The Left Atrium
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The Left Atrium Lifeworks Artist as visionary That Morrisseau is Aboriginal sets the Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist Curator Greg Hill context, but he is first and foremost an National Gallery of Canada artist on an artist’s journey, with a Until Apr. 30, 2006 highly individual vision and style. The spiritual journey is well-trod territory in the art world, but Morris- orthrop Frye, the venerable seau’s work sings with freshness and commentator on Canadian poignancy as his style evolves from its N culture, postulated that the birch bark beginnings, through to the dominant Canadian concern is not use of more conventional materials and “Who am I?” but rather “Where is a concern for woodland tones, on to vi- here?”1 Although this is an obvious brant colours and huge canvases. He is question for immigrants who are one of the very few living artists who a d newly arrived to this hostile land- started a completely new art movement: a n a scape, theoretically this wouldn’t be the Woodland or Legend School, now C f o y the case for Aboriginal peoples given called the Anishnaabe School, and has r e l l a their profound connection to the land been dubbed the Father of Canadian G l a n through legends and lore. But their Aboriginal Art. Morrisseau’s distinctive o i t a culture has been threatened, even style has influenced three generations N shattered, by colonialism, and so in an of Aboriginal artists, including Carl Norval Morrisseau, Man Changing odd way, they are faced with the same Ray, Daphne Odjig, Jackson Beardy, into Thunderbird (panel one of 6) question as their oppressors: Where is Roy Thomas and the Kakegamic broth- (1977). Acrylic on canvas. 153.5 × 125.7 here? And the corollary: What is my ers, Goyce and Joshim, as well as the cm. Private Collection. place here? curator of this exhibit, Greg Hill, who is The answer, as witnessed in the ex- also an artist and member of the First hibit Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Nations. given the international acknowledge- Artist, lies in, first, reclaiming this cul- Much has been made of the fact that ment of his place in the art world. In tural heritage, including Anishnaabe this is the first solo exhibit of an Aborig- 1989, he was 1 of only 3 Canadian artists legends, and, second, undertaking a inal person’s art in the history of the Na- to exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompi- spiritual journey beginning in Shaman- tional Gallery of Canada. Morrisseau’s dou in Paris as part of the French Revo- ism and later encompassing Christian- work has been celebrated by Canadians lution Bicentennial celebrations; the ity and Eckankar. The former estab- since his inaugural solo exhibit sold out French press fêted him as the “Picasso lishes a link to the physical world, the at Jack Pollock’s gallery in Toronto back of the North.” Seventeen years after latter an expression of spiritual dimen- in 1962, and he continues to be one of Paris, our national gallery has finally rec- sions; the two halves of a whole as de- this country’s most collected artists. De- ognized Morrisseau as worthy of a solo fined and united by Morrisseau in his spite this popular acclaim, the National show — arguably a breakthrough, in ac- 3 work. Gallery didn’t own any of his work until cording full artistic status to First Na- 9 2 0 Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist, 2000 (its first contemporary Aboriginal tions people (aside from Inuit work) — 6 0 . j a an exhibition at the National Gallery of acquisition was in 1986). Before that his but shame on all of us for this inexcus- m c / Canada of 59 works (out of a consid- work was relegated to museums, prima- able delay. 3 0 5 1 ered 1500) covering the period rily as a subject of ethnographic concern Not surprisingly, given his life’s jour- . 0 1 : 1958–2002, takes the participant/ rather than artistic. This colonial hold- ney, there is an eerie uncertainty sur- I O D viewer on this transformative journey. over is all the more odious and blatant rounding Morrisseau’s place in the CMAJ • March 28, 2006 • 174(7) | 979 © 2006 CMA Media Inc. or its licensors The Left Atrium world from his birth onward: his birth during his prodigious career. Hill outside the Aboriginal world in 1958 by date may be March 16 or 17, 1932, his chose to hang the Gallery exhibit on the mining company physician and birthplace may be Fort William (now Morrisseau’s Shaman/spiritual paint- painter Dr. Joseph Weinstein and his Thunder Bay) or Beardmore or Sandy ings because, as he told CMAJ, they wife Esther. They saw in Morrisseau’s Lake Reserve, and although he was regis- “tend to be the most powerful.” Cer- crafts, that he was selling door-to- tered as Jean-Baptiste Norman Henry tainly, spirituality appears to be an door, the potential art. They bought Morrisseau, he was known as Norval, abiding concern of the artist and the him art supplies, gave him access to and later reborn, after an illness, as Cop- man. He left school after grade 4 and their extensive art library and, when per Thunderbird. became preoccupied with oral culture Morrisseau began painting in 1959, ac- Perhaps it is this uncertainty, cou- and traditional shamanistic ritual prac- quired some of his paintings. pled with the influence of the grand- tices that allow people to communicate The exhibit begins at this juncture in parents who raised him (his grandfa- and acquire blessings of power from his life, with Morrisseau interpreta- ther was a Shaman, his grandmother a other beings who inhabit the universe. tions of important Anishnaabe legends devout Catholic) that propelled him to His absorption in his culture and and symbols, such as the medicine look for meaning in the spiritual world. Shaman traditions set him apart, open- snake, mostly painted on unorthodox Morrisseau’s journey has been fraught ing the way for transformations. Mor- surfaces, including birch bark, roofing with difficulty. He endured sexual risseau is officially a Grand Shaman of paper, cardboard and tar paper. abuse at the Catholic residential school the Ojibwa. He can enter a trance state, In 1961, anthropologist Selwyn he briefly attended; a life-threatening an ecstatic experience, that allows the Dewdney recognized Morrisseau’s po- but ill-defined illness cured by an An- soul to leave the body and see the world tential for using art to transmit his cul- ishnaabe medicine woman (who be- in ways unknown to earthbound tural knowledge and he began teaching stowed on him the name (Copper denizens. He is not, however, a him in materials and techniques. Thunderbird); tuberculosis at age 26; Shaman healer, except insofar as some Dewdney encouraged Morrisseau to horrific burns; alcohol and drug abuse; people claim his work has healing use earth tones reflective of the wood- jail time; brief patronage from the properties, in particular the power of lands: 2 of Morrisseau’s paintings of mob; periods of extreme destitution, the colour he uses. Primarily, he is a this time are the charming Untitled including living on the streets of Van- “visual scribe documenting the (Two Bull Moose) (1965) and Earth couver; and estrangement from his 7 shamanic ‘ecstatic’ experience,”2 writes Mother (1966). children. Now in his 70s, he suffers Hill. “Time has obscured the notion of From the beginning, Morrisseau cre- from Parkinson’s but has attained hap- the artist as visionary — imaging for ated a visual bridge from the culture of piness and sobriety with his adopted others that which could only be imag- the Anishnaabe to art, in terms of sub- family in Nanaimo, British Columbia. ined.” Artist and Shaman “can be ject matter and style. His pictographic Throughout it all he continued to viewed as one and the same.” style has its roots in the distinctive bead paint a range of subjects, including The journey — and exhibit — work of the Anishnaabe, where black erotica and representations of animals chronicles this union. rows of beads separate and delineate — some 6000 to 10 000 works in all Morrisseau was first discovered shapes such as the petals of a flower. He also had an early interest in colour, perhaps derived from the iconography of the Ojibway people in their tradi- tional clothing, adornments, dyed por- cupine quills and, later, glass beads. To this Morrisseau added his own iconography. He reveals the souls of hu- mans and animals through what has been simplistically termed an x-ray style of imaging. Sinewy black spirit lines emanate, surround and link the figures, while stylized skeletal elements and in- ternal organs within the figures’ seg- a d a ments represent their spirituality, as well n a C f as, sometimes, their physical strength o y r e (rigid bone structure) or health and vi- l l a G tality (enlarged heart of a bird). Dots de- l a n o i note power. Lines drawn out of people’s t a N mouths represent power or communica- tion or establish relationships. An inter- Norval Morrisseau, Artist and Shaman Between Two Worlds (1980). Acrylic on canvas. 175 × 282 cm. The Klamer Family, Katonah, New York, USA sected circle expresses the idea of duality — night and day, men and women — CMAJ • March 28, 2006 • 174(7) | 980 The Left Atrium Poem Death of a doctor Be the shade from sun on the snow covered road a white scar left where the basal cell was removed deep and rooted Be the cut of the surgeon's knife the harbinger of news from tall places the bridge you stood on the night you thought I could if then not now maybe be the long shadow that is lost in the dark in a prairie city on a uneasy March night Gather the many white scars of stars a d in the backyard of your retinas a n a C They are the ones you can see f o y r e l l a Your discontent feeds your memory G l a n The white ash is only the ash o i t a N of another barkless tree without birds Norval Morrisseau, Indian Jesus Your hands hold open a new book Christ (1974).