance of Cite Libre in 1950. Why historians have remained uninterested in liberals and their politics prior to that time may be explained by the fact that until 1949, liberalism in Quebec found itself adopting fairly reactionary positions--an embarassing discovery for many historians, it seems.

29 Francophones seldom worked for the federal civil service: "There were few French Canadians [in the federal government]. Of the 201 foreign service officers employed in the Department of External Affairs in 1949, only 43 were of French origin. And External Affairs fared better than most Ottawa departments in its French-Canadian recruiting" (Bothwell, Drummond and English, Canada Since 1945, p. 135. 35

liberals admired and which they saw as their own reflection:

Le Devoir, journal independent, nationaliste, et catholique, fonde et maintenu a coups de sacrifices, ne tombat entre les mains d'un parti politique....Le Devoir est un journal independant qui discute les ide'es, les actions et Les omissions des hommes des partis politiques....Le Devoir, c'est la conscience du peuple canadien-f rancais.3 0

A close examination of Filion's comments indicates some of the contradictions inherent in francophone liberalism, contradictions which will help explain the liberal support for one sector of the Montreal avant-garde over another. Liberalism

insisted that it was politically independent, and therefore should be the natural guardian and arbiter of the intellectual, cultural, and political life of Quebec. Quite apart from the colossal arrogance of such a view, liberals could scarcely be regarded as having cornered the market on political independence

in 1948; Filion's own comments explain why. Although Le Devoir, like the liberal public it served, was theoretically

independent, it also endorsed nationalism and Catholicism, both of which were highly charged political concepts; by establishing an amalgam of political independence/nationalism/Catholicism, both nationalism and Catholicism tend to be emptied of their political significance due to their proximity to the first element, political independence. Furthermore, as nationalism and Catholicism are not exclusive of political independence, by extension, they must enjoy the status of immutable, eternal

30 Gerard Filion, "M. Duplessis vide son coeur," Le Devoir, 28 February 1948, p. 2. 36

truths which cannot be questioned or challenged. In reality, of course, provincial patriotism and fealty to the Roman Catholic church were far from such an exalted position, and were instead aligned to a specific political party, the Union Nationale.

The Church and the Union Nationale enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship, remarkable for the baldness of the symbiosis. During election campaigns, such church publications as Relations and Renaissance supported the Union Nationale's charismatic candidate for the premier's office, Maurice

Duplessis;31 priests pointed out the benefits which accrued to parishes faithful to the Union Nationale, which arrived in the form of better schools, increased funding for parish activities, and charitable institutions.32 Catholicism constituted one of the dominant themes in Duplessis' electioneering, just as the

Church formed his staunchest ally; under the Union Nationale, the Church, and the faith, would always be protected:

La legislature de Quebec, c'est une forteresse que nous devons defendre sans defaillance. C'est elle qui nous permet de nous construire des Ecoles qui nous conviennent, de parler notre langue, de pratiquer

31 See, for example, Pierre Vignon, "Qui nous protegera du communisme?" Renaissance, July 1948, pp. 38-52; "Un mandat explicite," Relations 8 (September 1948): 249.

32 On this matter see: Gerard Dion and Louis O'Neill, Two Prises Censure Political Immorality in the Province of Quebec (Montreal: The Public Morality Committee, 1956); Jean Hamelin and Marcel Hamelin, Les moeurs llectorales dans le Quebec de 1791 a nos jours (Montreal: Editions du Jour, 1 962 ); P i e r r.e Laporte, Le vrai visage de Duplessis (Montreal: Editions de 1'Homme, 1960); Pierre Laporte, "La machine 6lectorale," Cite Libre, 2 (December 1952): 42-46. 37

notre religion.33

While Catholicism was closely identified with the Union

Nationale, hostility towards the Church was connected with the

Liberal party, which formed the opposition in Quebec, and the government in Ottawa. The Union Nationale, the Church, and less

frequently, the press, characterized the Liberal Party as having dangerously left-wing, and hence, by definition, atheistic tendencies. The writers of Union Nationale campaign literature pointed, with almost gleeful indigantion, to the federal government's recalcitrant position on many issues deemed to be of vital importance to the Church, such as the refusal to establish diplomatic links with the Vatican,3" or to support the

Church and provincial government in its dispute with Poland over ecclesiastical art .treasures 'safeguarded' by Quebec during the war, and which the province now refused to return to the new

33 Le Temps (Quebec), 16 July 1948, quoted by Herbert F. Quinn, The Union Nationale: Quebec Nationalism from Duplessis to Levesque, 2d~. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 118.

3" The call for a Canadian representative at the Vatican was heard frequently during the post-war years. The following comments by Paul Sauriol in "Aurons nous bientot une ambassade canadienne au Vatican?" are indicative of the position adopted by most intellectuals: "L'eglise est la depositaire par excellence des principes de droit, de justice et de charite qui seuls peuvent apporter la paix entre les peuples comme a l'inte"rieur de chaque pays....Malgre les persecutions et les calomnies, sous les assauts de communisme comme ceux du nazisme, l'Eglise reste inebranlable et inattaquable. C'est cette stabilite dont le monde a tant besoin qui fait aujourd'hui le prestige du Vatican" (Le Devoir, 28 November 1947, p. 1). 38

Communist regime in Poland.35 In addition, the Union Nationale press often published speeches of Liberal Members of Parliament which contained unflattering references to the policies and politics of the Roman Catholic Church.36 Thus, far from being a non-political issue, as liberals in Quebec suggested, the

relationship between politics and Catholicism was central to

Quebec politics, and was used, overtly and obliquely as an election tool of the Union Nationale in political campaigns,

including that of 1948.

Similarly, nationalism, or, to use its synonym in the poli•

tical jargon of the late forties, 'provincial autonomy,' was the

focus of enormous controversy and discord between the Union

Nationale and the Liberals in the 1948 campaign. In his book on the party, Herbert Quinn points out that the Union Nationale was the manipulator par excellence of the nationalist issue:

the Union Nationale was successful in making it [provincial autonomy] the dominant issue in every election until that of 1960....The main argument of Duplessis for the return of his party to power was that it constituted the sole bulwark against complete domination by the federal government and loss of

35 See, for example, Am£d£e Gaudreault, "Les tresors polonais," Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe), 12 March 1948, p. 1; Andre Bowman, "Quelques propos sur 1'actualite.... la rocambolesque histoire des tresors polonais," Le Clarion . (Saint-Hyacinthe), 12 March 1948, p. 3; "Les tresors polonais," Relations 8 (April 1948): 121: "La division entre les deux partis, liberal et Union Nationale, a acuqis une violence incomprehensible....Ces divisions ne peuvent faire le jeu que du communisme international." For the impact of the dispute on Ottawa, see the House of Commons Debates II (1948): Thursday 4 March 1948, pp. 1859-1863.

36 See Vignon, "Qui nous protegera du communisme?" 39

provincial autonomy.37

In its campaign literature, the Union Nationale contended that the Liberal party (generally equated with the federal government) had charted a disastrous course for French

Canadians, attempting to destroy them as a distinct linguistic and cultural group by infringing on provincial rights in education and social welfare, and by encouraging the immigration of English-speaking citizens to Quebec.38 Moreover, by contributing to a European reconstruction programme when Quebec was in need of federal subventions, the federal government showed its lack of concern for French Canadians. The Union

Nationale's campaign slogan in the election reveals how it combined jingoistic nationalism and opposition to the Liberal

Party: "Les liberaux donnent aux etrangers; Duplessis donne a

37 Quinn, The Union Nationale, p. 117. In addition to communism, the nationalist issue was the major issue of the 1948 provincial election; commented Guy .Lemay in "La campagne 61ectorale est termin£e: la parole est a la population," (Le Devoir, 27 July 1948, p. 3): "Plusieurs questions importantes^ etaient en jeu....Mais les questions les plus discutees ont ete 1'autonomie-provinciale et 1'anticommunisme." Duplessis often linked the two issues in his campaign speeches, arguing that only a province with a high degree of automony from the federal government could keep communism at bay. On 11 February 1948, for example, he was quoted in Le Devoir as saying, "Le respect de la constitition, c'est la meilleure assurance de la democratic. Le Canada est trop immense, un seul gouvernement amene la bureaucratie; c'est ce que veulent les communistes." Again, two weeks before the election, he declared, "[la centralisation est] la mere du communisme, ce qui nous montre la necessite de l'autonomie de la province" (Le Devoir, 9 July 1948). For an analysis of the relationship between the issues of anti-communism and provincial autonomy in the speeches of Duplessis, see Chapter I of Richard Desrosiers, "L'Ide"ologie de Maurice Duplessis" (M.A. thesis, Universite de Montreal, 1971).

38 See Pierre Morin, "Causons d'autonomie," Renaissance, July 1948, p. 23. 40

sa province."39 The campaign brochure, "Duplessis donne a sa province" further stated,

Un vote pour DUPLESSIS, c'est un vote pour votre province, pour votre compte, pour votre locality, pour votre famille; c'est un vote pour VOUS! car DUPLESSIS n'a pas donn6 aux etrangers.*0

In the context of the 1948 election, therefore, endorsement of provincial nationalism signified support for the policies of the

Union Nationale and its leader more than it connoted adherence to politically uninvolved, universal truth, as francophone

39 The slogan referred to Canadian participation in the Marshall Plan as well as its loans to Britain following the War; because sentiments against the War had been strong in Quebec throughout its duration, it was easy for Duplessis to rekindle these concerns when post-war recovery programmes for Europe were being discussed in Ottawa. The Union Nationale ran newspaper advertisements stressing the difference between its attitude towards the citizens of Quebec and that of Ottawa: "Les liberaux donne aux etrangers; DUPLESSIS donne un drapeau a sa province; Les liberaux ayant a plusieurs reprises refuse ce drapeau, ont prefere donner des cadeaux de millards aux etrangers" (La Presse, 14 February 1948, p. 49). Jack Pickersgill comments on the effect Duplessis' tactics had on Ottawa, and especially on Louis St. Laurent, who would shortly succeed Mackenzie King as the leader of the federal Liberal party and the Prime Minister of Canada: "That election [of 1948] posed a real problem for St. Laurent. He did not want to become involved in provincial politics particularly as Duplessis was expected to win. If St. Laurent took part in the election campaign, the result might appear to be a personal defeat for him; on the other hand, if, as an avowed candidate for the federal Liberal leadership, he remained aloof, the Liberal organizamion in Quebec might be alienated, particularly as Duplessis was directing most of his fire at the federal government with the slogan, "Ottawa gives to foreigners, Duplessis gives to his province!" This was an allusion to the loans of war-torn Britain and other countries. He also accused the federal government of being soft on communism and encroaching on provincial autonomy" (My Years with Louis St. Laurent [Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975], p. 47).

"° "Duplessis donne a sa province," Quebec, 1948, p. 32. 41

liberals suggested it did.

While such papers as Le Devoir repeatedly expressed the desire to remain independent of any political party, its

editorial policies reveal strong partisan biases, expressed with

almost embarassing candour. In editorial after editorial, Le

Devoir upheld the policies of the Union Nationale, while giving

Duplessis prominent and very favourable coverage; in the case of

the 1948 election, Le Devoir went so far as to offer electoral

advice to the voter, counselling support for the Union

Nationale.*1

For francophone liberal intellectuals, the doctrine of

apoliticism held obvious appeal because it enabled them to

comment on and participate in the political life of the province

while retaining their credentials as detached observers of it.

Apoliticism was also, however, central to the debate on freedom

which was waged at every level of society from the meeting room

of the CAS to the editorial pages of Le Devoir; apoliticism in

1948 was connected to the single most important issue of the

decade following the war: communism. Liberal intellectuals

viewed communism as the total politicization of both the

*1 In "Les centralisateurs sont ecrases," Gerard Filion explained why, while also insisting (still) on his paper's objectivity: "Le Devoir s'est prononce pour M. Duplessis durant la campagne electorale, a cause de la question primordiale de 1'autonomie....L'absence presque complete d'opposition officielle rend plus important le role de la presse libre et particulierement celui d'un journal comme le Devoir" (Le Devoir, 29 July 1948, p. 1. 42

individual and society42 as it fomented class warfare through the politicization of formerly contented, apolitical workers,43 forced political issues into the lives of the average citizen, and ultimately made all decisions on the basis of party

42 Camille Laurin, for example, defined communism as "nationalisation ou socialisation de toutes les branches de l'activite humaine," in "Les Etudiants hindous et le communisme," Le Quartier Latin, 27 January 1948, p. 3.

43 Even the trade unions shared this view, especially those affiliated with the Trades and Labour Congress, which by 1949 had expelled all affiliates with leftist leadership. Much of the analysis of the impact of communism on the working class also focused on the activities of unions, both Catholic and international. Camille Laurin and Pierre Trottier commented, "Syndicats et locaux communistes...peuvent pr£coniser les memes mesures, mais pour les uns, il s'agira de paix sociale a instaurer, pour les autres les luttes des classes a aiguiser" ("L'entente est-elle possible?" Le Quartier Latin, 11 November 1947, p. 1). Catholic unions were acceptable because they preserved both economic peace and the traditional elements of French Canadian soc iety: "Ceux-ci sentaient la necessite de s'unir dans un organisme qui tint compte de leurs aspirations nationales et religieuses. Ces aspirations se sont exprim6es dans la pratique par un desir veritable de collaboration entre la patron et les ouvriers et se sont traduites sur le plan de la revendication par une attitude plus modere'e" (Micheline Chevrier and Ivan Legault, "Union internationale ou syndicat national?" Le Quartier Latin, 16 March 1948, p. 7). Non-Catholic unions, however, were regarded as politically active, seeking to disrupt society, primarily through strikes, "Les ouvriers deviennent alors de simples instruments manies par d'habiles techniciens' qui tablent sur le ressentiment des masses pour renverser l'ordre etabli. Ainsi menee la greve constitue un veritable mal sociale. Elle alimente la lutte des classes, disloque toute organisation, seme le chaos" (Paul-Emile Blain, "La greve dans la societe," Le Quartier Latin, 21 October 1947, p. 4). For more information on the union movement in Quebec, see Louis-Marie Tremblay, Le Syndicalisme Q'uebecois. Ideologies de la C.S.N, et de la F.T.Q., 1940-1970 (Montreal: les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1972); Jean Real Cardin, "Syndicalisme Chretien et Droit quebecois du travail 1947-1957," Relations Industrielles 13 (January 1958): 28-40; and Fernand Harvey, Aspects Historiques du mouvement ouvrier au Quebec (Montreal: les Editions du Boreal Express, 1973). 43

politics."1 In contrast, in Western societies, contact between the state and the individual was minimal, and every citizen could enjoy an apolitical existence. Apoliticism as an antidote to communism and as a virtue of Western countries also appeared as a frequent theme in the provincial election of 1948, especially in the speeches of Duplessis. Again and again

Duplessis presented the Union Nationale as "le rempart contre le communisme...ses lois nous protegent du socialisme.*5 At the same time, however, he presented the party as an apolitical entity, demonstrating that apoliticism had become a politically useful concept in both the campaign against communism and

Duplessis' own campaign for re-election:

l'Union Nationale n'est ni un groupement de classes ni un parti qui gouverne pour un clan, mais un mouvement qui represente toutes les classes et tous les horizons politiques, qui a mis l'esprit de parti a l'6cart pour lui substituer l'esprit patriotique, un mouvement enfin qui fait passer l'interet de la province avant l'interet mesquin du parti."6

*" Jacques Parent, for example, commented that "le communisme apparait done comme un jeu fort complique (soumis a d'innombrables fluctuations de regies) dans lequel l'engage doit rechercher avant tout a devenir habile joueur" ("Mains Sales et communisme," Le Quart ier Latin, 16 November 1948, p. 3T~. Parent's sentiments were echoed by Adele Lauzon and Raymond-Marc Leger in "Le Zero et l'Infini," "Les animateurs de ce mouvement [communisme] formidable,...en donnant comme but ultime a la revolution le regne proletarien et la fatalite 6conomique, ont froidement et volontairement ignore la part de l'individu. L'unique guide de ces hommes dans leur entreprise gigantesque fut le machiavelique principe qui dit que 'la fin justifie les moyens'....Une seule chose importe: le Parti et son regne" (Le Quart ier Latin,' 29 October 1948, p. 5).

"5 Le Devoir, 8 August 1949.

"6 Le Devoir, 24 June 1948. 44

While anti-communism and apoliticism were issues central to

Dupessis' election strategy, his ability to connect them with other popular concerns, namely the Church and nationalism allowed him to galvanize Cold War tensions07 into support for the Union Nationale, and hostility towards the federal government and provincial Liberal party, which he depicted as sympathetic to communism. Duplessis argued that the provincial

Liberal party had repeatedly demonstrated its communist allegiances when it formed the provincial government from

1939-44,"8 and failed to adequately control communist groups through us,e of such tools as the 'Padlock Law,' passed by the

Union Nationale in 1937 as "An Act Respecting Communism or

Bolchevism";"9 as the Liberals had originally voted in

47 On August 20, 1947, the Montreal Star found that 79% of the citizens of Quebec viewed communism as "a very serious threat," or a "fairly serious threat" to the Canadian form of government; these statistics are cited by Quinn, The Union Nationale, p. 125.

"8 The premier during this period was Adelard Godbout. After its defeat in 1944, the Liberal Party severely declined in strength, until its return to power in 1960. For an analysis of the weakness of the Liberals in Quebec during the forties and fifties, see Rene Durocher, "Le long regne de Duplessis: un essai d'explication," Revue d'histoire de l'Amerique francaise 15 (December 1972): 392-96.

49 Quinn points out that: "Under this act Duplessis, as Attorney General, was given extensive powers to close, or padlock, any premises used for the purpose of 'propagating Communism or Bolshevism.' The law made no attempt to define the terms 'Communism' or 'Bolshevism,' such a definition being left to the discretion of the Attorney General. Although the Padlock Law met with a storm of protest from the English speaking minority in Quebec, who looked upon its loose terminology and the sweeping powers it gave to the Attorney General as a threat to civil liberties, it received the overwhelming support of the French Canadians. The act passed both houses of the legislature by a unanimous vote as it was 45

favour of the Padlock Laws in the thirties, they had little room in which to manoeuvre or defend themselves against

Duplessis' charges a decade later. Duplessis was equally astute in isolating the vulnerable and uneasily protected chinks in the federal Liberal government's professed anti-communist stance; he did not hesitate to use the several scandals involving communists in the government in order to claim that the Liberals filled the'civil service with communist agitators, spies, and fellow-travellers.50 Finally,

Duplessis pointed to the support which the Labour Progressive

(Communist) Party gave the Liberals in ridings where no LPP candidates were fielded, in order to substantiate his claims of a symbiotic relationship between Communists and the Liberal

supported by opposition as well as government members. It did not, of course, by any means eliminate communist activities in Quebec, but it did considerably hamper the functioning of the party in that province. Even more important, it enabled the Union Nationale to establish itself firmly in the eyes of the Quebec voter as a strong opponent of Communism" (The Union Nationale, p. 126). A decade' after the law was passed, Duplessis commented, "l'Union Nationale a vue le danger communiste des 1937 et a vote la loi du cadenas" (Le Devoir, 24 February 1947).

50 The main text outlining the Union Nationale's arguments regarding the connections between the Communist Party and the Liberals is Le communisme et le parti liberal by Noel Dorion (Quebec: Union Nationale, 1948). One of the main incidents Duplessis used against the federal government was the revelation of a spy ring existing in the civil service which came to be known as the 'Gouzenko Affair.' For further information on this scandal, see the Report of the Royal Commission, appointed under Order in Council P.C. 411,. to Investigate the Facts Relating to and the Circumstances Surrounding the Communication by Public Officials and other Persons in Positions of Trust of Secret and Confidential Information to the Agents of a Foreign Power (Ottawa: The Kings Printer, 1946); and Igor Gouzenko, This Was My Choice, 2d. ed. (Montreal: Palm, 1968). 46

party.51 Francophone liberals were responsive to Duplessis' approach to anti-communism, for like the premier, these intellectuals maintained that only if strict controls were placed on communism, could the democratic freedom they perceived existing in Quebec be preserved. For example, when, in February

1948, Duplessis invoked the Padlock Law to close the communist newspaper Combat, liberals rallied to defend his actions. Le

Devoir offered the following apologia for his actions:

Une legislation pour emp£cher la diffusion du communisme est done chose legitime. Ceux qui revendique la liberte de la presse a ce sujet pourraient aussi bien invoquer la liberte du commerce en faveur des trafiquants de narcotiques.52

The support of the liberal press for the padlocking of Combat reveals that they saw communism as an internal, domestic threat which could be countered only by taking the strongest measures to protect the existing social structure in Quebec, and their place within it.53

51 In 1944, the Labour Progressive Party proposed an alliance with the Liberal Party; see Tim Buck What Kind of Government? Liberal-Labour Coalition vs. Tory Reaction (Toronto: 1944). The LPP pledged support for the Liberals again in 1948; see the House of Commons Debates, 2 June 1948, p. 4656.

52 Paul Sauriol, "La Loi du Cadenas," Le Devoir, 1 March 1948, p. 1.

53 The ideas of immutable social structure and social order were also intertwined in Duplessis' anti-communism, as Desrosiers has pointed out in "L'Ideologic de Maurice Duplessis": "L'anticommunisme de Duplessis d6coule de ses conceptions de l'ordre et de l'autorite. Dans un monde statique, les structures sociales demeurent immuables. Chacun doit respecter la place que la Providence lui a donne. Le bonheur vient du respect de l'ordre, et la prospe"rite, de l'immobilite sociale. L'evocation de la menace communiste sert a combattre toute idee 47

Liberalism's support for both the abstract concepts and specific policies of the Union Nationale, marks them as political conservatives, yet at the cultural level they generally allied themselves with 'progressive' culture; it was

largely the disparity between francophone liberals' political orientation and their cultural prejudices which distanced them

from the political status quo and which gave a certain amount of credence to their assertions of intellectual independence. In

liberal analyses of art, literature, and music, such words as

'dynamism,' 'progress,' and 'modernity' appear with insistent

frequency, although their antonyms punctuate political

commentaries. If in politics liberals committed themselves to

the preservation of the status quo, in culture they swore

themselves to fostering a radically new one:

il est possible de nous repr6senter la culture comme la progression vivante de la vie de l'esprit dans notre milieu canadien-francais. Il y a dans la vie intellectuelle d'un peuple, de toute soci6te donnee, et il doit y avoir un dynamisme qui oblige chacun a refl£chir sur ce que 1'on a appele irr^versibilite de l'histoire et a trouver les voies nouvelles qui permettent a un peuple de progresser et de s'adapter sans cesse, de se renouveler continuellement, tout en demeurant fidele a son genie et a son histoire.5"

de changement et a tuer dans l'oeuf toute revendication. Les classes ne s'opposent pas dans la societe et la theorie de la lutte des classes s'avere ainsi contre nature. L'Etat ne se voit confier qu'un role tres limite et sans importance: il est atrophie dans sa nature meme" (p. 53).

5" Jacques Perreault, "Reflexions sur les ouvriers canadiens-francais et la culture,", Le Quartier Latin, 16 March 1948, p. 5. 48

Despite this fervent declaration of support for 'la progression vivante1 in culture, progress nevertheless was not constituted as a repudiation of the past, nor of tradition, but rather was seen as a renewal of it; lurking behind the call for modernity was a demand that modern culture reflect immanent, unalterable qualities of the French-Canadian spirit:

notre destined d'etres spirituels et raisonnables, conditionn§e par notre civilisation catholique et francaise, notre milieu historique, social et iconomique.5 5

While modern culture remained firmly anchored in the 'g§nie et...histoire' of Quebec, liberals saw contact with

'international' culture as a means of catapulting the province towards modernity. In an interview in Le Quartier Latin, for example, Guy Sylvestre commented:

Il y eut chez nous une sorte d'inflation de la conscience culturelle. Par ailleurs, les 'retour d'Europe' enrichis de connaissances et d'experiences les plus diverses contribuaient largement a ce reveil.56

It was on the issue of the relationship between Quebec and for• eign culture--an issue also crucial to the Montreal avant-garde

--that liberal intellectuals and the political status quo dif•

fered most. In his insistence on being "maitre chez nous,"57

55 Ibid.

56 Jean-Marc Llger, "Guy Sylvestre: litterature canadienne-francaise," Le Quartier Latin, 19 December 1947, p. 2.

57 This phrase has been used by successive nationalist movements; Duplessis generally tied it to the survival of Catholicism and of the French language, as in the following Duplessis characterized international, modern culture as a

threat to the national identity of Quebec and suggested that

adoption of the cultural norms of Europe or the United States

imperilled the survival of Quebec's cultural . identity.58

However, while condemning the increased contacts between Quebec and international culture, and decrying the degree of political and economic rapprochement between Canada and other western

nations, Duplessis also encouraged enormous foreign investment

in Quebec; it was, in fact, during Duplessis' tenure that the

greatest influx of foreign investment into Quebec occurred.59

comment, "Pour que nos enfants parlent francais et soient catholiques, il faut etre maitre chez nous" (quoted in Le Devoir, 19 August 1946). On the history of Quebec nationalism see Vincenthier, Une ideologie quebecoise; Michael K. Oliver, "The Social and Political Ideas of French Canadian Nationalists, 1920-1945," (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1956); Robert Rumilly, Histoire de la Province de Quebec, 33 vols. (Montreal: Fides, 1940-62); Gerald Fortin, "An Analysis of the Ideology of a French Canadian Nationalist Magazine: 1917-1954," (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1956); Jacques Grand'maison, Nationalisme et religion, Nationalisme et revolution culturelle, Religion et ideologies politiques, 3 vols. (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1970); Jean-Charles Falardeau, "Les Canadiens francais et leur ideologie," in La duality canadienne (Quebec: les Presses de l'Universite Laval, 1960) .

58 As Gagnon has pointed out in the.Introduction to Borduas: Refus Global et Projections Liberantes, Duplessis celebrated the country as a place of cultural, social, and religious purity, uncontaminated by the modernism and internationalism which had made the city a place of "perdition morale, mais surtout un lieu de perdition culturelle" (p. 15). A good example of the reception modern and international culture were given in Quebec by conservatives is Clarence Gagnon, "L'Immense blague d'art moderniste," L'Amerique Franchise, Part I, No. 1 (1948): 60-65; Part II, No. 2 (1948): 44-48; Part III, No. 4 (1948-49): 67-71; Conclusion, No. 7 (1949): 34-37.

59 While pursuing a policy of encouraging foreign investment, Duplessis carefully pointed out that economic development occurred primarily through the workings of free 50

Moreover, those sectors of society which benefited from the presence of foreign capital within Quebec—primarily the upper middle class which supplied the professional services for foreign businesses in Quebec—constituted the class to which liberal intellectuals belonged and addressed their views. On the issue of internationalism, therefore, a fairly complex situation emerges: Duplessis publicly deprecated foreign involvement in Quebec, while actually supporting it; liberals differed publicly with him on this matter, yet in reality were the beneficiaries of it; the issue of internationalism was at once a source of friction and a point of convergence for liberals and Duplessis, allowing them to simultaneously disagree with and to support him.

Liberal support of both 'modern' culture and conservative politics may be interpreted as a function of their attempt to

'naturalise'60 their position in Quebec society. Francophones

enterprise and not through the machinations of the state; in his 1948 Throne Speech, for example, Duplessis declared, "Nous sommes d'opinion que le paternalisme d'Etat est l'ennemi veritable du progres. Nous croyons que la Province de Quebec sera developpee plus rationellement et plus rapidement par 1'initiative privee bien compromise c'est-a-dire saine et juste" (quoted by Marcel Fournier in "Borduas et sa societe," La Barre du Jour, No. 17 [January-August 1969]: 118). On the economic development of Quebec and its relationship to foreign countries, especially the U.S.A., see: Albert Faucher and Maurice Lamontagne, "The History of Industrial Development," in Jean-Charles Falardeau, ed. Essays on Contemporary Quebec (Quebec: les Presses de l'Universite Laval, 1953).

60 Naturalisation refers to the concept of ideology: "Ideologies are those systems of beliefs, images, values and techniques of representation by which particular social classes, in conflict with each other, attempt to 'naturalise' their own special place in history. Every ideology tries to give a quality of inevitability to what is in fact a quite specific and 51

were increasingly preponderant in the professions, formerly the preserve of anglophones, while in education, they also began to assume a dominant role, and one which in the past had belonged to priests alone.61 As members of a socially ascending group, they needed to demonstrate that their new position in the social scheme was an eminently natural one, the fulfillment of some pre-existing plan only now coming to fruition. By insisting on the necessity of new directions in cultural affairs--the domain almost entirely within their sway in the late forties—they succeeded in rationalizing their social role.

Moreover, by presenting themselves as committed to a culture which was dynamic, progressive, and evolving according to an immutable but invisible pattern, liberals solidified their claims not just to the present, but to the future as well; through their allegiance to the political status quo, however, liberals demonstrated their dependence on it for their economic and political survival.

While francophone liberals enjoyed hegemony in intellectual affairs and harmonized their political opinions with those of

disputable relation to the means of product ion--it pictures the present as 'natural,' 'coherent,' 'eternal'" (T.J. Clark, "Preliminary Arguments," p. 3).

61 On education in Quebec, see Charles Billodeau, "Education in Quebec," University of Toronto Quarterly 27 (April 1958): 398-412; Louis-Philippe Audet, Histoire de 1'enseignement au Quebec, 1840-1971, 2 vols. (Montreal and Toronto^ Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1971); Marcel Rioux, ed., L'Eqlise et le Quebec (Montreal: Les Editions du Jour, 1961). 52

the Union Nationale, their claims were being contested by a small group of 'new liberals'62 who were anti-clerical, anti-nationalist, and partisan to the policies of the Liberal

Party.63 The opinions of this small group were primarily expressed in two newspapers, Le Canada and Le Clairon

(Sainte-Hyacinthe), papers which consistently criticized the

Union Nationale, while supporting the Liberal party both provincially and federally.6" Federalism, and the creation of a fully bicultural and bilingual state, formed a crucial aspect of their beliefs: largely because of their subscription to biculturalism, federalism, and the Liberal Party, these liberals were strongly informed by the liberalism of English Canada in

62 The term 'new liberals' has been adopted to distinguish a group of intellectuals which was critical of the conservative liberals who dominated Quebec's intellectual affairs and which was slightly more liberal politically than the bulwarks of the Liberal party amongst whom the 'new liberals' found themselves: "But though many of the young Liberals were inclined to be sympathetic to the CCF, the majority were as conservative as the Conservatives themselves, and as fully committed to the preservation of a hierarchical society" (Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760-1916 rev. ed. [Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1968], p. 1014) .

63 In Quebec in the Duplessis Era, 1935-1959; Dictatorship or Democracy?" (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970 ), Cameron Nish comments: "The use and/or abuse of Quebec society and its ideology, and of power, generally speaking, by Duplessis, his party, and its governments led to what has been called 'a revolt of the intellectuals' in the early 1950s. Opposition to the Union Nationale was, of course, part and parcel of the Liberal Party's policy" (p. 125).

6" The editor of Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe) was T.D. Bouchard, a Liberal Senator; see T.D. Bouchard, M6moires, 3 vols. (Montreal: Beauchemin, 1960). For further information on the politics of Le Canada, see Wade, The French Canadians, p. 1 006. 53

the post-war period; through them, the ideology of anglophone liberalism filtered through to the non-English speaking citizens of Quebec.65

Certain points of congruence exist between mainstream francophone liberalism and its English Canadian counterpart in

1948: both were hostile to communism, both presented themselves as apolitical, and both regarded freedom as the chief issue facing Canadians. Nevertheless, francophone and anglophone liberals diverged greatly in their approach to these issues, in their position within Canadian society, and in their political allegiances: it was these factors which effected a schism within liberalism, and which also preoccupied and divided the

Montreal avant-garde.

Liberal opinion in English Canada was voiced in such literary-politico magazines as the Canadian Forum,66 as well as

in scholarly periodicals like Public Affairs, The Canadian

Journal of Economics and Politics, International Affairs, and

65 In the case of Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe), the exchange occurred both ways, as its editorial content was always printed in both English and French, whereas the bulk of its news was printed in French alone.

66 In the 1930s, the Canadian Forum was supportive of the C.C.F., and tended to adopt leftist positions on most issues, but during the late thirties it began to express much more conservative opinions. A similar shift occurred in the Canadian Forum's American counterpart, Partisan Review. While no thorough analysis of Canadian periodicals and their politics has been conducted to date, a work dealing with American publications affords many parallels with the political and literary history of this country; see James Burkhart Gilbert, Writers and Partisans: A History of Literary Radicalism in America (New York, London, and Sydney: John Wiley, 1968). 54

various university reviews; as in Quebec, it was the authors of the articles in, as well as the subscribers to these magazines—primarily academics, civil servants, and other professionals—who constituted the main core of anglophone

liberalism, and who formed the public of contemporary artists.

An enormous number of the intellectuals who shaped liberal

ideology worked in the civil service, a fact which affected the nature of that ideology. During and immediately following the

War, the federal civil service underwent its most rapid expansion; as it increased, the level of its employees education

rose as well:

the most obvious common characteristic of the higher civil servants.[following the war] was that they were educated far above the average. At a minimum, the senior public servants had earned an undergraduate degree, most frequently at the University of Toronto, Queen's University, the University of British Columbia, or, less frequently, one of- the western provincial universities....They [federal ministerial departments and crown corporations] were officered by men (very few women reached senior levels) usually recruited direct from the university into the civil service.6 7

67 Bothwell, Drummond and English, Canada Since 1945, pp. 134-35. In the decade between 1937 and 1947, the total number of employees of the federal bureaucracy rose from 42,836 to 125,337, an increase of almost 300%, according to statistics contained in the Canadian Yearbook, 1948-49 (Ottawa: The King's Printer, 1949), p. 1187. The enormous expansion in both the size of the civil service and the number of university graduates staffing it reflects the national education boom which in 1948 saw the peak university enrollment in the history of the country in 1948: "In the academic year 1945-6, Canadian universities had enrolled 38,776 full-time undergraduates. In 1946-7 the figure was 61,861, and at the peak in 1948, there were 79,346 full time undergraduates. In three years, enrolments had almost doubled (Bothwell et al., p. 126). Thus, on the eve of the Cold War, university graduates became

the fodder for the civil service mill, and professional

intellectuals became a national necessity.68

Once in the civil service, university graduates retained

their links to academe, publishing articles on general

political, economic, and philosophical issues, rather than on

matters pertaining directly to their jobs.69 Thus, in 1948,

intellectuals wrote articles for the peiodicals which voiced and

shaped anglophone liberal intellectual opinion, but at the same

time in their capacity as civil servants, they were responsible

for the formulation and implementation of the policies of the

68 The comments of Christopher Lasch regarding American intellectuals also apply to their Canadian counterparts: "The history of the fifties had already shown that intellectuals were unusually sensitive to their interests as a group and that they defined those interests in such a way as to make them fully compatible with the interests of the state. As a group, intellectuals had achieved a semi-official status which assigned them professional responsibility for the machinery of education and for cultural affairs in general. Within this sphere--within the schools, the universities, the theatre, the concert hall, and the politico-literary magazines--they had achieved both autonomy and affluence, as the social value of their services became apparent to the government, to corporations, and to the foundations. Professional intellectuals had become indispensible to society and to the state" ("The Cultural Cold War," reprinted in The Agony of the American Left [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969], p. 94).

69 G. de T. Glazebrook, for example, was a regular contributor to the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Sc ience, while working as Intelligence Chief, Joint Intelligence Bureau, Department of National Defence; George S. Patterson, a writer for International Affairs, worked as the Canadian Consul General in Shanghai, and served on the United Nations Commission in Korea in 1948; H.L. Keenleyside and John P. Humphrey, also contributors to International Affairs, worked as Deputy Minister of the Department of Mines and Resources and Director, Human Rights Division of the United Nations, respectively. 56

Liberal government; not surprisingly, liberal opinion was often a mimesis of Liberal policies.70 The propinquity of liberal

intellectuals, the civil service and the federal Liberal

government created a supportive relationship between

'non-partisan' liberalism and the Liberal party, while prompting

liberal intellectuals to define their own interests, those of

the government and those of the country in compatible terms;

this group of professional intellectuals which "conceived of

themselves to be part of an international governing class,"71

was not without its national dominion as well.

Despite their rapprochement with the Liberal party,

anglophone liberal intellectuals theoretically remained

committed to a position of political independence; like their

70 Bothwell, Drummond, and English note in Canada Since 1 945; "The links between the cabinet and the civil service were strong and becoming stronger. The Liberals had grown grey in office during their thirteen years in the East Block. Hcwe and Gardiner had been around longer than the 'permanent' heads of their departments. It was a small wonder that the civil servants relied on their ministers for tradition and guidance, or, where they did not, freely exchanged advice on policy for advice on political impact. St. Laurent's ministers had their politics—and their administration--well under control" (p. 1 32) . Many civil servants eventually became Liberal Members of Parliament, and some became cabinet ministers and prime ministers; the most notable examples are Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson, Marcel Cadieux, Mitchell Sharp, Jack Pickersgill. For more information on civil service-government links, see Austin F. Cross, "Oligarchs at Ottawa," Public Affairs, Part I, 14 (Autumn 1951): 16-24; Part II, 14 (Winter 1951): 21-29.

71 Jack Granatstein and Robert Cuff, Ties that Bind. Canadian-American Relations in War Time: From the Great War to the Cold War (Toronto: Hakkert, 1975), p. 117. 57

peers in Quebec, they regarded themselves as objective, critical observers of the caprices of politics. The editorial policy of the Canadian Forum, one of the main voices of liberalism, is revealing on this point: "The Canadian Forum is an independent journal of progressive democratic opinion."72 At the same time, however, it printed articles by Liberal party members and was supportive of Liberal party practices, while criticism and

'objectivity' were reserved for the political opponents of the

Liberal party.73 Nevertheless, liberal intellectuals persisted in regarding themselves as

a liability to a political party....The ideal party member is one who accepts the party platform as without question the final solution for all our ills. This of course the liberal cannot do....He regards the party platform only as provisional....He is apt to be rather a nuisance in the party caucuses, for his insistence upon balanced statement will inevitably collide with the desire to coin election-winning slogans promising pie in the sky.7"

When considered against their very real political prejudices, protestations of apoliticism functioned as a means for

72 Canadian Forum 27 (January 1948): 221.

73 See, for example, Louis St. Laurent, "Canada and the U.N.," Canadian Forum 28 (June 1948): 49-50; Frank H. Underhill, "The End of an Era," (2 Parts), Canadian Forum 28 (August 1948): 97-98 and 28 (September 194871 121-122, 126-127; H.S. Ferns, "Mackenzie King of Canada, (3 Parts) Canadian Forum 28 (November 1948): 174-177; 28 (December 1948): 201; 28 (January 1949): 226-228; "Saddle Your Horses," Canadian Forum 28 (May 1948): 27-28; Leslie Thompson, "The C.C.F. and Communism," Canadian Forum 28 (September 1948): 128-129; Andrew Hebb, "Storms Brewing," Canadian Forum 28 (November 1948): 169-170, 173-174.

7" Desmond Pacey, "In Defence of Liberalism," Canadian Forum 25 (January 1946): 239. 58

anglophone liberals to present themselves as disinterested analysts of the political scene, whose very disinterest constituted their intellectual freedom and objectivity. The conjunction of the antitheses of partisan bias and non-partisan claims, however, also suggests that it came about through liberals' attempts to naturalise the precepts of both the party and the ideology supporting it: by presenting partisan opinion as the conclusions of non-partisan analysis, the distinctions between the two are blurred, and both are represented as objective truth.

Apoliticisrn in English Canada came to signify liberal intellectuals' repugnance towards the extremes of partisan politics, namely, the reactionary right and the communist left.

In the thirties, anglophone liberals had vigorously denounced the political right, lumping the Liberal and Conservative parties together as reactionary, and supporting the nascent

Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.75 After the

75 The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was formed in Calgary in 1932 to "[establish] in Canada...a Co-operative Commonwealth in which the principle regulating production, distribution, and exchange will be the supplying ofhuman needs and not the making of profits. We aim to replace the capitalist system" (The Regina Manifesto, adopted at the first National Convention in July 1933; quoted by Leo Zakuta, A Protest Movement Becalmed: A Study of Change in the CCF [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964 ], p. 160). The Canadian Forum welcomed the party and supported it in numerous articles; see, for example, F.H. Underhill, "The Co-operative Commonwealth Confederation," Canadian Forum, 12 (September 1932): 445-446: "All Canadian citizens who want a government that will seriously face the momentous social crisis in the midst of which we live should use their energies on behalf of the Co-operative Commonwealth Confederation" (p. 446). See also: Archibald Key, "Creating a National Federation," Canadian Forum 12 (September 1932): 451-453; F.H. Underhill, "The C.C.F. Takes Stock," 59

Stalin Trials, the intransigence of Soviet foreign policy towards its allies after 1944, and the revelation of a

Soviet spy ring within the government in 1945,76 liberal intellectuals, artists, and writers repudiated their former allegiance to the left. In a review of the literature on the

Soviet Union, Ross W. Collins articulates the sense of betrayal liberal intellectuals felt towards communism:

The costliest fraud of this century is the illusion about totalitarianism fostered in the western democracies by totalitarian propaganda. It is the basic thesis of this fraud that there is some essential difference in kind between the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union (communism) and that of the late regimes in Germany (Nazism) or Italy (Fascism)....Suffice it to say that in the opinion of this reviewer—who spent the past few years in the Soviet Union and went there with all the good will and most of the illusions typical of liberals who were students during the depression years here—the ultimately inevitable conflict between totalitarian techniques and 'progressive' ideals has by now spread into every aspect and field of Soviet life with the appropriate results.77

Collins' remarks also reveal how former communists came to regard communism as fascism's twin: blurring any distinctions between the nature of Nazism and Communism, liberals regarded both as equally reprehensible, equally totalitarian. The fusion of the left and right persisted in liberal polemics throughout

Canadian Forum 16 (August 1936): 9; David Lewis, "The C.C.F. in Convention," Canadian Forum 16 (September 1936): 6; King Gordon, "The C.C.F. Convention," Canadian Forum 17 (September 1937): 187-188.

76 See above, note 50.

77 Ross W. Collins, "Soviet Russia: A Review," International Journal 2 (Winter 1946-47): 72-9. 60

the next decade, and suggests the position on the political spectrum which liberal intellectuals simultaneously adopted: the 'vital centre,'78 which they viewed as the panacea to the global malaise engendered by the parallel perils of communism and fascism:

To approach the future with closed minds, whether the contents of the minds be old-line Toryism, orthodox socialism, or the Communist Manifesto, is the one thing above all others which we must shun. Certain fixed principles we must have—a respect for the human personality, for example, and a faith in man's capacity to survive and develop by his own efforts and the grace of God—but apart from these no dogma can help but only hinder us....Liberalism is the sole hope of the future.79

For anglophone liberals, only Western 'democracies'80 provided the possibility for the existence of real social and political

freedom, because unlike the Soviet Union, they did not insist on

single-minded commitment to a specific set of political dogmas.

Political pluralism was revered as the great saviour of freedom

in the West:

Only the naive can believe that the acceptance of a particular ideology or that the attainment of power by

78 The term comes from the title of a book which was enormously popular with liberal intellectuals in both Canada and the United- State, The Vital Centre by Arthur M. Schlesinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949). The review of the book which appeared in the Canadian Forum was extremely favourable: "everyone should read Professor Schlesinger's attack upon the toryism of the right and the fellow-traveller ism of the left. And his analysis of the mind of a good communist is incomparably brilliant" (Frank H. Underhill, "The Politics of Freedom," Canadian Forum 29 (December 1949): 197-99).

79 Pacey, "In Defence of Liberalism," p. 239.

80 In the 1940s, 'capitalism' and 'democracy' were used interchangeably. 61

a specific group of partisans solves the great human problems of politics....In the one-party state, recently demonstrated on a significant scale by Bolshevik Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, permanence in power by the one party permitted is set as the goal....Tolerance is often said to characterize the [liberal democratic] system, for division of opinion is not only tolerated but is institutionalized.81

Just as liberal intellectuals saw the one party, single

'ideology' system as the great iniquity of communist regimes, so

they believed that a campaign against communism could only be

successfully waged if it were fought on a 'supra-ideological'

level, in which Western nations put an 'end to ideology';82

Using 'ideology' to signify partisan politics, they believed

that all western nations and all political parties should draw

together and close ranks in their anti-communist 'crusade.'83

Although such a crusade was essentially a struggle between two

competing political systems, it was presented as a moral

struggle; the language of religion replaced that of politics in

81 H. McD. Clokie, "The Modern Party State," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 14 (May 1949): 142, 145.

82 This phrase was current in North American liberal circles; see Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology; On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (New York: The Free Press, 1961); Chaim Waxman, ed., The End of Ideology Debate (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968).

83 Louis St. Laurent first used the word crusade to describe the struggle against communism as well as the Liberals' chief weapon in that struggle, the North Atlantic Alliance. After three months.of campaigning for acceptance of an alliance system, St. Laurent made a speech in the House of Commons describing his work as "a crusade by Canada for the completion of a Western Union or North Atlantic regional pact" (quoted in Escott Reid, Time of Fear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty 1947-1949 [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977J , p. 77). 62

liberal polemics. Morris Ginsberg, for example, presented the

Cold War as a morality play, with the West playing the role of

Virtue and Communism that of Vice:

Democracy cannot be based on moral indifference or moral skepticism. The ideas which gave it impetus are, first, the idea of freedom with its correlative notion of individual responsibility, and, secondly, the idea of equality which is the core of • justice....Liberal thought has, I think, enriched the content of the idea of freedom by showing its relation to the intrinsic values of individual personality and by a deepened analysis of the relations between the individual and society....[In communist countries] the ultimate moral standard has no application. The operative moral code is that of war. Does this involve a conflict of ideologies between the Communists and their opponents? Clearly the answer is 'yes'. Does the conflict involve a difference of moral outlook? The answer again must be 'yes.'8"

For anglophone liberals, it was a given that communism violated

their most basic moral and ethical assumptions, and it was on

these grounds rather than more narrowly focused political ones

that they attacked it. Likewise, politicians lead the offensive against communism by consistently conflating political and moral

language; St. Laurent, then Minister for External Affairs, for

example, declared,

We are agreed, to begin with, that totalitarian communist aggression constitutes a direct and immediate threat to every democratic country, including Canada. It endangers our freedom and our peace. It puts in jeopardy the values and virtues of the civilization of western Christendom of which we are heirs and defenders....We are all resolved to maintain and to strengthen in Canada the values and virtues of our civilization; values and virtues which the totalitarian societies repudiate with contempt and

8" Morris Ginsberg, "The Moral Basis of Present-Day Political Conflicts," International Journal 4 (Autumn 1949: 323, 321). 63

derision: respect for the worth, the dignity, the inviolability of the individual man, woman, and child, the belief that the state exists for man and not man for the state; the belief that all men are brothers; the belief in pity and compassion....This force [against communism] must not be only military; it must be economic; it must be moral. Just as in the last war, so also today, we are engaged in a 'struggle for the control of men's minds and men's souls.'85

The vocabulary of morality, however, was used by such politicians as St. Laurent to sell a specifically political programme. In the speech quoted above, St. Laurent first attacked communism on a theoretical level, yet adroitly went on to outline what would become the West's main line of defense against it: the formation of a North Atlantic alliance against the USSR which subsequently came into being as the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).86

Despite the moralizing timbre of St. Laurent's speech, the formation of a North Atlantic alliance, like Canadian support for the American Marshall Plan,87 was essentially a

85 Louis St. Laurent, address to International Trade-Fair, Toronto, 11 June 1948, quoted in Robert Alexander Mackay, ed., Canadian Foreign Policy 1945-1954; Selected Speeches and Documents (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971), p. f84.

86 On the formation of NATO, see Escott Reid, Time of Fear and Hope: the Making of the North Atlantic Alliance (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977).

87 The economic and political reasons for Canadian support of the Marshall Plan are best described in R.D. Cuff and J.L. Granatstein, American Dollars—Canadian Prosperity; Canadian-American Economic Relations 1945-1950 (Toronto and Sarasota: Samuel-Stevens, 1978);-in summary, these authors contend that "like the European nations, Canada nervously eyed its fundamental dollar dependency on the United States, and by 1947 Canada, in company with other Western nations, felt the baleful effects of the dollar shortage. Much of Canadian economic policy came to be dominated by this central fact, and we have seen how off-shore purchases under the Marshall Plan, raw 64

political issue, and was, moreover, a response to a series

of political crises which beset the government in the

late forties. As has already been noted, since the

revelation of the presence of Soviet spies within the

federal civil service, the Liberal government had been accused

of being 'soft' on communism by both the federal opposition and,

of course, by the provincial government in Quebec.88 As

Canadian historians have recently noted, as late as 1947, when

the government first began to consider the creation of a North

Atlantic alliance, foreign affairs specialists within the

government regarded the threat of Soviet aggression as virtually

non-existent.89 An alliance against an unlikely Soviet threat

is only comprehensible as an attempt by the government disprove

the charges of 'fellow-traveller ism' which were levelled at it

by the federal Conservatives and Duplessis;90 by promoting

material sales, U.S. military procurement in Canada and even a possible continental free trade arrangement, found appeal in Ottawa in 1947 and after" (p. 179).

88 See above, pp. 44-45.

89 In 1947 St. Laurent believed that the U.S.S.R. could not possibly afford another war, and stated in February of that year that his study of the situation led him to "the definite conclusion that Russia not only will not risk war, but cannot (and knows she cannot) continue to support her present armed services" (quoted by Cuff and Granatstein, American Dollars—Canadian Prosperity, p. 195). Likewise, the Canadian representative to the U.S.S.R. from 1942 to 1946, Dana Wilgress, also contended that "Russia would avoid war at all costs" (quoted in Ibid., p. 195).

90 The Conservatives regularly implied that communists were present in the government; on 19 June 1948, for example, John Diefenbaker asked J.L. Ilsley, Minister of Justice, "I should like to ask a question...with respect to a press dispatch appearing yesterday to the effect that some investigation was 65

an aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union, the federal government undermined the accusations of its pro- communist sympathies.91 At the same time, the government was able to minimize the impact of negative criticism of the nascent alliance by presenting it as a moral obligation of all those who embraced "the values and virtues of the civilization of western Christendom";92 cast in these terms, failure to support NATO could only be construed as a lack of commitment to

'western Christendom' and an attitude of tolerance towards

'totalitarian communism.' Packaged in these terms, NATO became

being made in the civil service with respect to communist propaganda" (House of Commons Debates, p. 5488). The Leader of the Opposition, John Bracken, was much more direct than Diefenbaker: "Communist agents, some of them under diplomatic immunity, some of them Canadian citizens, have succeeded in corrupting officials of the public service of this country. We all know the sordid tale of what took place in this country within the last two or three years, and I do not need to repeat it here. But have we any reason to believe that these efforts have been discontinued? The answer is that we obviously have not. The evidence of infiltration is clearer today that [sic] it has.ever been before" (House of Commons Debates, 17 March 1948, p. 2305).

91 The Truman government adopted a similar strategy in the United States in order to resolve its domestic political problems and to gain an advantageous position in international political and economic affairs. For further information, see Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York! Alfred A. Knopf, 1971); Gabriel and Joyce Kolko, The Limits of Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Athan Theoharis, The Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971 ) .

92 St. Laurent, 11 June 1948 quoted by Mackay, Canadian Foreign Policy, 1945-1955, p. 184. 66

an endeavour attractive to all.93

Its active promotion of NATO bolstered the federal government's anti-communist image, and mitigated against

Duplessis' allegations of communist allegiances; nevertheless,

international involvements had always been a troublesome issue

for the federal government insofar as Quebec was concerned, for historically Quebec was an isolationist province which had consistently denounced Canadian military intervention in foreign wars;9" NATO was therefore both a solution to, and a further

irritation of the federal government's acrimonious relationship with Quebec. Nevertheless, by emphatically insisting that only an organization like NATO could adequately protect a specifically Christian society against the encroachments of atheistic communism, and because the principal architect of NATO was St. Laurent, a French-Canadian, the federal government escaped any significant criticism of the plan within Quebec.95

93 The Canadian Institute of Public Opinion reported in its poll of November 24, 1948, that 73% of Canadians believed NATO would make war less likely; 14% thought it would make war more likely, and 13% had no opinion (reported by Albert John Ossman in "The Development of Canadian Foreign Policy" [Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1963], p. 189).

9U On this matter see: J.L. Granatstein, Conscription in the Second World War 1939-1945; A Study in Political Management (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1969); J.L. Granatstein and J.M. Hitsman, Broken Promises: A History of Conscription in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977); R. MacGregor Dawson, The Conscription Crisis of 1944 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961).

95 D.C. Thomson and R.F. Swanson noted in Canadian Foreign Policy: Options and Perspectives (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1971): "Two additional factors explain Canada's subsequent strong stand against the threat—supposed or real--of Soviet expansion. 67

Press reaction within Quebec towards the planned alliance was generally favourable: of 13 newspapers which expressed an opin• ion on the subject, only one, Le Devoir, was hostile to it.96

Le Devoir portrayed NATO as yet another example of the federal government's propensity towards bellicosity and imperialism abroad, and protested that the alliance would signify a loss of Canadian neutrality in international affairs, a belief based on the old isolationist premise that any foreign

involvements were in everybody's interest except Quebec's; it commented

La neutralite n'est pas un id£al irrealisable si toute notre politique est dirigee vers cet objectif. Mais - elle l'est a coup sur, si nous continuons a preconiser

First, a new generation of policy makers, led by St. Laurent and Pearson, were assuming power in Ottawa and they rejected the policy of non-involvement....And second, the fact that the new danger to world peace came from 'Godless Communism' made it easier to rally support from the most neutralist element in Canada, the predominantly Catholic French Canadians" (p. 62).

96 In "The Development of Canadian Foreign Policy," Ossman comments, "The reaction of the French Canadian press to the idea of Canada's participation in a security pact ranged from whole-hearted endorsement to strong disapproval, a reflection of the dilemma of a traditionally isolationist, but strongly Catholic--and hence anti-communist people" (pp. 183-84). In a survey of French-Canadian newspapers, J.I. Gow found that the language of the Cold War fully permeated the newspapers of Quebec: "Nous avons trouve qu'apres 1948 le d6bat sur la politique etrang&re qui a eu lieu au Qu4bec s'est fait en termes de la guerre froide et avec des arguments qui se retrouvaient dans tous les pays de l'oeust" ("Les Quebecois, la guerre et la paix, 1945-60," Canadian Journal of Political Science 3 [March 1970]: 98). For further information on the reaction of the Quebec press to NATO, see James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada, vol. 4, Growing Up Allied (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). 68

meme en temps de paix une politique d'aggression.97

Although Le Devoir vilified international involvement at the political level while cultivating it at a cultural one, liberal intellectuals in English Canada were largely supportive of the alliance, because they saw it as a relatively pacific way of containing communism, while simultaneously affording Canada the opportunity to assume a more active role in international affairs, a move which they saw as laudable.98 Anglophone liberals also endorsed NATO, because like-federal Liberal politicians, they saw it as a tool for achieving certain domestic, as well as as international goals; 'national unity,' which signified a pacified Quebec no longer bent on 'provincial autonomy,' was paramount among the federal government's domestic objectives, and NATO had secured such support with the religious press in Quebec, its anti-communist allure overcoming most isolationist objections. As Ossman has noted:

The emphasis on the treaty as an instrument of Christian states involved in a struggle against

97 Le Devoir, 6 November 1948, quoted by Ossman in "The Development of Canadian Foreign Policy," p. 188.

98 D.C. Thomson and R.F. Swanson note in Canadian Foreign Pol icy, p. 27: "While the paternity of NATO must be attributed to several states, Canada's share is generally acknowledged as significant. Canadian statesmen were the first to refer to it publicly, in the autumn of 1947, as a real possibility, and they took part in every stage of its development. Lester Pearson was twice offered the post of Secretary-General....The prospect of a North Atlantic alliance was of more interest to Canada than merely to stem communist expansion; it held the hope of forming an Atlantic community....During the negotiations that led to the creation of NATO, Canada sought to enlarge the objectives of the proposed alliance so that it would, in fact, become the foundation of a trans-Atlantic community." 69

communism was designed to appeal to Quebec....Most French-Canadians reluctantly accepted the need for Canada's participation in a regional security alliance as part of the struggle against communism."

Throughout their speeches on NATO, St. Laurent and Pearson

stressed the necessity of national unity in the struggle against communism, of which NATO was but a part. In his Remembrance Day address of 1948, for example, the new Prime Minister, St.

Laurent,100 stated:

How can we add to the moral strength on our side? We can do it, I suggest, if the North Atlantic Alliance is the outward and visible sign of a new inward and spiritual unity of purpose in the free world. The alliance must be a sign that the North Atlantic nations are bound together not merely by their common opposition to totalitarian Communism but also by a common belief in the values and virtues of our Western civilization, and by a determination to work for the promotion of mutual welfare and the preservation of peace.10 1

St. Laurent's message struck a responsive chord among anglophone

intellectuals, for they returned time and again to this theme of

unity in their analyses of the current political situation, and

saw St. Laurent's foreign affairs proposals as a means of fusing

the fractious country. The historian, A.R.M. Lower, for

instance, believed that national unity could only be achieved with St. Laurent at the helm to navigate the country through the

99 Ossman, "The Development of Canadian Foreign Policy," p. 195, 196.

100 Mackenzie King announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal party on 20 January 1948, and asked for a leadership convention to be convened that August; on 7 August St. Laurent became the new leader of the party.

101 Louis St. Laurent, 11 November 1948, quoted in Mackay,. Canadian Foreign Policy, 1945-1954, p. 188. 70

Cold War:

Today....[a] French-speaking minister points out to us our plain duty: he names the potential enemy, Communist Russia. His people never spare their condemnation of that country, they loathe its atheism and its propaganda. May it, then, be assumed that the gap between the French and English is closing, and that if the worst came to the worst, we would find ourselves fighting shoulder to shoulder, with no difference of will?....Can freedom be saved by war?....As Mr. St. Laurent said, 'the free governments are themselves at fault if they are hesitant to take the necessary social and political measures, or to show the energy, determination and solidarity required to make democracy into an efficient political gospelSuperficially the country's internal harmony seems greater than at previous periods of stress.102

Although Lower regarded NATO as an issue over which Canada might become united, he was not, at that point convinced that it had completely eradicated all the points of friction between French and English Canada. J. Bartlet Brebner, however, was convinced of the alliance's ability to bind the two together:

To the student of Canadian history not the least interesting aspect of this new development [the North Atlantic alliance] is its association with Mr. St. Laurent. During the past three years this leader from so-called 'isolationist' French Canada has moved steadily ahead to become the accepted formulator of a foreign policy for all of Canada. Even when every permissible concession has been made to French Canada's special hostility to Russian communism, and when all due weight has been given to the differences between French-Canadian opinion as expressed at Ottawa and as expressed in the provincial legislature, it is impossible to escape the impression that Canada is emerging from the War of 1939, not as ethnically divided, mere nation-state of 1919, but quite possibly as a unified nation.103

102 A.R.M. Lower, "Canada in the New, Non-British World," International Journal 3 (Summer 1948): 213, 220, 221.

103 J. Bartlet Brebner, "A Changing'North Atlantic Triangle," International Journal 3 (Autumn 1948): 319. 71

Brebner's analysis of the impact of the NATO negotiations on

French-English relations were also those of the federal government, which was gratified by the support given the alliance within Quebec.100 Although NATO, like the anti-communist crusade which motivated it, increased the schism between francophone and anglophone liberalism, it succeeded in mobilizing support for the federal government among other sectors of the Quebec public, thus increasing the status of the

federal government within Quebec, and momentarily subduing the nationalists' isolationism; these were both political gains for the ruling party in Ottawa. Because the political gains for the

Liberals from NATO were so substantial, the apolitical, moralistic tenor of the proposals for the alliance cloaked, but did not entirely conceal the partisan nature of English Canada's proposal for 'collective security' against communism.

While communism remained the prime target of anglophone

liberal intellectuals and Liberal politicians in 1948,

100 In his memoirs, Lester Pearson commented: "After 1945 this [Canadian] unity was not threatened but strengthened by our external activity. International commitments were also made easier to accept because there was a very general and valid fear of an aggressive Soviet Community imperialism which threatened our basic values and which, it was thought, could be best countered and combatted by collective international action. We were now prepared to play our part in this action and were supported by public opinion to do so" (Lester B. Pearson, Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honnourable Lester B. Pearson, vol. 2 1948-1957 ed. John A. Munro and Alex T~. Inglis [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973], p. 29). Pearson became Secretary of State for External Affairs on 10 September, 1948, succeeding St. Laurent, who was made Prime Minister designate pending Mackenzie King's resignation. 72

conservatism was challenged as well: in politics, as in culture, it was seen as the great scourge of freedom. In their attempt to occupy the 'vital centre' liberal intellectuals attacked "the toryism of the right and the fellow-traveller ism of the left;"105 likewise, Liberal politicians saw the battle for freedom as occurring at both ends of the political spectrum.

Lester Pearson, for instance, commented that the campaign for

f reedom

is wherever free men are struggling against totalitarian tyranny of right or left. It may run through the middle of our own cities, or it may be on the crest of the remotest mountain.106

Within Canada, the war on the right was to be waged against

Duplessis, regarded by anglophone liberal intellectuals as the

incarnation of corrupt conservatism as well as the motivating

force behind the divisive extremism which fostered rather than

put an 'end to ideology.' Moreover, liberals excoriated

Duplessis because his corrupt--and indiscrete--electoral and

administrative practices107 offended the principles

105 F.H. Underhill, "The Politics of Freedom," p. 199.

106 Lester B. Pearson, Words and Occasions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. TT.

107 English Canadian liberals were disgusted with Duplessis' corruption and yet at the same time remained fascinated with his political tenacity; the most characteristic example of this kind of thinking is Stuart Keate's "Maurice the Magnificent," Maclean's Magazine, 1 September 1948, pp. 71-5. See also Harold H. Martin, "Quebec's Little Strong Man," Saturday Evening Post, 15 January 1949, pp. 17-19, 102-104; L.J. Rogers, "Duplessis and Labour," Canadian Forum 27 (October 1947): 151-52; Blair Fraser, "Shakedown," Maclean's Magazine, 15 November 1945, pp. 5-6, 59-61; and Herbert F. Quinn, "The Role of the Union Nationale Party in Quebec Politics, 1935-48," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 15 (November 73

of justice and fair play they equated with capitalism in their anti-communist arguments. Critisc of Duplessis claimed his government was a parody of democracy because he won elections on the basis of patronage and coercion; in his analysis of the 1948 election, for example, Herbert

Quinn emphasizes the unscrupulous means Duplessis used to secure victory:

The way in which this [political] machine functioned may be briefly described. First of all, the party sent well-experienced organizers into every constituency in the province for the purpose of enlisting the support of key individuals in the community such as journalists, lawyers, doctors, dentists, merchants, trade union leaders, mayors, and councillors....Although the methods used to induce these key individuals to back the Union Nationale might vary, the most important factor was the tangible benefits that a party in power has to offer, that is spoils and patronage.... In some cases the party leaders in a doubtful riding informed the voters quite bluntly that if they wanted a new road, public building, or other work-making project they would be well advised to vote the right way.108

In his examination of the Union Nationale's patronage system, it is significant that Quinn lays the blame for the success of that system on those who benefited most from the Union Nationale, namely, 'journalists, lawyers, doctors,' etc.--the backbone of francophone liberalism. While anglophone liberals perceived themselves as the saviours of democracy, they regarded francophone liberals as allies of those forces against it in

Canada.

1949): 523-32.

108 Quinn, "The Role of the Union Nationale Party in Quebec Politics, 1935-48," p. 528-29. 74

Liberals in English Canada calumnied the nationalist creed of the Union Nationale. They argued that only a strong central government, unencumbered with the irritations of provincial autonomy and a linguistically divided country, could deal with the problems of Canada in the Cold War world. For example, F.R.

Scott, a poet and professor of constitutional law at McGill

University contended,

No matter what theories about the Canadian constitution are propounded, no matter how much politicians may cry for 'provincial autonomy' or the sacred rights of the provinces, no matter how much 'centralization' may be held up as an unmitigated evil, the fact remains that the peace-time distribution of legislative powers to which we are returning has already proved incapable of producing that 'efficiency and harmony' aimed at in the constitution of 1867, because the magnitude of many social problems exceeds the boundaries of provincial jurisdiction within which they legally lie.109

While liberal intellectuals such as Scott argued in favour of an increase in "federal jurisdiction and control"110 because they believed it would help resolve current political crises, an altruistic devotion to Canada was not the only component of their desire for a strongly centralized country. It was largely due to the increased centralization of the federal government during the Second World War that the civil service grew at such an enormous rate; because intellectuals constituted a major part of the civil service, and because only a continuation of

109 F.R. Scott, "The Special Nature of Canadian Federalism," Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 13 (February 1947): 13-14.

1 10 Ibid., p. 13. 75

centralization would guarantee them continued employment—and more importantly, continued power—their call for even greater

centralization (and a minimization of the power of the

provincial governments) was also motivated by their own position

of importance within the social strata.

During the election campaign of 1948, Duplessis commented,

"nous sommes a la croisee des chemins."111 Although his

comments prefaced an exhortation to vote for the Union

Nationale, they aptly summarize the sentiments of liberals and

politicians throughout Canada on the polarizations occuring at

home and abroad, and on the necessity to become aligned with one

side or another. For liberals, the fundamental choice was

between communism and capitalism, tyranny and democracy, evil

and good. The consequences and implications of their unanimous

choice of capitalism, democracy, and good, however, forced

liberals to make another series of choices and alignments,

between the Union Nationale and the Liberal Party, provincial

autonomy and federalism, isolationism and internationalism,

non-alignment and NATO, a domestic campaign against communism

and an international one; it was on these issues that the

cleavage between francophone and anglophone liberalism occurred,

and which shaped their response to the cultural situation in

Quebec.

Artists, as producers of culture, and as participants in

the intellectual life of the country, were no less exempt from

111 Le Devoir, 24 July 1948. 76

the political perils of contemporary society than were liberal

intellectuals; they, too, faced the 'croisee des chemins' in matters both artistic and political, and were affected by the

ideological schism which had divided liberal intellectuals. In

Montreal in 1948, the outcome of this ideological division—which was at once aesthetic and political—was the confrontation between the Prisme d'Yeux and the Automatistes, and the fragmentation of the avant-garde into two distinctly different and extremely hostile camps. The issues which

polarized the Montreal avant-garde were also those splitting

liberalism—it was freedom, its relationship to politics, to the

left and the right, and to the individual which so obsessed and

divided them. Likewise, in the exclusively political realm,

'liberte' and 'freedom' peppered the rhetoric of politicians and

was the fulcrum of the most vituperative disagreements

provincially, federally, and internationally. The congruence of

the concerns of politicians and intellectuals with those of

artists suggests that artists are not exclusively attached to

the artistic milieu and its quarrels, but rather are affected,

both consciously and unconsciously by social, historical and

ideological factors which encapsulate their lives. Moreover,

because ideologies of two opposing strands of liberalism became

imprinted on the ideologies of competing branches of the

Montreal avant-garde, the relationship of artists to their

publics appears to be a symbiotic one, the medium through which

artists receive an understanding of the world beyond the studio:

•the artist addresses a public with analogous political and

cultural values, a public which in turn affects the artist's 77

verbal and visual ideologies, a public which appears in these ideologies as

for the most part...an implied presence, a shadow, an occlusion; it is what critic and artist in their civilized and hypocritical discourse, agree to leave out—but without success112

The artist and public, then, are bound to one another by a dynamic similar to that connecting both to their ideologies, a dynamic in which perceived relations to the social structure are unconsciously distorted and manipulated. Thus, in the late forties, liberal intellectuals in both French and English

Canada processed their understanding of the world through the falsifying lens of their ideologies; similarly, the Montreal avant-garde proclaimed its independence from its public, the

Canadian intelligentsia, while in reality it was profoundly affected by its ideologies. How these transformations occurred becomes apparent through an examination of avant-garde polemics and the liberal response to them, thus clarifying the points in which liberal ideology is inserted into the aesthetic discourse.

112 T.J. Clark, Image of the People (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), p. ]~T. 78

CHAPTER TWO

The Liberalism of Pellan and Borduas: the Prisme d'Yeux

Manifesto and the Refus Global

Mediations....allow the individual concrete—the particular life, the real and dated conflict, the person—to emerge from the background of the general contradictions of productive forces and relations of product ion.1

By opportunism I do not mean to imply a sacrifice of principle for the sake of expedience, but I use it in its original sense having to do with a wind blowing towards a port, i.e., favourable at a given moment.2

The mediations arbitrating the lives of the leaders of the factions of the Montreal avant-garde, Alfred Pellan and

Paul-Emile Borduas, and which determined their relation to the push and pull of historical events, were vastly different. The effect of the mediations of class, education, and experience explains why they were subject to different forms of

'opportunism,' and why their ideologies were at odds with one another. The presence of both the mediations and the ideologies transmitted through them ineluctably appear in both the written and painted works by these two artists; this chapter will deal solely with their verbal ideologies as theyexisted in 1948.

1 Sartre, Search for a Method, p. 57.

2 Albert Boime, "Marmontel's Belisare and the Pre-Revolutionary Progressivism of David," Art History 1 (March 1980): 81. 79

Both leaders of the Montreal avant-garde were born to lower middle class families; Pellan into the urban working poor,

Borduas into the rural poor.3 From the beginning, Pellan's career was a spectacular one. Supported by his family, he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City, where he won an astonishing number of prizes for artistic excellence." The

Quebec government, which subsidized the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

took early heed of the school's most precocious student, and in

1926, awarded him the first Province of Quebec bursary to study art in France for four years. Pellan's career abroad garnered him exhibitions, contact with major European artists, sales,5

3 Pellan was born in Quebec city in 1906; his father was a locomotive engineer on the Quebec-Montreal run. Borduas was born in 1905 in the village of Saint-Hilaire; his father was a carpenter and metal worker.

" Pellan entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1920. Colin S. Macdonald comments, "He enjoyed the understanding of the school director, Jean Bailleul and was able to choose his teachers and plan his own schedules.... The faculty was so impressed with his hard work that they allowed him possession of a key to the school studios to pursue his studies, beyond the hours of regular classes....Pellan did well in his studies winning prizes every year and in his final year he won all the prizes given for drawing, painting, sculpture, pen drawing, anatomy and sketching" (Dictionary of Canadian Artists, vol. 5 (Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 1977), p. 1567).

5 Pellan studied at the Ecole Superieure Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris, as well as at the studio of Lucien Simon, where he won first prize in painting in 1928. In 1935 he held an exhibition at the Academie Ranson which received very favourable reviews from the French press. In the 1935 Salon de l'art mural, Pellan won first prize for Instruments de musique (formerly titled Composition abstraite en rouge et noir); this exhibition also included work by Picasso, who Pellan visited on two occasions. In 1937, two of his works were purchased by the French Minister of Fine Arts for the Jeu de Paume and the Musee de Grenoble. In 1939, his work was included in an exhibition entitled "Paris Painters of Today," at the Museum of Modern Art, 80

and, at home, the reputation cof being a successful artist of international calibre.6 When World War II broke out in 1940,

Pellan returned to Quebec, where he was f§ted by the press and government alike; most importantly, he became the first living artist ever to be given a retrospective at the Musee de la

Province de Quebec, an exhibition which secured his reputation as the most important modern artist working in Quebec.7

Washington.

6 In his 1943 book on Pellan, Maurice Gagnon wrote, "Est-il autre peintre canadien qui puisse se flatter d'avoir ete reconnu des Gal6ries d'art, des Salons, des Musses? Est-il autre artiste canadien...dont les oeuvres aient e"te acquises, a cause de leur valeur meme, par des musses aussi importants que le Mus6e du Jeu de Paume a Paris, que celui de Grenoble; par des collectionneurs avertis: Mcllhenny en Irlande, la princesse Bassiano a Rome, Miherten en Allemagne, Georges Cordonnier en Cochinchine, Barnwell a New York, etc., etc . "Est-il beaucoup d'artistes chez nous qui savent leurs oeuvres en France, en Angleterre, en Irlande, en Belgique, en Allemagne, en Grdce, en Italie, au Bresil, aux £tats-Unis, aux Canada? Ceux qui estiment que le consensus universel est une consecration verront dans la diffusion m§me des oeuvres de Pellan une autorite qui est celle d'un grand peintre" (Pellan [Montreal.: l'Arbre, 1943], p. 11).

7 The speed with which the exhibition was organized is indicative of Pellan's status: within days of his arrival home, 161 of the 400 works he brought back from Paris had been selected for the exhibition at the Musee de la Province de Quebec in June 1940, which in October travelled to the Art Association of Montreal. The exhibition received very positive reviews; Robert Ayre's is typical: "If Alfred Pellan stays at home, he ought to be a vital influence in Canadian painting. He might have an effect on public taste, but if that is slow in developing, his example and the fact that the Provincial Museum has acquired some of his works may give courage to painters who have been trying to break away from the old established habits" ("Pellan's Exhibition 'A Painter's World of Shapes, Rhythms,'" The Montreal Standard, 12 October 1940). 81

By 1943, Pellan had secured a teaching position at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, where he came into contact with the liberal, intellectual upper middle class of francophone Quebec.8 Together with other members of the Ecole,

Pellan succeeded in displacing the conservative director of the school, Charles Maillard, and along with him, the academicism previously so characteristic of the school;9 it was his role in ousting Maillard which earned him the kudos of the Montreal intelligentsia, and which reinforced his reputation as a

8 Among these were Maurice Gagnon, who in 1943 published a book on Pellan; Jean-Charles Harvey, a newspaper editor; Marcel Parizeau, an architect and professor of architecture; and Dr. Paul Dumas, a prominent physician and art collector.

9 In 1943, Pellan became an instructor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, headed by the conservative artist and administrator, Charles Maillard. In May 1945, Fernand Leger visited Montreal and delivered a lecture attended by many of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts students, encouraging them to "oppose actively the restraining influence of every conservative element in the art world" (Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting, pp. 219-220); after the lecture, students returned to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts shouting "A bas Maillard!" As Leger was staying with Pellan during his visit, Pellan became connected with the students who had attended Leger's lecture and who challenged the authority of Maillard. The final confrontation occurred shortly after Leger's visit, and focused on the graduating exhibition of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The student works Pellan chose as the most important ones completed that year included a nude and a Last Supper, both of which the director deemed to be unacceptable and offensive to good taste; Pellan countered by submitting the nude covered with drapery and the Last Supper transformed into a "bacchanalian feast" (Harper, Painting in Canada, p. 333). On. the opening night, students blocked the exits of the building, refusing to let Maillard leave, and shouting, "A bas Maillard! Vive Pellan!" After this vote of non-confidence by his students, Maillard resigned, and was replaced by Marcel Parizeau, a much more liberal educator. 82

'progressive.'10 By 1948, Pellan occupied a secure niche within the group which had supported him in his 1945 power struggle with Maillard, namely, liberal intellectuals of Montreal. Given

Pellan's meteoric rise from an obscure family at the lower end of the social spectrum into a class which formed the intellectual elite of the province, it is understandable that

Pellan's ideological allegiances were primarily to the class towards which he had been striving all his life, for which his education had prepared him, and, even more importantly, which was now supportive of him.

The pattern of Borduas' career bears little resemblance to that of Pellan's. His early artistic education was geared towards a career without promise of international success, as he apprenticed with a religious painter, Ozias Leduc, in his home town of Saint-Hilaire, training for a career decorating small

10 See, for example, the cartoon in Le Canada, reproduced in Robert, Pellan, His Life and His Work, p. 51, which depicts Pellan as a dauntless modernist who triumphs over the forces of academicism. See also Maurice Gagnon Sur un etat actuel de la peinture canadienne (Montreal: SociSte des Editions Pascal, 194 5), pp. 91-92; Gagnon's thesis is that academicism is falling at the hands of the practioners of 'l'art vivant,' a proposition which he attempts to prove through the following discussion Pellan's work: "Enfin, Pellan, avec une envergure propre a lui seul, nous apporte la joie creatrice....La creation de Pellan est dynamique. Elle irradie d'un foyer puissant et se communique en enthousiastes productions. Sa vie est radio— activity insurpassable et qui le sera, chez nous, peut-etre pour toujours. De son oeuvre et de sa personne emane une force vitale 6minemment productrice: necessite de la peinture. Pellan nous apporte la joie, dans ce qu'elle a de plus £leve: sa fin creatrice" (Ibid., pp. 91-92). 83

parish churches.11 After completing his apprenticeship with

Leduc, Borduas attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, but achieved little distinction there.12 After several stints as a part time teacher in elementary schools in the Montreal

11 After a very rudimentary formal education in Saint-Hilaire, Borduas began to study with Ozias Leduc, the town's major painter, around 1921; in 1953, Borduas described his training with Leduc: "At the time of my first encounter with him he was already the full master of his art, and, by virtue of his commissions, busy at work on iconography, liturgy and Christian symbolism.... I already knew about his painting through the tiny church of Saint-Hilaire which he had profusely decorated.... From my birth until I was fifteen these were the only pictures that I saw. You cannot imagine my pride in having experienced this unique source of pictorial poetry at a time when the smallest impressions leave their mark and decide the direction our critical sense will take without my knowing it....From my first contacts with Leduc, like many others, I was seduced by his simplicity, by his extreme modesty, and maybe even more by the lightning quality of his mind. Foolishly, for many years...I tried to emulate him in his too beautiful painting" (Borduas, Ecrits/Writings, pp. 131-132; originally published in French as "Quelques pens£es sur l'oeuvre d'amour et de r£ve de M. Ozias Leduc," Canadian Art 10 [September 1953]: 158-161, 168). After a year of study with Leduc, during which time he mainly copied reproductions of religious paintings dating from the Renaissance to the 20th century, Borduas began to work on his first project with Leduc: from June 1922 to March 1923, the two worked on the decorations of the Chapelle de 1'Eveche in Sherbrooke. During his stay in Sherbrooke, Borduas attended night classes at the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Sherbrooke, on the advice of Leduc.

12 Borduas enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal in September 1923, again acting on the advice of Leduc; it was, in fact, through Leduc's connections with the Montreal art world that Borduas was accepted by the school. With the exception of the summer of 1925, Borduas continued to assist Leduc on church decoration projects during the school holidays. He graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1927. In the exhibition of work at the end of the academic year, Borduas presented a decorative scheme for an imaginary chapel, an effort which earned him second prize in the 'decorative' section; this was the only prize he won while at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. 84

area,13 Borduas went to France to study under Maurice Denis, staying there almost two years; his artistic interests led him to study contemporary French religious painters and secular painters of the 19th century, but unlike Pellan, he failed to connect with members of the modernist movement in Paris.1"

After returning to Quebec, Borduas was unable to secure any ecclesiastical commissions, and taught, again on a part-time basis, for the Catholic School Commission of Montreal.15

13 Borduas worked for the Catholic School Commission of Montreal, teaching part-time at the Champlain and Montcalm elementary schools during the 1927-28 academic year. In September 1928 he was transferred briefly to the Plateau School, a much more favourable post in his opinion, but after only two days on the job he was transferred back to his old schools; feeling that he has been unjustly treated by the School Commission, Borduas resigned in protest.

14 In November 1928, Borduas went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Arts Sacre under Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallieres. He left the school in April 1929, and after a brief holiday in Brittany, worked on decorations for the church in the village of Rambucourt until September, when he went to another job in Xivray-Marmoisan, where he worked until the end of the year. Upon his return to Paris in January 1930, Borduas visited several galleries, making brief notes of these visits; although he visited exhibitions of work by Matisse, Manet, Picasso and Puvis de Chavannes, the artist most frequently mentioned in his notes is Renoir. It was in Borduas' autobiography, as well, that Renoir is cited as the artist who made the greatest impact on him while he was in Paris: "What a marvel and what a lesson!" (Projections Liberantes, p. 87).

15 Upon his return from France in June 1930, Borduas assisted Leduc at the church of St. Agnes in Lachine from September to January 19'31 . In 1931, it appears that Borduas may have worked on renovations at Notre Dame, Montreal, although it cannot be established with certainty that this was the case (see Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 47). In August and September he completed six decorative panels on historical subjects for a ski cabin on Mount Royal. From October 1931 to June 1932, Borduas worked on decorations for the church at Rougemont, a commission he obtained through the graces of Leduc. In the spring he planned to open a decorative arts studio, but this project failed, as did his attempt to secure commissions 85

Borduas regarded this period of his life with great bitterness, and wrote of it in his autobiography:

The drawings by my pupils from the Externat Classique...are my only confirmation that the road I follow must lead one day to victory—be it a hundred years away. Everything else is a chimera, an illusion, a foolish unrealizable hope. Work at the studio is back-breaking. After ten years of obstinate labour, hardly ten canvases worth saving.16

Borduas' analysis of his career during the 1930s springs from a sense of betrayal by the Church, which failed to provide him a means to put into practice the fruit of the years of training as an ecclesiastical painter and which paid him meagre wages as a school teacher. In 1937, Borduas' professional and financial situation marginally improved, as he secured a post at the Ecole du Meuble; in terms of professional status, however, the Ecole du Meuble remained a poor second to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, for it was devoted to the instruct ion of commercial, rather than

'fine' art.17 Despite the friendships which he made at the Ecole du Meuble with the liberal intellectuals who gave him "confident

throughout the rest of the year. In the fall of 1932, he obtained a part-time job at the Externat Classique Saint-Sulpice (known as the College Andr£ Grasset since 1941), a position which he kept until 1937, when he got a job at the Ecole du Meuble.

16 Borduas, Projections Liberantes, p. 88.

17 On the status of the ficole du Meuble, see Fournier and Laplante, "Borduas et 1'automatisme," pp. 109-125; see also Jean-Marie Gauvreau, "L'Ecole du Meuble, son esprit--son but," Royal Society of Canada: Proceedings and Transactions, 3d. ser. 44 (June 1950) : 19-31. 86

sympathy and indispensable warmth,"18 an undercurrent of rancour runs through his account of his years at the school in

Projections Libirantes;

I,also knew very well that it was only through lack of enough imagination to invent a sound pretext for my dismissal that you [Jean-Marie Gauvreau, the school's director] kept me against your will—you would have liked to eliminate me as early as the Dominion Gallery exhibition in 1943. After that, behind my back you never stopped holding inquest after inquest to this end....In September of 1946, the director, Gauvreau-the-scoundrel ...without consulting the Pedagogical Council, without even warning me, cut out my role in the decoration and documentation courses.... The situation at the school, which had not been easy, now became difficult.19

Throughout Borduas' lament about the mistreatment he received at the Ecole du Meuble lurks the anxiety that he was not fully accepted at that institution; he felt alienated from and persecuted by those controlling it. By 1948 Borduas had penetrated only the periphery of the liberal, professional class, but his lack of formal, secular artistic education prevented him from advancing beyond being a part-time instructor at a second-string school. Trapped within a system he felt mistreated by, unable to receive ecclesiastical commissions, and without hope of significantly ameliorating his position, in the late thirties Borduas became increasingly critical of the institutions which he regarded as having betrayed and thwarted him: the Church and the Ecole du Meuble. Although during the early and mid-l940s, Borduas enjoyed a certain degree of

18 Borduas, Projections Liberantes, p. 108.

19 Ibid., p. 105, 107. 87

solidarity with the liberal intelligentsia in his critique of

the conservative status quo, by the late forties his views began

to conflict with rather than conform to theirs; through his

growing understanding of surrealism and his cult of the

Revolution, a split with them appeared invevitable.20 For an

artist enamoured with the Revolution and critical of the current

social and political structure, involvement with the Communist

Party was an obvious alternative. Despite numerous contacts

20 The locus of the tension was primarily the CAS. Conflicts between the younger members of the Society and the executive over admission requirements of the Society and the jurying of exhibitions tended to involve Borduas, as most of the young members were his students and were perceived as his allies; as Borduas himself noted, "De 1943 a 48, sur 20 nouveaux membres de la C.A.S., 16 sont mes anciens eleves. Onze des 16 n'ont jamais eu d'autre enseignement que celui de l'Ecole du meuble" (cited in Perreault, "La Societe d'Art Contemporain," p. 85) . Problems between Borduas and the rest of the Society existed as early as 1944, as is revealed by correspondence between Fernand Leduc, Guy Viau, and Borduas. On November 3, .1944, Leduc wrote to Viau that "Borduas devra tres probablement quitter la C.A.S. II ne peut vraiment continuer la lutte, mais cette fois contre les jeunes. II y a eu un jury pour admission de nouveau membres. Morrisset a e"t§ accepte par 'charite' alors que des croutes....Borduas a du s'engueuler avec Jacques de Tonnancour, qui est devenu un cretin parfait et d'une assurance!" (quoted in Bernard Teyssedre, "Fernand Leduc, peintre et theoricien du surr^alisme a Montreal," La Barre du Jour, No. 17 [January-August 1969]: 246T! Three days later, Viau wrote to Borduas, saying, "Fernand me dit des difficultes que vous avez rencontre a la C.A.S Nous devrions quitter cette societe sans attendre aucun pretexte, et pour la raison que c'est pas interessant" (quoted in Perreault, "La Societe d'Art Contemporain," p. 80). Two weeks later, Leduc again wrote to Viau about the continuing problems between Borduas and the Society's older members: "Borduas a eu une engueulade avec Lyman a mon sujet; il lui a signifie que sa societe n'apportait rien aux jeunes et que probablement ces derniers s'en separeraient" (22 November 1944, quoted in Teyssedre, "Fernand Leduc," p. 246). 88

with the-Communists in Montreal (largely through other

Automatistes), Borduas ultimately rejected Communism.21 Bereft of a specific group with which he could join forces, Borduas nonetheless moved closer at the ideological level to the critical position of the Quebec Liberal Party, itself indebted to the ideology of the new liberalism in English Canada, and disseminated in Quebec through such newspapers as Le Canada and

Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe).

Concepts associated with francophone and anglophone liberalism form the major tenets of the manifestoes issued by the groups led by Pellan and Borduas in 1948; like the ideologies on which they are dependent, the dominant preoccupation of both manifestoes is freedom, the issue which divided both the Montreal avant-garde and its public in 1948.

The Prisme d'Yeux released its manifesto at its inaugural exhibition on February 4, and again at its second exhibition in

May.22 This brief document, which was only distributed to the invited guests at the group's openings, associates apoliticism with freedom:

We seek a painting freed.from all accident of time and place, and of restrictive ideology; and conceived

21 See pp. 132-135 below.

22 The first exhibition, held in the Art Centre (the annex of the Art Association of Montreal), was for one night only, 4 February 1948. The exhibition attracted many luminaries in the Montreal art world, including Maurice Gagnon, Jean Simard, Mme. Hector Perrier, Henri Girard, Jean LeMoyne, Robert £lie, Roger Grigon, Judith Jasmin, Phillip Surrey, and Pierre-Carl Dubuc. The second exhibition was held 15-29 May 1948 at the Librairie Tranquille in Montreal. 89

without the interference of literary, political, philosophical, or other influences which can adulterate its expression and sully its purity.23

This passage of the manifesto is a crucial one, for it not only

received the greatest positive attention from the liberal

francophone press,2" but also contains a variety of distinct,

but interconnected ideas. To a liberal reader of the manifesto

in 1948, the group's vilification of art entangled with

'restrictive ideology' signified a rejection of politically

involved art; in that year, liberal francophone intellectuals

characterized non-ideological culture as apolitical culture, the

creation of which they regarded as the ultimate goal of the

civilization. Maurice Blain, for example, casts freedom as the

object and most laudable product of literature, while insisting

23 Prisme d'Yeux manifesto, quoted in Robert, Pellan, His Life and His Work, p. 49, 51. All citations of the manifesto are drawn from Robert.

20 See, for example, Guy Gagnon, "Pellan et Parent re"velent hier soir 'Prisme d'Yeux,'" Le Droit, 6 February 1948, p. 4; "La jeune peinture elle forme un nouveau groupe qui se dit ouvert a toutes les tendances," La Presse, 6 February 1948, p. 4; Jean Simard, "Autour du Prisme d'Yeux," Notre Temps, 14 February 1948; "Le monde Strange," La Presse, May 1948; Madeleine Gariepy, "Exposition Prisme d'Yeux," Notre Temps, 22 May 1948, p. 5; M. Troui-llard, "Prisme d'Yeux," La Revue Moderne, May 1948, pp. 25-26. See also: "La peinture 'Prisme d'Yeux' ou la peinture pure," La Presse, 5 February 1948; "Prisme d'Yeux est consacre," Le Canada, 5 February 1948; "Nouveau mouvement de peinture," La Patrie, 5 February 1948; "Pour nous en faire voir de toutes le couleurs," Le Canada, 6 February 1948; "Prisme d'Yeux name of New Art Movement," The Gazette (Montreal), 7 February 1948, p. 22; Jacques Delisle, "Un nouveau groupe de peintres modernes: les Prismes [sic] d'Yeux," Montreal-Matin, 7 February 1948; "Le Prisme d'Yeux," La Presse, 15 May 1948; "Prisme d'Yeux ouvre l'oeil," Le Canada, 15 May 1948; Berthelot Brunet, "Notre peinture vrai et les vieux modernes," La Patrie, 22 May 1948; "Expositions," Le Clairon, 28 May 1948. 90

that cultural freedom remain immune from the solicitations of

politics:

II ne s'agit plus...d'une acceptation de consigne, ou du service d'une formation politique....La vocation r6elle de l'ecrivain nous apparait comme un effort de depassement et de liberation.25

As Blain's words suggest, apolitical culture was seen as the

antithesis of the culture of 'engagement,'26 which was perceived

as allied with communism, and was therefore suspect. Communism

was construed as hostile to cultural, political, and personal

freedom; writing in Le Quartier Latin, the student newspaper of

the Universite de Montreal, Guy Cormier summarized the position

of francophone liberals when he declared, "Nous ne pouvons

suivre Marx. Notre conscience y repugne et qui plus est notre

intelligence y repugne....L'International russe [a un] caractere

fasciste."27 Despite the expressly political complexion of the

anti-communist debate, intellectuals who advocated a strict

separation of art and politics frequently infused cultural

25 Maurice Blain, "Engagement de la literature," (Part II) Le Quartier Latin, 26 October 1948, p. 4.

26 'Engaged' artists were seen as those who used their work as a vehicle for political change, generally towards the left. The validity of engagement in the realm of culture was debated on both the left and the right in Quebec in the late forties; see, for example, the Gelinas-Henault debate mentioned in note 115. See also: Addle Lauzon and Raymond-Marie Leger, "Le z6ro et l'infini," Le Quartier Latin, 29 October 1948, p. 5; Maurice Blain, "Engagement de la literature," (Part I), Le Quartier Latin, 22 October 1948, p. 4; Adele Lauzon, review of Le Confort Intellectuel by Marcel Aym6, Le Quartier Latin, 6 November 1949, p. 4-5.

27 Guy Cormier, "Propriete privee et proprigte commune," Le Quartier Latin, 16 March 1948, p. 3. 91

commentaries with anti-communist sentiments, as is revealed in a review of Sartre's Mains Sales:

Le Parti immuable...avance, recule; commande, d^commande; recompense, tue; tue, recompense....Le Parti est alors apparu sous son vrai jour, c'est-^-dire une individuation despotique et orgueilleuse.28

While art and literature supportive of communism were denounced as politicized, and therefore corrupted culture, books which castigated communism were hailed as epoch-making statements in defence of freedom;29 while the fusion of politics and art signified the sacrifice of aesthetic freedom, the conflation of anti-communism and culture did not.

The Prisme d'Yeux's condemnation of 'ideologically' narrow aesthetics, however, also relates to their dispute with the

Automatistes. Pellan and his followers denounced Borduas' leadership of the CAS because they regarded it as the signalling of the end of the Society's pluralist character; they feared that the CAS would be purged of all those who refused to countenance Automatism, because they believed Borduas and his group would remain committed to a fixed theoretical position without considering other issues, among them, aesthetic pluralism, or even aesthetics per se. This charge had been levelled at the Automatistes before; Maurice Gauthier, for

28 Jacques Parent, "Mains Sales et communisme," Le Quartier Latin, 16 November 1948, p. 3.

29 Books by Malraux and Koestler were particular favourites; see, for example, Lauzon and Leger, "Le Zero et 1'Infini." 92

instance wrote in December 1947, "Ils ne de'passent jamais la theorie, la technique, le surrealisme graphique pour atteindre a l'art."30 The Automatistes' attitude towards the non-Automatiste members of the CAS only exacerbated their reputation for being impatient with art or aesthetics other than their own; as F.-M. Gagnon has observed:

Cette perspective ne devait pas £tre envisagee avec beaucoup d'enthousiasme par les autres peintresqui ressentaient comme de la pretension intolerable, l'attitude de plus en plus exclusive et intransigeante des Automatistes.31

The Prisme d'Yeux's desire to create an art unmarked by temporal or spatial considerations was also a rejection of the specific form of art which most obviously bore the traces of time and place: regionalism.32 Regionalist art, so popular in

Quebec in the 30s and during the war, was not only conservative stylistically, but also politically;33 as it made a cult of the land and of rural life, regionalism intersected with the Union

Nationale's contention that the land provided Quebeckers with

30 Maurice Gauthier, "Riopelle, Mousseau, des Revolutionnaires," Le Quartier Latin; 16 December 1947, p. 3.

31 Gagnon, Borduas, Biographie critique, p. 232.

32 cf. comments of Guy Gagnon in "Pellan et Parent revelent hier soir,": "Il [Prisme d'Yeux] n'a pas du tout 1'intention de stimuler un regionalisme intellectuelle" (p. 4).

33 Popular regionalist artists included Clarence Gagnon, Adrien Hebert, Andre Bieler. For a list of artists esteemed by conservatives, see Bergeron, Art et Bolchevisme, pp. 88-134. For an analysis of the components of regionalist art, see Francois-Marc Gagnon, "Painting in Quebec in the Thirties," Journal of Canadian Art History 3 (Fall 1976), especially pp. 5-12. 93

their primary sense of identity, with their traditions, and with

their community.3" While the group declared itself to be in

opposition to any kind of regionalism and in favour of a totally-.

liberated form of art, as meaningful to "the cave man as to the

most contemporary of 20th century man,"35 in reality the Prisme

d'Yeux artists were almost exclusively dependent on a datable

and geographically specific style, the School of Paris;36 as

Francois-Marc Gagnon has justly observed,

Jacques de Tonnancour [author of the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto] claimed the right of free expression for many individuals having in common a desire for independence; but at the same time this desire was to be expressed through the vocabulary of the Ecole de Paris.3 7

The Prisme d'Yeux's celebration of French culture was also

shared by liberal francophone intellectuals who believed that

through the infusion of contemporary French culture, Quebec's culture could be 'universalized.' Liberals' respect for the culture of modern France is significant, for although they

3" Duplessis often connected these concepts as follows: "si nous vivons aujourd'hui pour poursuivre une mission belle et noble (diffuser la langue francaise et la religion catholique en Amerique), c'est grace a 1'agriculture," (Le Devoir, 7 September 1949). For further information on this point, see Richard Desrosiers, "Duplessis et 1'ideologic dominante," Revue d'Histoire de 1'Amerique Francaise 25 (December 1941): 385-388.

35 Prisme d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 40.

36 Lucien Morin acknowledged this debt: "Je suivis le mouvement de l'Ecole de Paris et me renseignai le plus possible, par les revues et les publications artistiques, sur les representants de la tendance nouvelle" (quoted by Gilles Marchand, "Lucien Morin," Le Quartier Latin, 17 October 1948, p.

37 Gagnon, "Pellan, Borduas and the Automatistes," p. 54. 94

identified with the conservative political status quo, they distinguished themselves from both it and conservative culture through their position on modernity, Quebec's relations with

France, and internationalism. Liberals considered themselves to be nationalists, but believed that their conception of nationalism accommodated, and even welcomed, the incorporation of elements of modern French culture, unlike cultural conservatives whose nationalism was coloured by a measure of xenophobia.38 Pierre Lefebvre's comments illustrate how francophone liberals perceived their relationship to cultural conservatives, as well as to international—that is,

French--culture:

Il est ind6niable que certains milieux canadiens-francais entretiennent a l'6gard de la France contemporaine une hostilite qui peut s'elever jusqu'd la fureur pour peu qu'elle trouve de quoi s'alimenter....Pour ces inquisiteurs benevoles, la France est en etat de peche mortel depuis 1789 Aux yeux de nos Savonarole, la vie en France n'est qu'une immense partouse qu'ils gvoquent longuement avec des

38 See, for example, Rene Bergeron, Art et Bolchevisme (Montreal: Fides, 1946), p. 8: "Les m£thodes des flibustiers de 'l'art nouveau' ressemblent en tout a celles des marxistes. Par exemple, c'est au nom de la science et de la liberty qu'ils assomment ceux qui croient a ces dogmes, S une morale et a une discipline. C'est au nom de 1'internationalisme qu'ils font la guerre au 'r£gionalisme' ou a l'art patriotique." Pierre Blondin commented on the reasons for such hostility towards international culture in "A propos d'Aragon et d''un M. Duhamel.'" "Notre elite intellectuelle n'a jamais beaucoup aim£ la France lib^rale et r£publicaine. Nos francophiles en sont encore a Louis XIV et au Grand Siecle. Au pays de Quebec, on n'a pas encore avale" la revolution de 89. Alors, rien de surprenant dans le fait que nos intellectuels se detournent davantage de la France maintenant que ses tendances a gauche s'accentuent" (Combat, 15 February 1947, p. 2). 95

bouffees d'indignation delectable qui les soulage de tous leurs refoulements....Ces acces de xlnophobie n'auraient aucun caractere de gravite s'ils visaient tout autre pays que la France. Mais notre situation presente exige que rien ne vienne entraver les ^changes culturels que nous entretenons presentement avec la mdre patrie.39

In the minds of Quebec's liberal intellectuals, modernity was to be achieved only through a continuation of Quebec's historic dependence on 'la mere patrie' for its norms of 'high culture.'

While the Prisme d'Yeux's repudiation of art marked by

'time and place' distanced them from the consumers of conservative culture, it equally distinguished them from the proponents of the culture of engagement, which, as has already been noted,"0 was imbued with distinctly Marxist associations in

1948; moreover, because engagement implied contact with a specific historical moment, aesthetic purity became sullied, aesthetic excellence an impossibility. In an article condemning engagement, for example, Maurice Blain comments that truly liberated art vitiates the ascendancy of history, and enters the realm of the eternal and universal:

La vie int£rieure de la litt£rature trahit pr£cisement cette resistance au mouvement de l'histoire. Elle tend tout entiere a transcender la situation qui l'a fait naitre et les determinations sociales qui ont confere son caractere propre pour se fixer dans une autre dimension de l'espace humain. Son signe definitif est celui de la duree, de l'universel: de la condition humaine."1

39 Pierre Lefebvre, "Le Complexe Francophobien," Le Quartier Latin, 26 October 1948, p. 1.

"° See above, p.90.

"' Blain, "Engagement de la literature," (Part II), p. 3. 96

Although Blain's repudiation of engagement stems from anti-communist anxieties, his defense of culture which is timeless, universal, and emblematic of the human condition is due to another set of considerations altogether. Francophone intellectuals like Blain were in the anomalous position of defending both French and universal culture; culture which was palpably modern, yet undatable; culture produced by a few men but which incarnated the concerns of all mankind. This series of contradictions arises out of the attempt on the part of critics to naturalise their ideology and their cultural predilections arising out of it. By describing culture which is self-consciously 'disengaged,' which is modern, and which is

French in terms of 'universality,' critics not only subverted the real attributes of that culture, but also rendered their debatable conclusions less vulnerable to challenge.

Burdened with the task of creating art capable of resolving the contradictions between the universal and the geographically specific, the eternal and the temporally precise, the Prisme d'Yeux imposed another constraint on their art, that it be

"conceived without literary, political, philosophical or other influences which can adulterate its purity and sully its expression";"2 it was a risky proposition to include identifiable content in art, with connections beyond the frame of the picture. Why was the group so contemptuous--and afraid--of content in their paintings? Why did 'purity' in

42 Prisme d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 49, 51. 97

painting acquire such currency with the group? The answers lie, in part, with the meanings attached to the verbs used by the

Prisme d'Yeux, 'to sully' and 'to adulterate,' and their meaning in 1948. Adulteration, impurity, and tyranny were interchangeable with communism in the political vocabulary of

Quebec in 1948, as communism and its multiple means of propagandizing itself were viewed as corrupting, dirty, and diseased:

Il semble bien que certains milieux...sont infectes [de communisme]....Trop de gens, naifs ou aveugles, voudraient traiter le communisme comme une autre maladie sociale. Pourtant des centaines d'exemples devraient leur ouvrir les yeux sur les effets desastreux d'une propagande communiste.*3

Contentless, unadulterated, pure art could flourish, therefore, only under social conditions which were hostile to communism; further, it could be created only by an artist who remained committed to the halcyon era of 'art for art's sake':

Le seul engagement de l'artiste est celui de son oeuvre, poetique ou metaphysique...Si enfin, la liberte de l'ecrivain doit tenir compte d'autres parametres--et c'est bien la tentation de l'ecole engagee--....la chance du chef d'oeuvre est presque perdue."u

The preservation of liberty through elimination of content, which the Prisme d'Yeux and liberal critics such as Blain advocated, may appear at first to be a relatively

43 "Complicite," Relations 8 (August 1948): 221-22. See also Andre Laurendeau, "Campagne negative," Le Devoir, 10 February 1948, p. 1.

" Maurice Blain, "Physiognomie de l'art. Approximations," Notre Temps, 17 April 1948, p. 4. 98

straightforward problem, but in reality, it is unresolvable.

Even if an artist were to somehow disentangle all subject

matter, all style, all references to any subject other than a

narrowly defined, purely formal aesthetic, a statement about art

and its relation to and function in society (essentially a

political statement) would remain. The naive hope of the Prisme

d'Yeux and their public that art could escape contact with

realms beyond pure visual sensation indicates how truly

desperate they felt the political situation to be; when any mark

on the canvas became fodder for politicized culture, escapism

into the past, into the happier days of the Ecole de Paris,

seemed to be the most propitious route.

The Prisme d'Yeux's disdain for politicized art gained

prominence in the press, but so too did the section of the manifesto which insists that the toleration of diversity secures

liberation. Like the CAS, the Prisme d'Yeux pledged itself to

eclecticism, and to

that [art] which sees all paths as open, including paths which take opposite directions but which, like night and day, fire and water, are all equally possible and true."5

The manifesto suggests that acceptance of contradictory aesthetic precepts guaranteed freedom, while commitment to a

single set of artistic principles mitigated against it.

Followers of aesthetic theories unreceptive to pluralism were

summarily dismissed by the Prisme d'Yeux as "galley slaves, tied

*5 Prisme .d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 49. to a theory they feel compelled to prove, rowing blindly without hope of each knowing where they are."*6 In light of the Prisme d'Yeux's attack on the Automatistes' 'narrow dogmatism' at the

CAS meeting, their commitment to diversity was a fortuitous means of defining themselves in opposition to Borduas' group.

The Prisme d'Yeux's equation of eclecticism and freedom, however, was not entirely a strategem of self-definition. The antonym of eclecticism in 1948 was 'dogmatism,' an attribute equated with communism; to francophone liberals, communism's dogmatism lay in its intolerance of ideas at odds with its own political aspirations. In contrast, in democracies, eclecticism, which fostered tolerance for a variety of views, was the norm, and Quebec at mid-century was perceived as a testament to this axiom; for example, the editors of Le Devoir noted that the culture of Quebec could tolerate a multiplicity of viewpoints because "nous ne vivons pas en dictature."*7

While the Prisme d'Yeux's defence of eclecticism initially appears to be motivated by a desire to remain unimpeded by the claims of a specific political or artistic group, and despite the fact that it was characterized by a reluctance to adopt a specific position on various issues, eclecticism in 1948 did, in

*6 Ibid.

*7 "Lettres au Devoir. NDLR," Le Devoir, 23 September 1948, p. 5. "~ 100

fact, denote a position taken: through their eloquent sil• ences,48 the Prisme d'Yeux became aligned with a group having identifiable political and cultural biases, and which defended diversity no less ardently than Pellan and his followers, namely, francophone liberalism.

The name of the group, 'Prisme d'Yeux' especially found favour among liberal intellectuals, for it suggests not merely toleration of, but also refraction of a multiplicity of aesthetic visions. Madeleine Gariepy praised the group's choice of name:

Prisme d'Yeux, c'est-a-dire des regards differents jet£s sur des realites diverses dans une lumiere qui est autre. Prisme d'Yeux, symbole plastique de la diversite des experiences humaines et des transpositions multiples qu'elles donnent dans le domainede l'art.*9

Guy Gagnon, writing in Le Droit, expressed similar approval of the new vanguard's name and ethos, noting that "'Prismes [sic] d'Yeux' r£unit divers elements, aussi differents que la vie les fait."50 The diversity of the group was thus connected to such semantic constructs as 'life,' 'human experience,' and 'the individual,' all of which were central to francophone

*8 The Prisme d'Yeux seem to have (somewhat naively) hoped that by remaining silent on most issues, they would be protected against politicization. Their muteness extended to matters relating to politics and art; in contrast to the Automatistes, Prisme d'Yeux members seldom submitted articles to newspapers and magazines for publication, nor did they write letters to the editor.

*9 Gariepy, "Exposition Prisme d'Yeux," p. 5.

50 Guy Gagnon, "Pellan et Parent revelent hier soir," p. 4. 101

liberalism's anti-communist arguments. To these intellectuals, communism stood as a denial of the individual and his unique experience of life, because it created a tabula rasa of

individual personalities in its quest for establishing the

'dictatorship of the proletariat'; furthermore, in the shadow of party machinery, the individual personality counted for little, as "une seule chose importe: le Parti et son regne."51

Moreover, the existence of the individual living under communist rule was constantly mediated by the invasions of the Party into his daily activities, and life became a simple matter of survival in a Kafkaesque world:

Le communisme apparait done comme un jeu fort complique, (soumis a d'innombrables fluctuations de regies) dans lequel l'engage doit rechercher avant tout a devenir habile joueur....1'homme' communiste nous apparait reelement comme un homme traque.52

Communism's commitment to a collectivist, single class society not only destroyed the possibility of the individual developing

in a unique way, but also eradicated the potential for social diversification at the class level:

En donnant comme but ultime a la revolution, le regne proletarien et la fatalite economique, [les communistes] ont froidement et volontairement ignore la part de l'individu. L'unique guide de ces hommes dans leur entreprise gigantesque fut le machiav^lique principe que dit que 'la fin justifie les moyens.'53

In 1948, therefore, the notion of diversity became politicized,

51 Lauzon and Leger, "Le zero a l'infini," p. 5.

52 Parent, "Mains Sales et Communisme," p. 3.

53 Lauzon and Leger, "Le ze"ro a l'infini," p. 5. 102

despite the fact that it originally surfaced as a part of a quest for a depoliticized culture. Eclecticism became the standard liberal solution to a variety of political problems, and stood as the means by which the emotional, intellectual, social and political rights of the individual could be protected; it stood as an ideal against which the political iniquities of communism could be measured:

Pour nous, nous croyons encore a la democratie, a la pensee libre, multiforme, tStonnante, progressive. Nous pr£f6rons une recherche, si penible qu'elle soit, au silence mortel des pays etouffes....L'anti- communisme, nous en sommes encore, si 1'on entend par la opposition a une conception exclusivement materialiste de la vie, mutilant 1'homme dans son destin spirituel.5"

The arguments in favour of the superiority of the diversity of the political system of contemporary Quebec, however idealistic and altruistic they superficially appear, are essentially a defense of the current mode of social organization which was based on class stratification; that this defense was carried out by the beneficiaries of the class structure—the educated upper middle class—diminishes the possibility that diversity was celebrated for its intrinsic merits alone.55

In matters of culture liberal intellectuals also supported diversity, a concept they equated with modernity and progress:

Differentes tendances de l'art moderne y etant representees.... La diversite, c'est bien une

5" Camille Laurin, "Greves, greves, greves," Le Quartier Latin, 10 October 1947, p. 1.

55 On pluralism as a concept beneficial to a dominant class, see Sartre, Search for a Method, p. 19. 103

caractiristique de l'art moderne, chaque artiste trouvant beaucoup de ses ressources de la vie interieure, consciente ou subconsciente.56

Eclecticism was valuable because it rendered a form of art—modernity—more palatable to a public which was otherwise hostile to it:

Il [Prisme d'Yeux] est ainsi prouv£ a un public trop souvent mefiant que.l'art moderne n'est pas une realite indivisible qu'il doit accepter ou rejeter en bloc, mais au contraire qu'il y existe plusieurs tendances et surtout des artistes trds differents les uns des autres.57

Why were liberal intellectuals so anxious to have modern art supported by the general public? The answer hinges on their position in the social scheme. As arbiters of high culture, liberals sanctioned a form of art alien to those sectors of society whose political and aesthetic ideologies were different to their own; at the same time, however, they naively believed that given sufficiently broad choices, the public could learn to understand and support art which did not reflect their own values. This form of populism, however, carries with it some unsavoury implications. By arguing in favour of the widespread assimilation of an aesthetic conveying values peculiar to liberals and supportive of their position in society, liberals were simply consolidating that elevated p'osition.

The positive liberal reaction to the Prisme d'Yeux's diversity reverses the position which they took on this issue with respect to the CAS; while the Prisme d'Yeux's eclecticism

56 Gariepy, "Exposition" Prisme d'Yeux," p. 5.

57 Ibid. 1 04

signified a manifestation of the group's commitment to freedom, the aesthetic melange which constituted the CAS denoted tenebrous artistic goals and aesthetic aimlessness. The question of modernity and liberals' perception of their relationship to it, clarifies their apparently erratic assessment of the issue of aesthetic diversification. Liberal critics regarded themselves as ardent supporters of progressive culture, and consequently, found it difficult to countenance those forms of traditional artistic expression which stood as a visual reproach to modernism; because the CAS contained conservative elements,58 liberal critics regarded their presence as an obstacle to the entrenchment of 'progressive' forms of art, and therefore indirectly criticized the Society for tolerating these members by questioning its aesthetic coherence.

It was, however, also the presence of unconscionably radical elements,--that is, the Automatistes--which also caused these intellectuals to regard the CAS as alarmingly fragmented; if diversity provoked such a polarization, or if it favoured inclusion of artists anathema to their outlook, liberals abandoned their allegiance to it. On the contrary, liberal intellectuals saw the stylistic diversity of the Prisme d'Yeux as existing entirely within the genus of one major aesthetic category, modernity, one which was acceptable to them:

58 These artists painted conventional subjects such as landscape, still life, and portraiture with a high degree of naturalism, and included such artists as Philip Surrey, Eric Goldberg, Jori Smith, Allan Harrison, Miller Brittain, Piercy Younger, and Fanny Wiselberg. 105

La premiere exposition temoignait d'une grande diversite...aucun des artistes representes, sans doute, ne s'en tient a la description pure.59

Thus, for liberal critics diversity was only acceptable if it occurred within one spectrum of available modes of artistic

representation, namely, modernity as it had been defined in

Paris during the first half of the century. The liberal alliance with the forces of 'advanced' art and its impatience with noticeably traditional styles can be viewed as a function of the ideological constraints of francophone liberalism: partisans of conservative politics at the conceptual and pragmatic level, but preoccupied with an image of themselves as progressives, liberals papered over their illiberal politics by redoubling their defense of such ostensible cultural modernists as the Prisme d'Yeux.

Despite his censure of politicized art, Pellan believed that art should have some kind of connection with society:

Art should be a healthy by-product of society....The great artist echoes the dominating social accents of his age....I myself want to paint for people.60

Pellen's conception of the relationship of art to society is rather more political than would be anticipated coming from such a stridently apolitical artist: 'dominating social accents' is an innocuous synonym for 'dominant ideology,' which does not become dominant through any intrinsic virtue or merit, but

59 "La Jeune Peinture: Elle forme un nouveau groupe," p. 4 .

60 Pellan quoted by Paul Duval, "The Work of Alfred Pellan," Here and Now 1 (January 1949): 53, 54. 106

rather as a result of historical and economic factors which are uninfluenced by considerations of inherent worth. Because ideologies are political in both partisan and non-partisan senses, Pellan is really advocating an art which is implicitly political, implicitly supportive of the status quo.

Like Pellan, liberal critics in Quebec perceived art as modified by the society surrounding it, although they continued to advocate apoliticism in art. Gariepy, for instance, stated that

La peinture est 1'expression plastique d'une Epoque troubl§e et inquiete ou 1'homme se trouve aux prises avec des problemes nouveaux et difficiles.61

Like most liberal critics, and like Pellan himself, Gariepy expected art to remain apolitical while responding to the anxieties of the contemporary world. What both Pellan and francophone liberals overlooked, however, was that an artist's response to historical conditions was affected by social position, and as a consequence, specific ideological considerations, both of which had political ramifications.

Thus, although liberal critics and Pellan categorically rejected art which was overtly political, they approved of art which was politicized insofar as it carried ideological messages compatible with their own; as long as such art carried messages mimetic of their own ideology, however, liberals could not recognize either the ideological or political content of such

61 Gariepy, "A la Societe d'Art Contemporain," p. 6. 1 07

works.62 When such critics as Simard wrote favourably of the

Prisme d'Yeux, and accorded to it the role of expanding "la connaissance de l'art, d'en favoriser 1' appre"c iation et de collaborer a la creation d'un commun langage de vision"63 they

facilitated the entrenchment of the liberal ideology via the

Prisme d'Yeux, thereby 'naturalising' their ideological constructs at the cultural level: by arguing in favour of art which spoke for and to francophone liberalism, but by presenting

it as containing universally valid messages, liberal

intellectuals both rationalized and consolidated their position

in the social scheme, masking the contradictions between the

image of permanence and inevitability their ideology created and

62 Or they did not want to recognize the dependence of art on ideology; cf. Werekmeister, "Marx on Ideology and Art," "Looking back on the art that did and does exist, the philosopher's task, according to Marx, will be to point out its constant estrangement from its ideal or Utopian perfection. He will demonstrate that the 'semblance of autonomy' projected into ideological products is by definition a fictitious one. As an exception, the notion of an autonomy of art is not fictitious; on the contrary, it is fundamental for both the art of the Greeks and the art spontaneously created by emancipated individuals of the future. But history shows art tangled in ideological concerns. Time and again, it can be shown how the semblance of its autonomy under these conditions was in fact contrived to serve particular interests of socially organized material production" (p. 508). While ideology infiltrates art and destroys its autonomy, it is also, in a sense, 'invisible': "the essence of ideology is to be unstable, protean, omnipresent but nowhere, using everything but altering nothing, alternately a content and a form" (T.J. Clark, "The Conditions of Artistic Creation," Times Literary Supplement (London), 24 May 1974, p. 562).

63 Simard, "Autour du Prisme d'Yeux." 108

historical evidence to the contrary.6"

The claims of liberal francophone ideology and those of the

Prisme d'Yeux were, of course, challenged by anglophone liberals, new francophone liberals, and the Automatistes. The

Automatistes most vigorously contested the dominant ideology of

Quebec in their manifesto, the Refus Global, which also stands as a rebuttal to the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto.65 Unlike the

Prisme d'Yeux, the: Automatistes released the Refus Global

6* Cf. note 60, Chapter I. As Hadjinicolaou has pointed out in Art History and Class Struggle, class struggle is, for the most part, a silent affair, one that is simultaneously ignored and present in the representations of a social class, and especially in art: "Speaking of class struggle in painting does not imply that one is adhering to a simplistic view which holds that because a painting is supposed to represent something and because one sees this something jjn it, one must expect to see either social classes silently conducting their battles over the whole area of painting, or their representatives appearing and denouncing their class enemies with outstretched fingers, as if they were on the stage. "Nothing could be further from the truth....To wish to see them presupposes a very crude idea of class struggle, ideology, and picture production. In fact, neither social classes nor the struggle between them appears as such in painting....this conflict is nowhere openly visible. What is visible is, on the one hand, its effects, and on the other the 'self-awareness' or perhaps lack of self-awareness of social classes, that is to say their ideology" (p. 14-15).

65 Drafts of the manifesto were circulating late in 1947; Gagnon suggests that a nine page document, "La transformation continuelle," written in 1947, may have been a first draft of the Refus Global (Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 233). In a 1971 interview Maurice Perron affirmed that the manifesto had been drafted long before its publication in August 1948: "Durant 1'hiver de 1947-1948, j'habitais Saint-Hilaire et, a cette Ipoque, un premier jet du Refus Global avait circule parmi le groupe. Puis, Borduas avait retir6 ce texte-la qui a ete repris en entier et c'est ce deuxieme texte qui fut publie" (Henri Barras, "Quand les automatistes parlent des automatistes," Culture Vivante 3 [September 1971]: 29). 109

independent of an exhibition, and starting on August 4, 1948,

sold it to the public at the Librairie Tranquille.66

One of the dominant themes of the Refus Global is one which

also received prominence in the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto, the

repudiation of partisan politics in art. The Automatistes

insisted that all art remain autonomous from the vicissitudes of

politics and society, but at the same time they insisted that

the value of art was predicated on its opposition to established

social and political norms: , •

Magic booty, magically wrested from the unknown, lies at our feet. It has been gathered by the true poets. Its power to transform is measured by the violence shown against it and by its resistance in the end to exploitat ion....The items of this treasure reveal themselves, inviolable, to our society. They remain • the incorruptible, sensitive legacy for tomorrow. They were ordained spontaneously outside of and in opposition to civilization and await freedom from its restraints to become active in the social scheme.67

While the Automatistes characterized great art as anathema to

66 The Automatistes printed 400 copies of of the manifesto themselves, as Maurice Perron notes in "Quand les automatistes parlent": "Tout le monde s'etait cotise, on avait loue un Gestetner, on avait achete une quantite de papier et en groupe on l'avait imprime dans 1'appartement des Gauvreau....Henri Tranquille avait accepte d'en faire la distribution mais nous avons decide d'en donner a plusieurs librairies tout s'est ecoule tres rapidement, l'espace d'un mois je pense" (p. 29-30). According to Stuart Keate, in Time (Canadian Edition), the manifesto cost $1.00 ("L'Automatiste," 18 October 1948, p. 22); in the same article, he notes that "the Mani feste sold only 250 copies," but by December, Borduas' correspondence indicates that the manifesto had been sold out for at least a month (see letter to Henri Masson, 28 December 1948, Borduas Archives). It appears reasonable, then to conclude that the Refus Global was sold out sometime in November.

67 Refus Global, p. 50. 110

social norms, they do not see such opposition to the status quo as a political position. Thus because the Automatistes adopted a position antagonistic to francophone liberalism, but clung to apoliticism, they needed to rationalize this opposition as a difference in the ability to distinguish between 'inviolable treasures' and corrupted art, rather than as a difference of political position. Moreover, opposed to the Quebec status quo, but in need of its patronage, the Automatistes68 had to portray antagonism to the status quo as an ineluctable condition of aesthetic genius. According to the Refus Global, genius was by definition beyond the grasp of the status quo, while the products of aesthetic greatness became putrefied through contact with the status quo:

For centuries, the bountiful products of poetic activity have been doomed on the social level: violently rejected by the upper strata of society, or warped irrevocably by them and falsely assimilated.69

In the Refus Global, the Automatistes do not denounce the status quo in purely abstract terms, but add qualifiers to their definition of it, voicing opposition to its values in specific terms. The first paragraph of the Refus Global vilifies nationalism, conservatism, and Catholicism, the foundations of the dominant political ideology of Quebec:

Descendents of modest French-Canadian families,

68 The Automatistes were not the only ones in this position; their dilemma was shared by such writers as Remi-Paul Forgues, Paul-Marie Lapointe, Jean-Jules Richard, Gilles Henault, Jacques Ferron, Gerard Bessette.

69 Refus Global, p. 47. 111

labourers or petit-bourgeois, from our arrival on this soil up to the present day kept French and Catholic by resistance to the conqueror, by an irrational attachment to the past, by self-indulgence and sentimental pride and other compulsions.70

Thus, the Automatistes placed themselves on the side of those who refused to participate in nationalism and Catholicism, who vaunted 'progress,' and who felt little pride for the traditional cultural achievements of Quebec. At that time, the principal advocates of such a position were anglophone liberals and the new liberals of Quebec, who subscribed to a similar view of the past and present political structure, but who did not denounce it in such strident terms.

The response of different sectors of the Quebec status quo to the Refus Global was immediate and uniformly hostile, although this hostility took many forms. Montreal-Mat in, the

Montreal daily, generally faithful to the Union Nationale,71 criticized the Automatistes for mounting an attack on "la civilisation occidentale bourgeois'e, de l'ordre etabli tel que nous le connaissons en Europe et. dans la province de Quebec."72

Because the Refus Global advocated immorality, the very values of western civilization appeared to be at stake, jeopardized by an entire catalogue of vices:

Materialisme, amoralisme systematique, irrationalisme, instinctivisme qui, revendiquant le droit le plus

70 Ibid., p. 45.

71 Beaulieu and Hamelin, Les journaux du Quebec, p. 122-123.

72 Rolland Boulanger, "Dynamitage automatiste a la Librairie Tranquille," Montreal-Matin, 9 August 1948, p. 5. 1 12

absolu a la licence bien plus qu'a la liberte, refusent, lies ensemble dans une commune conjuration, de se laisser freiner par aucune norme mais qui tentent par contre d'etablir la normalisation de 1'anormal.7 3

From the point of view of Montreal-Mat in, therefore, the

Automatiste's doctrines posed a threat to society at the psychological and individual level, rather than at the political level. Nevertheless, by noting that the Automatistes challenged both 'la civilisation occidentale' and the moral precepts of every individual in Quebec, Montreal-Matin emphasized the

Automatiste threat to its readers' values. The vocabularly of the paper's attack on the Automatistes is also revealing about the reasons for its response: the destruction of the established order, materialism and immorality were all closely identified with another social menace, communism, and the party associated with it in the political matrix of Montrgal-Matin, the Liberal Party. Therefore, while Montreal-Matin does not allege that the Automatistes are communists (or Liberals), the paper does play on its audience's Cold War anxieties in order to demolish the arguments contained within the Refus Global, and in order to forge connections between the Automatistes and the two

73 Ibid., p. 7. Boulanger's reference to licence is an allusion to a concept allied with one of the heroes of the European Surrealists, de Sade. While Borduas was not as interested in de Sade as his European counterparts, he nevertheless regarded him as a symbol of liberation. In the first draft of the Refus Global, Borduas comments, "After two centuries one still cannot find the works of de Sade in a library. But it is not really de Sade who is alien to human society, it is the ruling class who are censoring his work" ("La transformation continuelle," in Merits/Writings, p. 42). This reference to de Sade, however, was eliminated from the final version of the Refus Global. 1 13

political menaces, communism and the Liberal party.

Montreal-Mat in catered to a politically and culturally conservative intellectual audience and took seriously the challenge presented to the intellectual establishment, but the other Union Nationale paper in Montreal, Le Petit Journal, was directed to a mass, 'low-brow' audience; its different public altered the focus and manner of its attack on the Refus Global.

Unlike Montreal-Mat in, Le Petit Journal simply summarized the contents of the Refus Global without editorializing on it to a significant degree.7" The paper's only interpretive comments on the Refus Global, were humorous ones, with the article on the manifesto entitled "Ecartelement et jus de tomate," a headline whose irony suggests that the manifesto is more ludicrous than threatening in the eyes of the paper's editors. The last line in its article indicates why the paper did not perceive the manifesto as a serious challenge to its values: "Et c'est la, dans notre monde rationnel et non initie, ce qui est le plus pres de quelques mets au...tomate!"75 Le Petit Journal's jocular approach to the contents of the manifesto, as well as its definition of itself and its readers as the 'non initie,'

7" See also: "Tranquille recoit les automatistes," Le Petit Journal, 8 August 1948; Andre Lecompte, "L'oeil en coulisse," Le Petit Journal, 15 August 1948, p. 51; Y.G., "Amour, Desir, Vertige," Le Petit Journal, 5 September 1948, p. 2; "Les automatistes s'elevent contre l'affaire Borduas," Le Petit Journal, 19 September 1948, p. 26; "Equilibre surr^aliste" (Photograph), Le Petit Journal, 19 September 1948, p. 26.

75 "Ecartelement et jus de tomate. Nos Automatistes annoncent la decadence chre"tienne et prophetisent l'avenement du regne de 1'instinct," Le Petit Journal, 15 August 1948, p. 28. 1 1 4

indicates that it realized that the Automatistes were not directly attacking the values of its readers, but rather those of another realm in Quebec society, the 'initie,' the intellectuals Of Quebec, the consumers and producers of the high-brow culture of the province.

The response of the religious press, however, resembles that of Montr6al-Matin insofar as it was both critical of the

Refus Global and took its contents seriously. Ernest Gagnon, writing in Relations condemns the Automatistes for denouncing the church, western civilization and the government: "[ils sont]...contre la civilisation...contre l'£glise universelle, contre tous les gouvernements....Tout cela condamne

1'automatisme."76 Because the church so closely controlled the intellectual life of the province, the negative response of such ecclesiastical intellectuals as Ernest Gagnon to the manifesto

is a defence of their advantageous position in the cultural life of Quebec. The most stringent and prolonged attack on the Refus

Global by a cleric came from the priest Hyacinthe-Marie Robil- lard, who published numerous articles in the religious and sec ular press, and who gave lectures on the subject of "Le surre"al-

isme et la revolution des intellectuels", during the fall of

1948.77 Robillard not only castigated the Automatistes on the

76 Ernest Gagnon, "Refus Global," Relations (October 1948), p. 293.

77 Hyacinthe-Marie Robillard, "Le manifeste de nos surr£alistes," Notre Temps, 4 September 1948, p. 4;"Refus Global," Action Catholique, 22 September 1948, p. 40; "Le Surrgalisme. La revolution des intellectuels." Revue Dominicaine 54 (December 1948): p. 276; "Le surrealisme et la 1 15

familiar grounds that they opposed both the church and the government, and also because he saw direct connections between

Automatism and communism. According to Robillard, surrealism (a movement which he does not really distinguish from automatism) was "une tentative de Revolution intellectuelle, parallele a son genre, a la revolution marxiste, et destinee a la completer."78

Automatism was dangerous because it carried out the Marxist revolution at the level of the spirit, and was therefore an agent of class warfare:

Or, quel sera 1'instrument de cette Revolution? Ce sera 1' automat i sme sur rat ionnel: formule d.'art technique de la pensee surtout, guerre de classes engagees dans le domain de l'esprit entre le bourgeoisisme de la logique traditionnelle et le proletariat de »1' inconscient opprime"e.79

Robillard's connections between surrealism and communism, automatism and Marxism were partially correct, as both artistic movements had been affiliated with the left at different stages in their development.80 By 1948, however, both the European

revolution," Le Canada,18 December 1948, p. 14; "Le surrealisme est mort, dit, le R.P. Robillard," Le Canada, 20 December 1948, p. 16; "Le surrealisme et la revolution des intellectuels," Le Devoir, 20 December 1948, p. 10.

78 Robillard, "Le Surrealisme. La revolution des intellectuels," p. 276.

7 9 Ibid., p. 278-279.

80 See below, pp. 132-135, on the affiliation of the Automatistes with the left. On the politics of the European surrealists, see Nicole Racine, "L'Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Revolutionnaires (A.E.A.R.): La revue Commune et la lutte ideologique contre le fascisme (1932-1936)," Le Mouvement Sociale No. 54 (January-March 1966): 29-47; Nicole Racine, "Une revue d'intellectuels communistes dans les annees vingt: Clarte 116

Surrealists and the Quebec Automatistes had severed their connections with the left, and therefore Robillard's parallels are made either out of ignorance or the desire to discredit the the Automatistes on the grounds of politics; communist sympathizers or 'fellow-travellers' became suspect, and were feared because they were ideologically, if not actually affiliated with the new enemy, the Soviet Union, in the new war.

Charges of communism became an effective weapon with which to attack any group challenging the values and political power of the intellectuals, the clergy, and the government.

The response of the liberal, secular press was no less critical than that of the Union Nationale party organs and the ecclesiastical press. The most bitter and sustained attacks on the Refus Global appeared in Le Devoir, primarily in columns written by Gerard Pellet'ier. Pelletier's main objection to the

Refus Global—apart from its criticism of the church and

Christianity, which he rebuts in terms analogous to

Robillard's--was the manifesto's refusal to countenance disparate ideologies, one of francophone liberalism's main a criterion of freedom:

(1921-1928)," Revue francaise de science politique 18 (June 1967): 484-519; Robert S. Short, "The Politics of Surrealism 1920-1936," Journal of Contemporary History 1 (1966): 3-25; Jean Touchard, "Le Parti Communiste Francais et les intellectuels (1920-1939): avant-propos," -Revue francaise de science politique 17 (June 1967): 468-83; David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals 1914-1960 (London: Andr£ Deutsch, 1964); Andr§ Thirion, Rgvolutionnaires sans revolution (Paris: Editions Robert Laffont-) 1972). 1 1 7

Car M. Borduas vaticane comme un prophete avec un mepris totale pour toute demonstration ou preuve rationelle....Voila qui tend a nous fixer dans un climat sectaire...ce dogmatisme nouvelle maniere ressemble trop a celui que l'auteur condamne. Voila le comble de la loufouquerie dangereuse.81

The Refus Global was so threatening, therefore, because it challenged the status quo on both specific issues, such as the

Church and its doctrines, as well as on that fundamental attribute of liberal ideology, eclecticism.

Of all the critics of the Refus Global, Pelletier was the only one who attempted to transform the manifesto's attacks into an illustration of the values of a liberal society; he maintained that although the Automatistes declared that Quebec society was oppressive and restrictive, the fact that such a defamatory document could be sold and discussed revealed how strongly freedom was entrenched in Quebec. By September 1948, such liberals as Pelletier, of course, had forgotten that only seven months before, the Communist Party newspaper, Combat, had been padlocked by the government, an action they had strongly supported, demonstrating that dissent articulated by artists could be accommodated by liberal intellectuals, whereas those actively involved in radical politics could not. In response to a letter written by several Automatistes defending Borduas and the Refus Global, Pelletier wrote,

II est done normal que les amis de cet artiste veuille le d6fendre publiquement, normal aussi, puisque nous ne vivons pas en dictature, qu'ils ne trouvent pas

81 Gerard Pelletier, "Deux ages, deux manieres," Le Devoir, 25 September 1948, p. 8. 118

toutes le.portes fermees.82

In the eyes of Quebec liberal intellectuals, 'dogmatisme exageree' and 'sectarisme etroit' made the Automatistes the opponents of freedom; only liberal intellectuals could act as defenders of the faith, because only they were tolerant of multiple points of view.

While francophone intellectuals denounced the Refus Global as dogmatically polemical, an affront to universal truths, and their concept of freedom, anglophone liberals lionized it.

Canadian art historians of the post-war period have generally minimized the anglophone response to the Refus Global;

Francois-Marc Gagnon's comments are typical: "la presse angl- aise...n'attachera pas beaucoup d'importance au manifeste."83

The. reasons for such an assessment of the English response to the Refus Global is found within most analyses of Borduas' career; for the past three decades, the majority of Canadian art and political historians have upheld Borduas as a symbol of the neo-nationalist, and radical 'new' Quebec which emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pierre Vadeboncoeur's assessment of the position of Borduas in Quebec's cultural and political history—which Gagnon quotes immediately after his analysis of the English response to the manifesto—is indicative of the role which most liberal historians have accorded to Borduas:

Entendez liberty, entendez desir, soif, fidelite. Entendez amour, reponse a l'appel, droiture,

2 Gerard Pelletier, Le Devoir, 28 September 1948, p. 5.

3 Gagnon, Borduas, Biographie critique, p. 263. 119

intransigeance, vocation, flamme. Il [Borduas] s'est mis sur la route. Dans notre culture contrainte, ou domine 1'empdchement, dans notre petite civilisation apeuree et prise de toutes parts, il a, rompant les amarres, introduit le principe d'une singuliere animation. Il a pos6 l'exemple d'un acte. II s'est avance jusqu'au bout de sa pensee. II a fait l'experience complete de sa part de verite. II nous a totalement legue ce qu'il savait. Enfin quelqu'un avait tout livre.8*

Because liberal art historians regard Borduas as a hero of

Quebec's cultural 'awakening,' it has been difficult for them to account for the positive English response—measurable in reviews in the press, as well as in sales and exhibitions of his work—because to do so would be to minimize his stature as a truly Quebecois artist who spoke for and to those 'progressive' sections of Quebec that perceived English Canada as the great enemy. Unable to explain the English response to the

Automatistes, art historians have tended to ignore it85

Borduas gained the high esteem of anglophone liberals partly through his denunciation of Duplessist values. Liberals' hostility towards Duplessis, as well as their repudiation of the

Union Nationale's cultural practices, predisposed them towards

Borduas and the Automatistes. Only eight months before the

8" Quoted by Gagnon in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 263. This reverential attitude has been criticized" by Fournier and Laplante in"Borduas et 1'automatisme," p. 107: "les specialistes de l'art transforment l'oeuvre admire en objet sacre et contribuent a accroitre et produire le 'mystere,': Borduas et son oeuvre apparaissent alors, en effect, non seulement indechiffrabies mais aussi historiquement impossibles."

85 Gagnon is the only art historian who even briefly mentions the English response. 1 20

publication of the Refus Global, the federally funded

periodical, Canadian Art, the only national art magazine at the

time,86 printed an article by Louis Muhlstock decrying the

stultefying artistic and political atmosphere of Quebec.

Writing of the censorship of a French art magazine, Carrefour,

the movie, Les enfants du paradis, and the removal of several

paintings from various exhibitions in Montreal, Muhlstock wrote:

These are only slight examples of the backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the province I live in....As artists we must be free to paint and exhibit what we feel. Here we are not free....If we are silent about it, we have no one but ourselves to blame.87

In Borduas and the Automatistes, anglophone liberals found

artists who not only refused to censor their animosity towards

the Duplessis regime, but who also voiced their objections in

such aggressive terms that they could not be overlooked either

within or outside of Quebec.88 Consequently, when anglophone

liberals reported on the Refus Global, they saw the Automatistes

as articulating their own concerns about the state of the arts

in Quebec, and therefore responded favourably to the group's

86 Canadian Art was funded by the federal government through the National Gallery of Canada; see "Canadian Art," Food for Thought 10 (May 1950), p. 58.

87 Louis Muhlstock, "An Excess of Prudery," Canadian Art 5 (Christmas 1947), p. 76, 78.

88 See, for example, Stuart Keate, "L'Automatiste,"; Guy Jasmin, "Quebec artists causes furor," Windsor Daily Star, 26 November 1948, editorial page. Borduas received letters regarding his works from outside the province and country; see for example, the letters from Jack O'Mally (15 October 1948, Hamilton); Gladys Arnold (30 October 1948, French Embassy, Ottawa); Shuiji Koike (29 March 1949, Kogei News, Tokoyo)(Borduas Archives, D. 156). 121

"attempt... to throw off the restrictions in education and culture."89

The Automatistes' critique of Quebec's political and religious establishment also secured them the support of the province's small coterie of French speaking 'new' liberals.90

Such critics as Charles Doyon, writing in Le Clairon

(Sainte-Hyacinthe), vigorously defended the Refus Global, championing what he believed was its legitimate dissatisfaction with the current regime:

Ce que plusieurs d'entre vous eprouvent silencieusement, ce que de rares prgcurseurs ont reve, ce que ceux de ma generation ont prevu est ici d£voi16....C'est un cri de detresse suscite par l'ecoeurment des jeunes avant une generation d'assis et d'encenseurs.9y

89 D.W. Buchanan, Review of Refus Global, Canadian Art 6 (Christmas 1948): 86. Buchanan and Borduas corresponded with one another periodically; see, for example, Buchanan's letters of 14 January 1948, 5 November 1948, 9 November 1948, and 30 November 1948; it was also Buchanan, along with Robert H. Hubbard, who Borduas used as his second and third references (after Ozias Leduc) in his 1948 Guggenheim Fellowship application (Borduas Archives, D. 102).

90 see above, -pp. 52-53.

91 Charles Doyon, "Refus Global," Le Clairon (Sainte-Hyacinthe), p. 5; Doyon and Borduas corresponded fairly regularly, especially after the publication of the Refus Global. The other Liberal daily, Le Canada, responded in similar terms; see Lafcadio, "L'underground de 1'esthetique," Le Canada, 23 August 1948: "Les milieux ou se recrute aujourd'hui ce que Montreal possede d'intellectuels serieux se rejouiront du cri sincere que lance Borduas....On etablit des chapelles litteraires et des clans artistiques dans la ville meme ou il y a quinze ou vingt ans, on pensait avoir epuise le summum de 1'intelligence en fondant 1'invraisemblables mouvements comme l'ordre patriotique des Goglus. Nous gagnons au change avec des annees" (p. 4). 1 22

Doyon's sense of self-recognition, expressed through emotionally intense language, arises out of the congruence existing between his own ideology and that of the Automatistes. While anglophone liberals, in their relatively anaemic prose accommodated the

Refus Global's ideology, such French speaking intellectuals as

Doyon perceived the manifesto as an equivalent of their own ideology; it is this which accounts for the degree of emotional punch contained in their analyses of the manifesto. The fervent defenses penned by such critics as Doyon, however, provided liberal anglophone intellectuals with an avant-garde criticism to complement the vanguard itself, thus providing them with "the schools, the rebels, the theories"92 for which they had been longing.

It was anglophone liberals' struggle over the definition of a Canadian identity93 which made them so anxious to find and

support a group expressing their vision of the new Canada, modern and finally independent of the mother countries, France and England. The Automatistes were ideal for this role because

they could not be easily categorized as following either

'English' or 'French' cultural patterns, while their critique of

the traditional norms of Quebec society made them appear vital, modern, and dynamic:

During the last ten years, Montreal has come alive in

92 John K.B. Robertson, "Art in Canada," Here and Now 1 (December 1947): 77.

93 See, for example, Hugh Kenner, "The Case of the Missing Face," Here and Now 1 (May 1948): -74-78. 123

the arts. To the French-Canadian, go the honours for developing this new life, with art as a common denominator, speaking a common language between the races9 ft

Just as the centre of art and the source of Canadian 'identity'

seemed to be shifting East from Toronto, so too,

internationally, the cultural capital was moving from Paris to

New York,95 a city with which Borduas and the Automatistes had

had a long series of artistic contacts and in which he was eager to exhibit.96 Borduas' interests in surrealism, and the

9

95 This shift can be followed in the writings of Clement Greenberg, who, as late as 1946 wrote, "Paris remains the fountainhead of modern art, and every move there is decisive for advanced art elsewhere" ("The School of Paris: 1946," reprinted in Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays [Boston: Beacon, 1961], p. 120). By 1948, however, Greenberg was insisting that New York, not Paris, was the centre of meaningful artistic production: "the immediate future of Western art, if it is to have any immediate future, depends on what is done in this country" (Art Chronicle: The Situation at the Moment," Partisan Review 15 [January 1948]: 82); cf. his comments three months later, which explain why New York had usurped Paris, "the main premises of Western art have migrated to the United States, along with the centre of gravity of industrial production and political power" ("Art Chronicle: The Decline of Cubism," Partisan Review 15 [March 1948]: 369).

96 Borduas first visited New York in 1928 and again in May 1943; as F.-M. Gagnon notes in the exhibition catalogue, Borduas and America/et 1'Amerique (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1978, p~! TT~, "it is obvious from the catalogues and the publications which he brought back that he was interested mainly in the Surrealists." The contacts between the Automatistes and New York were strengthened when in 1946 Louise Renaud became the 124

desire to create from it an aesthetic dependent on spontaneity, accident, and chance was, of course, similar to that of the emerging New York avant-garde, the Abstract Expressionists,97

governess to the children of Pierre Matisse, the New York art dealer; according to Teyssedre, she regularly sent invitations to Surrealist exhibitions to Leduc, who "etait de tous les mieux informe sur le surrealisme de New York" ("Fernand Leduc," p. 258, note 21). In 1948, Borduas began to actively pursue these tentative links with the New York art world. On 10 October 1948, he wrote to James Johnson Sweeney at the Museum of Modern Art about the possibility of a New York show. The opening lines of Borduas' letter reveal that he was conversant with the dominant figures of art in New York: "Vous connaissant depuis pluseiurs anne"es comme un defenseur de l'art, je prends la liberty de solliciter votre attention" (Borduas Archives, D. 164). The request for a New York exhibition was motivated by the desire "d'etablir de. nouveau contacts....a manifester en dehors du pays et a declencher de nouvelles sympathies" (Ibid.). Sweeney referred Borduas to the American Federation of Artists, the Willard Gallery and the Sidney Janis Gallery, but declined to give him a show at MOMA; nevertheless, he closed with the following words of encouragement, "While these suggestions are only 'shots in the dark' I offer them with the hope you may be able to make a beginning in the right direction through one of them and I hope you will continue to keep in touch with me. ;I ' 11 be glad to do anything I can to help" (letter dated 16 December 1948; Borduas archives). Sweeney apparently did mean what he said, as on 29 December 1948, Rose Fried of the Pinacotheca wrote Borduas enquiring about his work, "At the suggestion of Mr. J.J. Sweeney" (Borduas Archives, D. 211). At about this time, Borduas made an undated list of various galleries in New York (Borduas Archives, D. 211); the first two on the list were those which were crucial to the development of the New York avant-garde, Betty Parsons Gallery and the Sidney Janis Gallery. In addition to his contacts with New York galleries, Borduas applied for funding from the Guggenheim Foundation on 12 October 1948 (Borduas Archives, D. 211); this request for money, however, was unsuccessful.

97 When Borduas went to New York in 1953, he became friendly with the group, meeting them through the Passedoit Gallery where he had an exhibition 5-23 January 1953. By 1954, he had become an ardent admirer of the Abstract Expressionists; in a letter to Claude Gauvreau, for example, he wrote, "These painters live fully and tragically the difficult situation of art in the world. They labour hard to pay for their pictorial 125

a group which became the standard bearers of 'American type painting,'98 in contradistinction to the School of Paris. The congruence of certain constants in the theoretical and pictorial work of the New York vanguard and.the Automatistes, as well as the fact that Borduas, like his anglophone supporters looked to

New York for new sources of information and inspiration, suggests that English Canada was seeking a North American image as much as a Canadian one.

A similar pattern emerges in Canadian politics. Liberal intellectuals saw participation in a North Atlantic alliance as a way for Canada to adopt a more dominant position in world affairs. A.R.M. Lower, for example., commented that St.

Laurent's announcement of the formation of the alliance "may probably be taken as marking a stage in this country's evolution....we must be prepared to accept our responsibilities."99 Canadian intellectuals believed that their involvement with NATO signified their newly found political autonomy from Britain, yet recent research indicates that NATO was the cause and the instrument of Canada's new dependency relationship, that with the United States. As Granatstein and

Cuff have demonstrated, American post-war economic maneouvring

experiences. They have to be considered as exemplaries" (15 May 1954; quoted by Gagnon in Borduas and America, p. 13).

98 See Clement Greenberg, "American Type Painting," (1955) in Art and Culture, pp. 208-229.

99 A.R.M. Lower, "Canada in the New, Non-British World," International Journal 3 (Summer 1948): 209, 210. 126

made Canada dependent on U.S. dollar reserves, on its capital, and ultimately, on its politics.100 By developing NATO and sharing the American perception of the Soviet threat, the

Canadian government somewhat naively hoped that it would be able to exercise a certain amount of influence over American foreign policy, a relationship which in 1948 appeared to be the most independent one:

Acceptance of a broad view of the Russian threat gave Pearson and to others entry to the highest circles in Washington. That was useful for a wide variety of purposes, from influencing the relationship of the Marshall Plan to Canadian needs, to lobbying for joint industrial mobilization planning, military procurement, and tariff reductions.... Pearson and Reid decided to seize their advantage at the imperial center, capitalize on an inflamed public opinion, and negotiate an alliance that would best serve Canada's long-term interests as they defined them.101

At the very moment when Canadian intellectuals liked to consider themselves as on the threshold of political and cultural maturity, and when the country appeared to have abandoned its dependence on Britain, it actually only transferred its dependence from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Given that the intellectuals who charted these new post-war political policies which were dependent on the U.S.A. also belonged to the same ideological group making important cultural decisions, it

100 R.D. Cuff and J.L. Granatstein, American Dollars—Canadian Prosperity. Canadian-American Economic Relations 1945-1950 (Toronto and Sarasota: Samuel-Stevens, 1978) .

101 Ibid., p. 216. This view has been contested by John English, "Revisionism Revisited, A Response," Canadian Forum 52 (December 1972): 16-19. 127

is clear that the Automatistes were attractive to them not because their artistic interests were similar to those of the new vanguard in New York, but because despite this fact, they seemed to convey the new image of Canada.

Anglophone liberals' hostility towards Duplessis' reactionary nationalism, and their concomitant support for a bicultural Canada, also inclined them to sympathize with the

Automatistes' condemnation of that nationalist cultural conditioning which kept them "French and Catholic," subordinate to the "interminable litanies chanted in the land of Quebec," and imprisoned by the traditional values symbolized by the

"goupilion and the tuque."10 2 The bicultural concerns of anglophone liberals are apparent in the January-February 1948

issue of Canadian Art, a special issue devoted to the art of

Quebec. Significantly, little mention is made of Pellan and other Prisme d'Yeux artists, whereas its only article on an

individual group of artists--and the only one in French in an otherwise uniformly English periodical--deals with the

Automatistes. In this article, the Automatistes are upheld as one of the few groups of artists capable of creating a truly national, Canadian culture; through the activity of the

Automatistes, Montreal had become "le centre de la peinture canadienne....un milieu fecond qui attire a lui toutes les

102 Refus Global, p. 45, 47, 46. 128

forces vives du pays."103 Similarly, in Here and Now, John K.B.

Robertson commented,

Where—except perhaps in Montreal—are the 'schools,' the rebels, the theories, which mark a dynamic cul• tural situation and which would, perhaps, in their resolution, bring a truly national culture?104

The call for the creation of a 'dynamic cultural situation' and of a 'truly national culture' arose out of the political concerns of liberals on the question of federalism. By declaring themselves to be biculturalists and federalists, liberals created an ideological imperative to give shape to their rhetoric by supporting the culture of Quebec as fully as that of English Canada: they needed to prove that federalism was favourable to the culture of Quebec, and to disprove

Duplessis' allegations to the contrary.105 Significantly, however, liberals conferred their approbation on a group without popular support in Quebec: on the one hand, they fostered the illusion of surrendering to Quebec a portion of the cultural territory that had previously belonged to anglophones alone, while at the same time they retained control over who would occupy this turf. Furthermore, although anglophone liberals supported an avant-garde hostile to the provincial government in

103 Maurice Gagnon, "D'une certaine peinture canadienne jeune...ou de 1'automatisme," Canadian Art V (Winter 1948): 1 36.

104 "Art in Canada," Here and Now 1 (December 1947): 77.

105 See Desrosiers, "L'ideologie de Maurice Duplessis," pp. 167-188. 129

Quebec, they remained hopeful that the culture of Canada would become reflective of some kind of united collective national consciousness. The impetus for fabricating the semblance of cultural solidarity came from liberals' tenacious belief in the restorative power of the 'end to ideology,' and of national uni ty:

We are all Canadians... before we are Liberals, Conservatives, or CCFers, and before we are Quebeckers or Manitobans. So we should face the outside world with a united front. Politics, it has been said by an American leader, should end at the water's edge.106

The definition of national unity was largely determined by both the Liberal government and the intellectuals which supported it, and biculturalism was simply one aspect of this political programme, designed in part to counteract communism; if, however the defense of national unity became disadvantageous to them, it disappeared from the discourse of liberal intellectuals and the government alike.

In the anti-communist crusade, censure of the status quo became linked with the West, which anglophone liberals perceived as capable of withstanding internal dissent, in contrast to communist regimes where dissent—and especially criticism of the ruling party--was not tolerated. Frank Underhill commented in the Canadian Forum, that in communist countries, "the press, the cinema, and the judiciary have been muzzled," whereas dissent

106 Lester B. Pearson, 1948, quoted in Words and Occasions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 81. 130

was institutionalized in liberal democracies.107 The Liberal party also argued that governments and intellectuals were obliged to protect dissenters, if western democracy was to prove

itself more attractive than communism. In an article in

Maclean's magazine, for instance, St. Laurent declared,

Democracy does not mean preservation of the status quo....We must demonstrate by deeds and not merely by words that democracy is a more humanitarian creed than communism.10 8

It should be noted, however, that both liberal intellectuals and

Liberal politicians defended the antagonists of the status quo

only if these dissenters pilloried a status quo other than the

one to which they belonged.

Liberal intellectuals characterized the act of repudiating

the status quo as both an emblem of freedom and a precondition

of artistic excellence. The great artist was by definition a

rebel, who "has achieved radical freedom from social restraint

and conventional order, who has penetrated the walls protecting

our world of reality."109 The Automatistes portrayed their

relationship to society in similar terms, describing themselves

as simultaneously alienated from and scornful of acceptable

society and all that it entailed:

If we continue to hold shows, however, it is not the

107 Frank H. Underhill, "Hammer and Sickle Democracy," Canadian Forum 28 (July 48): 75.

108 Blair Fraser, "Where does St. Laurent Stand?" Maclean's, 15 September, p. 7.

109 Dr. H. Lehmann, "Art and Psychology," Canadian Art 6 (Autumn 1948): 17. 131

naive hope of making fortunes. We know the wealthy stay away from us. They could not with impunity make contact with incendiaries110

The sentiments expressed above, however, are rather disingenuous, for liberal intellectuals perceived genius only in those artists who voiced concerns analogous to theirs, while the

Automatistes reserved their truculence for a very circumscribed segment of society which formed their most immediate public but not their only one; as Barthes has pointed out, such revolts

"are what one generally calls the avant-garde. But these revolts are socially limited, they remain open to salvage."111

The Automatistes were especially vulnerable to such salvage by the anglophone liberal intelligentsia, due to their revolt against the Quebec status quo and subsequent rejection by it: by presenting themselves as artists pledged to creative and intellectual freedom at the expense of personal financial gain or political favour., and because of their ostracism by the

Quebec status quo, the Automatistes fit in with the liberal conception of the relationship between the great artist and society, a relationshi-p possible only in Western countries.

Although the Automatistes primarily attacked the values associated with the dominant ideology of Quebec, they also denounced the left and the right as forces against freedom:

Friends of the present regime suspect we support the Revolution. Friends of the Revolution say we protest what now exists but only to transform and not to

110 Refus Global, p. 53.

111 Roland Barthes, "Myth Today," in Mythologies, ed. and trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), p. 139. 1 32

displace it....But the only distinction between these 'friends' and those presently in power is that they belong to different classes—as if a change of class implied a change of civilization, a change of desires, a change of hope!112

The Automatistes' formulation of freedom as the fruit of the eradication of communism and conservatism closely corresponds to the liberal concept of 'the end of ideology'113 in their anti-communist campaign. Like anglophone liberals, the

Automatistes repudiated both ends of the political spectrum, but their refusal of political extremes was not a global one, for they did not condemn, or even comment on another sector of that spectrum: the center, the locus of their support, and the dominion of anglophone liberalism.

The Automatistes' rejection of communism was partly based on its disenchanting experiences with the Communist Party: after a brief flirtation with communist politics,11" the

112 Refus Global, p. 52.

113 Although he does not make the connection between liberals' call for an 'end of ideology,' and the Refus Global, Gagnon comments that "le manifeste souhaite la fin de l'&re des ideologies" (Borduas, Biographie critique, p. 241).

11" Bernard Teyssedre describes "la fraction la plus progressive"--the one most interested in establishing some kind of links with Montreal communists--as Jean-Paul Mousseau, Bruno Cormier, R^mi-Paul Forgues, Fernand Leduc, and Pierre Gauvreau ("Fernand Leduc," p. 247). Teyssedre comments on the political activity of this group during 1943 and 1944: "Par leur engagement aux c6tes des communistes (a leurs cotes, non parmi eux), ces contestaires qui etudient Hegel, Marx et Lenine, qui distribuent des tracts denon^ant l'oppression capitaliste et clericale, qui organisent des reunions avec les cellules se portent plus loin que Borduas ne peut les suivre; mais par leur volonte de rompre avec toute une civilisation, par leurs tumultueux debats sur Freud, Breton, Mabille, sur Matta, Lam, Tanguy, Ernst, ils incarnent, au sein du 'groupe' composite, la fraction la plus progressive--et la plus proche, au fond, de Borduas" (Ibid., p. 249-250). 133

group became the focus of a series of attacks by Pierre Gelinas,

Despite the group's desire to remain separate from the Communist Party, in 1946, an article by Claude Gauvreau appeared in Combat., the Party's newspaper; see "La peinture n'est pas un hochet de dilettante," 21 December 1946, p. 2. This article was the first of many written by and about the Automatistes during the next year. In January 1947, Gilles Henault, a regular contributor to Combat, wrote to Borduas with a list of questions on which he wished to interview Borduas for a future article in Combat; the article, "Un Canadien francais—un grand peintre: Paul-Emile Borduas," appeared 1 February 1947, on p. 1. Almost immediately following publication of this interview, however, Borduas was expressing hostility towards communists in his private correspondence; in a letter to Riopelle, for example, he wrote, "Les communistes sont d'un egoisme immediat degoutant. Ils sont a ce sujet [i.e., revolution] inutiles. Ils font plutot figure d'oppresseurs que de liberateurs" (quoted by Gagnon in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 207). In June 1947, Riopelle signed the European Surrealists' manifesto, Rupture Inauqurale, which not only solidified its already existing break with the Communist Party, but also announced that "surrealisme...refusera sa participation a toute action politique qui devait etre immorale pour avoir l'air d'etre efficace" (quoted in Jean-Louis Bedouin, Vingt ans de surrealisme 1939-1959 [Paris: Denoel, 1961], p. 100). Leduc, however, refused to sign the manifesto for reasons he outlined in a letter to Borduas on 4 July, 1947: "Ce manifeste semble en effet assez bien. En plus de renforcer les positions deja connues, il precise la position du surrealisme devant la politique actuelle et accuse le 'parti communiste,' entre autres, d'user des moyens qu'ils reprochent aux capitalistes et de tabler uniquement sur l'avenement du proletariat sans se soucier d'une morale revolutionnaire, et tient pour responsable Marx lui-meme de cet etat de choses: le manifeste se termine sur l'espoir en un myth collectif. Rien pour qui regarde les oeuvres, en somme une position politique teintee de sentimentalisme. L'objectivite emotive se transforme peu a peu, il me semble, en slogans sentimentaux.... Pour ce qui est des relations que j'ai eues avec un group de communistes soi-disant surrealistes, c'est l'exacte position contraire, je veux l'accent sur l'action politique et la meme tout le devenir du genre humain. J'ai du prendre position par £crit pour eviter tout equivoque de ma presence parmi eux. Pour eux il semblait possible d'inserer dans un projet de manifeste 1) aide inconditionnelle au Parti, reconnaissance de ses representants,...et 2) liberte totale d'experimentation" (quoted, in Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, pp. 221-222). Mousseau also retained contacts with the Party until the end of 1947; see for example, "J.-P. Mousseau nous parle de son voyage a Prague," Combat, 1 November 1947, p. 1. The paper continued to be interested in the Automatistes' work and. 134

Gelinas, the editor of Combat, who described their art as counter-revolut ionary:

•L'ideologie individualiste petite-bourgeoise le [an Automatiste] poussera a se renfermer sur lui-m&me, a pratiquer un art ferine"....Un individualiste petit-bourgeois peut se revolter. Mais quelle est le sens de la revolte? Elle est limit£e a son ego—au meilleur, elle vise a faire accepter une formule nouvelle par la societe existante....Encore une fois, ce n'est pas par hasard qu'un grand 'revolte' comme M. Riopelle parle de la 'degenerescence' du communisme. C'est l'attitude de 1'individualiste petite- bourgeoise. C'est l'attitude contre-revolution- naire....normale chez eux qui neveulent pas un changement fondamentale de la soci£te\115

Combat's criticism of the Automatistes solidified their

reservations about the left, and partisan politics in general.

Moreover, the escalation of anti-communist sentiment in Quebec made affiliation with the left more dangerous than before; Bor• duas remarked that if the group were thought to have links with

the communists, "nous allons etre oblige de nous exiler!"116

published a positive review of a solo exhibition by Gavreau written by Gilles Henault, "Au sujet d'une exposition de P. Gauvreau," 22 November 1947, p. 2.

115 This attack was occasioned by Henault's positive assessment of Gauvreau's work in "Au sujet d'une exposition de P. Gauvreau," p. 2. The debate between Henault and Gilinas which ensued continued into 1948; see Pierre G61inas, "Contribution a une discussion sur l'art," Combat, 29 November 1947, p. 2; Gilles Henault, "Discussion sur l'art," Combat, 13 December 1947, p. 2; Pierre Gelinas, "Poursuivant la discussion sur l'art," Combat, 3 January 1948, p. 2; "Le role de l'artiste dans la soci£t§," Combat, 17 January 1948, p. 2.

116 Quoted by Gauvreau in "L'epopee automatiste," p. 70; although Gauvreau is somewhat vague as to the context of this remark, he seems to have made it some time in 1948 during 1 35

Because they were recent converts against communism, and

because their disaffection with the left had caused them to

become cynical about all political activity, the Automatistes'

position in 1948 was analogous to that of liberal intellectuals

in English Canada whose association with the Communist Party in

the 1930s became transformed into intense hatred of it during

the 1940s.117 Like anglophone liberals, the Automatiste's

deprecation of communism was thus based on both political

objections and personal experience, and both perceived

communism's relationship to culture in the same way:

discussions about the projected manifesto, and in reaction to Borduas ideas about his own contribution to it; Gauvreau notes, ."Par ailleurs, a 1'intention d'une revue socialiste qui ne parut jamais, j'avais ecrit un article d'inspirat ion trotyzkyste" (Ibid., p. 70). Despite all his objections to the left, and despite his fears of being seen as its ally, early in 1948, Borduas gave a public lecture in which it was reported that he said, "le surrealisme a des rapports avec la psychanalyse freudienne et le marxisme, mais sans pr£ciser lesquels" ("Inconscient et peinture--Echange de vues entre des etudiants en psychologie et M. Borduas," La Presse, 2 February 1948, p. 11). While Borduas' comments are obviously true, it is puzzling that he would leave the impression that he was aligned with a movement connected to the left, when he otherwise sought to suppress such an idea.

117 Little has been written on the relationship between the left and intellectuals in the thirties and forties. See, however, Norman Penner, The Canadian Left: A Critical Analysis (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1977); and Ivan Avakumovic, The Communist Party of Canada: A History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975); Tim Buck, Thirty Years: The Story of the Communist Movement in Canada, 1922-1952 (Toronto: Progress Books, 1952); Leo Zakuta, A Protest Movement Becalmed (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964); Dean S. McHenry, The Third Force in Canada: The Co-operative Commonwealth Confederation 1932-1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1950); Gerald Caplan, The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism: the C.C.F. in Ontario (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973) . 136

The age of radicalism is happily ended....Liberals no longer measure literary values by the yardstick of political orthodoxy....They are disenchanted but free....Marxist categories are not applicable in the realm of literary values.118

Although the Automatistes' scorn for politicized, especially leftist culture parallels the liberal prescription for aesthetic freedom, the group's contempt for the status quo exempted them from being regarded as simply pawns in new liberal cultural politics which were based on a rejection of both communism and conservatism alike.

While the Automatistes denounced partisan politics as ultimately oppressive, they did not relinquish the idea of a political morality, however nebulous. Insofar as it was defined, political morality signified commitment to the overturning of "the inexorable regression of collective moral power," achieved by breaking with "all convent ions -of society," and characterized by a refusal to "remain silent."119 The decisive act of rupt.ure was the first step in artistic emancipation, as Leduc noted in a letter to Borduas regarding his break with the CAS:

L'attitude decisive que vous avez prise vis-i-vis de la Societe d'art contemporain et les dechirements

118 Charles Glicksberg, "Literature and the Marxist Aesthetic," University of Toronto Quarterly 18 (October 1948): 84. The presence of Marxism in any form became grounds for dismissing any number of ideas? in a book review, for example, F.H. Underhill rejects the validity of the work in question precisely because the author's "thesis is presented almost entirely in Marxian terms" ("Turning New Leaves," review of The American Democracy by Harold J. Laski, Canadian Forum 28 LOctober 1948]: 164) .

119 Refus Global, p. 50, 51. 1 37

qu'elle a pu entrainer apparaissent comme le prelude a une serie de ruptures liberatrices dont nous nous rejouissons et qui s'annoncent dans un avenir rapproche.12 0

Similarly, in his letter of resignation from the CAS, Borduas

indicts Maurice Gagnon for his "complete nullite dans la lutte

engagee."121 Couched in the language of existentialism, the

Automatistes linked themselves to commitment, the decisive act, and freedom itself, and saw this triad of characteristics as

those which facilitated the existence and practice of 'political morality.'

The Automatistes' insistence on freedom as a challenging moral problem, and their perception of the necessity of clinging

to a political morality, parallels the tone of anglophone

liberal anti-communist rhetoric. The exhortations of liberal

intellectuals and Liberal politicians in defence of the moral virtues of liberal, democratic civilization against the inroads of communism, conforms very closely to the Automatistes' concept of 'political morality.' The political morality of Liberals and anglophone intellectuals, however, had much more concrete and

immediate political implication than it did for the

Automatistes, namely, anti-communism, support for a North

Atlantic alliance, all those virtues and actions necessary for a moral and military defence against the Soviet Union:

to contain or restrain Soviet expansion...[we must build] up in these liberal, democratic and Christian

120 Leduc to Borduas, 8 March 1948, quoted by Gagnon in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 236.

121 Ibid., p. 235. 138

states a dynamic counter-attraction to the degrading tenets of totalitarian and materialistic communism.122

Thus, although political morality was used by both the

Automatistes and liberal intellectuals to signify simply a commitment to apolitical freedom, in the context of the Cold War it came to denote a brand of freedom which could be protected by the Liberal party and its policies alone.

The Automatistes frequently made reference to the atomic bomb in the Refus Global and other writings. For example,

Fernand Leduc proclaimed himself to be on the side of works which were "soeurs de la bombe-atomique,"123 while the Refus

Global states,

The H-hour of total sacrifice is upon us. Two world wars have been necessary to bring us to this absurd state. The terror of the third will be conclusive.12"

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church and Quebec's liberals, the

Automatistes do not present the image of the atomic bomb in entirely negative terms, or as a baleful reminder of mankind's sinfulness;125 instead, they refer to the bomb as evidence of the ineluctable imperative to establish real freedom in the face of nuclear annihilation. Anglophone liberal intellectuals perceived the atomic bomb in a similar fashion, and were by

122 Louis St. Laurent, 24 March 1948, Kitchener, Ontario; quoted in Reid, Time of Fear and Hope, p. 137. •

123 Fernand Leduc, "Qu'on le veuille ou non," individual text included in the Refus Global.

12" Refus Global, p. 50.

125 "'La bombe atomique: l'arme la plus terrible jamais inventee par 1'homme' (Pie XII)," Le Devoir, 9 February 1948, p. 1 . 139

turns, fearful of it, hopeful about its use for peaceful purposes, and convinced that Western superiority in the quality and number of nuclear armaments guaranteed victory over communism. In the enormous number of articles written in newspapers, academic journals and popular magazines on atomic warfare, F.A. Rudd's comments on this subject most succinctly summarize the liberal attitude towards it:

No subject of such moment to humanity as that of atomic energy has ever in the world's history been discussed in an international tribunal [i.e., the United Nations]. No subject has ever been so urgent.... The issue is clear: can warfare, now including wholly destructive atomic warfare, be completely eliminated for all time from our earth, or must mankind continue to exist under the gnawing fear of total atomic destruction in an unknown and unguarded future?126

Of all the commentaries on the Refus Global, only the

English Canadian critics and one Liberal Party francophone newspaper, La Presse, mentioned the Automatistes' comments about the atomic bomb.127 Writing in Time magazine, Stuart Keate commented that the Automatistes advocated "a new civilization and an atomic age art."128 The manner in which Keate presents the nuclear connections of the group is significant: words with favourable connotations for liberals, 'a new civilization,' jostle beside the 'atomic age,' which simultaneously signified

126 F.A. Rudd, "Atomic Energy and World Government," International Journal 2 (Summer 1947): 240.

127 "Les theories de M. Borduas," La Presse, 10 August 1948, p. 4.

128 Stuart Keate, "L'Automatiste," p. 22. 140

both terror and the demise of the world, and the salvation of

western civilization through military superiority to the USSR.

The effect of Keate's combination of words is to give 'atomic,

age' a positive charge: the salutary meaning of 'a new

civilization' blot out the pessimistic connotations of 'atomic

age.' The advent of a group which recognized the terrors

inherent in atomic.warfare, but which catalyzed this terror into

the pursuit of a new, more radical form of freedom than had ever

existed, came at a moment in the history of Canadian art when a

anglophone critics appeared to be looking for a such a

collection of artists. Critics writing on the arts in Canada

throughout the latter part of 1947 and 1948 consistently

returned to the need for art which could face, and adequately

respond to the current perils of fascism and communism, as well

as to the spectre of global destruction. Charles Comfort

outlined the ways in which artists weire affected by the current political situation:

Much of the current anxiety...is no doubt caused by the world's increasing destructive potential... the implications of the destructive deployment of the U235 [Uranium 235, the active agent of atomic weapons] and the possibilities of the willful creation of lethal plague conditions do not contribute to our sense of security in a world where actual warfare may only be held in abeyance.... These factors... form the background, conscious and unconscious for painters of today.129

The problem facing the artist in 1948, of course, was the

129 Charles Comfort, "Observations on a Decade. Canadian Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking: Transition," Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada 25 (January 1948): 141

appropriate manner to respond to the specifically political problems of the world without lapsing into politically corrupted, overtly propagandistic art. Liberal critics believed that a lack of objective content immunized art against the

incursions of politics, and that non-objective and surrealist art would be stamped with the artist's psychological response to

the world without bearing the seal of partisanship:

But they [atomic weapons] do influence this expression....There is an increasing interest in non-objective and surrealist abstraction....[The artist] is concerned with exploring the concepts of art forms and stating them in the audacious terms of today.130

The problem with both the liberal conception of 'atomic age,' non-political art, as well as with the Automatiste's belief that such art could be created through the use of the technique of automatism, is that the concepts underlying the role of atomic weapons in the contemporary world, and the kind of response which was seen as appropriate to the nuclear age were coloured with political overtones: the perception of nuclear weapons as a spur for the West to trounce communism was one which belonged to liberal intellectuals and the Liberal party. Thus, whatever the artist's response to this perception was, it was bound to be tied to the politics submerged beneath

it. Moreover, because it shared the politics of a specific strata of society, but relentlessly professed apoliticism,

'atomic age art' became particularly vulnerable to political

130 Ibid., p. 8. 142

exploitation; the uses to which such art could be put was

candidly remarked on by a writer for Canadian Business:

Socialism is constantly on the offensive. This attack can be met only by...telling something of what free enterprise has done for this country...using cultural materials.131

Surrounded by a society so willing to recruit culture in the

campaign against communism, and armed with an ideology allied

with anglophone liberalism, the possibility that the

Automatistes could produce apolitical art and keep it that way

was minimal.

While the Refus Global abjures political entanglements, it

does declare itself to be on the side of "resplendent

anarchy,"132 a declaration which has led art historians to

perceive the group as politically pure, uncorrupted by the

political machinations of partisan politics.133 While

131 Murray Tevlin, "Business and Culture," Canadian Business, August 1948, p. 45.

132 Refus Global, p. 54. Andr6-G. Bourassa argues that the anarchism of the group was dependent on Breton's ideas: "Furthermore, the anarchistic reveries of Arcane-17 surround the final words of Borduas' text" ("Refus Global: a current interpretation," Canadian Art 35 [December 1978/January 1979]: 27). Although it is clear that Breton's thinking influenced Borduas' to a degree, by viewing Borduas' politics as almost wholly subordinate to those of Breton, Bourassa overlooks the effects the contemporary world had on Borduas.

133 Art historians today are the heirs of the kind of liberal thinking which was central to that of their predecessors three decades ago: the end to ideology and contempt (at the rhetorical level, at any rate) for partisan politics. Thus,- Borduas is upheld as having retained his political integrity because his discussion of freedom was couched in non-political terms; he is esteemed because he defended "freedom in the face of all those systems that attempt to crush it" (Francois-Marc Gagnon, "Foreward" [to a special issue on Borduas] Artscanada 35 [December 1978/January 1979]: 1). Why a defense of 143

the Automatistes1 apparent support of anarchism garnered

them the hostility of the francophone press which regarded

anarchy as the political equivalent of immorality and licence,

the response of anglophone critics was quite different. Donald

Buchanan, for example, casts anarchy, and the Automatistes'

relation to it, in an idealizing light:

a long critical essay by Borduas himself... tends to be an expression, in terms of both art and society, of the doctrine of philosophical anarchism. His assumption, like that of the anarchists, is that the human personality is essentially good and is only corrupted by the deforming power of institutions and authority.13 8

Buchanan's understanding of anarchism as a philosophy rather

than a political doctrine allows him to preserve his assumption

that the Automatistes were essentially non-political, even anti-political. Moreover, his equation of anarchy with the

libertarian belief in the innate goodness of man and the destruction of man's rectitude by both political and

institutional power, effects a reconciliation of anarchism and

liberalism, which asserted that man's probity could prevail if contact with authority and the state were minimized. Desmond

Pacey's definition of liberalism, for instance, stresses both

faith in the supremacy of the individual and a mistrust of power:

The end for the liberal...is the maximum development of all the good potentialities of the human

non-partisan freedom guarantees political incorruptibility is not addressed.

13tt Buchanan, Review of Refus Global, p. 86. 144

race....[the] belief in the possible progressive development of the human race....In this context is the liberal's distrust of power to be understood. He fears power not out of cowardice or timidity, but because power which is allowed to get sufficiently entrenched provides an almost immovable obstacle to change. Hence it is also that he defends minorities; for from them alone can come the new insights which will make clear the need of modifications in the status quo. Civil liberties, of course, must be defended for the same reason: the right to criticize the existing order is an obvious corollary of the belief that no order is perfect and final.135

In the context of the Cold War, the defense of the individual

against the encroachments of the state and of powerful

institutions became identified not just with philosophical

anarchism and neo-liberalism, but also anti-communism. Liberals

castigated communism because of its anti-individualistic, monolithic character, in .which the party mediated all aspects of

the citizen's life, minimizing the opportunity for individual

expression. Philip Mosely, commented, for example,

the Soviet leadership feels that its moral right to rule rests on the 'correctness' of its analyses and the 'monolithic' unity of its action. Western democracy is flexible in its aims and rigid in its procedures; the Soviet power is rigid in its aims and flexible in its procedures [i.e., it unilaterally makes or breaks laws in order to carry out its policies most expeditiously].136

Thus, when Buchanan describes the Automatistes as anarchists

because of their abhorrence of power and their commitment to

individualism, he makes their anarchism compatible with the

liberal world view, one which before all else was hostile to

135 Paceyf »In Defence of Liberalism," p. 238.

136 Philip E. Mosely, "Soviet Policy in a Two-World System," International Journal 3 (Summer 1948): 194-5. 145

communism. In 1948 therefore, the Automatistes' avowal of anarchism did not guarantee them political immunity, but only made them more appealing to a group with distinct political biases, namely, anglophone liberals.

In the Refus Global, the Automatistes express a desire to achieve an art which is international in import and influence:

"Yesterday, we were alone and indecisve. Today, a group exists with wide, courageous branches that extend beyond the frontiers."137

Buchanan's review of the Refus Global also focuses on the universal aspirations of the group:

Given this freedom of expression, Borduas claims that the individual painter, no matter how chaotic his first attempts at instinctive composition may be, will yet have taken the first steps on the road to a more honest and more essentially human and universal art. 138

To cultivate universality was to reject isolationism, an issue which Borduas addressed earlier in the manifesto when he attacked the ghettoization of Quebec which had endured from the conquest to the present:

A colony trapped and abandoned as long ago as 1760 beneath unscalable walls of fear....A little peopleshielded from the broader evolution of thought as too risky and dangerous....A little people... spellbound by the annihilating prestige of remembered European masterpieces, and disdainful of the authentic creations of its own oppressed.139

137 Refus Global, p. 53.

138 Buchanan, Review of Refus Global, p. 86.

139 Refus Global, p. 45. 1 46

On one level, the rejection of isolationism was a denial of one of the fundamental characteristics of the Quebec status quo. At another level, however, its corollary, 'universality,' also responded to the desire of English Canadian liberal intellectuals and Liberal politicians for Canada to adopt a full and committed role in international politics:

Our nationalism is growing rather less provincial and more Canadian, our internationalism less pious and more practical, though subject to the limitations of our resources and our sympathies. The impulses of our people are generous and humane, though we suffer the spiritual obtuseness which inhibits nationalist man from comprehending all that is human. We peer across the region of the North Atlantic cohesion and welfare still seems a long way off, hypotheses resting precariously on avoidance of war and of regressive nationalism. 'The world of today,' Mr Pearson warns, 'is too small, too interdependent, for even regional isolation.'140

The defence of internationalism and the desire for increasing

"Canada's new international status as a middle power,"1"1 however, was intertwined with a political proposal of the

Liberal government: Canada's entry into NATO. When, therefore,

liberal intellectuals defended the Automatistes for having placed Canada "for the first time in its hi story,...no longer in

the wake of European achievement, but...in competition with

1"° Eric Harrison, "Strategy and Policy in the Defence of Canada," International Journal 4 (Summer 1949): 243.

141 D.C. Masters, Review of The English-Speaking Peoples: A Modern History by Edgar Mclnnis and J.H.S. Reid and Contemporary Canada: A Mid-Twentieth Century Orientation by Robert England, International Journal 4 (Summer 1948): 275. 147

her,"1"2 their appraisal of the group was conditioned by, and indicative of their political concerns regarding Canada and its newly acquired role in international politics. At every turn, the Automatistes became enmeshed in the maze .of liberal ideology.

The positive reception of the Refus Global within anglophone liberal intellectual circles was not a function of liberals' intuitive response to the presence of 'artistic genius' in their midst, but was rather predicated on their ideological preoccuptions in 1948. Deeply immersed in the campaign for freedom and the crusade against communism, which coloured their assumptions about art and culture, anglophone liberals saw the Refus Global as an articulation of their own concerns about the position of freedom in the Cold War world.

When these intellectuals upheld the Refus Global as a

"challenging statement"1"3 about the nature of freedom in contemporary society, and when they agreed with Borduas' formulation of it, they were actually only celebrating their own definition of freedom, the liberal/Liberal one. In the Refus

Global, liberal intellectuals in English Canada perceived a reflection of themselves, hostile to the left and the right,

1"2 "Automatism," Canadian Art 5 (Winter 1948): 134. Also underlying these comments is the recognition that Paris had ceased to hold the position as the art capital of the Western world; in 1948, who would move into the position had not been definitively decided, but Montreal, in addition to New York, was vying with Paris for this honour.

1"3 Buchanan, Review of Refus Global, p. 86. 148

faithful only to freedom itself:

that such thoughts should have been put thus directly on paper by a group of artists does prove what diverse stirrings, sometimes direct and clear, sometimes confused and incohate, do exist in French Canada today. Let us hope that such freedom of thought will not be crushed out too arbitrarily.140

The verbal ideologies of the fractious Montreal avant-garde, as expressed in the manifestoes issued by the

Prisme d'Yeux and the Automatistes, corresponded closely to the ideologies that effected a schism between francophone and anglophone liberalism. The Prisme d'Yeux, in attempting to assimilate everything eclectically, and, as its name implies, to refract everything, articulated the major tenets of liberalism in Quebec. In contrast, the Automatistes, in their 'refus' global' rejected everything connected with the liberalism of

Quebec's intellectuals, but in doing so became unexpectedly aligned wih the position of anglophone liberals. By accepting everything and rejecting everything the Prisme d'Yeux and the

Automatistes not only came to blows with one another, but also, despite their avant-garde facades, aligned themselves with the status quo, albeit different and contending ones.

104 Ibid. 149

CHAPTER THREE

The Visual Ideologies of Pellan and Borduas:

L'homme A grave and Objet Totemique

The pictorial experience of each of us—and this is our deepest desire--must be a part of our essence, and in consequence, should inhere in all essential experience, of which it is the projection.1

Truly these painters are for children and the simple-minded, and for the 'grown ups' of tomorrow--when all will be able to see beneath the surface and identify the truths that it conceals.2

While Pellan and Borduas were engaged in the polemics of avant-gardism, they also continued to produce art.3 The problem which is posed by their artistic production of 1948 is its

relationship to the manifestoes which both signed, the meaning of its imagery, and the implications of their choice of styles.

Through an examination of these issues the aesthetic ideologies

1 Prisme d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 51.

2 Borduas, "Commentaires sur des mots courants," In Borduas, Ecrits/Writings, p. 79.

3 In terms of his artistic production, 1948 was a very successful year for Borduas; by April 1948, he had probably completed at least 11 new paintings which were exhibited in his one man show at the Viau brothers' atelier. As one of these works, Cimitiere glorieux bears the secondary title, 14'. 48, one may infer that he had completed 14 works during the first four months of 1948. Pellan's artistic output in 1948 was limited to small scale drawings due to health problems, as Reesa Greenberg has noted in the exhibition catalogue The Drawings of Alfred Pellan (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada^ 1980), p. 65. 150

of two works produced by the leaders of the Montreal avant-garde, L'homme A grave (plate 1) by Pellan, and Objet

Totemique" (plate 2) by Borduas will become apparent.

L'homme A grave is one of a series of 44 pen and ink drawings which Pellan executed in 1948, inspired by a reading of

Paul Eluard's Capitale de la Douleur (1926); L'homme A grave owes its source to "Volontairement," one of the shorter poems in the collection.5 The punning title of the drawing is typically surrealist, although it bears little relationship to either the title or content of Eluard's poem. Pellan's choice of a title with multiple meanings, however, is typical of his antipathy towards commitment to a single position; it may alternately mean the first rate man engraves, the man engraves, the serious man, the heavy man, the man is aggravated.6 When considered simultaneously, these epithets evoke the position of the artist in 1948, subject to a series of pressures, both artistic and social, which Pellan felt acutely. According to Reesa

u In Borduas; Biographie critique, Gagnon refers to this work as Objets Totemiques (pp"! 228-229, 266); however, a list of works shown at the Viau brothers' apartment in 1948 which is made in Borduas' own hand refers to the painting as Objet Totemique. Despite my many reservations about his interp• retation of the 1948 conflict, Gagnon's work remains the most valuable on the period.

5 Greenberg, The Drawings of Alfred Pellan, p. 145. Although I disagree with her on many points, I am indebted to Greenberg's research on the relationship between Pellan's 1948 drawings and Eluard's poetry.

6 Francois-Marc Gagnon has also suggested that the title refers to Albert Dumouchel, a printmaker and member of the Prisme d'Yeux: "'A' for Durer. Albrecht. 'A' for Albert, Albert Dumouchel, Father of Graphic Art in Quebec" (corresp., 1 October 1981). 151

Plate 1. Alfred Pellan, L'homme A grave, 1948. Ink on paper, 29.8 x 22.8 cm. Coll: Musee du Quebec. (Photo: Musee du Quebec) 152

Plate 2. Paul-Emile Borduas, Objet Tot§mique, 1948. Oil on canvas, 55.8 x 46.9 cm. Coll: Mme. Vianney Decarie. (Photo: Yvan Boulerice) 153

Greenberg,

Pellan deliberately changed the titles [of the drawings inspired by Capitale de la Douleur] in an attempt to obscure their source, in response to the current anti-communist climate in Quebec...A non-communist, Pellan preferred not to have his art interpreted on the basis of a political affiliation with the most vocal European communist Surrealist, Eluard, nor for that matter with the Montreal Automatistes.7

Considering the tension existing between Pellan and Borduas in

1948, Pellan's self-censorship of the surrealist source of the series of drawings to which L'homme A grave belongs, is comprehensible as an avant-garde strategy of self-definition; if he had acknowledged that he, like the Automatistes, owed a debt to surrealism, he would have minimized the differences between himself and the Automatistes, differences which both groups insisted were sharp edged ones.

Pellan's fear of being regarded as a communist through affiliation with Eluard, however, is more problematic than he and Greenberg suggest. Whatever Eluard's subsequent political convictions,8 and their influence on his poetry, Capitale de

7 Greenberg, The Drawings of Alfred Pellan, p. 66.

8 Eluard joined the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) in 1927, along with four other Surrealists, Breton, Aragon, Unik, and Peret. The Surrealist-PCF alliance was an uneasy one, as the PCF doubted the Surrealists' reliability and commitment to the Party, while Eluard and Breton were "put off by the oppressive atmosphere in the Party under the narrow, sectarian and fundamentally anti-intellectual leadership of Barbe and Celor" (David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914-1960 [London: ^Andr§ Deutsch, 1964], p. 97). Together with Breton and Crevel, Eluard was expelled from the PCF in 1933; the other Surrealists were expelled for having attacked, among other things, "the wind of cretinization blowing from the U.S.S.R." (Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism, trans. Richard Howard [Middlesex! Penguin, 1973], p. 208). Eluard rejoined 1 54

la Douleur's allegiances are to surrealism, not communism.

The poems' introspective, individualistic and often hermetic qualities were, in fact, precisely those which caused the Parti

Communiste Francais to regard poets like Eluard with a large measure of suspicion: the PCF regarded his poetry as speaking to and for the alienated, but politically naive and self-indul• gent bourgeois intelligentsia, and considered his commitment to the revolution to be a romantic, rather than hard-headed and specifically political one.9 Moreover, the lack of political consciousness and the absence of manifestly Marxist ideas in

Capitale de la Douleur reflects Eluard's attitude towards the

PCF at the time these poems were written: in 1926, Eluard, like several other Parisian Surrealists, was flicting with the notion of collaborating with the PCF in fomenting revolution, but the

flirtation remained an idealistic one, and did not solidify into a whole-hearted acceptance of either the cultural or political policies of the PCF.10

the PCF in 1942, and remained a member until his death in 1952. On the relationship between the French Surrealists and the PCF, see note 81, Chapter 2.

9 See, for example, Pierre Naville, La Revolution et les Intellectuels. Que Peuvent faire les Surrealistes? (Par i s, 1 926) .

10 Indicative of the Surrealists' ambivalence towards the PCF was their refusal to abandon publishing their journal, La Revolution Surrealiste, and to devote their energy exclusively to the Party's paper, L'Humanite. As Short has noted in "The Politics of Surrealism," the contents and title of La Revolution Surrealiste "caused consternation and moral outrage" among the leaders of the PCF (p. 10). 155

While the non-communist tenor of Capitale de la Douleur and the fact that it was written prior to Eluard's active involvement with the PCF make it difficult to understand

Pellan's anxiety about being regarded as a communist through affiliation with it, the status of Eluard among Quebec's critics in 1948 adds further dimensions to this problem. Only the most conservative critics judged Eluard as a specifically communist writer. In "Bilan du Surrealisme," for example, Auguste Viatte wrote:

le surrealisme...pouvait sembler une entreprise de demoralisation au service du communisme....Eluard, Breton, Aragon, n'adheraient-ils pas au parti communi ste?11

The critics who censured Eluard as a communist, however, were also those who considered the majority of 20th century art as inherently revolutionary and therefore imbued with communist connections, and who had previously castigated Pellan's art as

'bolchevistic' because of its similarity to the modern art of

France. Since these critics12 were already hostile to Pellan's work without knowing of its connections with Eluard, it is unlikely that in 1948 Pellan regarded them as an important part of his audience, unlikelier still that he would avoid mentioning the influence of Eluard on his art for fear of antagonizing these hysterical anti-modernists.

11 Auguste Viatte, "Bilan du Surrealisme," Revue de l'Universite Laval 3 (November 1948), p. 234.

12 See, for example, Bergeron, Art et Bolchevisme and Clarence Gagnon, "L'immense blague de l'art moderniste." 156

Among Quebec's liberal literati, Pellan's sympathetic public, however, filuard was extremely popular, and his association with the PCF was overlooked or excised from their analyses of his poetry. Liberal intellectuals placed Eluard in the pantheon of 20th century French culture; for example, an article on surrealism by Jean-Marc Leger presents a typically favourable image of Eluard:

[Le surrealisme]...renfermait des elements veritablement constructifs et...il repondait a un besoin. Comment expliquer, autrement, l'etendue et la profondeur de son succes et qu'il ai pu rallier des artistes aussi authentiques qu'un Eluard, un Aragon, un Ivan Goll (chez les poetes), qu'un Miro, un Masson et, pour un temps, un Fernand Leger (chez les peintres).13

Leger's omission of Eluard's political connections and his juxtaposition of Eluard with such School of Paris artists as

Miro and Masson, also creates difficulties insofar as Pellan's suppression of Eluard as the source of his inspiration for

L'homme A grave is concerned. The artists which Leger regards as analogous to Eluard had not only been connected with the PCF, but were also those who Pellan quite overtly imitated and for whom he had often expressed admiration. In an interview with

Paul Duval in January 1949, for example, Pellan said, "For me,

Giotto, Poussin, Leger, Klee and Miro are great painters...I embrace the surrealism of Andre Masson, Klee and Miro."1" That

Pellan was willing to affiliate himself with painters involved

13 Jean-Marc Leger, "Porter l'obscur a la lumiere; Situation du surrealisme," Notre Temps, 1 May 1948, p. 5.

14 Duval,."The Art of Alfred Pellan," p. 55. 157

even temporarily with communism, but not with a poet associated with the PCF, makes Pellan's explanation for his suppression of the source of his 1948 drawings rather unbelievable. Moreover, the fact that Quebec liberal intellectuals were either unaware or unmindful of Eluard's political inclinations, and that they accorded him accolades of praise, also enfeebles Pellan's account of his censorship of Eluard's connections to his entire artistic production of 1948.

Pellan's attempt to conceal the connections between his art and Capitale de la Douleur only becomes comprehensible when one recalls the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto's edict against "the interference of literary...influences...which can adulterate its

[art's] expression and sully its purity."'5 Pellan's artistic output of 1948 was entirely inspired by literature, and therefore violated the aesthetic code articulated in the Prisme d'Yeux's manifesto; public admission of this fact would have severely compromised his own credibility as well as that of the

Prisme d'Yeux. The Prisme d'Yeux's vilification of art with literary connections, however, was also a thrust against the

Automatistes, who had previously been accused of producing overly 'literary' art, a charge motivated by the fanciful titles which many of them gave their paintings (and regarded by its critics as inappropriate to the visual arts, however appropriate they may have been to literature), and by the fact that automatism was.a technique first used.by surrealist writers; as

15 Prisme d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 49, 51. 158

Bourbeau commented, "1'automatisme (essentiellement langue ecrite) ne peut apporter...absolument rien en peinture."16

By using poetry as a source of artistic inspiration, Pellan transgressed a major article of faith of the group which he led, but by obscuring this fact, he could nevertheless apppear to uphold the group's principles, and yet still measure his distance from the 'literary' Automatistes. That Pellan's career in 1948 was so fraught with contradictions is not necessarily an indication of hypocrisy on his part; instead, these contradictions were an outcome of the difficulties inherent in manoeuvring for the position of the dominant avant-garde, which forced such artists as Pellan into ambiguous positions.

Moreover, the contradictions relating to the use of Eluard's poetry in his art are yet another example of Pellan's propensity to regard dichotomies as natural, and the reconciliation of them as a bid for an aesthetic freedom, unbound by the edicts of rigid, closely adhered to aesthetic principles.

Both the title and figurative content of L'homme A grave refer to graphic art. The central image of the work may be read as an emblem of the graphic artist, for a hand grips an etcher's stylus and enscribes an encoded message on a plate. In 1948, graphics occupied a prominent position in the lives of the

Prisme d'Yeux artists, as they were working on Les Ateliers des

Arts Graphiques, a magazine jointly sponsored by the Ecole des

16 Geraldine Bourbeau, "M. Borduas et 1'automatisme," Liaison 2 (March 1948): 175. 159

Arts Graphiques de Montreal, and the provincial Ministry of

Social Welfare and Youth. Regarded as avant-garde within

Quebec,17 but by the English press and the Automatistes as passe,18 Les Ateliers repeats the main tenets of francophone liberalism and the preoccupations of the Prisme d'Yeux.

In an article in Les Ateliers, Jacques de Tonnancour, the principal author of the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto, advances graphics as the bridge between the 'old' and the 'new,' associating graphics with tradition and any linear style •

17 The reproduction of a nude by Mimi Parent in its first edition (1947) had caused consternation within the government, thereby adding to the magazine's avant-garde image. In the Catholic journal Relations, the anonymous reviewer described Les Ateliers as "Albums d'essais typographiques d'un art avance"e, trop avance"e pour etre formateur, peut-etre" (8 [April 1948]: 1-26). See also Bourassa, Surrealisme et litterature quebecoise, pp. 186-187 and Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, pp. 213-214.

18 See, for example, Guy Sylvestre's lukewarm review in Canadian Art 5 (Winter 1948): 152: "Generally speaking, the articles are inferior to the illustrations....almost all the works of art reproduced here are of an astonishing audacity; the articles, which lack originality, do not always keep pace with them." The Automatistes had contributed to the first edition of Les Ateliers, a move over which there was dissent within the group. In a letter to Borduas, for example, Leduc wrote, "je vous avouerai qu'il m'a ete tres penible de constater votre (je pense au groupe) presence a la Revue des Arts Graphiques tout ce qu'il y a de plus bourgeois et de plus conformiste par la presentation de plus reactionnaire par les textes" (quoted by Gagnon in Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 214). The second issue of Les Ateliers was to be published in 1948, and Leduc's reservations notwithstanding, the rest of the Automatistes considered collaborating on it again. When an Automatiste article was censored, and when the group learned that its works would not be presented 'en bloc' in the magazine, it withdrew from the project; in Borduas' words, "a partir de ce moment, les ruptures se precipiteront" (Projections Libgrantes, p. 109). 160

post-dating Cezanne with modernity; the reappearance of graphics as a major form of modern art appeared to de Tonnancour as the

ideal link between the past, the present, and the future:

avec une pur§te et une gloire nouvelle, la Renaissance moderne a fait le lien avec la tradition dans tous les arts, et cela au prix d'efforts patients et entiers, aux prix d'une intransigeance et d'un proc£de de purification qui rapproche notre epoque des plus grandes.19

In L'homme A grave, the references to graphics and their visual expression through modernist styles, function as a visual analogue of de Tonnancour's perception of the role of graphics

in the visual arts. Pellan's synthesis of two main branches of the School of Paris--cubism and surrealism—also relates to the old/new dialectic, a feature which contemporary critics remarked upon. Berthelot Brunet, for example, perceived the Prisme d'Yeux as "les vieux modernes," and commented that "ces peintures...ne semblent revolutionnaires que pour ceux qui ont neglige de soumettre a l'heure dite avancee, une heure que les plus realistes ont adoptee."20 Similarly, Paul Duval commented,

Alfred Pellan is the enfant terrible of Canadian art. He is the acknowledged leader of the Montreal School--that singular cultural bridge betwen the Old and the New Worlds.21

The perception of Pellan as an "old modernist" was dependent on his amalgamation of cubism and surrealism, which were regarded

19 Jacques de Tonnancour, "Considerations sur le graphisme," Les Ateliers des Arts Graphiques, No. 3 (1949), n.p.

20 Berthelot Brunet, "Notre peinture vraie et les vieux modernes," La Patrie, 22 May 1948.

21 Paul Duval, "The Work of Alfred Pellan," p. 53. 161

as tokens of the old and the new, respectively. By 1948, cubism occcupied a position of respectability within the aesthetic cosmos of Quebec; as early as 1942, the conservative Amerique

Francaise had published an article characterizing cubism as an example of the vitality and intellectual fecundity of western civilization.22 However, by virtue of its respectability, cubism had lost its aggressively modern, and hence, avant-garde allure within Quebec. In contrast, surrealism continued to be viewed as a distinctively' modern adjunct of contemporary art, and its execration by conservative critics only enhanced its veneer of novelty.23 Through allusions to the old and the new, the figurative and stylistic components of L'homme A grave appear as a fulfillment of the criterion of aesthetic freedom--duality--celebrated in the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto:

"Prisme d'Yeux rallies to the oldest theory of art...to that of the cave man [and] to the most contemporary of 20th century

22 Eliane Houghton Brunn, "La volont§ du cubisme," Amer ique Francaise 1 (August 1942): 23-28.

23 Surrealism's most bitter critic prior to 1948 was Rene Bergeron, who wrote in Art et Bolchevisme: "Le Pere Raymond Kelley, jesuite americain, ecrivait dans 'Catholic Digest'...que 'le surrealisme prend sa source dans le socialisme de Marx et dans la psychologie de Freud,' et que ses tenants sont materialstes, athees, amoraux, immoraux, antimoraux, antirationnels, anti-intellectuels, et, a plus forte raison, violemment anti-catholiques....Le surrealisme...comme tout ce qui est communiste, est destructeur" (p. 14). For the reaction of conservatives to surrealism in 1948, see Auguste Viatte, "Bilan du surrealisme," pp. 233-239, as well as the articles by and about Hyacinthe-Marie Robillard mentioned in Chapter 2, note 77. 162

man."24

As has been demonstrated in the previous chapter, the reconciliation of both the distant and recent past with the onrushing present also formed a dominant motif of liberal ideology on many points, especially on the matter of communism.

Linking the rural, pre-war economy of the province with tradition, and the urban, industrialized post-war economy (and its concomitatnt problems)25 with the present, liberal intellectuals contended that communism would swallow up the urban and working poor, unless the government rectified some of the new problems faced by them. Mild social reforms would accomplish this goal, preventing the radicalization of workers and leaving the essentials of the political structure intact.26

In L'homme A grave, the combination of references to graphics,

24 Prisme d'Yeux Manifesto, p. 49.

25 World War II prompted an increase in industrialization and urbanization in Quebec; on the effects of these changes see Kenneth McRoberts and Dale Posgate, Quebec; Social Change and Political Crisis, rev. ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980); and Roland Parenteau, '^'industrialisation du Quebec et ses consequences," in Le Quebec en Textes, 1940-1980, ed. Gerard Boismenu, Laurent Mailhot and Jacques Rouillard (Montreal: Boreal Express, 1980): 45-59.

26 On this point, the thinking of liberals coincided with that of the Church. In "Le manifeste communiste de 1848. Influence et Rayonnement," Girard Hebert counsels Catholics to thwart communism by ameliorating the conditions of workers: La deuxieme conclusion, c'est la necessite de travailler a 1'amelioration des conditions de vie des masses ouvrieres, puisque le communisme, doctrine de revolte, ne peut se developper que dans une societe qui connait les mecontentements et la misere" (Relations 7 [June 1948]: 173). Similar ideas had previously been expressed by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno.

r 163

as well as to both traditional and avant-garde modernist styles—elements which betokened the old and the new—ties in with the ideology of francophone liberalism, which simultaneously insisted on its claims to the present and future by presenting itself as modern, but which established the validity of those claims by remaining firmly tied to the values of the political status quo.

While the figure of the graphic artist dominates L'homme A grave, another, smaller, inverted man appears on the right hand side of the work, beyond the rectilinear forms evocative of a wall. Reference to the poem which inspired the drawing and to the title of the work itself suggests that this figure represents the public persona of the artist. Eluard's poem,

"Volontairement," deals with the relationship between the private, creative existence of an artist and his life in the

'ou.tside' world:

Aveugle maladroit, ignorant et leger Aujourd'hui pour oublier, Le mois prochain pour dessiner Les coins de la rue, les allees a perte de vue Je les imite pour m'etendre

Dans une nuit profonde et large de mon age.27

Similarly, L'homme A grave refers to '1'homme,' not 'les hommes,' suggesting that the drawing, like the poem, deals with two different incarnations of a single individual, the artist.

The business suit, hat, and tie of the inverted man intimate that he represents the public persona of the artist. The wall

27 Paul Eluard, "Volontairement," Capitale de la Douleur (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), p. 41. 164

separating the artist at work in the studio from his existence in the outside world reproduces the liberal prescription for aesthetic freedom: liberals contended for the autonomy of culture, and alleged that if it were jeopardized, it would be pressed into the service of political propaganda, and more specifically, communist propaganda. Similarly, this compartmentalization of existence alludes to the Prisme d'Yeux manifesto's declaration that art must deal with aesthetics alone, and must remain untouched by non-artistic realms of life--literature, philosophy, politics, religion.

The treatment of the two figures' eyes reinforces the dichotomy between the public and the private, the social and the artistic: those of the inverted man are hypnotically wide, while those of the artist are stitched shut. However, the schematic dilated eyes of the public self also appear in the grid structure emerging from the interior of the artist's head, implying that while he must literally shut his eyes to the outside world, the imprint of what is seen beyond the studio can never be entirely effaced.

In addition to the eyes which are sewn together, other images of control and silence appear in L'homme A grave: the lips of the artist are firmly pressed together, the encoded message on the plate remains incomplete, the sheaf of papers (or are they posters, already tacked up, but devoid of any message?) remain blank, walls proliferate around the hand and the plate, constraining them, and the inverted man's limbs are contorted, as if pulled by the invisible strings of a marionetteer. In

1948, themes of order and control were also found in liberal 165

anti-communist rhetoric; Pellan, sensitive to the 'dominating social accents' located and pictured these tensions in L'homme A grave.

Pellan's dependence on surrealist imagery and cubist techniques also relates to the correlated concepts of freedom and control, both Pellan and his critics perceived surrealism as evidence of spontaneity, while cubism inferred control. Pellan believed that "surrealism has added to the richness of the artist's raw material. That material should still be filtered through the conscious mind."28 He further subscribed to the

"use of the new material of deliberate free-association and the spontaneous sub-conscious within a classical framework,"29 a framework identified with cubism. Critics praised this conjunction of opposing tendencies, viewing it as a manifestation of the harmonious integration of different facets of human existence. Madeleine Gariepy, for example, commented,

Prisme d'Yeux, c'est-a-dire des regards differents jetes sur des r£alites diverses dans une lumiere qui est autre. Prisme d'Yeux, symbole plastique de la diversite des experiences humaines et des transpositions multiples qu'elles donnent dans le domain de l'art.30

In contrast, art lacking the successful amalgamation of the liberated and the ordered engendered cultural chaos and tyranny,

28 Pellan quoted by Duval, "The Art of Alfred Pellan," p.

55.

29 Ibid.

30 Gariepy, "Exposition Prisme d'Yeux," p. 5. 166

effects associated with communism in liberal polemics.31 Art which appeared to combat these effects through a celebration of the harmonious, controlled and free, concepts associated with liberal democracy in the minds of francophone intellectuals, should be supported. As one critic noted in a laudatory review of Mimi Parent, a member of the Prisme d'Yeux whose work closely imitates that of Pellan,

Aujourd'hui, comme autrefois, l'Art c'est l'ordre, l'equilibre, l'harmonie. Il faudra toujours lutter contre l'obscurite, le desordre, 1'incoherence ... qui sement la confusion dans les esprits.32

For liberal francophone intellectuals, the works of Pellan and the formation of the Prisme d'Yeux symbolized the vitality of Quebec's culture. While modern in a limited and general sense, works like L'homme A grave did not challenge any of the aesthetic norms previously made acceptable by the CAS; commented one anonymous critic in Le Canada, "un mouvement est ne....Rien de nouveau."33 Similarly, the defenders of the Prisme d'Yeux did not seriously oppose any of the political or cultural

31 Cf. Maurice Fraigneux, who in "Communisme et esprit moderne," associates communists with "le chaos et le desespoir" (Notre Temps, 20 March 1948, p. 1).

32 Maurice Huot, "Mimi Parent," La Patrie, 4 June 1948.

33 "Prisme d'Yeux est consacre," Le Canada, 5 February 1948. Le Canada, a Liberal newspaper, was one of the few papers to regard the advent of the Prisme d'Yeux with less than total enthusiasm; see, for example, the editorial, "Pour nous en faire voir de toutes les couleurs!" (6 February 1948). 167

positions of the status quo, but instead, by virtue of their prominence and dominance in the cultural and political life of the province, defined and codified them. Consequently, the work of Pellan was perceived by the status quo as a testament to the supremacy of the culture arbitrated by them, and to the validity of the variant of freedom on which it was theoretically based.

With the advent of the Prisme d'Yeux, Quebec's intellectuals could proudly declare:

Ces societes, il en faut applaudir l'eclosion. Elles sont le signe de notre sante" intellectuelle et elles ont, dans notre culture, un r6le de premier plan a jouer: celui de rgpandre la connaissance de l'art, d'en favoriser 1'appreciation et de collaborer a la creation d'un commun langage de vision....Nos yeux sont fixes sur eux, amicaux et expectatifs.34

The Automatistes also wanted to create a 'commun langage de vision,' but the components of this language and the ideas it was to express were radically different than those of the Prisme d'Yeux. To Borduas and the Automatistes, painting constituted an outlet for everything which Quebec society muzzled, an

attitude which is implicitly critical of the status quo

province, and which was best expressed by Pierre Gauvreau:

II est evident que ces formes peintes correspondent a des desirs qui ne peuvent s'exprimer dans les cadres de la societe actuelle.35

A detailed examination of one of the works created by Borduas in

1948, Objet Totemique, will reveal what could and could not be

34 Jean Simard, "Autour du Prisme d'Yeux," Notre Temps, 14 February 1948.

35 Pierre Gauvreau quoted by Tancrede Marsil in "Gauvreau, Automatiste," Le Quartier Latin, 28 November 1947, p. 5. 168

said in Quebec in 1948.

Most analyses of Automatiste paintings are informed by the kind of sentiments underlying Gauvreau's comments: according to most Canadian art historians, the works of Borduas and his compatriots reverberate with the very notion and essence of freedom. What this freedom is, and how it functions in the works of Borduas is seldom clearly described, but is approached from various angles. Guy Robert, for example, paraphrases the theoretical writings of the group, borrowing from them all the familiar adjectives appended to 'freedom' in the vocabulary of the late 1940s:

On y explore un champ de peinture non-figurative et spontane"e, 'automatiste,' liberee de tout controle rationnel et de tout tradition.36

Robert fails'to describe how lack of figuration, spontaneity, freedom from rational control, and the liberation from tradition are translated into pictorial terms; nor does he elaborate on what any of these qualities signified to the artist or the observer in the late 1940s. Without such an analysis, the works that Robert describes seem to be emptied of their content—paradoxically, because they are described in abstract terms as the hallmark of absolute freedom, which stifles nothing and says everything, the works seem devoid of content, communicating nothing. Similar lacunae exist in the writing of other authors who simultaneously depict Borduas as an artist

36 Guy Robert, La peinture du Quebec depuis ses origines, p. 93. 169

committed to "liberatfing] his creative energies" and

"explor[ing] new avenues of expression,"37 yet without examining how these pursuits are present in these paintings.

Those writers who expand on the ways in which Borduas' art may be seen as the epitome of liberation, do so through a discussion of the sources of his art—automatism and surrealism—and their relationship to other 20th century movements. Ann Davis, for instance, characterizes Borduas' work as a struggle between cubism and surrealism, a contest between rational control and subconscious domination:

Now [early 1948] Borduas seems to be much more willing to give completely free rein to the spontaneous, to free association, and, by implication, to the abstract. Yet, despite his verbal support, Borduas retained some stylistic determinants, particularly a cubist concept of space which he used in his own work and encouraged in that of other Automatistes. The final liberation came after the Refus Global....The momentous social implications of Refus Global were reflected in equally momentous plastic terms.38

France Gascon analyses the relationship between cubism and automatism in greater depth, although she continues to regard cubism as an impediment to aesthetic liberation:

L'Automatisme partage aussi avec le Cubisme le caractere organique de ses compositions: un magma de forme organise autour du centre ou autour d'un axe horizontal. Les formes evoluent dans un espace tridimensionnel. Ici comme la, la liberte d'action du peintre est contrSlee, d'abord par l'espace naturel qui persiste et ensuite a cause d'une volonte de

37 Natalie Luckyj, Other Realities: The Legacy of Surrealism in Canadian Art (Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 1978), p. 15.

38 Ann Davis, Frontiers of Our Dreams (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1979), pp. 24, 30. 170

traiter les formes et les couleurs.39

The content of the works created by Borduas appears to be the image of a battlefield on which the conflict between two major

20th century movements is played, with artistic emancipation as the object of the struggle. Why this battle was enacted within the parameters of the canvas, what it means, and how it was resolved remains unanswered.

Other critics, such as J. Russell Harper, have adopted a kind of formalist methodology in approaching the works of

Borduas. Harper sets the stage for his formalist exegesis by establishing Borduas as an abstract artist:

After convincing himself that the figurative element had no essential meaning in a painting, Borduas rejected not only all subject matter (although he still retained a certain affinity with landscape) but also his interests in Picasso, the Cubists and the Surrealists.40

The aesthetic which stood in opposition to these movements, and which Borduas adopted was

'automatic writing' and later Automatism and Tachism....Its aesthetic is found in the significant meaning of the medium itself: the infinite variety of surfaces, the light or heavy application of paint, the swirls of the brush or palette knife, and the accidentals of colour."1

Although Harper confines the meaning of the painting to the medium itself, he nevertheless sees a kind of content shining

39 France Gascon, La Revolution Automatiste (Montreal: Muse"e d'Art Contemporain-^ 1980) , p. i~6~!

40 J. Russell Harper, Painting in Canada: A History, 2d. ed. (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 338.

41 Ibid. 171

through the swirls of paint, a content equivalent to the spirit of the artist which is mystical in significance and import:

It was Borduas's conviction that the artist's inner spirit will automatically reveal itself by means of an uncontrollable force which ignores the human world; the painter's unconscious mind will accept and set down or reject and refuse to record artistic feelings as the brush wanders freely over the canvas. Borduas went beyond automatic writing to a union with a kind of cosmic force-of life and truth in space, in which no conscious artistic mind is recognized.42

The two authors who have written most on Borduas,

Francois-Marc Gagnon, and Fernande Saint-Martin, continue to

focus on the predominantly formal elements of the works, cataloguing the relationships of forms to one another, of figure

to group, image to frame, and so on. While Saint-Martin, a

semiologist, remains relatively uninterested in messages beyond

the formal in Borduas' works, Gagnon, a structuralist, sets himself the task of discerning thematic patterns in his artistic production of a given year.

Although the approaches to Borduas' work adopted by the above-mentioned authors varies greatly, several constants emerge

in their interests and conclusions. None of the authors

acknowledge the presence of a real, 'knowable' content, beyond

the formal elements, or beyond the personality of the artist:

any discussion of Borduas' work is self-limited. Why has the

content of Borduas' works been so circumscribed? The answer, in

part, lies in Borduas' own assessment of the significance of his

works: "Tous mes tableaux ne sont faits que pour ma propre

42 Ibid. 1 72

connaissance."43 Art historians have tacitly accepted such a judgment as a starting point for their analyses of his work, without stopping to consider why an artist would say such a thing about his work: mistaking his comment for an argument for a kind of hermetic formalism, art historians have failed to see that in the context of the late forties, when anything connected to the world outside the atelier had a potentially lethal political message, the artist could only consciously address himself to those realms which seemed least vulnerable to politicization: his psyche and formal, painterly concerns. But could the artist really remain untouched by the concerns of the world beyond the studio? And could his art remain devoid of

images arising from that world, images connected to the political pressures which worked so forcefully on his theoretical work? An analysis of the content, formal and

figurative, of one of his works from 1948, Objet Totemique, demonstrates that it is not.

Objet Totemique abjures many traditions which are prominent

in L'homme A grave, including figuration and cubism. For the

Automatistes, figurative and anecdotal art, whether fused with modernist styles or not, had been corrupted by the left as well as the right. Commenting on one of the main forms of figurative art dominant in the 1930s, social realism, Pierre Gauvreau stated:

Il s'accommode facilement de toutes les exploitations

43 quoted by Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 229. 173

techniques selon le stage d'Evolution du pays ou il est pratique": en URSS, il se resume au plus grossier trompe-11oeil porteur d'anecdotes 6difiantes; en France, il adopte volontiers un aspect plus evolue" qu'il exploite a des fins politiques en restaurant l'anecdote edifiante dans le cubisme, le fauvisme, etc.4"

It was, in part, the glib aesthetics of social realism which so antagonized the Automatistes. Above all, the Automatistes valued aesthetic abstruseness, believing that a work's impenetrability was the key to its quality, while acting as protection against vulgarisation by the unthinking masses, and as a challenge to the few who could unlock its enigmas: "Few people know how to decipher them....to see beneath the surface and identify the truths that it conceals."45 Against an art intended to communicate with all levels of society, the

Automatistes opposed an aesthetic with a frankly elitist or ientat ion.4 6

Cubism, also apparently rejected in Objet Totemique, was criticized with equal fury. As early as 1943, Borduas had

44 Pierre Gauvreau, "Arbre genealogique de 1'automatisme contemporaine," Le Quartier Latin, 17 February 1948, p. 3.

45 Borduas, "Commentaires Sur des Mots Courants," p. 78, 79.

46 It was also the banal which so offended American liberals about art produced in communist countries: it was too easy, too vulgar, too obvious. Schlesinger commented in The Vital Centre: "The conclusion is clear....Let them [Soviet artists] create only compositions which officials can hum, paintings which their wives can decipher, poems which the Party leaders can understand. This is the Diktat of the state. And the consequent attacks on 'formalism' and 'decadence' are fully as vulgar as those which used so to amuse the Doughface progressives when they were conducted by the Nazis" (p. 79). 174

declared that the door to cubism had been irrevocably shut for contemporary artists,*7 but by 1948 he reviled it as a modern version of academicism; the old enemy had resurfaced in a new guise. In "Commentaires Sur des Mots Courants," Borduas' individual contribution to the Refus Global, cubism is defined as a "school which became rapidly conventionalized. Its numerous 'missionaries' satisfy their meagre curiosity by continuous repetition."*8 The implications of the new academicism were addressed by Riopelle in a letter to Le Canada in November 1948:

Ne voit-on pas les peintres des ateliers d'art sacre* aussi bien que les peintres rallies aux partis politiques de gauche, utiliser chacun de leur cdte les decouvertes cubistes a des fins de propagande?*9

Emptied of any kind of critical position it once occupied as an avant-garde movement, and practiced without being fully understood, cubism was amenable to assimilation into the aesthetic vocabularies of totalitarianism at either end of the political spectrum. By definition, cubism could no longer communicate the concept of freedom, and therefore, for the

Automatistes, it became untouchable.

*7 "Manieres de gouter une oeuvre d'art," Am6rique Francaise 2 (January 1943): 31-44. Reprinted and trans, in Borduas, Ecrits/Writinqs, pp. 23-43; on cubism, see p. 35 in Ecrits/Writings.

*8 "Commentaires sur des mots courants," in Borduas, Ecr its/Writings , p. 74..

*9 Riopelle, "En marge des propos de l'artiste Agnes Lefort," p. 4. 175

Although Pellan and the Prisme d'Yeux are seldom mentioned in the Automatiste offensive against cubism, given the context of 1948, it is fairly clear that they are the real object of attack, because of all the art being produced in Quebec in 1948,

Pellan's was the one most closely identified with cubism.50 The intensity with which Borduas and his followers denounced cubism was fuelled by the disintegration of their relations with the

Prisme d'Yeux artists in 1948, and the struggle for the avant-garde pre-eminence which catalyzed it; that Borduas attempted to obliterate references to cubism in his works produced in that year is therefore inseparable from the strategies of the avant-garde.

The links between the tactics of the avant-garde and the

Automatistes' condemnation of cubism are solidified if other writings are taken into account. In numerous articles throughout 1948, as well as in the Refus Global itself, the

Automatistes established an aesthetic hierarchy, with cubism consistently ranked below automatism, historically and qualitatively. Pierre Gauvreau, for instance, catalogued a variety of contemporary movements in art, placing automatism at the pinnacle of artistic evolution, far in advance of cubism:

"Il appartient aux Automatistes canadiens d'apporter leur effort a la liberation de l'objet peint....Ils le feront

50 Cf. Borduas, Projections Liberantes, "Pellan believed only in cubism, which, partly because of him had already lost its mystery for us" (p. 94). 176

prochainement."51 Likewise, in the Refus Global major movements from "the beginning of Christianity" to the 20th century are cited as a series of small advances leading up to the climactic appearance of the Automatistes in Quebec in the late forties, a group which would lead mankind into new frontiers, "until now taboo and unexplored."52 Through their art historical framework, the Automatistes accomplished two things: by linking

Automatism with major artistic movements of the past, the group validated its own artistic credentials, but by describing itself as the most recent stage in the evolution of art, the group could lay claim to the present and future, confidently declaring, "dans notre decade...les recherches surrealistes et automatistes constituent 1'avant-garde."53

The Automatistes definition of themselves as against tradition, yet bound up with it, and on the brink of establishing a new one responded to the anglophone liberals' attitude towards the question of the relationship between tradition and freedom. According to these intellectuals, authentic creative freedom existed once allegiances to tradition

51 Pierre Gauvreau, "Arbre genealogique de 1'automatisme contemporain," Le Quartier Latin, 17 February 1948, p. 3; cf. Claude Gauvreau, "La generosite en fuite," Le Quartier Latin, 30 January 1948, p. 3.

52 Borduas, "Commentaires Sur des Mots Courants," p. 77.

53 Claude Gauvreau, "La generosite en fuite," p. 3; cf. Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 220: "It is obvious that the very dialectic of movements and the effect of fashion cause every avant-garde to be able (or to pretend to be able) to transcend not only the academy and tradition, but also the avant-garde prec-eding it." 177

had been severed:

The...pre-requisite for true self-expression is freedom from tradition...[and] the obligations imposed by social conventions and social consciousness.5*

The desire for non-traditional, or even anti-traditional representations of artistic freedom hinged, of course, on their belief that the post-war world was radically different from any other, and that only through new solutions could freedom survive; politically, this meant subscription to NATO, and vociferous anti-communism, while aesthetically it meant support for a beleaguered avant-garde whose commitment to freedom was beyond reproach and shone through every canvas.

For Borduas, freedom could only be expressed through the practice of superrational'automatism. Among modern aesthetics, automatism alone was able to avoid compromise with politics, for it was dependent on the emotional and unconscious realms of man which he regarded as quintessentially apolitical. Borduas' description of superrational automatism reveals his faith in its incorruptibility:

Superrational Automatism. Unpremeditated plastic writing....During the process, no attention is given to content....Complete moral independence with regard to the object produced.... 11 hopes: an acute knowledge of the psychological content of any form, of the human universe--in short, the human universe itself.55

The original title which Borduas gave to Objet Totemique, 7.48,

54 Dr. H. Lehmann, "Art and Psychology," Canadian Art 6 (Autumn 1948): 17.

55 Borduas, "Commentaires Sur des Mots Courants," p. 74. 178

reflects this disinterest in consciously manipulating the work's objective content; the second number, 48, refers simply to the year in which it was painted, while the first number refers to

its position relative to other works completed in that year.56

Through this initial designation, Borduas focuses attention on the work's temporal quality, stressing the notion that it is the product of a transitory state of psychological awareness. The numerical title also offered a solution to an artist who at

least part of the time wanted his works to be seen as abstract

in terms of both concept and execution; numbers could not conjure references to objective reality, whereas words did.

Borduas' ultimately futile attempt to obliterate content

from his works through dredging the unconscious and through such

titles as 7.48, was, of course, catalyzed by a quest for

freedom: in a desperate attempt to hang on to artistic liberty,-

Borduas attempted to create a self-confessed hermetic art,

inaccessible to most, and devoid of any references to the 'real'

world where every thought, idea, and object were at risk of

beoming politicized. Terrified of creating politicized art,

artists' censored themselves; their self-censorship was a

burlesque of the very freedom they sought, while at the same

time it mimicked, albeit unconsciously, the overt censorship

being practiced around them. Unfortunately, self-censorship was

no guarantor of political freedom and purity.

56 Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 184-5. 179

Loosening the ties that bound his works to the external world, however, proved impossible for Borduas, who read figurative content into his works and titled them accordingly; when Borduas stated that the "secrets of these pictures are encoded in their forms,"57 he was evidently prepared to regard these secrets as objective, communicable ones. The compulsion to direct the viewers' interpretation of his works, by giving the spectator easily understood clues about the meaning of the nebulous forms reflects two fears: first, that total abstraction, without suggestive titles would alienate a public schooled on representational art, and second, that without interpretive titles his works might be misread, understood as something other than what he intended. The dual titles of his works poignantly reflect the dilemma of the artist in Quebec in

1948 in the same way that Pellan's inverted man does: he was caught between the desire to speak and be silent", and to do either signified, in the final analysis, a violation of freedom.

'Objet totemique' conjures up connections with primitive, ritualistic art, particularly with the totem poles of the

Northwest Coast Indians of British Columbia. The vertical elements of this picture, with their multi-faceted planes of colour may indeed be read as a carved pole, while the horizontal bands at the left and right suggest the rippled sand of a beach

in the distance. F.-M. Gagnon has already noted these connect ions:

57 Borduas, "Commentaires Sur des Mots Courants," p. 78. 180

Cette conjonction des totems et d'un rivage marin refere a un endroit geographique precis: 1'extr£me-ouest canadien, la Colombie britannique et peut-£tre meme ses ties c6tieres (Vancouver et les lies de la Reine-Charlotte) ou se sont developpees les grandes cultures amerindiennes qui aimaient eriger de totems dans leurs villages de pecheurs.58

The European Surrealists had been interested in primitive cultures for some time, finding in their art a directness and spontaneity they wanted to emulate; after living in the United

States during the war, Andre Breton, Borduas' idol,59 became especially interested in the myth and culture of North American

Indians,60 an interest of which Borduas was aware.61 This preoccupation with native culture was also shared by anglophone liberals who believed that contact with primitive art could

revitalize contemporary culture:

If there is any modern art to which ... ['modern primitivism'] might apply ... it is to be found when the artist's responses to a situation in his own world reproduces in its essentials the attitude of the primitive to his; when that is, an emotional conviction so profound, so vital, that the conscious intellect has no chance to interfere.62

The integration of primitive artistic processes and states of

mind into contemporary art, then, allowed the modern artist to

58 Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 228.

59 In "En regard du surrealisme actuel," Borduas wrote, "Breton seul demeure incorruptible" (in Borduas, Ecrits/Writings, p. 71).

60 see Jean-Louis Bedouin, Vingt Ans du Surrealisme, 1939-1959 (Paris: Denoel, 1961), p. 99.

61 Bourassa, Surrealisme et litterature quebecoise, pp. 104-105.

62 Doris Shadbolt, "Our Relation to Primitive Art," Canadian Art 6 (October-November 1947): 16. 181

respond to the contemporary world, yet not be compromised by it, for the response existed at the level of emotion and the unconscious, the two realms of man impervious to political corruption. Liberal intellectuals candidly admitted, however, that the appeal of the primitive and its presence in modern art were intimately linked to the current political situation, and further, that this art which they considered to be apolitical, could lead them out of the current political morass:

Living in a world that seems more fettered and crippling than ever before...[we] are feeling the urgent need of an art that is symbolic in its true sense, that can be for us the talisman of a new faith, without which there can be no will to live. Of all the symbolic arts the primitive embodies a statement of the most direct and impassioned response to the world and because of the very complexity of our problems it has an especial meaning for us. We have .no desire to revert to the primitive, 'but in such art we find an emblem for the release we crave.63

The perception of emotion and symbol as agents of 'release' from the constraints of the political world which both Borduas and his critics shared, is an expression of a belief in the futility of political action to solve a society's problems. The flight from politics and the retreat into emotional and artistic catharsis, however, was also an argument beneficial to the status quo, for it is ultimately an insistence on the impotence of the individual to effect any real social or political changes, and a suggestion that the real solution for the individual lies in emotional reconciliation to social and political problems.

63 Ibid., pp. 14, 15. 182

In addition to a thematic relationship with primitive art,

Objet Totemique is allied to it formally. The work's loose brush stroke and lack of finish bind it to the art of primitive cultures, and stand as a denial of contemporary norms, especially those established by the School of Paris. Borduas obtained these effects through practicing automatism and cultivating "'the chance encounter' before rational value;"6" the crudity and abstraction of the forms suggest that Objet

Totemique is the product of the netherworld of Borduas' psyche, liberated from the constraints of the conscious brain, eye, and hand. The exploration of psychological, as opposed to physical realities was also a major preoccupation of liberal

intellectuals in English Canada, and articles on psychology, psychiatry, and the relationship of psychological reality to everyday life preponderated in popular and scholarly literature.

Liberal intellectuals connected their interest in psychology with their cult of individualism, as well as with the angst produced by the threat of nuclear war. To liberal

intellectuals, the investigation of the human psyche—especially when it was conducted by artists--appeared as a unique prerogative of Western man, and thus affirmed the superiority of liberal democracies over communist tyrannies, where the state sought to minimize the differences between individuals at all

levels including the psychological one: psychology became just one more field for the Cold War to be waged upon. Moreover,

6" Borduas, "En regard du surrealisme actuel," p. 71. 183

anglophone intellectuals venerated artists who explored the human psyche as paradigms of the truly liberated individual in liberal society, capable of seeing truth, "in the realm of dreams and sonambulistic phantasy, [and] encountered the unconscious springs of our imagery."65

Despite such indicators of spontaneity and the unconscious

in Object Totemique as the loose brushstroke, the forms of this painting are harmoniously organized into a series of horizontal and vertical elements which are played off against one another

to produce an image of stability. The formal structure of the work implies that the unfettered psyche produces forms which

though rough hewn, coalesce into an ordered and integrated

whole; it'thus functions as a visual expression of Borduas'

conviction that psychological liberation could produce a new,

harmonious social order in which "man is freed from chains to

realize a plenitude of individual gifts."66 Anglophone liberals

also accorded psychological freedom a pre-eminent role to play

in the restructuring of the post-war world; as the literary

critic, Charles Glicksberg noted, "The revolution...must take

place within the heart. It is man who must be transformed."67

The new credo of the liberated psyche, however, contained

political components for English liberal intellectuals, those

65 Lehmann, "Art and Psychology," p.17.

66 Refus Global, p. 58.

67 Charles Glicksberg, "Literature and the Marxist Aesthetic," University of Toronto Quarterly 18 (October 1948): 84. 184

disenchanted Marxists who had lived in political limbo since

"confessing their past sins" of Marxist dalliance in the

1930s.68 For them, the "revolution of the heart and psyche"69 not only appeared as a means of attacking the old enemy, the

right, but also the new enemy, the left:

Freudianism convinces man that the effort to establish a more humane world order will no longer be achieved by a bloody class war. Dictatorships of the left and right stand accursed in the eyes of all free men.70

Although for Borduas the exploration of the human psyche through

superrational automatism appeared as a means of escaping

political corruption in art, his insistence on the supremacy of

the psyche, spontaneity, and loss of conscious control, were

imbued with political significance for the sector of his

audience which responded most favourably to his art.

To the liberal intellectuals who looked at Borduas' work in

1948, such paintings as Objet Totemique spoke unequivocably for

'the new civilization' because they were the product of the new

and risky business of translating "feelings and emotions into

formal values,"71 and therefore participated in 'universal'

values. In reality, however, their admiration for Borduas was a

function of the conformity of the pictorial values of his work

with their own ideology. The apparent lack of specific content

68 Ibid., p. 84.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid.

71 "Automatism," Canadian Art 5 (Winter 1948): 135. 185

in his work satisfied their craving for an art which was devoid of any subject matter that could become politicized. Likewise,

Borduas' references to primitive art in both content and style responded to their need for an art which, in their eyes, could express the 'collective unconscious,' while the 'emotional' quality of his work conformed with their belief that the only appropriate aesthetic response to contemporary society was an emotional one: Borduas' freedom of expression appeared to be a symbol of the freedom which anglophone intellectuals felt was available to those in liberal democratic societies like Canada. 186

CONCLUSION

The Aftermath of the Conflict

The avant-garde in most western countries is now sought out and supported as part of official culture, and this is not only because all new ideas eventually become old and acceptable ones, but because the myth itself is regarded as part of our creed.1

On 18 November, 1948, the Contemporary Arts Society formally dissolved: fractured by the conflict between the

Automatistes and the Prisme d'Yeux, the Society had ceased to fulfill any real function in the contemporary art scene in

Montreal.2 By officially and publicly disintegrating, however, the CAS made the way clear, in a symbolic sense, for one of the new avant-gardes to take its place, and for the Prisme d'Yeux/

Automatiste conflict to be resolved.3

By the time the CAS dissolved, the Prisme d'Yeux/

Automatiste struggle appeared to be deadlocked: Pellan had won

1 T.J. Clark, "The Changing Guard," Times Literary Supplement (London), 6 August 1964, p. 675.

2 At the November 18 meeting, the Society decided to pass the resolution dissolving its charter at a future meeting; this was eventually held on 14 February 1949. Robert fSlie, who had replaced Borduas as President of the CAS gave the reasons for the Society's demise as "Baisse de qualite de l'exposition et manque d'homogeneite" (reported by Charles Doyon, "Le C.A.S. n'est plus," Le Clairon (Saint-Hyacinthe), 24 December 1948, p. 4).

3 Doyon commented, "Ayant d6passe les limites maximum de son evolution, il etait normal pour cette societe de disparaitre, quitte a faire place"a un organisme plus dynamique" (Ibid.). 187

both the 1948 Montreal Spring Salon (April) and the Concours

Artistique du Quebec, but had failed to elicit substantial enthusiasm beyond the borders of the province. Borduas, on the other hand, had been dismissed from his teaching position at the

Ecole du Meuble for having published the Refus Global, had had a show cancelled at the Universite de Montreal for the same reasons (and was replaced by a Prisme d'Yeux artist, Lucien

Morin); however, he had received national and international attention through the controversy sparked by the Refus Global, had exhibited in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto, and had his paintings solicited for exhibition and acquisition by the National Gallery of Canada. On balance, the position of both artists seemed equal.

The dismissal of Borduas from his job at the Ecole du

Meuble has been characterized as a sign of his rejection by the status quo, and as a symbol of the inevitable martyrdom peculiar to aesthetic genius." In reality, however, Borduas'

* Jean-Ethier Blais' comments are typical: "Borduas, for personal and necessary reasons, chose to link his destiny with the development in time of abstract painting. In that sense, he might disappear as a painter. He will not disappear as a man, the first one in French Canada who has had the deep-felt courage to go to the very end of his thought, to accept the solitude inherent in revolt, to choose despair where success could have been easy, to choose beauty where humdrum painting could have been socially rewarding, to choose inner and truthful development where ambition could have reaped the most honourable rewards our society can give" ("Paul-Emile Borduas," in Canada's Past and Present: A Dialogue, ed. Robert L. McDougall [Toronto: University of Toronto Press in Association with Carleton University Press, 1965], p. 58). On this kind of perception of Borduas, John Lyman commented, "Its repercussions [i.e., those of the Refus Global] projected Borduas into the role of martyr and prophet. But if it could be said that this role was sustained with rather more 188

firing was instrumental in altering francophone liberls' opinion of him, and became a source of their eventual support for him. When Gustave Poisson, the deputy minister of the department responsible for the Ecole du Meuble, dismissed Borduas because "les manifestes qu'il publie, ainsi que son etat d'esprit, ne sont pas de nature a favoriser 1'enseignement que nous voulons donner a nos eleves,"5 francophone liberals who had crucified the manifesto, became outraged: the direct intervention of the government in educational affairs, and the mixture of politics and education, affronted their perception of themselves as the only legitimate arbiters of culture and education, and violated their belief in the necessity of 'apolitical' culture. Liberals were unanimous in their condemnation of the Quebec government for reasons for best expressed by Andre Laurendeau: "Nous denoncons

1'intervention directe du pouvoir politique dans le domaine de

1'Education."6 Despite its censure of the contents of the manifesto, the francophone liberal press throughout Quebec repeated these sentiments with different nuances of expression, but the meaning remained the same. .

guile than innocence, the same could not be said of his painting" ("Borduas and the Contemporary Arts Society," p. 40).

5 Gustave Poisson to Jean-Marie Gauvreau, Director of Ecole du Meuble, 2 September 1948, quoted by Gagnon, Borduas: Biographie critique, p. 256.

6 Andre Laurendeau, "Bloc Notes: Intervention Politique," Le Devoir, 23 September 1948, p. 1. 189

During the late fall of 1948, other sources of disagreement erupted between francophone liberals and the Quebec government, primarily on educational issues. At that time, the Duplessis government was negotiating the financing formula for Quebec universities with the federal government. Duplessis eventually refused federal funds for universities because he regarded

Ottawa's desire to spend money on Quebec's educational system as yet another strategem to encroach on provincial rights, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of provincial autonomy and the elimination of Catholic, nationalist values from the university educations of the province's students.7 Seeing their livelihood at stake with Duplessis' refusal of federal subventions for universities, francophone liberal academics, and the liberal press, severely criticized Duplessis' actions.8

The end of 1948 also saw a strike by professors at the

Catholic School Commission of Montreal for higher wages, and again, liberal opinion was sympathetic to the strikers and hostile to Duplessis, particularly after he stated that strikes by educators were anathema to good teaching:

Je considere comme un des attributs fondamentaux d'un bon professeur le respect des lois et de l'autorit6. Nous verrons a ce que salaires et pensions ne soient payes qu'aux bons professeurs. Les professeurs n'ont pas le droit de faire la greve, ni en vertu des lois

7 See Desrosiers, "L'Ideologie de Maurice Duplessis," pp. 142-143.

8 The most outspoken member of this group was Rev. Georges-Henri Levesque, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Laval University; see Roger Lemelin, "The Silent Struggle at Laval," Maclean's, 1 August 1952, pp. 10-11, 36-38. 190

humaines, ni en vertu du droit naturel.9

The advent of strikes within the sphere of education and

Duplessis' recalcitrant attitude towards federal funding of universities forced liberals to rethink their position on a variety of social and political issues; as they became more critical of Duplessis, they became more closely aligned with his traditional opponents, the federalists, the trade unions, and the Liberal party.10

The major shift in liberal opinion away from Duplessis occurred in 1949 over a dispute which Quinn has described as having "all the appearances of a miniature civil war,"11 the

Asbestos Strike.12 The illegal strike13 began when the

Confederation des Travailleurs Catholiques du Canada, the

9 Le Devoir, 12 November 1948, quoted by Desrosiers, "L'Idiologie de Maurice Duplessis," p. 140.

10 See Quinn, The Union Nationale, Chapter VII, "The Growth of Opposition to the Union Nationale," pp. 152-169.

11 Ibid., p. 95; cf. Cameron Nish, Quebec in the Duplessis Era, p. 75: "The Duplessis era is sometimes viewed as if the Asbestos strike was a great watershed: his rise until 1949 and his decline thereon."

12 See: "Asbestos Strike," Canadian Forum 29 (June 1949): 51-52; Pierre Elliot Trudeau, ed. The Asbestos Strike, trans. James Boake (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 197 4); Jacques Cousineau, Reflexions en marge de "La Greve de l'Amiante": Contribution critique a une re"chereche (Montreal: Les Cahiers de l'Institut Social Populaire, 1958).

13 The strike occurred after contract talks broke down between the union and Johns-Manvilie, but before the dispute went to arbitration; the Quebec Labour Relations Act declared illegal all strikes occurring before the arbitration process had been completed. See Gilles Beausoleil, "History of the Strike at Asbestos," and "History of the Negotiations," in Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, pp. 143-181; 183-203. 191

affiliate union representing the mine workers at the Johns-

Manville Company in Asbestos, broke off contract negotiations.

Shortly after workers walked off the job, Duplessis summoned a force of 100 provincial police to the Eastern Townships village as a 'peace-keeping' force. The peace was disturbed several months later when the company brought in workers from neighbouring communities to fill the strikers' positions; when the strikers set up road blocks to prevent the strikebreakers from entering the town, the police responded by dispersing the strikers with brickbats and tear gas. The clashes between strikers and the police escalated the next day when police reinforcements were called in from Sherbrooke and the Riot Act was read, and mass arrests of the citizens of Asbestos were made; throughout, police violence was extreme, and because of media interest in the story, well documented.14

The drastic measures adopted by the government during the

Asbestos strike dismayed both liberal intellectuals and large sectors of the Roman Catholic church. Newspapers were critical of Duplessis in their editorials, while the church, already critical of the premier's labour practices15 became actively engaged in the defence of the Asbestos strikers by taking up

14 See for example the photographs contained in "Asbestos Strike," by Jacqueline Sirois, Montreal Standard, 28 May 1949.

15 Early in the 1949 Legislative Session, the government introduced Bill 5, legislation to establish the Quebec Labour Code which would impose strict limitations on unions. Under pressure from the Catholic Church, Duplessis withdrew the Bill. 192

collections for them,16 an action which Duplessis strongly criticized, and which was instrumental in causing the resig• nation of Archbishop Charbonneau of Montreal a year later.17

Duplessis similarly responded to criticism from the intellectuals: Laval University was denied a $4 million grant from the province, mainly due to the opposition of the university's Dean of Social Sciences, G.-H. Levesque, to the

Duplessis regime throughout the strike.18 Such Newspapers as Le

Devoir, which were formerly the premier's allies, now became some of his most severe critics; this role ultimately earned Le

Devoir "the strongest epithet in...[Duplessis'] vocabulary: 'Le

Devoir est un journal bolcheviste.'"19

Alienated from the Union Nationale, Quebec's intellectuals were increasingly attracted to the province's political alternative, the Liberal party, "the only political force in the province which had the organization, finances, and political experience to organize such a united front."20 Changes in both the provincial and federal Liberal parties made them more

16 Over $167,000 was raised by the Church for the strikers; see Gerard Dion, "The Church and the Conflict," in Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, p. 211.

17 Nish, Quebec in the Duplessis Era, p. 75; see also "Mgr. Charbonneau et l'opinion publique dans l'Eglise," Cit6 Libre 11 (January-February 1960): 3-7; Renaude Lapointe, L'Histoire bouleversante de Mgr. Charbonneau (Montreal: Editions du Jour,

1 962) .

18 Nish, Quebec in the Duplessis Era, p. 75.

19 quoted by Quinn, The Union Nationale, p. 157.

20 Ibid., p. 169 193

palatable to a group of intellectuals with a reserve of nationalist sentiments. In August 1948, Louis St. Laurent was elected leader of the party, and became prime minister of the country on September 15 of the same year. Led by a

French-Canadian, the Liberal party was more acceptable to

Quebec's liberal intellectuals than it otherwise would have been, a fact of which both St. Laurent and the Liberal Party were aware; as Jack Pickersgill, St. Laurent's chief aide in

1948 and 1949 noted,

I know he [St. Laurent] felt it would be a good thing for Canada to demonstrate that Laurier had been wrong, when he said no French Canadian would ever again be acceptable as Prime Minister. St. Laurent did not think that because a third of the population was French in origin French Canadians had a right to a third of the public offices, but he believed it was in the national interest for French-speaking Canadians to demonstrate their capacity to assume their full share of the task of directing the affairs of the whole country, and he was ready to set an example.21

The political isolationism to which the Automatistes had pledged allegiance in 1948 evaporated during 1949. The cause they adopted was the fashionable one for intellectuals with liberal leanings, the Asbestos strike. On 3 June 1949, the

Automatistes and their friends released a second manifesto, proclaiming their solidarity with the strikers of Asbestos, and stating that they:

desirent egalement feliciter les esprits impartiaux et fiers qui, des le debut de cette greve, ontmene" campagne en faveur des representants de la classe ouvrilre, dans la pleine mesure de leur pouvoir et de

21 Pickersgill, My Years with St. Laurent, p. 49. 1 94

leur lucidite.22

Like francophone liberals, the Automatistes' romantic sense of kinship with the Asbestos strikers arose out of their perception of themselves as having been betrayed and trampled on by the

Union Nationale: through the strikers of Asbestos, the artists and intellectuals of Montreal could watch what they perceived as a re-enactment of their own travails with the government.

The effect of the change in the relationship of the

Automatistes to their public was measurable at the 1949 Annual

Montreal Salon. At that exhibition, Borduas won the Jessie Dow prize, the highest honour which the show could accord a painter, for a 1948 painting, Reunion des Trophees.23 Liberal party newspapers responded to Borduas' victory with a.certain measure of self-satisfaction, regarding his newly-won acclaim as a moral vindication of this painter by those who had so recently scorned him; Le Canada, for example, declared:

l'odieuse brimade officielle [subie] l'automne dernier lorsque des politiciens de l'Union nationale sont intervenus a l'Ecole du Meuble pour priver M. Borduas, qui y etait professeur depuis onze ans, de son gagne-pain et du gagne-pain de ses trois enfants. Raison de plus pour applaudir.2ft

The reaction of the francophone liberals who had failed to

22 "A Asbestos. 'Intellectuels' et 'artistes' pour la grdve," Le Canada, 3 June 1949.

23 Pellan had won this prize in 1948 with Pot de Tabac Automatique (1942, National Gallery of Canada); see Prize Award Winners 1908-1965 (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1967), n.p.

2" Renee Normand, "Les Arts," Le Canada, 25 April 1949, p. 4. 195

perceive anything laudatory in Borduas' work the previous year, and who had vested all their cultural aspirations in the Prisme d'Yeux, suddenly regarded Borduas with new eyes; his painting had not changed, but their perception of it had. Notre Temps,

for instance, which had hailed the Prisme d'Yeux as the architects of a new aesthetic vision for all Quebeckers, printed articles celebrating the Automatistes as the new aesthetic

giants of the province; even more significant, these articles

were written by Rolland Boulanger, who only nine months before

had attacked the Refus Global;

Reunion des Trophees possede cette propriete; ce tableau n'a rien par essence de choquant d'abord au point de vue sensoriel; il possede en outre plusieurs qualites, qu'il n'appartient malheureusement pas a tous indistinctement de saisir, mais qui lui valent a plus d'un titre le credit dont il a joie aux yeux des membres du second jury, questions de revanches politiques ou de rehabilitation exclues.25

Pellan, meanwhile, won no prizes in 1949; by the end of that

year, the Prisme d'Yeux had disbanded, following over a year of

obscurity.26 If one measures artistic success in terms of

exhibitions, prizes and critical acclaim, therefore, in the

contest between Pellan and Borduas, the Prisme d'Yeux and the

25 Rolland Boulanger, "Borduas entre parentheses," Notre Temps, 21 May 1949, p. 4.

26 Pellan himself recognized this, as Germain Lefebvre notes, "The blowup over Borduas' dismissal for the Ecole du Meuble propelled the Automatiste movement into the front rank of the art world, plunging into the shadows the individuals not affiliated with the school. Pellan became more or less rejected by Quebec's intelligentsia, who swore by the Automatistes. 'Snobbery was part of it,' he recalls. 'It reached such a point that I was laughed at when I exhibited.*" (Pellan, pp. 96, 98). 196

Automatistes, Borduas and his group were victorious.

The eventual triumph of Borduas over Pellan in the fight

for supremacy within the Montreal artistic hierarchy cannot be viewed as a triumph of the heroic artist who valiantly struggles against the limitations of his epoch, and whose prescient powers

in the gauging of the shape of the future, manifested in the

'avant-garde' quality of his paintings and writings, which guaranteed him a corner of aesthetic success; instead, Borduas

'won' the 1948 battle with Pellan because his verbal and visual

ideologies responded to the ideological needs of anglophone

liberals, and ultimately to those of francophone liberals as well, the two sectors of the Candian population which determined the parameters of the dominant Candian ideology--in culture as well as in politics—for the next several decades. Borduas momentarily fulfilled their fractious quest for a symbol of their cultural and political aspirations which could, in the midst of the Cold War, act as a talisman of freedom and of "that hope without which there is no will to live." 27

27 Shadbolt, "Our Relation to Primitive Art," p. 15. 197

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