The Left Atrium

training she observed the energy and ef- Lifeworks ficiency her two careers provided: “diver- sions made studies easier, not more diffi- cult.” Like Anton Chekhov, who saw Marrying the coats medicine as his lawful wife and literature as his mistress, Levine likens a career in Until Jan. 16, 2000, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum in Char- music to climbing in sand, whereas medi- lottetown showcases traditional and modern designs and techniques in rug hook- cine is always there, reliable. Both careers ing, sometimes called North America’s “one indigenous folk art.” The Marrying of are about communicating, and she suc- the Coats features the work of rug hookers from cessfully fuses them into a rewarding life. across Prince Edward Island, including 80-year- The section on spirituality is timely, old Anna MacLeod, who in her 60 years of moving and courageous. In the 19th rug hooking has carried on the tradition of century, Oliver Wendell Holmes ar- “the marrying of the coats,” a process in gued strongly for a rational base for which torn-up coats are dyed to provide medicine that excluded religion. Today a consistent background colour for large in Boston, Ray Hammond and Gloria rugs. Joe Smith and the Spectacular Brennan White-Hammond, with a mission to Rug features arguably one of the most im- Alberta Som “serve others as we are led by the Holy pressive rugs ever created on the Island. In Spirit,” have transcended barriers of Bricàbra Nancy Edell of Nova Scotia com- class, gender and race to produce a ers bines rug hooking with other media, including modern-day miracle. Among other painting and animation. For more information things, their coalition adopts gangs. Anna MacLeod, Colour Wheel, on these and other exhibits, visit the gallery’s Guess what has happened to the murder 1997. Hooked rug; wool. Each Web site (www.confederationcentre.com rate in Boston? I am sure that Holmes edge measures 40.6 cm /exhibs.html). would be impressed. Alan Mermann, in “Looking for the Red Line,” and John Young, in “Priest in the Prison,” are equally convincing on the need to appropriately access the soul Mentor times two to sustain the doctor and heal the patient. There are lessons to be learned from In Halifax, The Art Gallery of Nova careers in the visual arts. Andrea Baldeck, Scotia remembers two artists who ex- an anesthesiologist, was so fulfilled by erted a presence in the visual arts in the her photography career that medicine province both through their work and lost out. Sir Roy Calne, a pioneer trans- through their influence on younger plant surgeon, used his surgeon’s eye for artists. Born in Halifax’ north end, John anatomy as a stepping stone into the Cook (1918–1984) was a prolific and un- world of art and then got lessons from sentimental painter of Nova Scotia’s one of his patients, a noted Scottish rural and urban landscapes and an ener- GNH artist. Wayne Southwick discovered the getic teacher who cared little for the es- John Cook, The Little Boats of Indian connection between orthopedics and tablished institutions of art. Born in Harbour, 1967. Oil on masonite, 50.5 sculpture and used his second career as a New Brunswick, Donald Cameron x 76.0 cm successful bridge into his retirement. Mackay (1906–1979) worked as war “Getting Famous,” by Michael La- artist, illustrator, printmaker and painter Combe, an internist from rural Maine, is over a career than spanned 50 years. the piece that I liked best. His journey as Principal of the Nova Scotia College of a physician–writer has not been smooth Art from 1945 until 1971, he was by his and effortless. He reveals this in a won- own admission of an “ultra conservative” derfully literate manner and packs in a stamp. The parallel and yet disparate ca- whole lot of good advice along the way. reers of Cook and Mackay largely de- Read Doctors Afield. You will be fined the horizon for serious artists in nourished and renewed. Nova Scotia until the 1970s. John Cook:

Artist & Teacher and Donald Cameron GNH Ian A. Cameron Mackay: Artist & Teacher continue at the Donald Cameron Mackay, Landscape, Department of Family Medicine gallery (www.agns.ednet.ns.ca) until Jan. Herring Cove, c. 1950. Oil on canvas, Dalhousie University, Halifax 16, 2000. 61.1 x 76.1 cm

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The Canadian Audubon Models of extravagance

Audubon's Wilderness Palette: The Birds of The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Canada is the first major Canadian exhibition marvels at Triumphs of the Baroque: Ar- of the work of artist and naturalist John chitecture in Europe, 1600–1750 until James Audubon (1785–1851). At Frederic- April 9, 2000 (www.mmfa.ca). Thirty ton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery (www.beaver- large-scale original period models, 20 brookartgallery.org) until Jan. 15, 2000, the paintings and 75 drawings and prints exhibition comprises 100 hand-coloured, life- convey the grandeur of architectural sized plates from the famed four-volume projects undertaken during turbulent “double elephant” folio edition of Birds of times in which Catholic Europe was America (1827–1839), a set of 435 prints shaken by the Reformation, the political based on Audubon’s watercolours and pre- order was challenged by the rise of the pared over 12 painstaking years by the Eng- middle class and states were brought to lish engraver Robert Havell, Jr. Only 100 the brink of ruin by war. Arising in complete sets are still in existence; this one, Italy, the baroque style was adopted from the Toronto Reference Library’s col- throughout Europe by church, state and lection, is one of five held in Canada. High- aristocracy as a reaffirmation of power lighted are extinct species such as the Eskimo and prestige. Arranged by type of pro- curlew and the Great Auk, as well as birds John James Audubon, Whooping ject  royal and private architecture, now considered threatened, endangered or Crane. Hand-coloured engraving, public architecture and religious archi- vulnerable. “Audubon's approach to bird 73 x 99 cm. Collection of Metro tecture  the exhibition illustrates how portraiture revolutionized the way we see na- Toronto Reference Library in public buildings a visual rhetoric of ture,” says David Lank, curator of the exhibi- splendour and munificence often tran- tion. “Besides being the first to place birds in their natural habitat and paint scended national boundaries, while resi- them life-size, he had an extraordinary artistic ability and a scientific accuracy dential architecture tended to take on a which pre-dates the invention of photography.” The exhibition’s next stop will national style. It also shows how ba- be the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Feb. 13 to April 2). roque architecture, despite the weighty nature of its materials, was motivated by a gravity-defying urge to create illusions of infinite possibility. Northern lights

Continuing at the National Gallery of Canada (national.gallery.ca) until Jan. 2, Baltic Light: Early Open Air Painting in Denmark and North Germany is the only North American presentation of this luminous exhibition of early 19th-century plein air painting by artists centred in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and Dres- den. Inspired by discoveries in botany, geology and meteorology, and influ- enced by the longstanding Roman tradition of painting outdoors, these artists left the studio behind in favour of the direct observation of natural phenomena. Despite their fresh approach to composition and their preoccupa- tion with light as a legitimate sub- ject for painting, the reputation of these painters was largely eclipsed by the Impressionists. However, like Impressionism, northern Eu- ropean painting exerted an influ- ence on our own Group of Seven. Returning from an exhibition of Scandinavian art in 1913, J.E.H. MacDonald remarked that the Antonio Rinaldi, Model for the Cathe- Martinus Rørbye, Vester Egede Church with works he had seen “began with dral of St. Isaac, St. Petersburg, c. 1768. Gisselfeld Convent in the Background, nature rather than art,” and that Wood, 310 × 245 × 208 cm. Research 1832. Oil on canvas. Ny Carlsberg Glyp- “This is what we want to do with Museum of Academy of Arts of Russia, totek, Copenhagen Canada.” St. Petersburg

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Failed utopia

Until Feb. 6, 2000, the Art Gallery of Windsor (www.mnsi.net/~agw) features Le Détroit, a new film installation and exhibition of pho- tographs by Canadian multimedia artist Stan Douglas. Drawing on years of research in the Detroit area, Douglas examines the social conditions that give rise to the decay of modern cities, of which De- troit is an extreme example. His colour photographs expose the processes by which historical memory is overwritten by social change and the encroachment of nature upon the urban landscape. Inspired by the city’s long-standing association with machines and industry, the film installation is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House and Marie Hamlin’s 1883 chronicle, Leg- ends of Le Détroit, a compilation of oral histories that circulated among people of aboriginal and European descent living in the re- gion between the mid-17th and early 19th centuries. Douglas rein- terprets the conventions of popular media — in this case, horror movies and electronic music — to explore the impact of technology Stan Douglas, Michigan Theatre, 1997/98. C-print, on the social imagination. 45.7 x 55.9 cm

A pioneer in modernism Transformations

Assembling Sounds: the Drawings and Illustrations of Bertram Little known until recent years, Claude Cahun (1894–1954) Brooker is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (www.wag.mb.ca) is currently the focus of a great deal of international atten- until Jan. 2, 2000. Brooker (1888–1955) played a significant tion. The first Canadian solo exhibition of her astonishing role as an artist, musician, writer and champion of the arts self-portraits, Don’t Kiss Me: Disruptions of the Self in the Work in Canada between of Claude Cahun, is at the Sherwood Village Branch of the the two World Dunlop Art Gallery (www.dunlopartgallery.org) in Regina Wars and has been from Dec. 17 to Jan. 30, 2000. Born Lucy Schwob, Cahun described as the was a poet, actress, sculptor, photomonteur and sometime- country’s first ab- associate of the French surrealists who gained some notoriety stract painter. His as a political and sexual revolutionary. Like Cindy Sherman move away from and other contemporary artists some 50 years later, Cahun representational art explored how the body is read according to cultural codes. toward abstraction Using costumes, masks stemmed from his and theatrical make-up desire to express to challenge normative spiritual ideas and views of women, she to unify painting postulated a new con- with other arts cept of identity that left such as poetry and room for ambiguity music — interests and the unknown.

he shared with his Ernest Mayer During World War II friend Lawren Bertram Brooker, Sounds Assembling, she was arrested by the Harris, unofficial 1928. Oil on canvas, 112.3 x 91.7 cm Nazis for openly resist- leader of the ing their occupation of Group of Seven. Presented in tandem with an exploration the Isle of Jersey. Much of his painting and writing in Sounds Assembling: Bertram of her work was de- Brooker in Winnipeg Collections, this exhibition of graphic stroyed and she was work features 70 abstract drawings, nature studies and illus- sentenced to death.

trations — work that Brooker considered as important as Fortunately, the war Jersey Museums Service and Presentation House Gallery his painting. Sounds Assembling, his most famous piece, rep- ended before her sched- Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. resents a spiritual journal through time, space and sound. uled execution. 1927. Black and white photograph

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Photography of place Art of persuasion

To mark the millennium, the Southern Alberta Art As e-technologies revolu- Gallery (home.uleth.ca/~saag) invited Toronto photogra- tionize our habits of com- pher Geoffrey James to create a photographic portrait of munication, we might for- the city of Lethbridge. James made four visits to the Leth- get the important role that bridge area over a 12-month period and produced more diverse and often ephemeral than 250 images. His large-format black and white pho- print media have played in tographs of the city’s rural and urban landscape record defining the 20th century as what curator Joan Stebbins describes as the “uneasy al- the age of mass communica- liances” between culture and nature. She writes: “His pho- tion. Until Jan. 3, 2000, the tographs document a specific moment in time, but hold Art Gallery of Greater Vic- within them an acute awareness of the meaning of that toria (aggv.bc.ca) presents moment — an interval caught between the past and the Propaganda, Advertising & present. In the Graphic Arts in 20th Century Lethbridge pho- China, an intriguing collec- tographs, James tion of graphic materials Fabric advertisement, 1920s shows us some- produced in China during thing entirely the 20th century. The exhibition includes woodblock prints, new about our propaganda posters, advertisements, firework labels, joss pa- place; something per, decorative wrapping and luck-bestowing New Year’s Eve that we can’t see prints from private collections and the gallery’s own holdings. until he shows The woodblock prints bear the imprint of Soviet-style social- us, because it is ist realism; the advertising posters flog products ranging from too familiar.” perfume and cosmetics to alcohol and cigarettes. While cul- The Lethbridge tural and historical markers give these artifacts an intrinsic in- Project exhibition Geoffrey James, Chinese National terest, they may also lead viewers to pay more attention to continues until League, 1998. Silver gelatin print. 40.6 × the aesthetic appeal and persuasive power of the print media Jan. 15, 2000. 50.8 cm. Collection of the artist that surround us today.

Vancouver, Varley, Vanderpant

A sense of place infused with a sense of mystery inspires two exhibitions on view at the Art Gallery (www.vanartgallery.bc.ca). Until Jan. 23, 2000, Visions of Paradise: Varley in British Columbia presents for the first time in more than 40 years the major works created by Group of Seven founding member Frederick Horsman Varley during his Vancouver years (1926 to 1936). The portraits and landscapes from this period reflect not only the nationalist and anti-classicist motivations of the Group of Seven but Varley’s growing in- terest in theosophy, Eastern mysticism and the psychological interpretation of colour. Continuing until Feb. 13, 2000, The Rhetoric of Utopia: John Vanderpant and his Contempo- raries explores another anti-establishment strain in the development of Canadian art. Like many of his contemporaries on the West Coast, painter and photographer John Vanderpant rejected the colonial aesthetics that dominated the art scene in the 1920s , The Cloud, Red and 30s in favour of a modernist aesthetic. Mountain, 1927–28. Oil on can- His strikingly optimistic work asserted the vas. , Bequest beauty of both natural and architectural John Vanderpant, Lilies, 1935. Silver bro- of Charles S. Band, Toronto, 1970. forms and thus the potential for the harmo- mide print. Acqui- © Estate of Kathleen G. McKay nious coexistence of nature and technology. sition Fund

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