Marcelle Ferron, Le Droit D'être Rebelle
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Document generated on 09/25/2021 2:06 p.m. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review Marcelle Ferron, Le Droit d’être rebelle : Correspondance de Marcelle Ferron avec Jacques, Madeleine, Paul et Thérèse Ferron, textes choisis et présentés par Babalou Hamelin, Montréal, Les Éditions du Boréal, 2016, 621 pp. 7 b/w illus., $ 34.95 paper isbn 9782764624562 Ray Ellenwood Volume 42, Number 1, 2017 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1040849ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1040849ar See table of contents Publisher(s) UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Association d'art des universités du Canada) ISSN 0315-9906 (print) 1918-4778 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Ellenwood, R. (2017). Review of [Marcelle Ferron, Le Droit d’être rebelle : Correspondance de Marcelle Ferron avec Jacques, Madeleine, Paul et Thérèse Ferron, textes choisis et présentés par Babalou Hamelin, Montréal, Les Éditions du Boréal, 2016, 621 pp. 7 b/w illus., $ 34.95 paper isbn 9782764624562]. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 42(1), 95–97. https://doi.org/10.7202/1040849ar Tous droits réservés © UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit Association d'art des universités du Canada), 2017 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ it becomes clear that the previous ones were mere steps leading up to Marcelle Ferron this final pitch to the jury about the Le Droit d’être rebelle : Correspondance de construction of liberal subjectivities Marcelle Ferron avec Jacques, Madeleine, in the early twentieth-century city. Paul et Thérèse Ferron, textes choisis et There is a nice critique of pictorial- présentés par Babalou Hamelin ism here, positioning it within the Montréal, Les Éditions du Boréal, 2016 larger context of photography in the 621 pp. 7 b/w illus. late nineteenth and early twentieth $ 34.95 paper isbn 9782764624562 centuries, as well as within the broad- er development of the modern city. Sekula defined photography as “mod- Ray Ellenwood ernity run riot,” and in this final chap- ter and in the conclusion, Bassnet Ma vie est un fouillis, un gargantues- had married and started a family. foregrounds the fundamental link que désordre où la seule continuité a While Riopelle’s career took off between modernity and photography, été ma peinture. very quickly in Paris (by the mid-1950s no mater the later’s purpose. — Marcelle Ferron he was a rising star, internationally In the end, the author makes a Marcelle Ferron is a major figure in acclaimed, selling well), Ferron need- strong case not just about the role of the history of modern Canadian ab- ed a few years to be recognized, as her photography in shaping a modern stract art, and before discussing this painting became bolder and more Toronto, but in shaping its modern exchange of leters with her brothers assured, with its characteristic broad, citizens as well. And she has bigger and sisters, selected and edited by her sweeping strokes of a palete knife ambitions which she begins to fulfill daughter, it might be useful to take that sometimes seemed larger than with this book: to convince the read- a very quick look at her remarkable the artist herself. But by 1957, she was er that photography, the modern city, career. presenting solo exhibitions in increas- and modern subjectivity are entwined In 1947, discouraged by her studies ingly important galleries in Paris, and in ways that need to be carefully at the École des Beaux-Arts in Quebec was showing with the likes of Riopelle, examined not only across a variety of City, Ferron moved to Montreal, met Borduas, and Sam Francis in group photographic genres by photograph- Paul-Émile Borduas, and began to fre- exhibitions on two continents. In 1961 ic historians, but also by historians quent the group of painters, writers, her work was included at the Sixth who are trying to beter understand dancer/choreographers, photograph- Bienal de Sao Paulo, and in March modernity itself. ¶ ers, and designers who were dubbed of 1962 she was preparing for major les automatistes by journalists at the exhibitions in Milan, Copenhagen, Jill Delaney is a Senior Archivist, Photography, time. In 1948, she signed their well- and Spoleto. Soon she was geting Library and Archives Canada. — [email protected] known manifesto, Refus global, with its more and more shows and commis- call for social and artistic liberation sions in Montreal and had begun 1. Classic works on this subject include, Vic- through generous spontaneity and experimenting with new techniques tor Burgin, “Looking at Photographs,” in Thinking Photography, ed. Victor Burgin (London, 1982); its demonstration of how surrealist for an old medium: stained glass. Martha Rosler, “In, Around and Aferthoughts automatism could be expressed in Those experiments would solidify the (On Documentary Photography),” in Three Works non-figurative art. The publication second period of her career, when she (Halifax, 1981); John Tagg, The Burden of Representa- tion (London, 1988); Abigail Solomon-Godeau, was a moment of euphoria, the cul- moved back to Montreal and began “Who Is Speaking Thus. Some Questions about mination of several years of ground- work on some magnificent architec- Documentary Photography,” in Photography at the breaking creative activity, and was tural installations of stained glass for Dock (Minneapolis, 1991); and James R. Ryan, Pic- met by a strong negative reaction by such public buildings as Montreal’s turing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago, 1997). church and state due to its anti-clerical Champ de Mars subway station and 2. The edited volume by Carol Payne and tone. The energy continued for a few the court-house in Granby. The Musée Andrea Kunard provides a good cross-section of years of debate and demonstration, d’art contemporain de Montréal held recent Canadian approaches: Carol Payne and Andrea Kunard, eds., The Cultural Work of Photog- before the group began to disperse a major retrospective of her work in raphy in Canada (Montreal and Kingston, 2011); see as some of them, such as Thérèse the spring of 1970, and another in also, for example, Carol Williams, Framing the West: Renaud, Jean Paul and Françoise Rio- 2000, shortly before her death. By Race, Gender and the Photographic Frontier in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford, 2003); Martha Langford, Scis- pelle, and Fernand Leduc, made their the end of her life she had become a sors, Paper, Stone: Expression of Memory in Contemporary way to Paris and New York. Marcelle much-loved, outspoken public figure, Photographic Art (Montreal and Kingston, 2007); Ferron would follow, arriving in Paris and her funeral drew enough people and Penny Cousineau-Levine, Faking Death. Can- adian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination in 1953, but before then, like other to fill the large Saint-Viateur church in (Montreal and Kingston, 2003). women signatories of Refus global, she Outremont. racar 42 (2017) 1 : 73–106 95 ⇢ Marcelle Ferron, Le Droit d’être rebelle and berating each other in turn. Le Je viens de perdre mon procès. J’ai été Of course, such a hurried over- droit d’être rebelle (note how the rebel accusée d’athéisme et tout a été dit. view of a life is only the tip of an is singular and feminine) presents Douze ans de ma vie ont été balayés. iceberg of personal details, capping leters writen over a long period, Inutile de te dire que l’on ne m’accorde a mass of incidents that are basic from 1944 to 1985, and in her contri- pas un sou de pension… me voilà dans to the equilibrium of the struc- butions Marcelle shows she can hold la rue avec comme tout moyen d’exis- ture, though largely unseen. Baba- her own among the published auth- tence ma maudite peinture. lou Hamelin’s selection of leters ors in her family. In fact, early reviews exchanged by Marcelle Ferron with of this book seem to have discussed it Donc, je retourne en France — je ne her brothers and sisters affords us a mainly as a literary publication, with veux pas crever dans ce maudit pays que je hais. (368) glimpse of that sub-stratum, much one commentator, Jérémy Laniel, as a personal journal or an autobiog- cited on the publisher’s website, Over the next half-dozen years she raphy might do, but with a special insisting that it reads like an epis- works herself into exhaustion, longs quality that comes from the dynam- tolary novel. The first two hundred for her children, fears they are ics of an exchange between extra- pages especially are a very candid unhappy in Canada, and goes through ordinary people. To my knowledge, account of three complicated sisters moments of suicidal depression. But there is no artistic family in Canadian going through marriage, pregnancy, she can still write, in October 1962: history quite like the closely knit and childbirth, and all that follows, good Reçu des intérêts vis-à-vis de ma pein- brilliant Ferron clan. Jacques, Mar- and bad. But the book is also fascin- ture très réconfortants — entre autres, celle’s brother, was a medical doctor, ating reading for art lovers because le directeur de Sao Paulo qui m’écrit as was their brother Paul, who also it reveals so much not only about que je suis le peintre qui l’intéresse le sometimes acted as Marcelle’s busi- the progress of a woman artist’s plus dans la peinture canadienne.