FIVE PAINTERS IN OTTAWA: THE GOVERNANCE OF EXHl BIT1 ONARY SPACES
KRYS VERRALL
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Graduate Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies York University North York, Ontario
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M ASTER OF ARTS
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It \vas controversial. It nias unprecedented. The 1961 Five Painters from Regina/ Cinq Peintres de Regina exhibition at the Nationai Cmllery of Canada represented a euplioric cultural moment. The artists, Ronald L. Bloore, Ted Godwin. Kenneth Lochhead, Arthur E McKay, Douglas h/iorton and, the exhibition's organizer, Richard Simmins, forty years after the event, believe that it was the first tirne a group of living Canadian painters hrid ever sliown rit tlie nation's premier exhibititig institution! The following study undertakes a critical, interdisciplinary. intei-pretation of tliis event, specifically focusing on co~ivergencesbetween identity, fine art production and the governace of publicly supported cultural domains. In tbis endeavour, it hivstogether three sirands of tliought: i) Foimult's latter work on governalice, including neo-foiicauldian work in the fields of Sociology and Cultural Studies, ii) an understanding of spatiality suggested by tlie seograplier tlieoiist Edward Soja, and tlie cultural tlieorist. Tony Bennett, iii) and fiiially. a B'arthes-like engagement uitli the nxiteriaiity of different kinds of cultural texts. AWOWLEDGMENTS
This research pro.jec t, cuiminatiiig in a Masters of Arts thesis for Interdisciplinary Studies, represents a syiithesis of passions. It follows twenty years of work as an artist, cuitural tlieonst, and feininist. 1 wouid particularly like to tharik my supervisors Renate W~ckens,Chair of 111y supervisory coimlittee, Robert Albitton and Tim Whiten, for tlieir creative and intellectual support. While 1 struggled to define the interdisciplinary space tlis study deiiianded. tliey gave me constant ex~comge~nent.Thanks must go also to those otliers wliose conceptual contributions have been indelible: Marlene Kadar. Judith Schwarz, and Lorna Weir. Joyce Zenians patiently answered niy first question "Regina what?' The hypertent, an integral component of tlie thesis. woidd not have been possible w5thoiit tlie involveinent of the Art Gallery of York Uni versitp Finaicial awards from York University's Facdty of Graduate Studies aiid CUPE, pennitted excep- tioiial primary resear-ch and documentation. The pject would, of course. have been iinpossible witliout siipport from the artists - Bloore. Godwin, LocIiliead, McKay, Morton - ruid fichad Siiiiniins, foniier Director of tlie National Galleiys Exhibition Extension Services. Tl~oughoutour niany communications niid visits, they have al1 proven generous and engagin; time travellers. Finally, the fandial grouiid makes everything possible. Aiina and J.P.C. Fraser. Catherine and Arthur Vemll have alniays, aiways been there. And Bill Burns also did so iiiuch. CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... v
LIST OF TABLES ...... viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... ix
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
"Regina what?" - an introduction
PART I
Chapter 1. THE PROBLEM OF "REUTIONS BH'WEEN ...... 14
Visibility and Three Texts The Exhibition Catalogue The Paintings The Hypertext Dye Blue
"Relations Between" and Ottawa and 1961
PART II
Chapter 2. A PARALLEL VISION OF STATEIINSTITUTIONAL POLITICS ...... 77
The Problem of Importance
Violence and Welfare: a consideration
A Problern of Context in Three Spaces Chapter 3 . FIVE ARTISTS IN REGINA ...... 115 A Bief Discussion of Subjectivity A Srnall Phrase in Public Places
CONCLUSION Closer & Closer ...... 145
Appendices
1. FORWARD BY CHARLES F. COMFORT ...... 152
2 . LETTERS. MEMORANDA. & AN ARTICLE ...... 153
3 . FROM INTERVIEWS WITH R . L. BLOORE & R . B . SIMMINS .... 162
4. TWO EXHIBITION CHECK LISTS ...... 167
5 . FATH OF FISCAL RESPONSIEILITY AT THE NGC ...... 174
6 . CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS ...... 176
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 221
vii TABLES
Ta bIe Page
86 1. Total Exhibitions Handled by the NGC 1959-6û ......
2. Contemporary Canadian Exhi bitions - Solo Exhibitions ...... 89
3. Conternporary Canadian Exhibitions - Group Exhibitions ...... 91
4. Canadian and Non-Canadian Art Exhibitions ...... 93
5. NGC Divisions, 1955- 19% ...... 110
6. NGC Divisions, 1%1- 1962 ...... 111. ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure Page
1 . Five Painters from RegindCinq Painters from Regina ......
2. DYE BLUE .detail ......
3.Painting#1 ......
4. The Establishment ......
5.Painting.1960 ......
6. SignNo.5 ......
7. Drawing No. 7 ......
8. Blue Move ......
9. Amber Deep ......
10.RedGrew ...... lI.Organic#4 ......
12 . Medieval Landscape ......
13.Eclat ......
14 . Stampede ......
15 . Minotaur ILLUSTRATIONS CON'T
Figures Page
16 . Effulgent Image ...... 51
17.Microcosm ......
18 . Darkness ......
19.TheVoid ......
20 . Three Blue ......
21 . Green Night ......
22 . October Collage ......
23 . Brownscape ......
24 . Auction ......
25 . Interior: Installation shot. NGC ......
26. Exterior: Ottawa at 40,ûûû ft ......
27.TedGodwin ......
28 . Five Painters in Ottawa in a Page ...... Five Paintcrs frorn ReginaKinq Pcintrcs dc Regina INTRODUCTION
"REGINA WHAT?" - AN INTRODUCTION TO AN EVENT,A HISTORY & SOME THEORY
Ir )vas !/le/irsf rirrte rhe Nariotrnl Gdlety fiad ever pur on cr .rllow of n living gruirp of puinrem. Yomg ris lue ns we rvere. As bue were . . . . Ali Cod! So r/tcrrT.r Iiow rhat orle came ahtrr. Rottald l31oorr. 1997
But we weren't a group in the sense like Painters Eleven. They actuall y convened meetings and took minutes. Oh--Jesus! Or in MontreaI--al1 they did was chum out manifestos! I mean, if we had a meeting, it was going to be in the basement of the Saskatchewan Hotel - that was the watering hole - where we could sit there and quaff beer, or what have you (Bloore 1997). 1
On August 17, 1%1 Richard Simmins wrote five nearly identical letters: "You wiIl recall" they each began, "that 1 was recently in Regina organizing an exhi bition caIled Five Regina Painters and I do hope you will participate." Simmins, Director of the National
Gallery of Canada's (NGC) Exhibition Extension Services Programme (1957- 1%5), addressed each piece of correspondence separately: one to Ronald L. Bloore, Ted Godwin, Kenneth Lochhead, Arthur Fortescue McKay, and Douglas Morton. The letters are the officia1 documents in the NGC files, inviting the artists into what became the Five Painters from Reo,ina/Cina Peintres de Reoina exhibition, November 1%1. The event became
legendary because, as Bloore states, it was thefirst tirne The Gallery hadeverpur on a
7 Bloore refers to other groups of painters associated with the 1950s and early 1%0s, the Painters of Eleven of Toronto, and the abstract artists in Montreal, the Autornatistes - associated with Refis global, published in 1948 - and the Plasticiens. Figure 1, preceding page: the National Gallery of Canada, Five Painters from ReisinaJCina Peintres de Reoina, exhibition catalogue cover (Ottawa: NGC, 1961b). show cif'living puinter-s! A bsol ute claims are intrigui ng, just as they also provoke challenge. And this one is no exception. Even though what real ly survives is not the
memory of the show per.~,but rather - following a certain sernantic trick - the "Regina
Five" is what survives. Certainty the 1961 show at the National Gallery, and the enduring Regina Five identity are not the same. Although connected, they are nonetheless different
entities. Bloore speaks of an il that develops through a series of events into their final
colIective identity. He says, "Simmins called ii Five Painters from Regina, then it became
the Regina Five" ( 1997, my emphasis). While McKay observes "the Regina Five becune us and everything we did becanie something done by the Regina Five" (1997, my emphasis again). The exhi bition catalogue cover literally pieces together their five individual parts into the unified one of Five. The outside edges of each photograph close tightly around each face. Collectively, they fom a border across the bottom of a white cover-page. Across the top nght hand corner a thin band of blue text proclaims Five Painters from ReginalCinq
Peintres de Reoina. The cover captures them at the mid-century mark when, true or not, they believed themselves to be the first Iiving Canadian artists ever shown at their country's National Gallery. In posing the question "Regina what?" the following study does not
attempt to answer how five painters became the Regina ive.' Nor is it a biographical
2 Leclerc suggests that the Five Painters became the "Regina Five" because of the title of the National Gallery of Canada exhibition. See D. Leclerc, The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: the 1950s (Ottawa: NGC, 1W2). Although, it may indirectly be the case. The nomenclature "Regina Five" was first uttered by the visiting Lord Mayor of London in 1964 when Bloore and Luchhead were on the verge of perrnanently leaving Saskatchewan and three years after the NGC exhibition. On his arriva1 at the Regina airport, the visiting dignitary asked to meet the "Regina Five." Apparently, some confusion then ensued because no one knew who the Regina Five were. The artists put on dark suits and thin black ties for the honour of meeting the Lord Mayor. At some point that day they lounged around in front of a white Cadillac parked behind the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery. Sorneone - no one can remember who - took two colour photographs. The images then became icons of their collective identity. Sources, Ted Godwin and Doug Morton, interviews by author, 25 October 1997 and 30 November 1997, personal collection. J. treatrnent of five men at a significant moment in their professional careers. Instead, my interest might best be descri bed as curiosity provoked by a phenornenon of a particular time
- 1% 1, and place - the National Gallery of Canada. Clearly, the intrigue of "first" illuminates the event so that, as a solitary circumstance, it focuses my inquiry into artistic identi ty, and the govemance of exhi bi tionary space at one, fleeting historical moment. The intersection of three theoretical imaginings have dominated my thinking. First, the Foticauldian notion of the "heterotopia" employed by the geographer-theorist Edward Soja (1995)and cultural theorist Tony Bennett (1995). Soja interprets Foucault's "notion of 'heterotopias' as the characteristic spaces of the modern worId," writing that through them Foucault focuses "our attention on another spatiality of social life, an 'external space', the actually Iived (and socially produced) space of si tes and the relations between them"
(16-7). In explaining this notion, Soya tums to a passage from Foucault's "Of Other Spaces":
The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space. In other words, we do not live in a kind of void, inside of which we could place individuals and things. We do not live inside a void that could be coloured with diverse shades of light, we live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not super imposable on one another (Foucault, cited in Soja, 17).
-- -- King, "A Documented Study of the Artists' Workshop at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, of the School of Art, University of Saskatchewan, Regina, from 1955 to 1970" (BFA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1972) incl udes the colour snap shots in the original copies of his thesis. The following works al1 include one or both photographs. Leclerc's The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: the 1950s; J. O'Brian, The Flatside of the Landsca~e:the Emma Lake Artists Workshops (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1989) 34, univ&rsityof Regina Archives and Library, Regina Five Painters. (Regina LJRA, 1998) [on-line] Available from, uregina.ca/-library/archives/re~na5.htd; the hypertext Dve Blue: The Regina 5: studies on tirne. identitv and creative production (see attached CD ROM). The sense of spatiality which heterotopia implies, infuses the story of the Five Painters. What is a gaIIery but an architectural ly defined and culturaIIy imbued locale? What is a painting but a space, framed and imagined? Bennett, in his study of museums, introduces
the rnuseum and its cornpanion institution, the fine art gallery, as heterotopias.' Clearly, we
can understand that the organized, cultural spaces of the gallery and art exhibition fonn a
corn plex of interrelated but delineated sites. However, wi th the five painters, spatiaii ty does not only play itself out within culturally defined locales. The very title of the exhibit provokes the relevance of place: Regina - a handkerchief of urbanization surrounded by the great plains, nation - imagined throuph the scope of the National Gallery - or the city of Ottawa along the Ottawa and Hull Rivers. Second. as an extension of this concem with space I have sought a critical engagement with the mater-iality - the objectness - of different kinds of texts and their juxtapositions. Just as the notion of heterotopias singles out the gallery, the museum, the
Iibrary, the church, or the cemetery as externa1 sites (Soja I7), 1 have attempted, as a means of reconstructing the 1961 exhibition, to think carefully about certain objects - the paintings, the exhibition catalogue, textual fragments such as interviews, or documentary photographs. Roland Barthes' need to know the object provides a theoretical strategy. He sets his project at the very beginning of CameraLucida (1995) when he writes "1 was overcome by an 'ontologica1' desire: I wanted to Iearn at al1 costs w hat Photography was
'in itself, ' by what essential feature it was to be distinguished from the community of
3 Bennett examines the "archaeological collections of the great nineteenth-century museums." His arguments, however, are clearty applicable to the art museum since, as he himself notes, "The museum of art, finafly, is like the history rnuseum but with a specialist orientation." Tony Bennett. The Birth of the Museum. (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) 76, 181. images." In drawing on Barthes' ontolqgiculdesire ro leun, my intent is twofold: certainly
1 have an in interest in problematizing the form-that-things-take, but also to stnve against the weightlessness of discourse, to lend these objects back some of their density, some of their dimensionality in space.
Finally, Foucault's contributions to governance and subject formation (1990, 1988a, 198ûb, 1979) illuminate a critical set of relations. In this turn of thought, cultural
institutions - like the NGC or the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina - intersect not only with the nation state, but also with how individuals produce themselves as creative and professional subjects. Foucault introduces the notion of govemment as a problem, emergent in the 16th century. Around this theme he poses a cl uster of questions around
hsw to govern - "how to govern oneself, how to be governed, how to govern others, how
to accept him who is to govern us, how to become the best possible governor" ( 1979,5).
From these remarks 1 wiIl extract two configurations: first, an entwinement between the management of individuals - that is, others - and self conduct and, second, the demarcation of three separate but intersecting domains which we can identify as govemment of self. of
othew, and state govemmentl Explicitly underscoring these points, Foucault ( 1986) states:
4 The organization of Foucault's thought into three themes or domains appears in the work of three researchers - Dean (1994a), Flynn (1988), Mahon (1992). M. Dean credits T. Flynn with the term "Foucauldian triangle." Flynn's configuration organizes Foucault's work along three points that he suggests are knowledge, power and subjectivity (106). See Flynn, "Foucault as parrhesiast: his last course at the CoIlege de France (1984)", The Finai Foucault, eds. J. Bemauer and D. Rasmussen, (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 1988) 102-118. Dean, acknowledging his debt to Flynn, incorporates a fourth theme of "historical perspective and rnethods." He writes, Broadly. four thematic areas might be identified [in Foucault's thought] . . .; an overarching one of historical perspective and methods; one around the problems of rationality, discourse, and the production of tmth; another around practices of government, power, and domination; and a final one around subjectivity, the self, and ethical practice. For to "conduct" is at the same time to "lead" others (according to mechanisms of coercion which are to varying degrees, strict) and a way of behaving within a more or less open field of possibilities. The exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and putting in order the possible outcome (220-22 1).
CoIin Gordon (1991) in the opening pages of Governmental Rationalitv: An Introduction, explicates Foucault's characterization of government as "conduct." Gordon organizes conduct into types of possible relations:
Government as an activity could concern the relation between self and self, private interpersonal relations involving some form of control or guidance, relations within social institutions and communities and, finally relations concerned wi th the exercise of poli tical sovereignty.
This provoca tive conceptualization of three spheres structures the foI1owing study. Each chapter cntically investigates a possible intersection. Chapter One dwells on the means of
communication, and includes the hypertext Dve Blue as an innovative part of its forma1
str~cture.~It assumes the problem of object-making and relations between objects are
significant tasks of the artist. Chapter Two illustrates convergences between interna1 and external state interests and the National Gallery of Canada. ChapterThree looks at the five artists themselves - Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay and Morton - focusing on the
Dean, Cri tical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods & Historical Socioloov (London: RoutIedge, 1994)5. M. Mahon calls these fields the "three domains of genealogy," clearly identifying them in the title of his book, Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogv: Truth. Power, and the Subiect (New York: State University of New York Press).
5 Dye Blue is a virtual text component of the Master's of Artists thesis project. Created by myself with support from the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Dve Blue was published on-line by the AGYU (1998-99). See accompanyinp CD ROM. government of self and self. In other words, it concerns the formation of the artist's identity as it engages with object-making on the one hand and cultural institutions on the other. In this rnatrix the artist acts as a vital, mediating element between the divergent spheres of fine arts professionalism, the insti tutional space, and the nation state. Versions of this story have been told before. Since they are artists, exhibition catalogues represent one of the most prevalent and enduring forms: the Five Painters from
Reoina/Cinq Peintres de Recrina (NGC 1961b) exhibition catalogue is an invatuable document. Others, dealing with the five artists, either collectively or individually, include
Ted Fraser's exhibition of Bloore's paintings (1975) at The Art GaIIery of Windsor, Terrence Heath's retrospective of Bloore (1993), David Howard's McKay retrospective
( 1997),Denise Leclerc's exhibition of Canadian abstract painting (1992), curated for the National Gallery, John O'Brian on the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops (1989), and Nicholas Tuele's Morton retrospective (1994). Some of these catalogues are merely slim documents, barely augmenting the exhibition, crthers contain critical essays (Heath,
Howard 1997, Leclerc, 07Brian),Gr - in the case of retrospectives - also offer extensive monographs, such as those by Heath and Howard (1997). In addition to exhibition cataIogues, the story of the Five Regina Painters appears in Canadian twentieth century art history surveys. These insert the Five Painters into a chronological, ever progressive trajectory of Canadian art movements and trends. David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff's Contemwrarv Canadian Art (1983), Leclerc's The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: the 1950s, and Dennis Reid's A Concise Historv of Canadian
Painting (1988), provide examples of this kind of treatment. In a category of its own, is the astounding empirical research conducted by John
King on the Artists7 Workshops at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan (1972). No discussion of painting or art-making on the prairies during the 1950s and early 1960s would be complete without acknowledging it. In its breadth and detail, it has, to my knowledge, remained unsurpassed. The last twenty years have witnessed the emergence of critical investigations into
the art and art-rnaking practices during this period. Howard's work ( 1997, 1993, 1989),
O7Brian's and Colleen Skidmore's (1989) come to mind. These art historical texts apply postmodern, post-colonial or feminist thought to their objects of study. The present work draws on this trend. White in debt to their path-breaking researches, no sustained analysis has looked at the Five Painters as a cultural phenornenon. Howard's work concentrates on Art McKay - one of the five - particulary focusing on Canada-U.S., bi-lateral, cultural and CoId War politics (1997, 1993). O'Brian's, Fiatside of the Landsca~e,with collected essays by Ann K. Momson, Howard (1989), Matthew Teitel baum and Terry Atkinson, concentrates entirely on the Artists' Workshops at Emma Lake, providing an intelligent overview up until 1979. The collected essays ably sketch salient historical, political and cultural contexts, yet only a srnail section of the text - O'Brian's Introduction, and essay "Where the HeIl 1s Saskatchewan, and Who 1s Emma Lake?," and Howard's "Frorn Emma Lake to Los Angeles: Modernism on the Margins" - deafs with the decade of direct concern ta the present study (1951 - 1961). Skidmore's work Iooks at the landscape painter Dorothy Knowles, a peer of The Five. While the concerns of her study are relevant and over- Iapping, they have a decidedly different focus.
As already stated, the present project gravitates towards an existing body of critical scholarship, but remains squarely situated within the broad, intersecting terrains of cultural studies and Foucauldian thought. In other words, it works an interdisciplinary interstice between three theoretical positions: i) Foucauldian (Foucault 1990, 1988a, 1988b, 1986, 1979) and neo-Foucaldian (BurcheII 1996, Dean 1996, 1994a, 1994b, Gordon, 1991.
Rose 19%) thought on governance and subject formation; ii) the convergences of space and time in Edward Soja's Postmodem Geooraphies and Tony Bennett's examination of the Museum; and iii) a Barthes-like attention to the object.
At this juncture an explanation of my own interest in the subject bears some mention. AIthough these researches are motivated by a grouping of intellectual interests, two additionai elements have propelled my cunosity. The first embodies a concern for the intersection of government and art as it impacts upon contemporary art practices. The question is double pointed and, perhaps, naive. Its two concerns couple the autonomy of creative vision with a hoped for vitaI politic. In other words, the question of how independent can artists be from those systems and institutions that support and maintain cultural production, works on me like an abrasion. It is a question Clive Robertson ( 1993) cynically underscores in "Invested Interests: Cornpetitive and Dysfunctional Autonomies within the Canadian Art System," published in Fuse magazine, when he observes
As it is currently used within OUT own discourse, the tenn 'autonomy' has become a very fluid, some wouId Say diluted and contradictory, concept; one which can refer to the self-detemi nation of a group of artists, the arms- length principle of independence that a government allows a govemment- funded arts funding agency, or, the undernocratic board structures of any number of arts institutions (14).
Because the story of the Five Painters unfolds in the early blossoming of federal and provincial expansion into cultural fields after World War II, it is one of the first instances of when statelart interlacements became institutionalized. Possi bI y, as an O bject of study, i t will illuminate these present issues. A second driving element has been the competting weight of my own engagement with the subject matter. I have been repeatedly startled to find myself in the flux of history and place. Such moments of surprise and recognition sustain fascination. In A-Chorus of S.(-, Susan Griffin presents a deep relationship between history. materiality and the self. The following excerpts connect the small ntuals of daily life with biology. and with another historical "first" - the detonation of the atom bomb at Los Alamos:
And there are other languages, words, gestures, the srnaII ntuals of daily life that connect us with others, both the living and the dead. This afternoon 1 drhk my tea from a cerarnic cup. It is useful and also beautiful. And part of its use, part of its beauty, lies in the long history of the cup, so that as 1 drink I participate for a moment in other lives.
The ceil is constant(v hngingmatter with the world around ir (77-78). . . . . Hans Bethe, the head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos, said, Human calculation indicaies that the experirnent musi succeed But wiil nature act in conformiiy foour calculdom ( 1992,80-1. Griffin's emphases)?
Griffin's passages suggest connective tissues between historical narrative and expenence. This possibility of relatedness punctures my own exploration of Five Painters from Regina in Ottawa. 1 was born in 1957 under, what Howard (1993) calls, a web of invisible, "transparent membranes, arrays of radar and other surveillance equipment stretching across thousands of square miles of Canadian temitory" (19). As such, my birth was a small microscopie event nestled between two nascent Cold War actions - the Iaunch of the first Soviet ICBM (ballistic missile) in the summer of 1957 and the successful projection of the
Sputnik 1 satellite on October 4.1 was born in Ottawa in the solid middle-class area known as The Glebe, but never lived there. Ken Lochhead met my grandfather, the Reverend Dr. J.P.C. Fraser since his parents were active members of Glebe United Church (Lochhead 1998). Several decades later, 1 stood in the doorway of his Ottawa home. Afternoon light made sharp, bnlliant shapes over the walls and fumihire. 1 said, 1 was born here - meaning, 1 was born in The Glebe. In 1957 Simmins left his position as director of Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina Saskatchewan, to become the future director of the National Gallery of Canada's Exhibition Extension Services. In what must have ken a central-western Canada criss-cross, Bloore simuitaneously left Toronto for Regina. However, before the visit to Lochhead in Ottawa, before I had even heard of the Regina Five, a small and sornewhat untended art collection pinched my interest. As a painter, the places I know best are the artist's studio or gallery. The milieux of the fine art collection is a noveIty. The stillness of the storage vault, the amassed and silent objects were steeped in unfamiIiarity. Under some bubble wrap, leaning against a wall, a colour caught my imagination. Not any colour, but the very particular colour, texture, of blue
paint on a painting by Roy Kiyooka - Homage to Debussy (Lamer), (1966). The painting was massive - 101.6 cm x 304.8 cm. Across the back, four times in bIack magic marker, Kiyooka had written "aquatex on cotton." The memory of this blue clung. It troubled me because 1 did not know what could possibIy connect me with it. Between myself and this artist seemed an improbable distance filled with years of tirne, and certainly aesthetic difference. 1 did not know him at ail, except for this sheet of blue. And then a story suggested itself. It formed as a line, untwisting into Saskatchewan and the earIy fifties. It stretched through the work and careers of five painters - and Kiyooka too - to Toronto, and then, finally, to rne.%cross this track, Kiyooka's blue bleeds like a tattoo. Its brightness stains through.
6 Three of them - Bloore, Lochhead, Morton - taught for different durations of time in York University's Department of Visual Arts where 1, much Iater, spent several yearsas an undergraduate and, Iater stilI, as a graduate student instructor of Studio Painting. Additionally, Bloore was cross appointed for almost four decades to the Division of Humanities. Art work of four of the Ftve litters the campus. Godwin is the only one who is not currentIy represented in the university's fine art collections (Verra11 1%, 5).Also see attached CD ROM Dye Blue, particularly the "1964" windows . PART 1
CHAPTER ONE FIVE PAINTERS AND THE PROBLEM OF "RELATIONS BWWEEN"
matcrial spatial practiccs reprcscnhtions of spacc li\,cd spaccs of rcprcsentaiion Edwrtl W. Sojn, Tlrird Snnce
Even a reprodi~cfiott/titrrg orr n rual/ is rtof cornpnrab/e itr rhis respecc for iri the origitrnf tire siletrce ntrdstilltress pertrreate 111e c~ctr~lmatericl/, the pairrt, itt wliiclt one /ol/o~vsthe mxes of f/repaitirer 's N~ttnediaregesrrrres. Jolitt Berger. Wnvs of Seeitiz
For John Berger (1972)"the actual material" illuminates a key incomparability between the "reproduction" and the painting (31). Certainly in art-making the physical embodiment of the creative endeavour is its shape or actual configuration. Although Berger irnparts a value to the original in its silence and stillness, clearly both are visuaI texts comprised of diffenng substances. If this is the case, embodiment would not necessarily value one more than the other. In the following chapter, 1 want to examine three texts linked with the 1%1 exhi bition Five Painters from Regina at the National Gallery of Canada. These are the exhibition catalogue (NGC 1%I b), the exhibited works of art, and the hypertext, Dve Blue
(1998). It is precisety between these three substantially different configurations where the problern of "relations between" anses. Two key questions here would be: What does their actual materiality encompass; how do certain cultural texts become cohesive? Bloore, in a terse artist's statement in the catalogue, would seem to privilege the formal, physical aspects of a work of art over what the painting represents. He writes
1 am not aware of any intention while painting with the exception of making a preconceived image function formally as a painting. . . . [My] paintings fa11 into distinct series which are usuaily composed of four or five large works which were preceded by smaller ones in which some forma1 and technical problems have ken examined (NGC 1%1 b).
However, his resol ution is nei ther unequivocal nor without contradiction. An anecdote.
related years &ter its occurrence, appears to arneliorate the previous staternents. The painter recollects a trip with his wife to the Near East when they were both Young. He rose early
every moming, leaving the hotel while she slept, and ventured out atone. Those trips were not idle expeditions. He was not merely a curious tounst looking for the novel and the exotic. He was filled with purpose - the quest for tmty great art - trusting himself to recognize it once he had found it. Architectural forrns struck him. After one early morning adventure he returned to the hotel awed and agitated; he had seen God (Bloore 1997; Fenton 1993,30).For Bloore, a rigorous attention to the physical properties of the object
act as a path, a way to, as well as an embodiment of, the artist's creative purpose. Clearly Berger's actual materiality resonates with larger implication. In answering the questions "what" and "how" - the following chapter is divided into two parts. The first looks at three different texts associated with the Five Painters in Ottawa - the exhibition cataiogue, the exhibited paintings, and the hypertext. The second considers "relations between" their discrete fonns and proceeds as a theoretical engagement. Arguably, our knowledge derives from intersections, juxtapositions and convergences between things and not from a single one in isolation (Foucault 1977, 139, 14-5). As a micro exarnple, we rnight turn to Jerry Boultbee's 1%1 description of Godwin's work where, he wntes, there are "three elements that appear most frequently - a void, a volume and a 'resul tant interaction between these two forces'." It is, therefore. not the texts themselves, but their "relations between" - their "resultant interaction" - which now appears most salient.
Visibility and three texts
The image at the beginning of this chapter appears carved at either end, the sides lopped. They remain without the comfort of having the black background extend to al1 four edges.
Because the border disappears at the left and right, it is as if what the picture portrays remains uncontained and therefore, unframed. Roland Barthes writes that the photograph,
"Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its rnanner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see. In short, the referent adheres" (6). What we - the viewers - see are frames within frames: the outer edges of the image containing two interior rectangles, one a black and white snapshot of a child anchoring a huge expanse of upholstery (the outside edge severs her). The other rectangle holds three vertical portraits agai nst i ts horizontal ground. At the farthest left hand side, one portrait gives only a shred of representation: a hand tips upwards against some textured surface. Between the two - the snapshot and the white field with the three grey portraits - is a slim thread of darkness. Barthes' attempts to know the photograph as an object (signifier), separate from what it shows (referent), are frustrated since in considenng a particular photograph he sees only what is portrayed, "the desired object, the beloved body," and not the object. That is, he cannot see the Photograph (7). This equation of signifierlreferent calls to mind the tension between shape and content. ClearIy, as Barthes suggests, any separation is slippery and possibly even doomed to failure. And yet, despite this certainty, I momentarily want to focus on ho w representations are materially organized into concrete structures. My inquiry forms along two points. The first is visibility. Arguably, the signifier - such as the Photograph, the exhibition catdogue, or the paintings - disappears because its shape has become self evident. Clearly it does not actually disappear but in a sense we no longer see it because of its very ordinariness. The overall structure of the catalogue adheres to a recognizable mode1 whereas the hypertext, Dve Blue, in tandem with the "hard text" of the written thesis might lack a similar cohesion. A counterpoint to a critical examination of the catalogue and hypertext is the presence of the paintings, sitting as a sheaf of images between the leaves of the chapter's written text. They are not explicated, nor theorized. Perhaps instead, they serve as a reverent recollection of the silence and stillness conjured by their original forms.
The Exhibition Catalogue
For Barthes the "Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves canot be separated without destroying them both" (6). However, it would seem that other foms have the potential for more visibility. This is especially true with works which refer to their own matends and opticality over and above a subject such as the aèsiredobjecr or beloved body. David Howard ( l997), in his discussion of Art McKay 's painti ngs, observes "the application of thinned oïl paint onto areas of unprimed cotton duck asserts the primacy of flatness and opticality while maintaining the visuaI illusion of depth by the indeterminate way in which the canvas and paint bond" (13). It is the "application of paint" and "unprimed cotton" that give McKay's painting a degree of visibility that Barthes suggests the Photograph cannot possess. Arguably, different types of objects mediate the tension between forrn and representation differently. If this is the case, then knowing the limits of any given objectlsignifier becomes critical. If the object is the exhibition catalogue, where does one begin to see its physical
structure? Do we begin with the 1961 exhibition or with the artists? Does one begin with the paintings or at the beginning of the catalogue? After ail, one might argue, there is a first
page. If one chooses such a beginning, then one starts with the portraits of the five artists, in a grey line across the cover. Atong the top, justified right, reads the Iine Five Painters from RegindCinq Peintres de Regina. Pages of text fol low, in terspersed with photographs of the five men, and black and white reproductions of some of the paintings.
Two other treatments of the art scene in Saskatchewan in the late 1950s and early
1 %Os provide different points of departure. John O'Brian's Emma Lake Artists' Workshops and Leclerc's The Crisis Of Abstraction are also exhibition catalogues, intended to support art shows. Although both have a broader regional or national interest than only those Five Painters, they certainly recognize and address their significance. In tems of a beginning, one might find that O'Brian's investigation starts with geography. Certainly this is reinforced by his essay "Where The Hel1 1s Saskatchewan, and Who 1s
Emma Lake?' and by identical front and back sheets silhouetting a rnap of North ~rnerica.~
Leclerc takes a different tack. She begins with the artists and their visionary navigation through tumultuous social, cultural and technological change. She writes, "This exhibition is intended to be, above all, a vibrant tribute to the creativity manifested by Canadian artists . . . . Through their courage, imagination, and perseverance - and despite nurnerous
7 On this map five points, and five points only are identified: the Canada-U.S. border, New York City, Emma Lake, the cities of Saskatoon and Regina (O'Brian). obstacles - these artists managed to leave the indelibte mark of their vision on their milieu" (35). However, as exhi bition catalogues, both most directly refer to the shows they support and their separate curatorial visions. The Five Painters from Regina catalogue also most obviously references the exhi bition, so that in al1 three cases the refere~adheres.My point is to problematize its shape and tease it into visi bili ty. But we cannot presurne that the exhibition is the only or even the most usefui origin of the exhibition catalogue. Another point I would like to explore in relation to this question of visibility is the activity oiIooking. It is self evident that visibility involves seeing. However, the object/signifieralso has a rnateriality, experienced not only spatially but also temporally. Looking is a sirnultaneous experience of both. The catalogue structure is diachronic. We begin with the cover and progress page by page through the document. We can read
Bloore's artist's statement in so many seconds knowing that the act of making a painting involves a more elongated experience of time then reading the entire three parapraphs of his
statement. In another context, historian and cultural theonst Caro1 Duncan ( 1995) creates a compelling portrait of the art museum as a ritualized organization of time and space.* In such a synergic environment, she argues, Iighting and architectura1 detail are as influential as works of art. Implied in al1 these instances is an actor - one who enacts the activity of seeing. Certainly the diachronic expenence of the Catalogue requires a viewer. It is also this person - the viewer - who Duncan thinks of when she describes the sequenced spaces
8 Duncan's investigation of the art museum deli berately uses language associated with sacredness. Her first chapter, "The Art Museum as Ritual" in particular uses descriptive words such as "ceremonial," "liminality," "ritual experience," and "enlightenment." Duncan critically looks at the museum as a deeply resonant cultural structure. It is in this capacity that 1 have drawn on her arguments, incorporating to a limited extent her language into the text. The Iarger, more profound question of sacredness in visual practice is well beyond the scope of this particular study. Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside the Public Art Museums (New York: Routledge, 1995) 7-20. of an exhi bi tion as a "performance field" ( 12). The relationship between time, space and looking appears in CameraLucida with Barthes' poetic euIogy to his mother, in his careful account of looking at photographs.
Now, one November evening shortIy after my mother's death, 1 was going through some photographs . . . . There 1 was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these pictures of my mother, one by one, under the lamp, gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the tmth of the face I had loved (67).
In this passage he slips several kinds of time and space into a single description. There is the physical place of the apartment as well as a location in time; his corporeal presence and the mother's imagined one; the sequential act of looking - "at these pictures . . . one by one" - attached to each micro action of lifting, holding, sorting by hand, the actuality of each photograph (the interior spaces they portray), the presence of the past overlaying the present ici a translucent fold - "moving back in time." The exhi bition catalogue reproduces the action of looking in time and space differently. Our observing eye grazes back and forth across the cover, along the collective length of the black and white portraits. It slows to capture a line of words at the top of the page. The thin band opens on either side of [. . ./ . . . 1: Five Painters from Reginal Cinq Peintres de Regina. The cover has five die cuts; one for each of the photographs. Each opening rnakes a small, postage size window looking through to the page underneath. As we tum over the leaf, the slightly larger photographs become visible beneath. It seems as though the artists corne closer. It is as if the act of turning the page activates a mechanical device: "Click." The space between us - the observers - and the photographs, becomes tighter. Following these two opening pages are several with text. There is a forward from the director of the gallery, Charles F. Cornfort, and a noncredited introduction by Simmins, the exhibition's organizer. The forward and introduction form blocks of blue type. The bilingualism on the cover- Five Paintersl Cinq Peintres - continues here with English displayed in a bolder, heavier font then the French. And so - leaf by leaf - the observer moves through each succeeding page until the end. On the back cover a small block of text reveals the name of the Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationary. Barthes alone in the apartrnent, looking at pictures one by one under the lamplight,
would seern a different coupling of time and space than the 1%1 exhi bition catalogue. Certainly, one can recognize that an event in an architectural space is not the same as one
evoked by turning the pages of a booklet about an art exhibit. An important distinction between the two is that the different spaces and ternporalities of Barthes' experience are unified within Camera Lucida as text whereas the catalogue juxtaposes text and image
throughout. In the former, language renders al1 cohesive. In other words, what is seen -
Barthes, the lamp, the photographs - is reimagined through words and embedded into the passage as text.
Clearly, the exhibition catalogue aIso suggests multipIe convergences of space and time. An incomplete listing indudes the small windows opened by each individual photograph to each individual subject, the local - Regina - contiguous with "the tnily national" (Cornfort, NGC l%l b), French dovetailing English, the space within the frame of each painting, the irnplied but invisible space of the Gallery. This is only a partial inventory. However, it offers an important materiat consideration for cornparison with the section from CameraLucida. In this passage what is seen - the photopraphs of his mother,
. etc. - are transposed into the single descriptive and evocative form of language. In the exhibition catalogue, the differing spaces and ternporalities are captured by both text and image.' Nonetheless, one can recognize a cl ear distinction between spaceltime
juxtapositions reproduced uniformly as text and those reproduced as text and image. In the latter case, usinp the exhibition catalogue as an example, the sequentially organized book structure serves as the unifying container. Words and images fit the page. For a moment I would like to consider more carefully some of these texthmage reiationships that are in the National Gallery catalogue. Portraits of the artists abut the Forward, the Introduction, and reproductions of the paintings. As we have seen, the document opens with five portraits capped by a title. Six pages in, at the very centre of the document, the same artists' portraits appear in a double page spread. This means that BEFORE we have seen any hint of the paintings, the catalogue format shows us the same five pictures of the same five artists three times. With each viewing, the photographs become successively Iarger so that by the third and final time they command a fulI two pages at the very centre of the document. These last images are not so tightly cropped as those on the cover pages. One can see the artists' hands and a suggestion of their gestures within the frame. Each photographic portrait is accompanied by biographical data: "Arthur F. McKay b. 1926. Born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan.. . ." The paintings appear AiTER the double page spread on the artists. They are juxtaposed with explanatory artist's statements written by each of the painters: "TED GODWIN In my painting I have found . . . . Dans mes peintures, j'ai constaté . . . ." The catalogue's rhythm of imageltextlimage is not inconsequential. The collection of written and visual fragments supgests that the Artist is a personality who can not only
9 This is not to suggest that the French theorist did not liberally use photographic reproductions in Camera Lucida. In fact, the particuIar excerpt ci ted above immediateI y precedes a single image by Nadar, a pioneer of early French photography. authon tivel y represent thei r own work, but l ink that work, and themselves, to issues of nationhood and regionalism. These questions wilt appear in more detail in subsequent chapters. The immediate problern is how. How are representations (the referent) materially organized into concrete structures (the signifier)? A number of possi ble formulations present themselves. CIearly overt and layered discourses emerge from such a complex
interplay of texthmage juxtapositions. Yet, the catalogue, despite its obvious compIexities, presents us - the readedobserver - with a sense of a cohesive, rational whole, preciseIy because words and images fit the page. The catalogue with its white leaves, portraits, text and so forth, calls upon language, portraiture, graphics and photographic reproduction. It points to several convergences, beginning with the most mundane - the relation between
words and pictures. tt is because of its very mundanity that this relation appears so self- evident. Pictures may illustrate discourse. For Barthes, Nadar's portrait - "one of the loveliest photographs" - i Ilustrates an argument presented in the text. Images do not al ways take on secondary and supportive roles so that converseIy, discourse can expIicate pictures. The inclusion of statements from the five Regina artists along with reproductions of their paintings provide a context for understanding their abstract works. In this relation of seeing to speaking, Foucault (1994), in The Order of Thinos, observes "But the relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. .. .Neither can be reduced to the other's tenns: it is in vain that we Say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say" (9). Words contextualîze vision. As we have seen, when images join with language one explicates or illustrates the other. With the exhibition catalogue, attendant essays, statements, biographies rnay make the works of art more accessible to a visuaI arts audience. One primary function of these discourses is the revelation of the artist's objectives as a guide for understanding. For example, Bloore claims that the three brief paragraphs comprising his artist's statement are the only unes he has ever written about his own work in his entire career (l9!27). His refusal to explain his work is Iegendary. Terrence Heath, curator of Bloore's retrospective at the Mackenzie Gallery in 1991, observes
To follow Bloore in this undertaking is to attempt to articutate meaninps and significances about which he has refused to speak, to attempt to accompany his visual speech with verbal speculations are a very separate exercise from seeing the paintiogs; obviously, the very act of writing about them [the paint~ngs]becomes the trap which Bloore has refused to fa11 into (78).
Heath acknowledges that Bloore's refusal to Say what his ngorously austere work means creates difficulty for viewers. However, he then fills the gap Bloore's silence opens (78- 79).
In the task of rendering the self-evident visible, FoucauIt's analysis of Las Meninas is worth some consideration (1994). The painting by the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Velizquez is officially a portrait of the Spanish royal family, but also includes a self-portrait of the artist, The King and Queen, the focus of the painting, do not appear within its illusory space, but as paIe reflections rnirrored from the back waIl. Foucault suggests that tbere is an impossible irreducibility between vision and language. The difference between them is not sensory but spatial. One can "pass surreptitiously from the space where one speaks to the space where one Iooks." Similarly, "What we see never resides in what we say" (9). Despite their absolute sepamteness, in the same passage he suggests that the point of their "incompatibility" provides "the starting-point for speech." However, he Iinks a caution to this possibility. If one is to avoid passing "surreptitiously" from one space to the other, if one is to avoid foIding vision over language "as though they were equivalents . . . If one wishes to keep the relation of Ianguage to vision open" then one must resist facile descriptions of the painting's content. In Las Meninas, he suggests that it is the names of those eleven individuals arranged throughout the canvas's fictive space that must not be uttered. We must "pretend not to know who is to be reflected in the depths of that mirror, and interrogate that reflection in its own terms" (9- 10). If what is seen and what is written are not interchangeable, but potentially folded over one another, then their interface is not self-evident but constmcted. The emergent form - the book - depends upon an imaginary as well as concrete organization. By imaginary I mean that Foucault's argument evokes a relationship with a large, revered, and physically absent painting. For the publishers of The Order of Thinos, the relationship of the painting to the text is reinforced by the actual inclusion of a reproduction at the fore of the volume. The conceptual terrain has a material manifestation. No one would mistake it for the original object in situ. However, incorporated as it is into the Ieaves of the text, it reverberates between the irnagined, absent object and its theoretical, textual interpretation.'
10 In formulating this particular argument 1 draw upon several theoretical tracks. First is Soja's clear working through of "time, space and being." He writes, "It is necessary to begin by making as clear as possible the distinction between spaceper se, space as a contextual given, and socially-based spatiality, the created space of social organization and production." See E. Soja, Pastrnodern Geoara~hies:the assertion of space in critical social theory (London: Verso, 1989) 79. A little further on he continues, "Space in itself may be pnmordially given, but the organization, and meaning of space is a product of social translation, transformation, and expenence" (79-80).The application of this to the Las Meninas frontispiece is certainly a micro consideration compared with his macro argument. However, 1 find the conjunction between the "contextual given" and "social1y-based spatiali ty" particuIar1y useful conceptual tools. A third cons~derationis Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1981). In this essay the attention to and separation of the original object from its reproduction recalls the relationship between Las Meninas as an actual painting and the small black and white pnnt embedded into The Order of Thinm. Benjamin writes "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (322). Further ". . . technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway . . . .The cathedra1 leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art" Benjamin, in Photographv in Print: writinos from 1816 to the present [323]. Certainly, the question of concrete organization again reaffirms the statement that words and images must fit the page.
One can pus surreptitiou.c.i-yfi'omthe space where one speaks ro rlze spuce where one looks. If vision and Ianguage are so distinct, and yet function within cohesive documents, repetition smooths over whatever discornfort their disjunction may cause. Clearly, their interface within a single text is not a natural occurrence but a constructed one. The Paintings
Richard Simmins, organizer of the Five Painters in ReoindCins Peintres de Regina exhibition, observes there was "Great dignity to that show" (1998). The following section attempts visually to reproduce some of the experience of seeing which Simmins imagined in drawing together 38 works from these five artists. The checklist at the close of the exhibition catalogue (see Appendix 2) has provided the organizational structure since it lists the paintings one through to 38, arranging them alphabetically by artist. Paintings that are
Iost. or otherwise unaccounted for appear as gaps, noted by their title only. We start with
Bloore's Painting #I (1959), and move through the artists and their works, ending with
Morton's Auction ( 1961). the last painting on the checklist. Ron Bloore Painting No. 1, 1959 Oil on masonite, ll6.8xll6.8 cm Collection: Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Regina Photography: Mackenzie Art Gallery Ron Bloore The Establishment, 1959 Oil on board, 121.92~121~92cm Collection: Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Johnson Photography: National Gallery of Canada Ron Bloore Painting, 1960 Oil on masonite, 121.9x243.8cm Collection: The Artist Photgraphy: Eberhard Otto. Ronald Bloore: Not Wi thout Design, exhibition catalogue, The Mackenzie Art Gallery Ron Bloore Sign No. 5, 1961 OiI on board, 121.92~198.12cm CoIlection: The Artist Photography: Hank Roes t Ron Bloore Painting, 1961 Oil on board, 121.92~243.84cm Collection: Destroyed by Artist Ron Bloore Drawing No. 7, 196û Pen and ink on wove paper, 52.0x66.1 cm Collection: National Gallery of Canada Photography: National Gallery of Canada Ron BIoore Drawing, 1960 Ink on paper, 52.0x66.1 cm Collection: Dr. W.A. Riddell, Regina Ron Bloore Drawing, 1960 Ink on paper, 52.0x66.1 cm Collection: Unknowti Ted Godwin Blue Move, 1961 Oil on Canvas, 199.39~166.37 cm Collection of: Audrey & Frank Sojonky, Vancouver Photograph: University of Regina Archives Ted Godwin Amber Deep, 1961 Oil on canvas, 199.39x168.91 cm Col Iection: Garfinkle, Edmonton Photography: University of Regina Archives Ted Godwin Red Grew, 1961 Oil on canvas, 169.0x60.0cm Collection: Glenbow Museum of Calgary Photography: The Artist Ted Godwin Light Swim, 196û Oil on canvas, 172.72~142.24 cm Collection: Unknown Ted Godwin Late Summer, 1%1 Oil on canvas,124.46x 154.30 cm Collection: Unknown Ted Godwin Organic #4, 1961 Pastel on paper, 30.3~38.1cm CoHection: Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Regina Photograph: Don Hall, Mackenzie Art Gallery Ted Godwin Feel, 1%1 Ink drawing, 41.27~36.19cm Collection: Unknown Ted Godwin Double, 1961 Ink drawing, 50.80x33.02cm Collection: Unknown Ken Lmhhead Wobble Tree, 1 %1 Gesso and oil on board, 12 1.9~182.88 cm Collection: Audrey & Frank Sojonky, Vancouver Ken Lochhead Medieval Landscape Gesso and oil on board, 91.44x121.9 cm Collection: Morris & Jacqui Shumiatcher, Regina Photography: The Artist Ken Lochhead Eclat, 1960 Gesso and oil on board, 121.8~91cm Collection: Mr. & Mrs. Al Johnson, Ottawa Photography: National Gallery of Canada Ken Lochhead Stampede, 1961 Gesso and oil on board, 116.8x116.8cm CoIIection: Canada Council Art Bank Photography: University of Regina Archives Ken Lochhead Minotaur, 1960 Gesso and oil on board, 182.2x121.6 cm cm Collection: National Gallery of Canada Photography: The Artist Ken Luchhead Three Faces of Nature I, II, III, 1%1 Oil on Paper, each 53.34x66.04 cm Col Iection: Unknown Art McKay Effulgent Image, 1961 Latex, stovepipe enamel and retail trade enamel on hardboard, 122.0~lZ.0 cm Collection: Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Regina Photography: Don Hall, Mackenzie Art Gallery Art McKay Microcosm, 1960 Latex & stovepipe enamel on hardboard 182.6 x 122.0 cm Collection: Art Gallery of Ontario Photography: Art Gallery of Ontario Art McKay Darkncss, 1961 Latex and stovepipe enamel on hardboard 121 .Oxl77.4cm Collection: London Regional Art and Historical Museums Photography: Don Hall, Arthur F. McKav: a Cri ticalRetros~ective,exhibition cataogue, Mackenzie Art Gallery Art McKay Inward, 1%1 Enamel on board, 123.19~123.82 cm Collection: Unknown Art McKay The Void, 1961 Latex and stovepipe enamel on hardboard 121.3x121.7 cm Collection: Edmonton Art Gallery Photography: Edmonton Art Ga1lery Art McKay Image of Potential, 1961 Enamel on board, 123.82~123.19 cm Collection: Unknown Art McKay lnterior Space, 1959 Enamel on paper, 58.42~6604cm Collection: Unknown Art McKay Structure, 1959 Enarnel on paper, 58.42x72.39 cm Collection: Ron Bloore, Toronto Doug Morton Three Blue, 1960 Oil on board, 129.54x129.54cm Collection: The Artist Photography: The Artist Doug Morton Green Night, 1960 Oil and retail trade enamel on hardboard 129.5x121.5cm Collection: National Gallery of Canada Photography: The Artist Doug Morton Untitled Red, 1960 Oil on hardboard, 129.54~121.90cm Collection: Unknown Doug Morton October Collage, 1961 Enamel/collage on hard board 121.9 x 165.1 cm Collection: The Artist Photography: The Artist Doug Morton Brownscape, 1960 Enamel on hardboard 121.9 x 106.6 cm Collection: The Artist Photography: Bob Matheson, Art GalIery of Greater Victoria Doug Morton Auction, 1961 Enamel on hardboard, 139.70~124.46 cm Collection: Private Photography: The Artist The Hypertext: Dve Blue
The photograph at the beginning of the chapter comprises frarnes within frames. The separate demarcated spaces it contains are the three portraits, the cropped photo of a child and the oblong black rectangle of the background. In total it is a stationary fragment of hypertext DY^ Blue, The Reoina Five: Studies in Time and the Formation of Creative Production. The virtual text explores the collective identity of the Five Painters over time. Its strategy is the creation of windows that act as pends punctuating a temporal trajectory:
1%1, 1%4, 1998. Embedded into this exploration of the five men is another, secondary narrative. 1t reasserts a stub born, unavoidable presence. Clearly the historiadnarrator has a roIe in determining what story can be told. Therefore, the presence of my childhood self justified left against the cover of the 1%1 NGC exhibition catalogue, mornentarily fixes my history to theirs. The Dve Blue site with its hotIinks, scrolls and windows, maps an amay of visual and discursive texts. Like the exhibition catalogue it incorporates text, photographs, and fine art reproductions. Possibly the desire to Ieam at al1 costs what the shape of the object is in itself is challenged by virtual forms. If the two leaves of signifierlreferent cannot be separated wi thout destroying both, the lay ered electronic document even further obfuscates. From the outset my intention has been to locate these visual texts - whether the Exhibition Catalogue, the Paintings, or the Photograph - into a spaceltime rnatrix. The virtual text also operates from such a position. The following discussion on hypertexts in general and & Blue, in particular, is not exhaustive. My objective is to consider these three different signifying objects associated with the historical event. Peter S. Donaldson (1998) in the on-line essay "Digital Archives and Sibylline Fragments: The Ternpest and the End of Books", provides a workinp mode1 of what a hypertext might be. He uses the metaphor of an "expanded book" - a " 'magicaIly7 enhanced" book - as a way of conceptualizing the effects of "digital technologies" and "cornputer instruction" on the reconfiguration of forms. His own on-line essay "Digital
Archives", points to a place between the past - of the book - and the future where a hypertext operates as an expanded book 9hough it is not a book" (Introduction). Doug
Brent ( 19%) observes in "E-Publishing and Hypertext PubIishing" that "the natural mode of hypertext is compilation rather than Iinear creation, especiaily as the Webbegins to be dominated by sprawling hypertext documents that are chiefly made up of links to other
documents, or other lists of links." The text then, evokes three formative aspects. it references the Book or pnnt published documents as though these were its clear antecedents.' ' It is a textual "compilation", so that the binate phrase "image/text7' would have Iimited application. FinaIIy, it often exists within a network - the Web- where it is "iinked" to other simiiarly "hyper" documents. The initial idea of Dve Blue did not evolve from the structure of a book, as much as it did from an exhibition. In an early conceptualization 1 suggested that an art show titied Dve Blue would be about the painting but would also be "implicitiy ,about the ways and means that history is toid" (1996). To accornplish this i proposed exhibiting art works and photographs of eight artists: the five Regina painters, Roy Kiyooka, sculptor Judith
1 1 Clearly, much of the terminology and practices of the book business appear reconfigured in eIectronic fom. In many cases the same texts slip between pnnt and virtuai versions (e.g., hard and on-line publication of journals, newspapers, weeklies and magazines). Historically, however, intemet use was the preserve of scientific research institutions and business corporations. Tem Palmer, Under Over and Around the Net: Intemptino the Uto~ianSubiect of the Internet. (1994,9)[on-Iine]; available from, eserver.org/cyber/mainframe.html, 1998. If this is the case, the use of book as a signifying object, predating electronic forrns must be interpreted broadly. Schwarz, and myself. 1 explained this configuration in the following terms: "1 am, a visual artist. My practice saturates my theoreticai concerns. The exhibition provides the event, the celebrated occasion, of bringing together the divergent elements of theory, history and practice" (Ibid.).The moment of such a compilation tumed out to be a virtua! one and not the architectural space I first imagined. Concomitantly, in the transition from actual to virtuaI, the focus of Dve BIue became the Five Painters. In this new format thematic convergences between theory, history and practice created a dense intertextual complex demonstrative of Brent's assertion that hyper documents are compiiations. The openinp page of Dye BIue unrolls a dark pround with two diagonally opposed motifs - two animated gifs - the blue ellipse and the osciiiating fan. While the site may have an obvious point of entry here, from this moment onwards there is no clear progression - linear or otherwise. Each motif signals two possible narrative trajectories. Others imrnediately follow but the fan and ellipsis are the first, so that there is no clear path or point of departure. in this way Dve Blue has the salient characteristics of the hypertext. Further, as an on-line document it was inserted into a network of other "sprawling" texts and sites. The question of visibiiity Iocates the hypertext spatially and ternporally. Although the signifier is virtual, it aIso has a materiality. The activity of looking operates through conjunctions of spaceltime. As we have seen, the catalogue structure is diachronic; the art rnuseum articulates a careful orchestration of space temporally unfolded. The hypertext suggests a complex of spaces deeply tied to a step by step engagement. That the steps might be laterai rather than linear does not make them any iess a time based experience. Anyone who has waited moments to hours, downloading a document knows the impact of being there, waiting. What are the contours, the particular demarcations of this space? Imagine for a moment, Barthes alone in the Pansian apartment looking at photographs. Wouid such a poetic evocation of "looking" be possible with the hypertext? Howard Rheingold (1992) offers what one rnight consider an approximation:
I'm a writer, so 1 spend a lot of time alone in a room with my words and my thoughts. . . . For the past seven years, however, 1 have participated in a wide-ranging . .. ongoing interchange with dozens of new friends, hundreds of colleagues, thousands of acquainiances, And I still spend rnany of my days in a room, physically isolated. My mind, however, is linked with . . . : My virtual community . . . . We do everything people do when people get together, but we do it with words on computer screens . . . ( I - 2).
EUieingold writes enthusiastically about the "exchange [of] words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networksW(2).Although this is a different focus than the hypertext, the description of Rheingold alone in a room does strangely echo
Barthes'. It is to this aspect of seeing, especially the final phrase - but we do it with words on computerscreens - that I would like to give further attention. The role of the viewer receives a lot of consideration in discourse about hyper documents and the world wide web. Most often what is championed is how the reader is chaIIenged into activity. mile the author rnakes a map, embedding it into a network Iinked with an infinite number of other maps, the viewer charts their own narrative passage. Donaldson argues that his on-line essay "asks its readers to imagine that they are exploring a path, one particular path, though an immense networked digital archive" (Introduction). Stuart Moulthrop (1998),in the eiectronic journal Postmodern, uses the term "navigation" to descri be the role of the viewer. ' In this altered, hyper, medium *'the sensation [of
reading] is less of steeiing than of swimming against a tide. You'li reach the shore eventuaily -- but where?." CIearly, both Moulthrop and Donaldson make simiiar observations about the viewer-text relationship although each chooses quite different
metaphors to descn be it. While one envisions picking a "path", the notion of the swimrner
appears less controlled and more arduous. Despite such dissimilari ty, what is the same is
the authority each gives to the viewer. It is worih at this juncture, recalhg Duncan's articulation of the dynamic between the viewerand the perfomative space of the art
museum. She points out that "[a] ritual performance need not be a formai spectacle. It may be something the individual enacts aione . . . . in art museums, it is the visitors who enact the ritual" (12). Perhaps the electronic document, even more explicitiy than a photograph. book, or institution, requires coilaboration. Without the navigating eye the virtual wortd remains dark.
Duncan's passage identifies two points relevant to this discussion on Zooking and the viewer-text relationship. It does critically underscore the role of an actor. Certainly the question of the document's visibility as a signifying object is tied to the rofe of the observer as navigator. However, her focus on the container of the gallery rather than individual works of art is dent. Such a deft manoeuvre shifts the emphasis from the specific and individuai to relations berneen elernents. The object/signifier for Moulthrop and
1 2 Moulthrop refers directly to Adrian Miles' "perfomative" essay "Hy perweb" ." He finds that its expioration "on thé nature of hypertexidallies temptinglywith some possibilities of discourse post-pnnt. A moving matrix of words and images, it makes inquiry into the message of an emerging, emergent medium." See S.Mou1throp "Hypertext Essay: Adrian Miles. 'Hyperweb"' The Electronic Journal of Postmodern and Interdisciplinarv Criticism (Postmodern Culture and Oxford University Press, Vol. 6, No. 3, May, 19%) [on-Iine]; availabk at, iath.virginia.edulpmc/text- onIy.5%lcontents.5%.html. Donaldson are the solitary and aggregate texts in cyberspace. We may certainly think of this
space as a kind of virtual container, equivatent in theory to the more concrete container of the museumlgallery. However, I wouId like to consider an aiternate framing device.
Rheingold begins to suggest it. "[AlIone in a room with my words and my thoughts," he argues, "We do evetythinp people do when people get together, but we do it with words on computer screens." With these last two words Rheingold lifts us out of cyberspace and into a room with a computer. Concomitantly, this singIe phrase flags a massive apparatus of technology, telecomrnunications, information systems, cornputers, and modems. '"he computer screen acts as the invisible frame around the impossi bly yawning window of the intemet. Against its sill, Rheingold only fleetingly indicates the existence of the viewer's corporeality and hence heing vis-à-vis the object/signifier. He writes "We do everything people do when people get together, but we do it with words on cornputer screens, leaving our bodies behind' (2, my ernphasis). The impossibility of this assertion - leaving our bodies hehind. - staggers me. Corporeality by its very omission is also present in Moulthrop and Donaidson's arguments. Certainly such a heavy technological apparatus rnediates a threshoid between the intensely pnvate sphere of a room and the unbounded, anonymous, public place of the WWWeb. If this is the case, then perhaps we can think of the hypertext as circumscribed by innumerable sills or thresholds. in its spacdtime convergences it proposes a curious acceleration of viewer participation cornbined with acute physical inactivity.
7 3 CertainIy there are critics of the discourses and practices of cyberspace culture and politics. The apparatuses of technology provide a key area of detraction. A pivotal question concems accessibility. Palmer argues that historically, access was the preserve of scientific research institutions, corporations, and more recently, unlversities. The result is that "the Net is a homogenous group, in that a large percentage of its users share economic, educational, and often times cultural interests." If one can recognize the technological window, immediately bounded by the cornputer screen, then the hypertext attains a particular visibility. A colleague once observed that reading from a cornputer screen was analogous to wearing a neck brace. The document, he suggested, seemed to slip imitatingly inside and behind the contours of the frame. What one wanted to see next was always just a click or mouse scroll out of sight. As a Iiterary scholar he was more cornfortable with the conventions of the book. However, the hypertext has its own structure which familiarity renders equaily discrete. Although i t
refen to pnnt published formats it remains distinct.'" It has conventional tag and markers
for navigating around the virtual page: forwards and backwards; up and down. Once fi terate, the viewerlreader navigates with aplomb. The celebrated intertextuality of
hypertexts - their images, discourses, windows, pages, links and so on -@ rhefiutne.
Similar to the Five Painters from Regina exhibition catalogue where text and images fit the page, Dve Blue attains its material integrity through its very conformity with the strictures of the virtuai frame.
CCRelationsBetween" and Ottawa, 1961
Berger points to an incomparabiiity between a painting and its reproductiori. Similarly, Walter Benjamin (1981) ponders the relationship between an "original" and its multiple reproductions, observing that "a plurality of copies" merely substitutes "a unique expenence" (323-324). Barthes, in Camem Lucida, finds an impossible relation between his memory of his rnother and a photograph of her taken years before he was born (67-70).
14 At the very outset one can recognize that the virtual is not a book rnerely pasted "on-line", just as we can recognize that a mass of words does not arnount to a single painting. Diverse objects have a certain irreduci bili ty. They are not transposable. Donaldson ponders what possible relationship might exist between the hypertext and non- hyper works, wondering if they would "perhaps, converge in so far as documents -- virtual or material -- always te11 their own stories" (2). The problem of "relations between", as I conceive i t, is the delineation of a space where one can "think" relations between objects that are physically separate. As we have seen, the exhibition catalogue binds the divergent forms of textiimage to the limits of the page. The problem of relations benveen presents the question of how one might conceptualize such relationships without the benefit of a visible container (such as the page or the gallery). Even with the organizational containment provided by such over-arching forms, there are imagined convergences between text and image. In other words, a viewer or reader or performer derives meaning from juxtapositions between language and images, so that we can understand that meaning is not solely contained in either language or visuals but in their convergences in location, time and with actors. In the instances where words accompany pictures - illustrated texts, newspapers, paintings exhibited with descriptive tags - ubiquity renders the imagined relarionsbeîween invisible. Other forms are more glaring in their disjunction. With hïs consideration of how hypertext and the non-electronic textua1 works compare, Donaldson indicates a degree of discornfort.
In the previous chapter the portraits of Five Painters make a border of black and white photographs across the page. At the beginning of this chapter the same portraits appear cropped, recontextualized by a wider frame and the fractured presence of myself as a young chiid. In the later case the juxtapositions indicate the awkward relationship between hypertext and print. What connects the Dve Blue hypertext with the Five Painters from Regina exhibitian catalogue and with the Paintings? If the exhi bition catalogue bounds the divergent forms of text/image by adhering them to the page, then thinking relu~iomberween would entail the construction of an irnagined "page." Such a page would define a system of relations connecting divergent forms in such a way that they cohere. Only in this instance, unlike the Exhibition Catalogue, the cohesion has no obvious materiat forrn. Two examples might be heipful. For instance, we are farnitiar with the strategies of advertising which commonly operate across a number of physical and conceptua1 locations. An aIIusion in a print magazine, or brief narrative in a television commercial connect wi th a banal product we probably pass many tirnes over the coune of a year in a supennarket. '' The Camera Lucida passage still
1 5 Max Kozloff provides an example. Considering a bus advertisement for Calvin Klein Jeans, he speculates
For a moment, one might have thought such subjects were a bhe-cotlar Hanse1 and Gretel who had lost their way, rather than highly paid models for Calvin Klein Jeans. . . . The scene illustrates a possible sexual contretemps . . . . Ours not so much to wonder about the history of this tense mysterious pair, as to acknowledge that wearers of Calvins are likely to have such a history. As Kozloff indicates, a bus advertisernent, blue jeans, an "illusion of mildly kinky" behaviour operate as a cohesive unit. See Kozloff, "Through the Narrative Portal" in The Privileoed EY~:Essavs on Photocra~hv(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987) 93,94. We can find another, less insidious example, in conternporary art historical writing. These narratives may contextuatize the production of fine art within a matrix of social, political and cultural influences. The effect of such discourse is that the painting,.sculpture, photograph, etc, then reflect events and other objects - an association that is implied but not mateiialiy actual. A case in point is Howard's discussion of McKay's paintings. How does the individual artist traverse the distance between provincialism and cosmopolitanisrn while at the same time avoiding a new relationship with the centre that replicates a time-honoured colonial-inferiority? . . . In particular, the Cold War pend is fraught with the fragmentation and dissolution ofolder political and cultural paradigms - the colonidism and imperiaf ism which are characteristic of European modernity - in addition to the decay of the rnodernist paradigm in visual culture. See D. Howard, Arthur F. McKav: A Critical Retrospective (Regina: Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1997) 8. In this passage the conflict of urban centrdprovincial margins, emergent nationalism, the colonial past and postcolonialism presedfuture, the CoId War, as weIl as, provides a complex layering of spaces and time such as the apartment in November; the memory of his recently deceased mother. One can understand both the strategies of advertising and Barthes' solitary moment as "pages." Arguably, we take these links for granted, forrning our "pages" unconsciously. Imagining "relations between" involves the construction of an envisioned space/page. Edward Soja, arguing for a more theoretically resonate spatiatity, conceives of knowledge embedded in materiality so that "Time, space, and matter are inextncably
connected" (79). A profound implication of this is that "We can no longer depend on a story-line unfolding sequentiaIly": because too much happens "against the grain of time, too much is continually traversing the story-Iine IateraIIy" (23). Within this narrative trajectory, which is continually and laterally crossed, is the subject - viewer/reader/performer. Soya suggests
Simultaneities intervene, extending Our point of view outward in an infinite number of lines connecting the subject to a whole world of comparable instances, cornplicating the temporal flow of meaning, short-circuiting the fabulous stringingout of 'one damned thing after another' (23).
Simultaneities intervene, extending our point of view ounvard in an inJnire nurnber of lines. This phrase envisions relations between in a way that is both rooted and open. Lines connecting the subjecr to a whole world ofcomparable instunces.The spatialized narrative forms a web with lines extending outwards. It is of significance is that such a configuration situates the subject at its axis. Its pivotal position recalIs the dynamic relationship Duncan describes between the viewer and the performative field of the gallery, or Mouthrop's
the complex narratives of modemi ty are al1 in some way attached to and reflected in McKay 's work. virtual "navigator." Although I have appropriated this notion of a spatialized narrative, the appropriation asserts the necessary space for imagining reIcr~iomberween.
We return to the beginning where the image appears carved at either end. The focus of these inquiries circles the 1%I exhibition of Five Painters from Reoina at the National Gallery of Canada. While some of its most enduring representations are the catalogue and surviving paintings, interpretive accounts also prevail. Collectively these suggest other directions, further possi bilities and different converges - the subjecr to a whole world of comparableinst~nces- a painting to a black and white reproduction, language to visuaiity, the individuats to thernselves. In conclusion, 1 suggest that the story of Five Painters in Ottawa, as the thesis asserts, articulates an imagined "page." The singular event over forty years ago is recounted and reimagined through its many elements and collective representations. The catalogue, thesis, hypertext, paintings, documentary photographs, photographic reproduction, text, and so on, al1 contribute to reconstmcting the scene. PART II Figum 25. [Intenorl Exhibition Five Painters from Reoina (NGC 1961) Source:National Gallery of Canada Archives Fium 26. [Exterior] Ottawa and area at 40,000 ft, 1 964 Source:Department of National Defense Photography Unit. CEPE 19-3 CHAITER TWO THE PARALLEL VISION OF STATEIINSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND THE PUBLIC EXHIBITION: THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA AND THE LIBERALSTATE
You see New York is a lillle regiort jus1 like Regirtn is n region. jirsf like Torortto is rr regior~. Ro~rnldBloore. 1997
Ir] eJecf, ~v/iofdefies (i re/(iliori.s/iipofpuer is I/ml il is n mode of acfiort rvlrid rloes nof nct direcrfyarid irnrnedia fely on ol/iers. Mic/w/ fiiiccrrrlf, "Subjecr dL f'oiver "
This chapter is composed of three Ioosely connected parts. Each analyzes a problem
focusing on intersections or relations between the institution and the state. In different ways they approach how exhibitionary space was governed in the early 1Wsat the National Gallery of Canada. That is, they seek to reconstruct a context leading up to the Five
Painters from Regina/ Cinq Peintres de Re~inaexhibition in 1% 1 by sketching three separate, but over-lapping aspects. The first part proposes an histoncal approach begiming wi th the dynarnic claim that the Five Painters exhibition in Ottawa was 6'controversial/controversée." This augments
the assertion that it was also an original, unprecedented event. The notion of an "interior- extenor" axis provides a mode1 for considering how the art museumlgallery dovetails with interna1and external politics. This mode1 is further developed in the second section, albeit through a more speculative discussion of state activi ties and its two, apparently opposing, pulls. That is, the emergence of the "social" on the one hand and diplomacy and war on the other. Finaliy, the problem of spatiality provides a third and pivotal overlay. The exhibitionary space exists of course, asjust that - a space; an aperture of simultaneity in the iinfolding narrative of the Five Painters from Reioina.
The Problern of Importance
When the Five Painters from Regina exhibition opened at the National Gallery of Canada
on Thursday November 30, 1961 "controversiallcontroverst5e~~appeared as a favourite descriptive with both Richard Simmins, the exhibition's organizer, and the media. The simpIicity of the bilingual invitation perhaps belied what Simmins, as director of the Gallery's Exhibition Extension Services and curator of the National Gallery show, descri bed as "the most important and controversial exhi bition of contemporary Canadian art organized for sometirne" (Ottawa Citizen [Ottawa], Dec. 2, 1%1). Simmins' assessment resurfaced as an echoing refrain through newspaper headlines across the country. Devoir in Montreal, the St. John's Dailv News and the Reoina Leader Post, for example, suggested the a bstract expressionist pain tings on display provoked controversy or were, in and of themselves, controversial.' %ne paper published a photograph of Simmins and the painter Douglas Morton tooking at one of the artist's abstract works. The caption under the newspaper photograph reassured readers that there was WOTransmission Trouble" with the paper's new wirephoto machine. The distortion was not only intentional, it was art! (Moon 1%1) At the time, the contentious apex of the "ControversiaI Exhibition" appeared to lie in its 38 abstract expressionist paintings, drawings and collages. The title, Five Painters from
1 6 See for exarnple, "Une exposition controversée" Le Devoir. (Montreal) 5 December, 1%1. NGC Archives: Five Painters from Reoina Exhibition File; "Controversial Exhibition" St John's DaiIy News. (St. John's) 2 December, 1961. NGC Archives: Five Painters from Reoina Exhibition File.
80 Reoina, gave the impression that the Gallery was offering a collection of recognizable regional scenes. But as one newspaper reported, reality made a mockery of such expectations: "instead of the familiar Iegislative building in Regina and grain elevators and portraits of Mounties", a visitor to the Gallery "merely found 'abstract' paintinps of senseless splashes of paint which didn't look Ii ke Regina or the Prairies at all" (St. John's da il^ News, OttawaCitizen,I%I). In this understanding of what was controversial, the rapid ascendance of fine artists producing abstract, non-objective art works in Canada
dunng the 1950s and 196ûs would produce a "crisis of abstraction" (Leclerc, 35). Indeed, contemporary media commentary demonstrates that, for the majority of the public,
abstraction was deeply bewitdering. Certainly, more then thirty years after the event, as we
near the onset of the twenty-first century. it is hard for us to recapture whatever shock those mid-cen tury abstractions ori ginally delivered. However, wi thin the narrative of western art the twentieth-century's avant garde marches on an ever progressive movement towards abstraction (Duncan, 108). While other studies have considered the cultural and psychic dismptions of dramatically altered modes of representation in the postwar period (Duncan; Leclerc; Howard 1997, 1993), such a focus is outside the purview of this investigation. Rather. for me, the question of controversy and importance derives from the context and circumstances of the Five Painters from Regina as an exhibitionary event. If the problem of abstraction-as-controversial is side-stepped, then the question of the Five Painters' importance rnoves in different directions. In hindsight the exhibition's importance would seem to rest on variations of a sinpIe theme: it was an original, unprecedented event. But exactly how it was remains debatable. Discrepancies do emerge. In one version the exhibition represented the first time Iiving, Canadian artists had been shown at the Gallery (Godwin 1997); in another, it was the first exhibit of living Canadian anists orgunicedby the Gallery ('Sirnmins 1998). In yet another understanding, perhaps the show was significant because it was the first time in living rnernnry that living Canadian artists had exhibited at the GaIIery (Campbell 1998). Regardless of whether it was really the first or merely seemed Iike it, the event survives as a potent, collectively shared legacy. The resonance of the historical moment became impossibly tangled up with, yet distinct from the Iives and careers of the Five Painters themselves. Each of whom - BIoore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay and Morton - in the decades after the Ottawa exhibition individually pursued long and formidable practices as artists, arts educators or cultural administrators. Still, the memory of the National Gallery event stayed close, as if it were a tenacious haunting. Clearly its historical tenacity lies in the claim of being somethinp that was Yirst." The consequences of this original status, 1 wilI argue, places the event on an "interior- exterior" axis. Such a conceptualization separates and simu1taneously connects the apparent polarities of national and international concems. In other words, an "interior-exterior'' axis joins intemal povernance of the nation with extemal diplomacy and cornpetition. The present exploration of this axis is largely limiteci to the activities of the National Gallery in so far as it intersects with andor reproduces the interests of the state. In contemporary texts the confIation between the Gallery and state can be associated through internally and externally directed activities. Alan Jarvis, director of the Gallery frorn 1955- 1959, provides an explicit demonstration in his farnous 1957 lecture "Art Means Business." In this address the director presents the promotion of art concomitant with the country's status as a nation in a global comrnunity of nations: "Canada is finafly corning of age as a country"; "[i]t is obvious that we must, if we are to be a civitized nation, have some repository of great works of art" (146, 147). Within the same address the extemal interest is juxtaposed with a concern for the interior of the country since the people of Canada had psychological and educationa1 needs.
One of the Gallery's missions, therefore, is to have concern for the welfare of the population and to secure that welfare by exposing the people to Canadian art and to the
"great works of the past."'7 The Gallery's initiatives in this regard would be supported by
"the whole paraphernalia of a modem educational institution that is trying to serve as wide as possible a public" (Jarvis, 15 1).
In addition to Jarvis' important Iecture, Sirnmins, the Gallery's director of Extension Services from 1957- 1962, provides an invaluable document thirty-seven years after the 1x1Five Painters exhibition. The two texts indicate two discourses, temporally disparate, but certainly key to any investigation of the exhibition's historical importance.
Although neither are definitive accounts, together they contribute an important and provocative focus for sketching an analysis. I would like to further analyze the relationship between the fomuIa "living Canadian artists" and the significance of the exhibition as a "first." What is needed is a more precise notion of what exactly was first and how it was achieved. To be an artist, to be alive - and perhaps uucouranr - to be organized and displayed in Ottawa was without precedence. This configuration was, for Sirnmins, criticai to understanding the importance of the Five Painters from Regina exhibition. Years later he would explain,
17 The historian Paul Litt describes this as the Gallery's patronizing attitude towards the Canadian population. He observes that "If peopIe would not corne to the National Gallery, then the National Gallery would go to the peopIe. It was for their own good, whether they Iiked it or not." P. Litt, The Muses the Masses and the Massev Commission. (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1992) 203. This was the first time the National Gallery of Canada had ever organized an exhibition of living Canadian artists. Now that's an absolute fact. It's not been documented before. Now there were pupshows exhibited in the National Gallery but never organized by thern. The same holds true for one man or soIo shows. The National Gallery, up until the time 1 was there, never organized a solo show by a living artist. They would exhibit them if organized by Montreal or Toronto, or perhaps Vancouver, but they never initiated the show themselves. You had to be dead to get the National Gallery to give you a show ( 1998).
However, in an apparently curious negation, he almost sirnultaneousIy countered the first statement with the observation that the show was unimportant because there were no diplomats involved (Md.). These apparently contradictory statements crystallize twin trajectories, reflective of the art institution's activities at that time. We can see that each forms an interna1 or external field of operation. Thomas Maher, Chaiman of the Gallery's Board of Trustees, succinctly expresses the double mandate in the 1% 1 Annual Report when he wrote, "We at al1 times encourage an interpretation of the role of the National Gallery which will promote the interests of art in Canada and be a source of increasing national pide abroad" (NGC 1%2, 8). Wreathed in controversy, the 1%1 Five Painters exhibition appeared radically to promote "the interests of art inCunada." Furiher, it promoted them in a way perceived, at the tirne and in retrospect, as unparalleled. However, the show's absolute non-involvement with "national piide abroad" made it unimportant in Ottawa since it clearly had limited di plornatic cache. Of the five exhibits shown at the Gallery between 1959-1960 only one, the Third Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Art, was entirely made up of contemporary Canadian works. [Table 11 Of the remaining four: one came from the Gallery's own collectim - which would include historical and contemporary works from Canada and abroad - whiie the other exhibitions were foreign.lR Because biennials represented the National Gallery's
rnost visible involvement with contemporary Canadian art up until that time, it is worth looking a&them a little more closely. The express purpose of these massive shows - 98 works in the 1959 Third Biennial Exhi bition of Canadian Art - was to display in a national
arena "the best" of contemporary Canadian art. Further, we can see them as deeply stitched into the Gallery's coIlection practices since rnost conternporary acquisitions made by the Gallery came from the biennials. WhiIe they did display contemporary Canadian work, what made them distinct from the other exhibitions was their organizational process. Regional committees from across the country made the selections. In other words, the biennials were juried and not curated in the same way as the other National Gallery shows
under consideration. '
With the exception of the Third Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Art, it appears as if the exhibitionary space at the National Gallery was reserved for cultural displays presenting the state as a unified nation-state. For instance, the exhibition, Paintins in Ottawa
18 Paintings in Ottawa ColIections (10works) NGC April-May 1959; Gerrnan Graphic Art of the-~wentiethCentury (105 works) NGC May 1-959; hir rd Biennial Exhibition of Canadian Art (98 works) NGC June 1959; Mastemieces of European Painting 1490-1840 (36 works) NGC Feb.-March 1960; The Artist in his Studio (137 photographs) Feb. - March 1960. Because the Gallery moved to a new site in the fall of 1959, the 1959-60 fiscal year is not typical. First, there were fewer shows, and secondly, two of five that were shown were specifically brought in for the Gallery's inauguration of the new premises. As a point of contrast, the previous year (1958-59)put an additional two shows (seven in total) into the Ottawa location, while in the year after, ( 1960-61) there were an astounding twenty-one exhibits. Such an increase makes the notion of defining a "typical exhibition year" seem 1udicrous. However, the opening of the Lorne Building does offer a good measuring point since with the opening, the Gallery's political and cultural profile heightened, both nationally and internationally.
19 A form of the biennials dates back to 1926. Initially - frorn 1926-1933 - they were annual events but, in 1953, after a twenty-year hiatus, they were reestablished as biennials.
Collections, demonstrated that the country was indeed a "civilized nation" because it had a suitable repository of great works of art. The remaining three exhibitions brought other nation-states in the form of thei r art works into the National Gallery. If this was the case, then the Gallery formed an actual Iocation where the state could safely intersect with other states. As such it operated as a forum for the Gallery's externally directed activities. With the exception of the Third Biennial Exhi bition of Canadian Art, it appears as if the exhibitionary space at the National Gallery was reserved for cultural displays presenting the state as a unified nation-state. For instance, the exhibition, Paintinos in Ottawa Collections, demonstrated that the country was indeed a "civilized nation" because it had a suitable repository of great works of art. The remaining three exhibitions brought other nation-states in the form of their art works into the National Gallery. If this was the case, then the Gallery formed an actual location where the state could safely intersect with other states. As such it operated as a forum for the Gallery's externaIly directed activities. The five exhibitions mounted in Ottawa between 1959- 1%0 could function as an opportunity for mediation between other nations. Certainly Jarvis saw the institution in its rnultipIe capacities; he saw it as an exhibitionary and coIlecting organization and as a site of national identity and statesmanship. 1 would like briefly to consider how this was case. For the Paintinas in Ottawa Collections exhibition, the show reflected that Canada could, in his words, assert itself as "a civilized nation" because we "have some repository of great work of art of the past and from other c~untries."~~This show served as a public manifestation of national sovereignty because it wouid demonstrate the possession of the
20 See J. Clifford "On Collecting Art and CuIture" in The Predicament of Culture: . Twentieth-Centurv Ethnooraiîhv, Literature. and Art, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988) 215-252, for discussion on the relationship between collections, coilecting, and individual and collective subjectivity. appropriate visual artifacts. With exhi bitions involving artists andlor art works from other countnes, the international dynamic of state interaction becornes even more explicit. Jarvis, commenting on preparations for the Masterpieces of European Painting 1490-1840, said,
Every museum in the world - this is an international fmternity now - has this universal respect for works of art and loans are indeed made because we al1 know, now, that every self-respecting museum in any civilized country wil l take care of its pictures (150).
While Jarvis was refemng to European national treasures, the protocol of "taking care" of another country's visual representations is key. Taking care was predicated on trust and respect within a "civilized" fraternity whose membership consisted of "self-respecting" institutions. "If." Jarvis asks, "the Louvre or the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam knew that we had let pictures go across the country on freight trains, would they Iend us great works of art belonging to their nation" (Ibid.)? Certainly the answer Jarvis expected to this rhetorical question was "no." Although it is important that we not conflate the meaning paintings from the past hold with conternporary works it is clear that "taking care", as an act of trust between nations, could apply equally to contemporary works. The German Graphic Art of the Twentieth Century exhibition, aIong with the Old Masters, was one of three non-
Canadian exhibitions shown at the Gallery in the same fiscal year (l%g-l%O).The third, The Artist in his Studio, was a large photogaphic exhibition organized and circuiated by the American Museum of Modem Art (MoMA). Whatever other narratives these exhi bitions might have suggested, collectively they gave a tacit demonstration of the Gallery's ability to take appropriate care within the fraternity to which it so proudly belonged. We can see that shows organized for, or brought into, the National Gallery reinforced the location as one reserved for non-aggressive international relations. This
appears to be the case no matter whether the Gallery was demonstrating its ability to properly "take care", or whether the Gallery was making a dispIay of its own authority
through organizing work from its own collections. As such, it operated as a forum for the Gallery's extemally directed activities. We must then understand the Five Painters frorn Regina as divergent from this exhibitionary practice. If so, the daims of precedence would appear founded. However. this is the point for a clearer analysis of "living, Canadian" and "artist" vis -&vis the relation between the exhibition's historical status of "first" and a broader institutional context. Such a context is explicitly laid out by Charles Comfort, director of the Gallery. In his introduction to the Five Painters exhibition catalogue he comments,
For a number of years the National Gallery has organized and circulated across Canada a series of important exhibitions with the purpose of stimulating regional developrnent and evaluating the diverse styles and varieties of expression king produced within the area of contemporary art (NGC 1961b).
He goes on to list four exhibitions, Six East-Coast Painters, The Non-Finurative Artists'
Association of Montreal, Folk Painters of the Canadian West, and Painters 1 1 as being among "the most interesting." As his statement is the very first in the catalogue it forms a powerful context for the Five Painters from Regina exhi bition. A context which appears as a direct refutation of the notion that the Five Painters was unique. The show was not only one of several similarly conceived regional exhibitions, but between I96û and 1% 1,
Donald W. Buchanan, the Gallery's Associate Director, organized three additional exhibitions of "living" Canadian artists. [See Table 21 A third set of exhibitions organized by the Gallery was the Canadian Artists Series organized by Simmins through Extension
Services between 1958 and 1961. [See Table 3J TABLE 3
CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN EXHIBITIONS HANDLED BY THE NGC 1958- 1%2, GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Title Date Material - Institution Exhibition No. of works Responsible Location in Exhibition
Painters 11 1958-59 30 Paintings Montreal Musée Toured only des Beaux Arts
Canadian Artists 1958-59 Approx. 20 NGC Toured Only Series 1: Paintings Maxwell Bates t? Jack Humphrey
Canadian Artists 1959-60 Approx, 20 NGC Toured Only Series II: Ghitta Paintings Caiçerman & Ron Spickett
Folk Painters of 1959-60 57 Paintings NGC NGC - Ottawa the Canadian & West Tou red
The Non- Montreal 27 Paintings NGC Toured only Figurative 1959-60 Artists' Association of
Canadian Artists 1960 Approx. 20 NGC Toured only Series Ill: Paintings Micheiine Beauchemin & Mariette Vermette
Six East-Coast 1961-62 38 Paintings NGC Toured Only Painters
Five Painters 1961-62 38 Paintings & NGC NGC - Ottawa from Regina drawings & Tou red CANADIAN AND NON-CANADIAN ART EXHIBITIONS SHOWN AND CIRCULATED BY THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA 1959-1960
Contemporary Historical Unknown - Total Exhibitions Exhibitions Exhibitions Historical or Con tem porary
Exhibitions of 20 3 Canadian Artists
Exhibitions of 9 Non-Canadian Artists
Total Exhibitions 29 9 8 46
Source: Annual Reports for the Board of Trustees for the fiscal years 1958- 1959, 1959- 1%O (NGC 1959b, 1 960b)
As Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate, the National GaIIery of Canada organized eleven exhibitions of conternporary Canadian art, coincidental with the Five Painters. However, the problem of the relation between "first" and "Iiving" requires further thought so that 1 would like to discuss a few of the similarities or points of departure between each exhi - bi tion. Tables 2 and 3 detail the size of each show, which institution(s) were responsible for their conception and organization, whether the exhibition toured, whether the tour included the National Gallery as one of its exhibition sites. Table 2 also indicates others whether the shows were supported by the publication of a catalogue. Our understanding of the critena of the Five Painters' importance resting with nationaI identity and "living" is clearly inadequate. So much so, that three further elements suggest themselves as central considerations. First is the distinction between the internat and externat operations of the gallery, that is, the dynamic of an "internal-external axis". In other words, the National Gallery shows fulfilled two purposes: i) there were
exhibitions displayed in Ottawa as part of a nationallinternational dialogue and ii) others which were organized or simply circulated by the GaIlery for the benefit of the population.
As Table 1 demonstmtes, the circulation of shows across the country, and on occasion into the United States, formed a substantial part of the Gallery's activities. These circulated
exhibitions were largely Canadian and conternpomry in c~ntent.~' [See Tables 2.3 & 41
Simmins had a passion for contemporary work, an enthusiasm formed dunng his tenure as the first director and curator of the Norman Mackenzie Gallery in Regina,
Saskatchewan ( 1952- 1957).
But the best exhibitions you could get were contempomry art exhibitions. So 1 lived on a diet of contemporary art exhibitions for five years before 1 came from Regina to Ottawa. . . . Naturally, you know. like a writer, you work with the scene you know best. The scene that 1 worked with principally, when 1 was there fat the National Gallery], was the conternporary scene ( 1998).
Arguably, the circumstance of "living, Canadian" and "artist" was not unique, but rather it had become a standard for interna1 circulation of Gallery exhibitions. Of the eleven shows organized by Extension Services only two were shown in Ottawa, the rest circulated away from the nation's capital. In considering the two that were exhibited at the National Gallery - Folk Painters of the Canadian West and Five Painters from Reoina - we corne to a second central element: the problem of professionalism. Folk artists by their very definition are amateurs. Jarvis in his introduction to the Folk Painters'
21 Of the fifty-five shows handled by the Gallery in one fiscal year, forty-six toured across the country. Of those more than half were Canadian in content (see Table 1).
93 catalogue. writes. "Folk painting is a fomof popular art. it is non-academic and makes no claim to artistic excellence" (NGC l959b). This very Iack of ski11 and professional training is directly and favourably contrasted with "the more sophisticated type of exhibition" (Ibid.). Clearly, the Five Painters represen ted this second type of sophisticated exhibition. The Regina painters appear opposite in almost every way to the folk artists. If folk painters were "self-taught" and "refreshingly free of the influence of any current trends" (Ibid.), then the five Regina painters were well educated, well travelled, and clearly cognizant of international developments in Modern Art. Simmins observes,
[Folk Painters of the Canadian West] was an absolutely stunning show. It circulated - it showed in Ottawa - and it circulated in Canada and the United States as well through the gallery - aegis - of the Smithsonian Institute of Fine Arts. . . . And folk was big in Saskatchewan. Big. And the - most of the established professional painters hated that kind of show, absolutely hated i t ( 1998).
The separation of professional from amateur suggests that the designation "living" is qualitative. To be a "living Canadian artist" is not synonymous with being a living Canadian Folk artist. Although Sirnmins in retrospect considers the Folk Painters exhibition one his most brilliant contributions to art in Canada, the show clearly does not have the same cultural cachet as the one with the Five Painters. Thirdly, I would like to consider the somewhat mythic quality of the category "living, contemporary and artistic." As we have seen, amateurs did not meet this criteria. However, neither did other producers of visual representations. I refer specifically to photographers. In the fine art gallery system professional photographers were not "artistic" in the same way, or even to the sarne degree, as painters, sculptors or pnnt rnaker~.*~Of
22 See "Collecting Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada, 1880-1980, Catalooue of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa: Canadian Art. Vol. 1, A - F, eds. CharIes C. Hill, Pierre B. Landry. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1988) xxiii. This the three solo exhibitions organized by Buchanan two were by photographers - Karsh and Buchanan himself. For this reason, I suggest that the third solo exhibition Buchanan organized, the Alfred Pellan Retros~ective,would also not meet the full "1 iving, contemporary, artistic" category. Despite the fact that Pellan was a painter and still very
much alive in 1961, the show was a "retrospective." Pellan's abstracted works, once
considered the embodiment of the modem era, would by 1961 no longer fit the "contemporary" model. Vestigial representational elements combined with his strong affinity with French Fauvism and Cubism, decidedly separated him from the post war avant-garde (Reid, 219-22).After W II, for artists to be contemporary meant that they
were abstract expressionist (Guilbaut 1985, 177-8; Reid, 226).23Therefore, the group
shows organized and circuIated by Exhibition Extension Services met the "living, contemporary, artistic" criteria in a way that Buchanan's solo shows did not. As we have seen, of the two exhibited in Ottawa - Folk Painters of the Canadian West and Five Painters from Regina - onIy the professional, abstract expressionist, Regina painters completely fulfilled the "living, contemporary, artistic" criteria. One can understand then, that the importance of the Five Painters exhibition emerged from a conjunction of elements: 1) the crossover of conternporary Canadian painting from the interior of the country into the national exhibitionary space; 2) the
text provides an itemization of the types of work shown at the Canadian bienniais. Until well into the 196ûs these were limited to conventional media: Le., paintings on canvas, watercolours, prints, drawings, and sculpture.
23 In the history of fine art, generations do not necessarily reflect age. Pellan, however, was born in 19û6, and a full twenty years older then most of the Regina painters. S. Guilbaut, in his history of the domination of American abstract expressionism in the post war Euro-Amencan culture, finds that "after 194, to be an arnbitious painter meant to be an 'abstract expressionist' The style became tyrannical." Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985) 178. elevation of a professional versus amateur status in the fine arts; 3) an adherence to an internationally recognized formulation of "contemporary."
VioIence and Welfare: a consideration
Having sketched a critical and historical context for the Five Painters from Reoina exhibition I would Iike to examine more explicitly, the possible intersections between the
Gallery's institutional practices and those of the state. The dual split of the Gallery's operations - intemal to the country on the one hand, extemal on the other - finds a paraIlel in the state itseIf. FoucauIt (19ûûb) observes that "In al1 history it would be hard to find such butchery as in World War II" and that such intelligent violence coincides with "precisely this period, this moment, when the great welfare, public health, and medical assistance programs were instigated" (147). With this statement Foucault points to a confounding duality which 1 have for convenience called an "internal-external axis.?'If war is a manifestation of externaIIy directed action against other States, then the emergence of the welfare programmes demonstrates an internally directed field of operations. In other words. what "govemment must take into account in al1 its observations and 'savoir', in order to be able to govern in a rational and conscientious manner" is an interna1 object (Foucault 1979. 18).Arguably, Foucault suggests that this object, since the eighteenth century, is management of the population?4
24 As for discipline, this was not eliminated either; clearly its modes of organization, al1 the institutions within which it had developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, schools, manufactories, amies, etc., al1 this can only be understood on the basis of the development of the great administrative monarchies, but on the other hand, discipline was never more important or more valorised than at the moment when it It is here, between these two extremes - 1) the ever-potential and ever-present apparatuses of war conjoined with 2) social weIfare - is a space of some importance. Assuredly, my emphasis will remain sketchy. However, I would like to pursue the articulation of this interstice a Iittle further through some discussion of each polarity. First, violence and abgression were not the sole focus of government's extemally directed forces. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the founding of the United Nations created a space for peaceful interaction between sovereign states just as the
Cold War refomiulated existing miliîary apparatuses into a renewed global conflict (Howard 1993). Diplomacy and negotiation, on the one hand became surreptitiously
twined with conflict. 1 do not mean to suggest that war twined with diplomacy were novel
in and of themselves at that moment. Instead what strikes me is the creation of a forum. an
institutional location specificaIIy conceived as a space for mediating conflict between
nations, ernergent in the tiny aperture between one global war and another. 2%rguably, no
matter whether violent or diplornatic, these externally directed activities had at their heart a
became important to manage a population; the managing of a population does not apply only to the collective rnass of phenornena. or at the level of its aggregative effects, it also implies the management of the population in its depths and its details.
See M. Foucault, "Governmentality", Ideolov and Consciousness 6 (Autumn 1979) 19.
25 Reflective of this, Foucault (1988b) observed that "each state has nothing before it other than an indefinite future of stni&es, or at least competitions, with sirnilar &tes" See M. Foucault,"The Political Technologies of Individuals" Technolooies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick H. Hutton. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, c. 198ûb) 152. perpetual concem with the strength of the siate.'"
The Canadian state was no exception. Historian Joseph T. Jocke1(1987), in the initial explanatory text to his study on the formation of North Arnerican Air Defense Command (NORAD), wonders under what circumstances, and by whom, were the decisions affecting North Arnerican air defenses and the evolution of the Canada-United States air defense relationship taken? The questions frarning his study articulate a cornplex
of stmggles around the deterrnination of Canadian sovereignty, security and g~ower.'~If war. diplomacy and sovereignîy have become intricately connected then Canada aIso is
The true nature of the state .. . . is conceived as a set of forces and strengths that could be increased or weakened according to the politics follawed by governrnents. These forces have to be increased since each state is in a permanent cornpetition with other countries, other nations, other states, so that each state has nothing before it other than an indefinite future of struggtes, or at least of competitions, with similar states. . . . Politics has now to deal with an irreducible multiplici ty of states struggling and competing in a lirnited history. See M. Foucauit,"The Political Technologies of Individuals" TechnoIooies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. Eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick H. Hutton. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, c. 1988b) 15 1- 152.
27 The following passage illustrates the dilernma of sovereignty in the escalating Cold War tensions. Jockel asks, To what extent was air defense primarily an American project in which Canada was obliged by American wishes to participate? When did Ottawa abandon its deterrnination. . .to control, al1 milibry activity on Canadian soil? How did the relationship between the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force] and the USAF [United States Air Force] grow "closer and closer," and how did that closeness affect decision-making, especially the ability of civilian leaders to reach decisions? See J. T. Jockel, No Boundaries Upstairs: Canada. the United States, and the OrisGns of the North American Air Defense, 1945- 1958 Bv f 957. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987) 4. explicitly implicated.28
Second, we have at this moment an ever further refinement of a problematic sphere.
Colin Gordon (19%) identifies this as " 'the social' meaning, approximately, the all-
encompassing collective universe of the twentieth-century Welfare State" (264).290nce
again, one can perhaps locate its emergence in the immediate post war moment with the
election of the British moderate socialist Labour Party in 1945. In the wake of their election, a series of ambitious pubIic programmes came into effect: a NationaI Health Service, welfare reforms, and nationalization of several basic industries. Amongst their immediate initiatives was the formation of the Arts Council of Great Bribin. The importance of this in Canada is evidenced by ensuing claims for reform modeled on British
examples (Litt 1992, 181-3; Tippett 1990, 180). It is interesting to note that the establishment of social govemment in Canada preceded the British one by a year. The provincial Co-operative Commonwealth
28 The immediate issues of geographic boundaries, national air and territorial defense were certainly not the only arenas for Canadian international relations. However, they do provide immediate, very real, and very close, examples of externally directed state activities and tensions. In addition to Jockel's work see D. Howard, "Bordering on the New Frontier: Modernism and the Military Industrial Cornplex in the United States and Canada, 1957- 1%S9 (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1993).
29 G. Burchell observes:
During the course of the nineteenth century, and throughout the present century, [civil society] was fundamentally recast into what some cal1 the social, or just society, by al1 those governmental techniques we associate with the Welfare State. G. Burchell, "Liberal government and techniques of the self' in FoucauIt and Political Reason: Li beralism. neo-li beralism and rationali ti es of govemment, eds. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, NikoIas Rose. (London; Chicago: University ColIege London Press; University of Chicago Press) 28. Confederation (CCF) held power in Saskatchewan from 1944. It was also the first Canadian government, at any level, to establish a public arts council (Saskatchewan Arts Board - SAB - founded in 1948, was modeIed on the Arts Council of Great Britain). Clearly, this bief sketch of linkages should not imply that state involvement with "the social" began abruptly. Antecedents of rnany social programmes trail into previous centuries." What 1 want to emphasize about this mid twentieth-century moment, is the refomulation of "a social" field, not as a concept, but as the object of a massive array of public and professional institutions clearly aimed at its management. Arguably, the dramatic expansion, professionalization, and focus of the National Gallery during the 1950s fits this pattern. What 1would like to draw further attention to about this penod in Canada, is the depIoyment of "universality" as a politically conceived notion but applicable to a social sphere. Problems in this field became "national" ones, requiring federal solutions. Because they were national in scope their appIication would cross, and seemingly homogenize, multiple jurisdictions - Le., provincial, regional, urban, rural and civic. It is perhaps significant that in the decade begïnning with the establishment of the "Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences1'(1941-1951) and cIosing with the formation of a federally administered arts council (Canada Council - 1957), there were
30 Fora Cnnadian example tmçing the divalopment of1 .iheral pky sep. P.F. Bryden, "Liberal Politics and Social Policy in the Pearson Era, 195'7- 196û" (Ph-D. diss., York University, 1994). Fer a theoretical disciission of the. evolution cf libed thcught from early foms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to advanced liberalisrn fomulated in the post war years see N. Rose, "Goverriing 'Advanced' Libed Democracies" Foucault and Political Reason: Li berdism. neo-liberalisrn and rationalities of gove.mment, Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne., Nikolzs Rose.((Londor?; Chicirgo: University College London Press; University of Chicago Press, 1996) 37-64. also significant nationalizing movements in areas of health insurance, OId Age security and
unemployment insurance.' ' If the two previous examples indicate increased governrnent involvement in culture, in other arenas two events could similarly bookend the fifties. The first is the 1951 expansion of the old age pension programme; and second, the unanimous House of Cornmons approval for the Hospi ta1 Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, in 1957 (Bryden 1994,30). The two extremes Foucault draws attention to - "such butchery" and welfare assistance - are, of course, not truly polar. A reciprocity exists between them. The connection was not Iost on artists and arts professionals. We have already seen how Jarvis understood the National Gallery's double field of operations. In two more recent texts one can find additional examples. Historian Serge Guilbaut (1983) finds the first reconciliation of avant-garde ideology with postwar liberalisrn and the ideology of individuality articulated by Rene Harnoncourt in 1948. For Harnoncourt, the probIern of alienation %an be solved only by an order which reconciles the freedom of the individual with the welfare of society." He continues, '$1 believe a good name for such a society is democracy, and I also believe that modem art in its infinite variety and ceaseless exploration is its foremost symbol" (Harnoncourt, cited by Guilbaut, 189).~*In this statement, the individual,
31 Bryden focuses on the poiicy developments of the Canadian federai Liberal Party: the St Laurent ( l94û- 1957) and Pearson govemments (1x3-lm). She suggests that by the late fifties a shift in the focus of state governance was in evidence. Economic management as the primary concem of government became displaced by a concern for "the sociai weIfare of the individual" (3). This coincided with an alteration in the "public's idea of individual responsibility, as greater emphasis began to be placed on collective or governmental responsi bility for social welfare" (3 1).
32 Considering the role of the powerful American fine arts critic Clement Greenberg, Guilbaut, wtites: "Because the battle against communism promised to be a long and difficult one, and one which for want of traditional weapons would require the fuli collective welfare, and democracy are thus captured within one vision. While Guil baut examines an American avant garde discourse, another example of internaIlextemai dynamic, comes from Maria Tippett's investigation of English Canadian culture leading up to the 1951 "Royal Commission on Nationat Development in the Arts, Letters and
Sciences" ( 1990). Here she clearly joins "international crisis" with "habits, outlook, and life-patterns."
The use to which [art and culture] had been put during both wars had already demonstrated the strength of the belief that they could help maintain and project 'civilized' values in times of internaticma1 crisis, and after 1945 Western govenunents particularly developed a strong attachment to the idea that they could be used in the fostering of habits, outlook, and life-patterns those govemments preferred (181 ).
Perhaps the strongest argument comes from Jarvis who closed his lecture with an i mpassioned warni ng.
. . . I put forward one argument to the captains of industry: the extrapolatirig of the curves in the Gordon Report of the economic future of Canada, plus al1 the evidence we have at our disposal, suggest that we are going to be working 30,31 or 33 hous a week in twenty years' time. That means that we are going to have a nation with an appalling burden of leisure on its hands. Either we are going to take the arts seriously, for example in regard to the operating of institutions like the National Gallery, for the psychological health of the nation, or we can spend an equivalent amount on psychiatrists (153).
Although Jarvis's fever may now appear a bit theatncal, implicit in his statement is the clear assumption that the strength of the state requires "the psychological health of the nation." To ensure healthiness, he advocates the positive, vital work "of institutions like the arsenal of propaganda. The war may have been a 'cold war' but it was nonetheless a total war. Accordingly, art, too, was called upon to play its part" (173). National Gallery" juxtaposing thei r activi ties against those concerned with the management of disease. Clearly illness, even if well managed, undennines the tempered resilience of the
w h~le.~"
Drawing from these three examples one can see that the strength of the state depended as much upon the careful and attentive management of the population in al1 "its
depths and its details" (Foucault 1979, 19). as it did upon statesrnanship and defen~e.~~
Such corrdation had clear implications for the deof cultural institutions as well as for the professionals interpreting and managing their interests. Further, as we have seen, there are clear points of duplication and intersection between the practices of the National Gallery and the state. But how can one understand this relationship without over privileging government? Clearly, an obvious supposition might be that these activities are cleverly and powerfully directed by "the State-domination of society" (Foucault 1979,20).1s the position of the state so obviously supreme that museums and fine art cultural institutions are either its instruments, or the instruments of mling-cIass hegernony ensuring its own authonty (Bennett, 91, Litt, 38-40)? However, this investigation is responsive to Foucault's caution that such a position would attribute "excessive value . . . to the problem of the State" (Foucault 1979, 20). This is not to negate that the politics of class has a formative role in understanding fine art institutional history in Canada but for the moment 1
33 "From the state's point of view, the individual exists in so far as what he does able to introduce even a minimal change in the strength of the state, either in a positive or negative direction"(Foucault 1!3ûûb, 152).
34 Bennett supgests that the exhibition space, in its capacity to effectively order the presentation of know ledge and CUl tural artifacts, and w i th i ts adjacent educational spaces, made an obvious location for regulating the aspirations and behaviour of the population (24)-
1O3 wish to consider an af ternate mode.
On this immediate question - conceniing the points of duplication and intersection between the practices of the National Gallery and the state - my thought is to problematize
the phrase "arrn's length." As Martha King (19%) describes it, the notion is the central organizing principle of statdpublic institutional relations.
In the federai context, am's length typically descn bes legislation which stipulates that an agency wi1I report and be accountable to Parliament and thus, to the Canadian people, through a Minister of the Crown. The finance and administration of that agency are guided by Canadian law and government regulation. Decisions on artistic matters however, rest with the collective expertise of staff, boards and cornmittees of that agency; lacking such expertise, elected officials are not permitted to iiiterfere (Introduction).
Certainly not limited to cultural institutions, "am's length" denotes a "certain extra-political
sphere" suffuse throughout the operations of the welfare state (Rose 1996,W).The authonty of expertise - that is, professionals, recognized and active in the field - is pivotal to the effectiveness of "am's length" as a pa~tice.~~In other words the mode of power 1 have been at pains to articulate does not move from the top down, that is, it does not move from the State down through a hierarchy of positions. Instead it is deployed across a series of sites - inchdinp government - as well as, up to and including the individual. If this is the case, analysis of texts generated by experts fram within the institution - Le., Jarvis and Sirnmins - take on a particular function. Certainly the texts continue to serve as primary docurnentary evidence. Their insight into the operations of the Gallery remains
35 N. Rose, observes that "The tmth claims of expertise were highly significant here: through the powers of tmth, distant events and persons could be governed at 'ams length': political ruIe would not itself set out the noms of individual conduct, but would install and empower a vanety of "professionals", investing them with authonty to act as experts in the devices of social mle" (40). invaluable. However, each wnter also represents an additional site for the interpretation and mediation of power within the Gallery's institutional structure immediately preceding the 1%1 Five Painters exhibition.
A Problem of Context in Three Spaces: Architectural, Imaginary, & Institutional
1 wouId like at tbis point to return to the exhibition using a slightly different tack. This - appropn'ately enough for an investigation of an exhibition - is space. The problem of space emerges in different capacities, not al1 of which can possibly be addressed here. 1 will, however, sketch three configurations pertaining to the Five Painters in Ottawa. First is the physical, or the actual architectural site, followed by a consideration of the Gallery as an institutional site, and finally we corne to the imaginary. Their fracturing into three is at once necessas, while at the same time artificial since Iocale, discourse, and practice form an inextricable, cohesive whole. We can recognize this for instance with two of the institution's roles as the repository of nation's fine art collection on the one hand and as the arbiter and presenter of national culture on the other. Both roles work in tandem with discourses of nationalism, statehstitutional "am's length" practices but also impinge upon and shape the site itself. Similarly, American geographer Edward Soja suggests that spatiality consists of thee interrelated and overlapping spaces comprised of the physical, mental and social (120)."~
36 Soja writes,
As socially produced space, spatiality can be distinguished frorn the physical space of material nature and the mental space of cognition and representation, each of which is used and incorporated lnto the social construction of spatiality but cannot be conceptualized as i ts equivalent. . . .This possibility of independent conceptualization and inquiry, however, does not produce an unquestionable Such an encom passing complexi ty appears in several i mponant theoretical projects.
Soja and the cultural theorist Tony Bennett draw upon Foucault's notion of a heter~to~ia."'
As Soja indicates, it is through this specific concept that "Foucault focused Our attention on anotherspatiality of social life, an 'external space', the actually lived [and socially produced] space of sites and the relations between them" (17).The heterotopia, therefore, is a heterogeneous space composed of sites and relations between them such as "the cemetery and the church, the theatre and the garden, the museurn and the library" (and so on). In The Birth of the Museum, Bennett juxtaposes the more explicitly opposing heterotopia of the nineteenth century museum against the amusement park. Clearl y, within this complement, the fine art gallery also functions as a social space. Therefore we can see the National Gallery of Canada as a single illustration of this external, socially produced arena. Just as the problem of space as a complex of intersections (between the physical, mental and social) is obvious to the geographer, it is also apparent to the artist and other fine arts cultural professionals. It is implicit in the creation of forms. Or bluntly put, the artist inteltigently works an area demarcated by the "frame." Although each painting may be largely detemiined by the dimensions of the canvas the probiem of space does not end with the edge of the painting. It expands into other practices and discourses. The architectural
autonomy or ngid separation between these three spaces (physical, mental, social), for they interrelate and overlap. Defining these interconnections rernains one of the most formidable challenges to contemporary social theory. . . (120).
37 Soja cites Foucault "Space Knowledge and Power" The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow (1984) 239-56;and "Of Other Spaces" Diaaitics 16 (lm)22-27. Also see M. Foucault, "Questions on Geography" PowerIKnowled~e:selected interviews and other writiws 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon, 1980) 63-77. location of the gallery is a single, but powerful example. Carol Duncan's suggestion that the exhibitionary space is a "performance field" locates the "frame" as an over-arching device composing multiple elements (1995, 12). Simmins comments on the work of Bob
Hume, the Gallery's installations designer who was responsible for Five Painters' exhibition.
Simrnins: [Hume) was a great guy. He was the rnost important exhibition designer in Canada. . . . Interviewer: Well, it seems from these [installation] shots that the rooms are huge.
Simmins: It was very large, 1 don't know. Look at the amount of space there is between thern [the paintingsj. Great dignity to that show.
The excerpt equates material things such as the large rooms, the expanse between each work, with grea~digniiy.It suggests that the physical is not discrete but slips without obvious fissure into the mental or imaginary. Returning to Duncan's concept of the "performance field", one can recognize that there is more to the exhibitionary site than the notion of a field as a frame. Leavened into the apparently inert materiai of the building, its art objects and Iight, isperfonance. Duncan suggests that one can perhaps understand this as "ritual" because a ritual site "is a place designed for some kind of performance."
Arguably. the art gallery - with its structure and traditions, with its definite separation from everything that is mt the gailery - could be such a locale. If this is the case, then an exhibitionary display fonns a series of culturally resonant, but circumscribed, spaces. Although they exist simuItaneously within the gallery's architectural confines, the viewer experiences thern diachronical~~?~It is this peson - in the form of the viewer - who,
Duncan suggests, enacts the performance. Citing Philip Rhys Adams, she writes,
And the art objects do have their exits and their entrantes; motion - the movement of the visitor as he enters a museurn and as he goes or is led from object to object - is a present elernent in any installation (Adams, quoted by Duncan, 13).
Perhaps one way that the social digs into and interlocks with the imaginary and the physical is through the pivotal role of the visiting and observing public.
As an encompassing and heterogeneous site, the gallery is clearly also an institution. Its structured spaces are cornposed of multiple interna1 sites. In this sense 1am making a distinction between the galIery as a particular type of public space - Le., as opposed to the garden or the theatre - and the gallery as an institution. In the latter capacity it functions simitarly to other institutions as an autonomous cornpiex. That is, positioned between the state and the private sphere it is organized and constructed; as it is also bolstered by the authority of i ts professional stat~s.~~~ndalthough self-contained, it also
38 Duncan uses the metaphor of the "frame" to explain the larger effect of the museum space on art objects. She writes, The museum's sequenced spaces, and arrangements of objects, its lighting and architectural details provide both the stage set and the script - aIthough not al1 museums do this with equal effectiveness. . . . Even when visitors enter museums to see ody selected works, the museurn's larger narrative stmcture stands as a frame and gives meaning to individual works (12).
39 Burchell identifies "that characteristically hybrid domain [ofl the public and the private." Here, he suggests, situated at "the interface of society and the State" are "practical systems" - "(medical, psychiatrie, educational, philanthropie, social . . . )" Clearly, one could add "cultural" to this list. The gallery, as an institution, overlaps with these systems such as social and educational(25). TABLE 5
NGC DIVISIONS 1955-56
- Director - Associate Director - Business Adrninistrator
- Chief Curator - Acting Chief - Curator of Prints & Drawings - Assistant Chief - Assistant Curator
Source: Annual Reports for the Board of Trustees for the fiscaI year 1955- 1956. (NGC, 1956)
intersects with other social and political spheres through a web of practices and obliga - tions. This complex of autonomy, invisible relations and obligations describes the typi- cal legal - governing - aspects of relations between the institution and the state. (M. King. Robertson) However, inside the National Gallery of Canada is an internal organization of space. From 1955 to 1956 these were presented as 1) Administrative - i.e., the Director, Associate Director, financial administration, 2) the curatonal departrnents, 3) publication and dissemination, and 4) the Industrial Design Division. [See Table 51 Six years later, by the time the Five Painters had corne to Ottawa, the internal spaces had changed significantly. Not only had they expanded, dramatically opening up into severaI additional sites, but other locations had disappeared. [See TabIe 61 For
instance, the number of curatorial departrnents had increased from two to five. Further, with the addition of the curatonal activities under the aegis of the Extension Services this would be increased even more. On the other hand, the Industrial Design Centre was no longer a part of the Gallery. The previous year it moved from the Ministerial Portfolio of Immigration and Citizenship to the Ministry of Trade and Commerce.
From these examples it becomes apparent that the institution is not a fixed entity but evolves. The period from 1955 to 1%2 was cIearIy one of expansion, professionalization, and refinement. AIthough one may ask why at certain points particular spaces open up or, conversely, why at certain points they disappear, my interest lies in a slightly different direction. In posing the question of the unstable institutiona1 space my intention is not "why", so much as, once opened, what does a new space make possible that was previously impossible? ArguabIy, Jarvis's creation of the Exhibition and Extension Services Division at the National Gallery in 1957 is a case in point. The Five Painters' exhibition came out of Simmins' curatoria1 oeuvre as the director of the new division. Once created, a previously non-existent opening appeared in the Gallery's interna1 structure. Further with the nascent space came the necessary correlation of new professional appointments to operate within it. Jarvis hired Simmins in 1957. But in addition to the Director, the division would dso include two Liaison Officers (Eastern and Western Canada), an Educational Officer, docents, and lecturers. After 1957 they a11 had a new and defined place in the institution. How did this translate into Gallery operations? What did Exhibition and Extension Services propel into effect? Certainly, four years after its inception the division's activities were considerable.
The 1960- 1%1 Annual Report proudly detailed its accomplishments as 1) the organization of travelling exhibitions across Canada; 2) educational services offered to visitors to the National Gallery and to museums across Canada; 3) the field operations of the two Liaison Officers; and 4) the national lecture program (NGC I%la, 39-40). When Simmins amved in Ottawa in 1957, he not only took up the new directorship, but enthusiastically enlarged
its field of opetations. He comments, "Now in theory, 1 was supposed to do exhibitions
for circutation across Canada. Now what happened was 1 filled a hiatus - a vacuum - which existed at the National Gallery" (1998).His statement makes the institutional aperture
appear endemic, as if it were a permanent interstice waiting for discovery and not, as we have seen, a recent spatial possi bility. However, once operating within the institution he imrnediately set about considering the nature and extent of the new division's potential. He
When 1 went [to the National Gallery] they weren't doing much. But Jarvis is the guy who gave me cart blanche - lots of money. Lots of money. 1 went down and I studied the American system: The Museum of Modern Art, the American Federation of Art, the Smithsonian. 1 set up the whole thing (Ibid.).
The "whole thing", in this case, was a comprehensive system for the distribution of paintings to exhi biting centres across the country. The aim of this massive project was, as Simmins indicates, the formation of a cohesive "nationally" imagined Canadian art. His
interest, he States, "was in the national Canadian art and that wasn't - 1 mean, Iet's put it this way - my interest was in Canadian art, accepting the fact there were pockets of major difference." Further, he observes, "1 Iike to think 1 had a truly national perspective"
( 1998b). It is clear that before 1957 the institutional space to develop "cart blanche," region by region, a "national Canadian art'' did not exist. Of course, this is not to suggest that the Gallery had not previously sought to identify, collect or exhibit nationally representative work~.~~Wliat is significant at this juncture is the creation of a space inside the institution,
whose express task is to identify, disseminate and circulate a contemporary national product within the country. Concomitantly, the emergent spaces demanded knowledgable, cultural professionals who could expertly fuIfiI its mandate.
The photograph suggests the exhibition. Already, 1 know far more than what can possibty fit into the photographic frame. The problem of space moves across its glossy surface. There are the architectural details found in its reference to the physical location: its open, bIocked spaces, the austere aesthetic of modern office towers, the bench. My own sense of an appropriate fine art gallery display balks at the impossible presence of the potted rubber tree. A signature, no doubt of Hume's touch, just as Bloore's paintings along the wall suggest a movement of light to dark to light. They lead my eye inward. The circles, fore-grounded in the lower left hand corner, seem a negative mirronng of McKay's distant, dark mandalas (The Void, 1961 and Efful gent Image, 1x1).Through Simmins' voice 1 can see "the amount of space there is between them" and the evocation of "great dignity" he finds in its patterns, pauses and movement. Absent, of course, from the photograph are viewers. There is only the spectator's eye - Our eye - displaced by time and arrested by the boundaries of frame. It would appear as if the institution is invisible, just as the artists themselves are invisible. Except, as I have already mentioned, rny knowledge outstrips what is actually portrayed. Their persona and signature Iooms behind each work,
40 For a critical discussion of the Group of Seven see E. Ramsay, The Promoiion of the Fine Arts in Canada. 1880- 1924: The Develovment of Art Patronage and the Formation of hblic Policy. (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1988) 279-295.Lauded as the true proponents of the nation's visual iconography, these artists have dominated Canadian painting. The Gallery also continually reitemted its comrnitment to support an indigenous product in its Annual Reports and in the House of Cornmons debate. This was tacitly dernonstrated through the Biennials. just as I can recognize the exhibitionary space, in al1 its collective detaits, as a fragment of a whole. Figure 27, Ted Godwin, archiva1 photograph, 1961 Source:National Gailery of Canada Archives CHAPTER THREE FIVE ARTISTS IN REGINA. OR MEET ME AT THE SASK HOTEL
Miss Dreirer mode mi itriptierrr Resrrtre. "Miss Ceorgin O'Keefe ~vntrtsro he the grentesr pnirifer. Eveworie cari '1 be rhnt. Brrr al1 con cotrrribirte. Does tf~ebid in the woods care if lie is rile hesf singer?" Etnily Cnrr
Ïèd Godwin 1997
Godwin's succinct response belies the complexities of identity. After phrasing such an unequivocal notion, "1 am an artist", he then completes the sentence with the fragment, "of the western persuasion" - "Iam an artisr of the western persuasion. " He observes, "1 've spent most of my years in the West and I've taught for many long years at the University of Regina, and now I am having my years of dotage in Calgary, pursuing large rainbow trout in the Bow River" (1997). Godwin's run-on, somewhat ironic, description of hirnself as an artist is couched within a cornplex of fomulations, each signalhg quite distinct domains and practices. In these two sentences he bundles a definitive notion of himself as artistic with bilateral twentieth-century politics (east versus West block), Canadian regionatism ("the west"), the university, his stature as a senior artist, and the serious occupation of fishing on the large and meanderhg Bow River. Certainiy these two sentences might just as easily have included many more details. Each mipht additionally evoke any number of other domains and attendant identities. For example, Godwin did not mention his mamage in 1955 to a felIow art student at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, Calgary, Alberta. Nor did he mention their two children. If he had, such a reference would evoke associations of the art ist comfortabi y folded into a heterosexual and a nuclear family organization.
Godwin's "1 am an artist", thus begins an inquiry into the question of the artist's
identity as imagined by five Regina painters in the years immediately leading up to the 1%1 NGC exhibition. At the outset, a question we rnight ask is "Who do these men think they are?", and "What do they think they were doing?'However, in the attempt ro recreate the exhibitionary moment we rnight rephrase these questions in past tense, asking instead,
"w ho did they think they were then?'and 'what did they think they were doing?Past or present, collectively these questions focus Our inquiring gaze away from political, social, and textual frameworks discussed in previous sections, redirecting it inwards towards the formation and subsequent presentation of an artistic self.
A brief discussion of subjectivity
Michel Foucault in The Use of Pleasure (1990) conceptualizes individual subjectivity as "the relationship of self with self and the forming of oneself as a subject" (6). In one Vermont Lecture (1988a) he suggests that people corne to understand themselves through
'technologies' of the self?' These produce "certain modes of training and modification of
41 Foucault's research concerns the long history of the desiring subject and how people came to recognize themselves as subjects of desire. He wntes that he wanted to analyze the practices by wbich individuals were led to focus their attention on themselves, to decipher, recognize, and acknowledge themselves as subjects of desire, bringing into play between themselves and themsehes a certain relationship that allows them to discover, in desire, the tmth of their king. See M. Foucault, The Use Pleasure: The Historv of Sexualitv Vol. 2, trans. R. HurIey (New York: Vintage Books, 1990) 5. This articulates a locus of concentration in his later wok, variously referred to as the domain of ethics, govemment of self and self; practices and "techniques of the self'; the aesthetics or "arts of existence." Dean (1994a) gives a individuats, not only in the obvious sense of acquiring certain skills but also in the sense of acquiring certain attitudes" (18). Further, we should understand these attitudes not as transient voguing, but as deeply stitched into our bodies and souk, into our thoughts and ways of being(lhid.). Most significant about these observations to the present pmject of the Five Painters is his suggestion that these "technologies" are enacted by individuais on
rhemselves (my itaiics): "by their own means or with the heIp of others . . . so as to transfom themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or imrnortality"(lbid.). It is this process, Foucault argues, through "which
individuals are given to recognize themselves" as desiring subjects (1990,5). Or, as in the situation of the Five Painters, they may corne to recognize themselves as creative and artistic. Foucault (I988a)describes 'technoIogies' as practices or as activities. In Ancient Greek and Roman texts to know oneself was associated with taking care of yourself (20).
Citing Plato's Alcibicrdes, he finds that "You have to worry about your sou1 - that is the principle activity of caring for yourself." However, we should not presume that this was a sacred preoccupation rather, FoucauIt continues, 'The care of the self is the care of the activity and not the care of the soul-as-substance" (25). It is this notion, care of rhe nctivizy, that I would like to highIight as key to articulating, sustaining, and transforming identity. An application of his thought to the modern/postmodern, industrialized worId appears in
good overview of this development in Foucault's thought, as do the collection of papers edited by Martin, Gutman, and Hutton, and published as Technolo(ries of the Self: A seminarwith Michel Foucault (198ûb). the work of Mitchell Dean (19%. 1994a, 1994b) and Nikolas Rose ( 1996).42Dean, in
"The Enfolding of Authority" (1996) suggests that an example of technologies of the self could be the contemporary and "mundane practice of dieting," whereby we seek to act upon the corporeality of our body through a knowledge of "blood choIestero1 levels . . . calories or kilojouies." He concludes, that "we thus seek to act upon a materiality rendered
govemable through a grid of intelIigibility and calculation" (222). Rose (1996) finds careof
the activity interlocked wi th social and political processes so that these 'techniques', modes of training and modification, activities or "procedures" intersect with "apparatuses" of governance. He then lists as instances "the practice of diary writing in order to govem conscience, practices of chiId rearing in order to govem children, practices of security and subsistence in order to govern pauperism, or techniques of financial inscription and calculation in order to govern economic activity" (41). Clearly, possibilities for knowing or recognizing oneself do not occur through searching the soul, but through the careful attention to certain acti~ities."~
I would like to consider this notion, care of the utivip, to the Five Painters in
Regina. How cmsomething so fidyarticulated as "1 am an artist" gesture towards something as uncertain as subjectivity shaped and produced by the self? In the 1%1
42 Rose has written several texts which have been pivotal to scholarship on oovemance and subjectivity in contemporary neo-liberal sÔcieties. These works have been rnstrurnental in developing the field of neo-foucauldian thought. For exarnple, see Rose and Miller, "PoliticaI Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government7'British Journal of vol 43, no. 2 (1992) 173-2025: and Rose, Governing the Soul: the Shaping of the Private Self (London: Routledge, 1990).However, for the present exarnination of subjectivity 1 draw more directly frorn Dean's, rather than Rose's work.
43 Throughout, 1 use "techniques", "activities", "procedures", and "practices" sornewhat interchmgeably . photograph of Godwin we see the artist in his studio. He is clearly identified as the artist, since the tools of his craft surround him. They point inwards from every corner - enormous canvases. brushes upnght in pots, jars of paint. Implied activities would certainly include painting on large canvases using massive brushes. However, the photograph also indicates another identifyinp sphere. Beyond signalling the importance of the creative person at its
centre, it displays what we can clearly recognize as the artist's studio. Here is a site, a locale. which embodies the artist and a11 his attendant things. Certainly, the studio appears highly important to the creative self. In an 1970 interview with J. King, Godwin descnbed a change in his relationship to the place where he painted as pivotal to his development from amateur to serious artist. The transfomative moment was inspired by painter Barnett
~ewman.""TheAmerican abstract expressionist had corne to Saskatchewan in the surnrner
of 1959 to lead the Emma Lake Artists' Workshop. In the aftermath of the workshop Godwin recollects,
See, Newman came up and he challenged us. We were a bunch of amateurs! And we were pretty amateurish in the way that we [sic] operating in life. We al1 came back from that Workshop and rented studios downtown as opposed to working in our basements (349.45
Godwin clearly equates artistic matunty with renting "studios downtown", away from the
44 Newman was the New York artist invited by McKay and Kiyooka, to Iead the artists' workshops at Emma Lake in northern Saskatchewan. That surnrner, four of the fifteen participants were McKay, Bloore, Godwin, Morton. For more on the significance of the Emma Lake Artists Workshops and the developrnent of Saskatchewan cultural production see J. King's and J. O'Brian's studies.
45 The "we" Godwin refers to are himself, Bloore, McKay, and Morton, four of the five Regina painters. Lochhead did not attend the Newman Workshop because he was away on sabbatical from the Regina College's School of Art, 1958-1959(O'Brian, 15, 79). Despite his absence, J. King suggests that Lochhead was nonetheless also affected by Newman through his association with the other Regina painters (8). domestic sphere of "our basements". Ho w the studio is important, lies in its isolation, its apparent separation, from the everyday. An incident at Emma Lake helps illustrate how the studio was made pre-eminent. Godwin recounts
1'11 never forget his [Newman's] wife standing outside the studio in the rain waiting for him to come out, because she wouldn't break the sanctity of the studio . . . The important thing was that she really understood. She felt so much the sanctity of the studio, that she stood outside in the rain rather than come in and break the space (344).
The impress of care around the studio is so strong that O'Brian, recollecting the above circumstance of Annalee Newman in the rain, observes that Newman imparted to the Regina painters an understanding that the studio was "a place of work; how you behaved in [it] was a measure of your seriousness as an artist" (79). We can see then, that activities, centring around the space of the studio, form as a locus for particular practices constmcting and confirming one's knowledge of self as artistic. 1 would like to consider care of theacrivih in tandem with governance. Dean and Rose in their brief accounts of subjectivity link these themes together. In Dean's dieting example he suggests that knowledge and caIculations render corporeality "governable." Rose joins the practice of diary writing with the '~governance"of conscience. Foucault
( 198%) calls the point of contact "between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self' governmentality (19)?~~r~uabl~, govemance determined how access to the painting studio at Emma Lake becarne informally organized and regulated. This was not only an issue of pnvilege and exclusion but, also, as O'Brian indicates, of behaviour. The
46 Dean (1994a)' elaborating on this explanation of govemance as a point of contact, suggests that it is "a novel thought-space across domains of ethics and politics," comprising "what rnight be called 'practices of the self and 'practices of govemment'," weaving "them together without reduction of one to the other" (174). notion of governance then - the domination of one's own matenality, linkages into social and poIitica1 apparatuses of control and regdation, behaviour and identity, domination of others and self - is implicit in iechmlogies and pructices of the self. In our imagined image of Annalee outside the studio door at Emma Lake, in the photograph of Godwin in his studio surrounded by art materials, in his small phrase "1 am an artist" uttered thirty-six years after the photograph was taken, we have evidence of domination of self and domination over others. A problem identified by Foucault as instrumental to governance. On this very point, theorkt Gilles Deleuze ( 1595) wonders,
"how could one daim to govern others if one could not govern oneself" ( 100)?These images, along with the phrase, subtly and intimately Iink political, social structures with fonns of "self-mastery" (Foucault I990,92). Annalee is barred from the studio on the authority of those inside, as well as by her own knowledge that she has no right to enter. Although apparatuses of patriarchy are clearly present in her exile, it would be an oversirnplification to suggest that the others - Newman, Godwin, BIoore etc., - were inside solely because they were men, although indeed they are Access, 1 would argue, is more complex. When two male artists, who had not been part of the formative sessions with Newman, intruded into the studio at Emma Lake, they felt "they were given a cool reception and discouraged from staying" (O'Brian, 79). What Godwin emphasi zes about Annalee is that she reul[y understood. She
47 Certaidy gender played a critical role in art-making in North Amenca. Saskatchewan in the fifties Gdsixties was no exception. For women it was a difficult and limited field. O'Brian notes that of the fourteen registered artists at the 1959 Newman Workshop at Emma Lake, none were women. Although several, including Annalee, amved as nonparticipants aIong with their artist husbands (79). For more on wornen artists in Saskatchewan see C. Skidmore, Dorothv Knowles' Rural Landscape Painting: Modernitv and Tradition in Saskatchewan. (MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 1989). For a discussion of women and modernism in twentieth-century western art see Duncan, particularly Chapter 5, 102- 132. knew she couId not go in. In contrast, the two visiting men did not. If the small space separating the doorstep from the inner sanctum of the studio is so clearly regulated, one must now ask, who has access and how? Such questions prefigure Deleuze's rumination, "The domination of others rnust be doubled by a domination of oneself. The relation with others must be doubled by a relation with oneself (101). But it is Foucault's iteration of strain, a pressure exerted, the self as a substance bent and moulded, that l wish to
emphasize. He ( 1990) writes "The effort that the individual was urged to bring to bear on himself . . . had the forrn of a battle to be fought" or "a victory to be won in establishing a dominion of self over self' (91). A battkfought, a victory won implies force. It suggests extreme and profound effort. Perhaps as we bring this thought to the photograph of the artist in his studio and its juxtaposition with the phrase "1 am an artist . . .," they now assume a certain cast. It is in this light that 1 would like to re-pose the question "who did these men think they were?"
A Small Phrase in Public Places
In the fa11 of 1961, two months before the Ottawa exhibition, BIoore wrote to Simmins, "None of us, and this is particularly true for those who work on Regina Campus, wish to
be introduced other than as painters and citizens of the country. We wish to be, for a happy pend in Ottawa, simply painters" (1x1). Bloore's letter, of course, anticipates the upcoming show at the National Gallery. However, his concern about how he and the other four painters - Godwin, Lochhead, McKay and Morton - would be known, specifically concerns the symposium Simmins was organizing to coincide with the exhibition's opening. As the Director of Extension Services explains, "[E]qually important to the exhibition, . . [was that] 1 organized a symposium at which five of those people (the artists] were present. This had never ken done before" (lm).Bloore's concem and Simmins' ambitious curatonal project present a situation. Through it we can recognize that the problem of artistic identity operates in more than one way. f would like to propose two possi bilities. First are the practices - the "technologies" - the care one takes with one's everyday activities. Certainly, Godwin's cmphasis on having a studio downtown is an example, centred around having a studio, going to it, sharing it, working in it, speaking about it. Maybe this preoccupation is not technically enacted every day, but certainly it foms part of the domain of daily ritual like going to work. Second, the problem of identity emerges in representations of The Artist, not as performed in the day to day, but in more formalized, public displays. By this 1 mean, foms such as books, magazines, or lectures, in fact, any sort of manifestation presenting the artist in a public venue, extraneous to their
direct control. The symposium at the National Gallery wouId be a case in point, as would the exhibition catalogue. In the latter, as we have already seen a thread of blue text identifies the five black and white photographs as Five Paintersfrom Regina. They form an identity, never any one of thern alone, but an aggregate composed of their five portraits. What is also clear is that no matter whether five or one, they are photographs of "Painters" and not, as might have otherwise been the case, of "Paintings", or scenes of Regina. In this way, it would seern as though the artist, as persona, prefigures the exhibition. Everyday activities on the one hand, public representations on the other, suggest movable boundaries stretching along two axes. One links the private domain of individual inspiration, creativity and object-making - what 1 would cd1 thepractice of art-making - with state and cultural institutions. The other intersects formaIized activities, such as teaching and exhibiting, with informa1 ones Iike fratemization. In other words, such a conceptualization juxtaposes the domain of the individual creator with institutional ones. The second axis maps the individual's behaviour in a variety of milieux - the studio, or the National Gallery, a public symposium or an evening at the Saskatchewan Hotel. Bloore's tetter to Simmins in the fa11 of 1961 indicates that mediating was a problem to be worked over. How the five artists presented themselves in Ottawa, in relationship to the exhibitionary space, and in the public space of the symposium, was not a matter of indifference to them."'The letter reflects anxiety. Its phrases reveal a degree of consternation. They did not, Bloore implies, want to be known as teachers (which Bloore, Lochhead, and McKay were) nor museum directors (which Bloore was) nor commercial artists (Godwin) nor industrial agents (Morton). Nor, clearly, did they want to be introduced as husbands, fathers, family men or hard drinkers. -We wish ru be simply piniers - and citizens (NGC). We can recognize this desire and its coupling of anxiety in
Sirnmins' comment about the effect of the symposium on the artists: "But the artists, 1 must Say, were particularly appreciative . . . -1remember Bloore there, virtually in tears, "Oh rny God, at last we're being treated like human beings" (1998). Although the painters augur the exhibition, how they do so is important, not only because the event demands it, but because of what they demand of themselves regarding it. Embedded into Sirnmins' comment about the symposium - This had never been done before - is the idea of originality, so closely fixed to the Five Painters exhibition.
48 Foucault defines "pmblem" as "the pmçess of 'problematization'" suggesting that to analyze this process "means: how and why certain things [behaviour, phenornena, processes] became aproblem." See M. Foucault, "History of the Present: On Problematization" in S~ring16 (198&) 17. Bloore's letter indicates that how the five artists presented themselves in Ottawa, forms this kind of problematization. As a corollary to this, Foucault poses additional questions: who had the right to present themselves as creative? how did they present themselves? how cmwe reco,pize them? what was appropriate training? - and so forth (16). However, it is not my intention to lay out a chronological history of the notion "1 am an artist . . ."; nor will 1 attempt to chart its discursive progression, cuiminating in the transformative moment, apparent in Godwin's confident stance and the Ottawa
symposium. That said, there are contiguous threads worthy of note. 1 would like briefly to discuss three of them. Certainly, American cultural politics and CoId War politics deeply effected the artists in Saskatchewan (Guilbaut, Howard 1997, 1993, 1989, O'Brian). As an example, we have seen some of the ways the Arnerican abstract-expressionist, Bamett Newman, influenced art-related practices there. A second thread is the astonishingty sudden emergence of a new professional-type, the cultural expert: the career artist, arts
educator, museum and gallery professional who appear in increasing nurnbers, around this time, filling positions in post-secondary institutions, as well as public cultural institutions
(Crow 1996, Litt, ~i~~ett)?~Finally, in returning to the idea of "first" one finds the third
point: that for the "controversial/ controversée" exhibition the problem of ;'first7', discussed in the previous chapter is a prevalent, albeit mythologized, discourse. Even if the claim lacks accuracy. it still holds powerful cachet. If the exhibition is significant because it was believed unprecedented, then, certainly, a similar aura must shroud its participating artists.
49 Theorist Thomas Crow observes that throughout the 1%Os, arti sts
increasingly professionaiised, that is defining themsdves through shared standards of cornpetence fostered by the exchange of services and information. This development gained strength from the fact that many young artists, in keeping with the rapid expansion of higher education, were corning through university departments or through art schools with high intellectual ambitions, their idea of a career correspondingly becarne something fashioned in terrns of credentials and opportune moves, rnuch as their pers in other established professionals behaved. T. Crow, The Rise of the Sixties (New York: Perspectives, Harry N. Abrarns Inc. Publishers) 163-4. tirne the National Gallery had ever put on a show of a living group of painters. Young as life as we were--as we were--ah God!" he casualiy links the painters with Simmins'
comment This hadnever been dotze hefore just as certainly as he links it with the exhi bition. Histonans (Guilbaut, Howard, Litt, Tippett) have pointed to the Second World
War, and the subsequent bipartite poIitics of the Cold War as profound for North American art-makers. Guilbaut, in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, comments on a
"rightward drift" amongst American intellectuals and the avant garde in the immediate postwar period (165). As the war against communism hardened, American "advanced" culture joined with American economic and military strength in assuming responsibility for the survival of democratic liberties and the 'free' world (177). This not only propelled the
emergence of a new and "universal" style of painting - Amerïcan abstract expressionism - but as Guilbaut argues, the artist himself took on heroic and individualistic - and hence American - dimensions. Certainly, he was male. He was aggressive, virile, and powerful. He was utterly up-to the-minute, progressive and modern (176, 181, 187). Indicative of the nghtward drift, he no longer appeared as "alienated", since aiienation was "a radical notion connected with society". lnstead there emerged a discourse "of neurosis" centred on
the individual ( 165). Descriptive rhetoric would now included adjectives such as "violence, exasperation and stridency," or "[blrutality, crudeness, virility" (Greenberg, cited in Guilbaut; Guilbaut, 176). Significantly, these qualities not only described the large, aggressively handled abstract paintings associated with New York and modemism, but also referred to the men who made them. Sirnply put, these qualities became synonymous with creativity. 8loore captures some of the intensity demanded of artists when he says, the five Regina painters al1 "had the drive, drive, drive, drive" (1997). For almost a decade - 1955 to the mid-sixties - the conduit from New York to
Saskatchewan was the Emma Lake Artists' ~orksho~s."Lochhead has said, "1 am
indebted to the New York painters working in the area of "action" and "gesture" painting"
(Lochhead 1961). Howard ( 1997) marks the "eagemess of Art McKay and the Saskatchewan painters to learn about the latest tendencies in modemist painting" (13). and how "effortlessly" they "could move towards the idealism represented by the individuatism
and universalist aspirations of New York modernism" (14). As we have seen with the studio, Newman's visit was pivotai in formulating a new, postwar, identity. Godwin (1972) recollects, "This was the thing which Newman did: he made it strictly a cornmitment-conviction thing, head-style rather than image-style--" (Cited in J. King, 34.4).Kiyooka, workshop coordinator at the Newman Workshop aIong with McKay, was more explicit:
As 1 remember, the most mernorable occasions spent with Barney [Newman] were always outside the context of the Workshop and what went on; that is, the painting that we were doing. Whenever we got together over a bottle of vodka he would tell us, yes, he would spin for us that mythology, that New York artisl' abstract- expressionist mythology and al1 of its legendary heros and non-heros and un-heros and their women there, various and valorous women--yes, that was part of it (cited in J. King, 267)
Here Kiyooka embeds rhepainring tha we were doing with a number of other activities not obviously directly related to painting. Activities such as dnnking, male fraternity,
50 Between the first Artists' Workshop in 1955 and the one just pnor to the Five Paintersfrorn Reoina at the National GaIlery in November 1%1, there were three other workshops led by New York artists: Will Barnet (1957), John Ferron (1%0), and Herman Cherry (1961). Clement Greenberg, the oniy non-artist, would not arrive until August I%2. Aithough Greenberg, critic and powerful proponent of American modernist painting, is the New York player most famously - or notoriously - connected with Saskatchewan, his influence remains indirect in the period leading up to 1%1. contemporary American-centred mythologizing, a sexualized but distant relationshi p with women. Kiyooka not only embeds art-making into this grouping of practices but almost prioritizes them over ~hepain~ingrhar we were doing. As the expanding Stream of Amencan globaiization and Cold War politics shaped cultural producers in the United States, it also helped forge an ernergent, postwar, Canadian, artistic identity as well.' '
A further contiguity is how cultural professionals operated at the mid-point of the twen tieth century. 1 want to examine this question specificall y focusing on the transition from earlier formulations. In her study of English-Canadian culture before the Second World War, Tippett finds a nch outpouring of cultural activity across the country. She ako observes that prior to the war most cultural players were non-professionals. Art-making relied on volunteers, independent cultural associations and ~r~anizations.~~Both state and private sector patronage were unsystematic, and what did exist was of an extemporaneous nature (180). Similarly, when B. Ilfor Evans, vice-chaiman of the newly formed British
Arts Council, toured Canada in 1947, he commented that "cultural activity in Canada was largely amateur, canied out over a large area, and organized through a wide variety of programs and institutions" (Evans, cited in Tippett, 180). Yet, dating from a decade and some years later, we have a small collection of images and statements which seem to
51 For a more in depth examination of the impact of the CoId War on cultural discourses and practices see D. Howard's essay on Art McKay (lm),and Ph.D. dissertation ( lm);and Guilbaut, particularl y Chapter Four.
52 B. Ilfor Evans' "Report", 11 October 1947, lists the wide variety of programs and institutions as "rmging from music and drama festivals, symphony orchesks, and university extension courses to comrnunity centres, provincial arts' councils, and organizations devoted to literature, art, drama, and music." M. Tippett, Makino Culture Enolish-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massev Commission (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990) 180. suggest a different set of circumstances. The small collection is made up of our image of Annalee at the studio door, Godwin framed and crowned by his studio debris, the brief and authoritative statement "1 am an artist". Into this inter-textual mix 1 would also draw Godwin's emphatic claim, as he describes Newman's influence on himself and the other
Regina painters, We were a bunch of amateurs! Taken coliectively, these indicate a clear gravitation towards professionalism amongst art-makers. What has changed from Evans's
1 947 assessmen t? Government patronage steadily increased through a dramatically expanding infrastructure. As the art historian Paul Litt points out, "the state was becorning increasingly interventionist" so that "it is hardly surprising that it [also] assumed greater responsibility in cultural affairs" (24û).From the 1950s onwards, government intensified its development of public arts policies. This reveals a political concern which was simultaneously paralleled by a proIiferation of culturai institutions (Burnett and Schiff, 82;
O'Brian, 33,71-73; Sirnrnins 1998). Eady bench marks of state investment in publicly funded culture are the formation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), in 1933 and 1939 respectively. Later, the Roval Commission on National Develovment in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (The Massey
Cornmission), formed in 1949, made its final submission to parliament in 1951. The Commission's great triumph was the formation of the Canada Council in 1957. Sirnmins, comrnenting on this burgeoning activity, says
Right after WW II there were three places in western Canada that showed art. Winnipeg, Vancouver, I think, Edmonton-- either Edmonton or Calgary-there were three. . . . By the time 1 Ieft western Canada Cl9571 . . . [there were] between twenty and thirty places showing exhibitions of art. 1 mean, that's extraordinary--a lot of new places-- (Simmins 1998) Of direct relevance to the Five Painters in Saskatchewan is that in September, 1953, when the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery opened in Regina College, it becarne one of those new places. Simmins's first job as a young art history graduate was serving as its inaugural director (1953- 1957).Given this activity, it is not surprising that younp, ambitious, well educated and passionate artists should imagine themselves as the appropriate participants of this new cultural largesse. Clearly, the Five Painters did. AI1 five of them were associated, either formally or inforrnally, with the
Regina College School of Art and i ts fine arts gallery, the Norman Mackenzie Art
~allery.~~The School of Art, in operation since the thirties, had been established with the sarne bequest that twenty-years later would support a gallery. As wi th the creation of Extension Services at the National Gallery, an emergent, institutional space served as a focus and a venue, for various practices in the cultivation of the self as professional and art-maker. Bloore, gallery director from 1957 to 1964, also taught at the School of Art. Godwin moved his young family from Lethbridge,
Alberta to Regina to be close to the only "A" gallery in western Canada (Godwin
53 The relationship of the Mackenzie Art Gallery to "Regina Campus" bears some explanation. O'Brian details the institutions' shifting developrnent (69-72). Throughout the fifties Regina College, although a somewhat autonomous institution, was responsible to the University of Saskatchewan, located in Saskatoon, with the School of Art and the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery operating under College's aegis. In September 1961 when Bloore wrote the phrase "Regina Campus" in his letter to Sirnmins, the use of "campus" instead of "college" reflected a recent change. In July of that year Regina College becarne "the Regina Campus of the University of Saskatchewan" (71). The transition was not without difficulty. As Simmins would Iater recollect, "A bitter, bitter rival ry existed between those two cities" (1998). 1997)." Lochhead served as director of the School of Art (1950 to 1964), and
hired McKay as an instructor in 1952. It was also Lochhead, with McKay's assistance, who conceived and initiated the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Finally, Morton's association with the Norman Mackenzie came through his
rnembership on the Gallery's Board of Directors (Morton 1997).~~clearly the
spaces offered by these interlockhg institutions - the gallery, the art school and the post secondary institution - were pivotal. AI1 five painters on many occasions stressed the importance of their connection wiih i t.
If 1am a growing artist, what do I have to see? Great Art! Where am 1 going to see it? Grade "A'' gallery, Where do they have a grade "A" gallery in the west? Regina! . . . . Oh, 1 had a choice of poing to Edmonton, Vancouver or Regina. I chose Regina (Godwin 1997). So 1 got the job out there rat the Nom~anMackenzie Art Gallery]. And we had our pood times, sweet times along the way. Yes, exhibitions of various kinds (Bloore 1997). So that's when I met up with al1 those guys. And slowly 1did get into the art community. And 1 was on the board of the Mackenzie Art Gallery for a while when they bought their first Harold Town that was ever bought by a public gallery in Canada, and Lipchitz sculpture, and stuff like that. So 1 was on the board before Bloore came out. . . . in the fifties sometime (Morton 1997).
54 For rny understanding of an "A" gallery 1 refer to O'Brian's definition. He wntes that an "A" rating indicates an exhibiting institution's ability to handle major exhibitions, especially ones requiring special lighting and secunty (19). Godwin did not join the faculty of the School of Art until 1%5.
55 When McKay resigned as director frorn the School of Art in 1%7 Morton left the family business to take ~&a~'splace. In a communication to his brother he remembers saying, " '1 need a break from this business, I'm getting stale, I'm getting bored, and it's repetitive, and 1 need something else to do.' . . . So 1 made the choice" ( 1997). But this gallery here has a long history of being 'quite something for Canada.' . . . . This gallery has a long history of being first in a number of things; this has for a long time been the most adventuresome gallery in Canada (Godwin cited in J. King, 348).
The gallery was also important to its first director Richard Simmins who recollects,
Al1 this incredible responsi bility on very young professionals. This hel d throughout the system. Lochhead was twenty-seven - or something - when he was running that art school. Twenty-eight--1 was a year older than Lochhead. . . . (1998).
Although we are looking at the convergences of different types of locales, the gallery was the visible, public space that allowed for both forma1 and informa1 kinds of professionalised engagement. The intersections were further reinforced by their physical proximity. Bloore, as director of the gallery, worked in the lower level of the building that also housed the School
of Art. He could recollect that 'Yight up above the gallery - I always found how lovely it was - the school of art where Lochhead and McKay and earlier, Roy Kiyooka, had taught. So it was al1 very niceIy knit kind of thing" (1997). The final point I would like to discuss in conjunction with American postwar cultural politics and cultural professionalisrn is the idea of "first". This last notion informs the phrase "1 am an artist". In the image of Godwin in the studio, can we see whispered over its debris details, rhis hadnever beendone before? Godwin's quote about the "adventuresome gallery" as it juxtaposes wit!i Simrnins' recollection of themselves as "very young" shows the interpenetration of events, institutions and self-knowledge. Surely, the aura of "first" imbues the artistic self with al1 the novelty and al1 the authority that "first" can possi bly provide. Centred in the middle of the photograph, then, we can recognize the confidence of the daim "1 am an artist". He is unquestionably both the subject of the photograph and the artist. The signs of his profession point him out, framing him - the subject within-the- frame. It is as though, in total, these signs - brushes, canvases, jars of paint - make the kind of enclosure usually reserved for adorning pictures of royalty or saints. Our glance rushes past what surrounds, barely noting the studio clutter. We rush headlong into his gaze. It seems to capture us: the man's eyes fixed, top third, and dead-centre. And yet, despite this confident presentation of self, he is the only artist of the Five who in this period (1950s-1%1) did not have a formalized relationship with the university, the School of Art, or the aller^."^ He does not, as the others do, have an institutional aperture on to which he can fasten his authontative daim of expertise. And yet, in his gaze as it meets ours, his position seems resolute. At this time in the fifties, Godwin's connection with the Gallery and with the other artists was compnsed of informal associations. By infornaII mean that they were not part of an official relationship to an institution. There is a shared understanding of the studio, and practices related to it. Care of appropnate activities in the studio indicates an artist's professional seriousness and expertise. However there were other apparently critical practices not directly associated with the studio or with exhibiting. BeIow, 1 have drawn together six textual accounts from Bloore, Godwin, McKay, and Simmins. These are fragments of mernories, which in some instances cast back almost fifty years. In their grouping, we can find themes salient to our discussion. 1 am struck by how a reference will
56 Lochhead recollects walking with Godwin around Emma Lake when he was still director af the Regina Callege Sch~~laf Art. During this walk Godwin presseci him for an explanation, why would Lochhead not hire him as an instructor at the art school? Lochhead had his reasr>ns. It was McKay, as director after bchhead Ieft in 1%4, who brought Godwin into the college (Lochhead 1998). suface in one passage and then reappear in another so that throughout the six, threads overlap and fold over one another. Certainly, the rnost obvious fact is that they were five abstract painters in a small prairie city who "got to know each other by chance because we were painters" (McKay 1997). But there are other themes that emerge: their drinking there, their close association as "the puys", the question of "drive", and finally, the inevitable problern of accessi bility and absence.
What I'm building up to is that 1 [hadl--quote unquote--"al1 modem, way- out" exhibitions. Yet, no stylistic bias. If it's good of its kind, it's good. I'd hanp that. . . . And then I began to show some of the local painters such as Lochhead, Roy Kiyooka, Art McKay and so on. When I went out [to Regina] 1 was a non-figurative painter and have been ever since. The other puys were somewhat--well--what Barnett Newman caIled one tirne, "half- assed, mid-western abstraction". . . . And 1 could see that Roy, and Art, and Ken, and Morton, had the drive to be something more than a painter in Regina--something more than a painter in Saskatchewan--that these guys were working along the way (Bloore 1997).
We would meet at parties--different people's parties. In a srnall town like Regina you go to parties. You keep meeting the same people (McKay 1997). But we did - we were close associates. 1 mean, we partied together, sometimes drank together, some might have smoked a little bit together, 1 don't know. But we were very close, very close (Bloore 1997). There was only one pub that seemed to gather the interesting people and that was the Sask [Hotel]. When 1started drinking there it was "MEN ONLY", had a honey-combed terrazzo floor, covered with sawdust. The unnals were Iocated outside the basement. They were MASSIVE! They were this taIl-- hang your elbows on them. Ha! Ha! The old style, five-foot-high-plus type, you could rest your arms on. rheSask] was where you went on a Friday to drink sociaIly (Godwin 1997). And there wers always parties, aIways parties. It was incestuous in a sense: you go Christianson's (he was the chernist). You'd go to Lochhead's house-go to DeGroot's house--the GoIdman family - (very iduential). Goldman was the son,and he was one of the absolutely, extremeIy excluded. . . . Weil, he wasn't just like--he didn 't measure up to the boys (Sirnrnins 1998) (my italics). The rest of the painters in Regina 1 simpIy ignored. So there was an in and out group (Bloore 1997).
These six recollections link together a compilation of dissirnilar activities such as non- figurative painting with urinals, or drinking together with drive. Through these fragments we can find suggestions, perhaps groupings of informal exercises, shaping the authority of
Godwin's stance. 1 would like bnefly to consider each theme individually, and then give a more careful consideration to possible convergences, particularly focusing on the problem of accessi bility and absence. They were dnnkers. And they drank together. Certainly. the activity of drinking and drinking with one's pers and drinking publicly was pervasive. That Kiyooka's most mernorable occarions with Newman should have been over a bortle of vodka would not be particular to Newman or to Emma Lake or Kiyooka. They drank a 1otS7In the photograph of Godwin, amongst the cluster of brushes bristling in the foreground, a beer bottle points
57 The excesses of the time perhaps had their costs. Godwin and Simmins are both currently non-drïnkers. Godwin is an active rnember of a local Alcoholics Anonymous chapter in Calgary. Bloore, during Our meeting in December, 1997, expressed some derision towards Godwin's decision to stop drinking. Simmins suggests that "McKay was an alcoholic from the time he took his first drink" (Simmins 1998). Since living with his daughter and her fdyin West Vancouver, McKay says he has attempted to limit his drinking "around the children" (1997). However, before retinng from the University of Regina in 1994, he was known as a heavy drinker. M. Burns, Regina, with author, 14 July 1997. Psychedelic drugs wem an exotic, but secondary substance associated with intellectuaIs and artists in Regina in the ffties. Before they were made illegd, psychologists Duncan BIewett and Abram Hoffer conducted limited, controlled, expenrnents with LSD on volunteers at the University Hospital, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (Howard 1997,56). O'Brian records that the psychiatrists Dr. Humphrey Osmond and Dr. John Smythies experimented with "mescaline and LSD in the treatment of schizophrenics and alcoholics" at the Saskatchewan Hospital, Wey bum (3 1,37). McKay considered Blewett one of his close friends. Both he and Godwin participated in the experiments. Published information on this research is lirnited, although the URA holds the Duncan Blewett papers, containing information on the experiments. S. Coward, Regina, to author 27 February 1997, e-mail correspondence. upwards. McKay recalls, "Ted used to always have a bottle on his desk. He used to pour
everybody a drink in class" ( 1997). Although there were other bars - the Wascana Hotel, where Godwin and Bloore had their studio, or the Queen's Hotei - The Sask. was the place of choice. McKay says, "That was the place where we used to go and drink. We drank a lot. So it was an important place. 1 mean, instead of going home--" (1997). Activities, centred around drinking, were informa1 but universdly commonplace; they might be incidental to making art, or getting together with one's peers, but they were, nonetheless, saturated with ntual and protocol. "The guys" is prirnarily Bloore's term. It slips ubiquitously into discourse as "the guys", "those guys", oneself and "the other guys", so that we can recognize each designation as a casual appellation for The Five. Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay and
Morton were rhose guys working along the wu-y. In discussing how he conceived of the
May Show (Mackenzie 1961):~ Bloore recounts running into Sirnrnins at a lecture in
Toronto. "[Dluring the talk," Bloore remembers, "Simmins, who was sitting beside me, said " 'Ron, what kind of exhibition are you going to put on for the Canadian Museum of Art Organization?' "The exhibition in question would coincide with the Canadian
58 Bloore organized the Mav Show so that it would coincide with Canadian Museums' Association meeting in Regina. Any exhibition hung during the meetingwould be seen by museurn and art gallery directors from across the country. For the occasion Bloore wanted a powerfuI showcas of "sipificant contemporary art created in Regina" (Bloore 1997). Participating artists were the Five Painters - Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay, Morton - the sculptor Wolfram Neisson, and the architect Clifford Weins (Mackenzie Art Gallery 1%1). Bloore argues that Simrnins took the Mav Show to Ottawa without the sculptor and architect. However, SUmmins, working on a national scaie, clearly had a different curatoriai mandate than Bloore (see Chapter Two). A distinction Godwin also makes, arguing that the Mav Show was not the Regina F'ive show. "Bloore," Godwin suggests, "is being disingenuous . . .The Five Painters from Regna came about because Richard Simmins, [acting] on the advice of William Townsend, who had judged the biennial of Canadian painting said: 'There's sornething xdly happening in Regina7" ( 1997). Museums' Association directors' meeting, scheduled for Regina that May. Bloore continues, 'And I said, 'Just the guys'" (my i talics). Refemng to the same exhibition,
Godwin, with some irony, uses the phrase, "the locaI good boys network" (1997). The correlation with "the guys" is clear. Decades later "the guys" still holds some resonance because McKay acknowledges he likes going to Regina Five reunions "because its fun to go and see how the guys are doing; find out what they're thinking; who's fighting with who . . . . [Ilt's part of an identified myth" (1997). Although informal, to be one of "the guys" was, and still is, a powerful designation. The five of them al1 had the drive, drive, drive, drive. It drew them together. They hud the &ive to be more than a painter in Regina, more than a painter in Sc~skatchewan. Lochhead captures some of this optirnism when he says they believed "anything could happen" (1998). But what was drive? How could you recognize it if you had it? What did one do to demonstrate possession of it? Certainly "drive", at least in part, rneant that you created the "big attach" paintings associateci with American abstract-expressionism. Bloore implies that it also meant being ambitious about your career as an artist beyond the local scene. "mhat made us similar," Godwin says, "was our approach as professional artists" (Godwin cited in Davitt, 1987). Amongst the five of them "The srnaIlest common denorninator of thinking was Canada, pe~od"(BIoore 1997). However "drive", as it gets deployed, is a complex notion, anly partially explained by ambition. Like drinking, it gathers together recognizable activities: painting in certain ways - such as abstraction, and in a certain places - like the studio, forming plans, executing strategies with the guys, "to do something" (McKay 1997)?'
59 The Emma Lake Artists' Workshops are a clear illustration of doing something. The audacity, particuiariy of Lochhead and McKay, of inviting internationally known New York artists to a remote lake in northem Saskatchewan has etched a now familiar track ont0 Always, it seerns as though the problem of exclusion must come up. Bloore
acknowledges it: so there was an in andout group. There were the farnous absences. There
was Kiyooka, a vital part of the art scene in Regina in the fifties (1955- 19~9).'~He taught
at the School of Art, Regina College. He was a participant and coordinator of the Artists' Workshops at Emma Lake. But by 1959 he was living in Vancouver, teaching at the School of Art there, so that he was not in the May Show at the Mackenzie Art Gallery when
the Canadian Museum directors held their annual meeting in ~egina.~Nor was he one of
the Painters from Regina at the ~a6onalGallery six months later. He was bitter, commenting to J. King, "My gripe has to do with that 1 had been excluded" (370).
The point of saying this is that if 1 was net not one of that group, if my having come to the College in 1955, prior to Bloore and Ted Godwin, was
the Workshops historical account. O'Brian rhetorically asks, why would "a group of professional artists living in Saskatchewan" want New York artists like Newman to come? (32) An answer possibly lies in Lochhead's request for a special travel grant "for the purpose of a study contact trip to New York City." He concludes his request with the observation that "Personally: to have the opportunity to meet these painters of international reputation would be [ofJ great value to me, both as a teacher and painter in this province" (Correspondence. Nov. 2, I96û. Cited in O'Brian, 127). Arguably, a much shorter answer to O'Brian's question is "drive".
60 Kiyooka's daughter, Jan Furniko Kiyooka, directed, produced and shot Retum. The documentary film, premiered at the Vancouver Film Festival, lm, is dedicated to the memory of her father. It look at Saskatchewan in the 1950s and 1%0s, focusing on the dynamic between the Five Painters and those other artists - like Kiyooka - who were most closely associated with them. See The Return. Dir. J. F. Kiyooka. Production Company: You've Been Dreaming Pictures Ltd., 1998.
61 It has erroneously been suggested by Leclerc (69) and O'Brian (72)that Kiyooka was in The Mav Show, but subsequently excluded by Simmins - dong with Weins - fmm the National Gallery exhibit. The participating artists in The May Show were the five painters, Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay, Morton, the sculptor Wolfram Neisson, and the architect Clifford Weins (Mackenzie Art Gallery 1%1). -not a factor, then the tems by which the "Regina Five" was chosen, 1 do not understand (Ibid.).
There was Weins, the architect. Bloore invited him into the Mav Show, but Simmins elirninated hirn from the National Gallery exhibition. In 1997, during the round table discussion at the opening at the Arthur F. McKav retrospective, Weins introduced himself as the "+1" rnernber of the group (Howard 1997,5;Wihak 1997). Bloore was bewildered by Sirnrnins' decision only to show the painters without the architect. He believed Weins
"was good, he was one of us" (199'7). The absence of both Weins and Kiyooka are highly visible instances that have, with telling, made tough intejections into the history of the Five Painters. There are others less famous omissions: for instance, only paintings went from Regina to Ottawa. There were no sculptures nor pottery, nor any architectural drawings or rnodeIs. Furthermore, not one other Saskatchewan painter from anywhere else in the province went. And there were other painters: Dorothy Knowles, Ernest Lindner, Jan Meyers, William Perhudoff are only a few. But 1 am not interested in these omissions. What interest. me is how particuiar exclusions become necessary and, through necessity, become govemed and hence ensured. At this juncture, I would like to retum to the imagined image of Annalee outside the studio door at Emma Lake. She is there. It is raining. Inside are the professionals, including ber husband Newman, Bloore, Godwin, Kiyooka, McKay, and Morton. In this moment, with an understanding of certain spaces as accessible to some but not to others, we have not only Annalee, but aiso the two unwelcome male artists mentioned by O'Brian.
Perhaps, Iike Goldman, éheir rejection derives from their inability to measure up tu the boys. While such an ephemeral notion as memure up may indeed offer an explanation for absolute, total exclusion, its very ambiguity requires further attention. Certainly, the problern of Annalee's respectful knowledge is more straightforward: she is a woman, she has her place. The Sask. Hotel, like the studio, is also a governed place. It was where the interesting people went but it was "MEN ONLY". The unnals were outsi& the basement (my italics). It was where you went on a Friday to drink. "The guys" certainly al1 had access. They not only had it, they felt cornfortable with the sawdust floors and massive, exposed, urinals. Bloore argues that what separated "the so-called out-group" from the "in
group" was "the drive - the ambition - to paint" (1 997,1978). Once, when asked to account for the absence of women painters from the "in group" he responded, "1 said, 'Its got nothing to do with sex or gender. It's simply there was no femafe painting with the
same drive and energy. . . -1have no objection to women 1 can assure yout " (Bloore 1997). Apparently this lack of women held, even though the majonty of students - including the best students - in the SchooI of Art at Regina College were women (Lochhead
1998)." 2chhead admits that the five of them - hirnself, Bloore, Godwin, McKay, and
Morton - forrned a kind of" 'boys' club" (Ibid.). Despite BIoore's conviction that exclusion had nothing to do with sex, informa1 practices of concern to the most detemiined art-rnakers, were heavily gendered and gendered masculine. These activities intersected with each other and across locales in such a way that women could have no easy means of engagement. They could accompany their participating husbands, but at certain critical
62 Two of the five - Godwin and McKay - marrieci girls they had ken at art school with. Although Phyllis Godwin maintains a tiny studio in aPsParebédroom, Godwin believes that, like Annalee, his wife knew: "She knew 1 was an artist. She knew. She rnamied me! She's an artist. She knew she married an hst. She knew--" (1997). Phyllis however says, meaningfùlly, that "it was the fifties." Alternatives to focusing on her family, her home, ber children, Godwin's career, seemed non-existent (P. Godwin. Personal communication. Oct. 1997). Similarly, Lori June Stringer - manied to McKay in 1947, divorced, 19fB - "was a house-mother". To a very limited extent she was able to stay involved with making art. Since retiring she has been able to do more (McKay 1997). interstices - such as the studio door or the Sask. Hotel - they might go no further. Goldman's absolute, total exclusion presents a somewhat different configuration for the problem of accessibility and exclusion. Possibly an answer lies in the shifts between professionalism and non. In other words, what one does and how one does it concerns occupation. Godwin descnbes an epiphany after the 1959 Newman Workshop at Emma Lake. But the separation of professional from amateur is not only one of personal transformation. In the photograph of Godwin in the studio, in the authonty of his daim I
aman mis?,we clearly recognize the successful fulfilrnent of the self as artist. In a word, he is a professional. However, such a designation must also demarcate another alternate
sphere, one that is appalling because it is opposite and that is the amateur. The distinction 1 want to draw attention to is the one which now cleaves these domains in two. On the one hand, how one must occupy oneself as a professional becomes preeminent while at its diarnetric opposite, is the amateur. If, before the war, most cultural activity had been largely and happily conducted by non-professionals, the new postwar amateur appears a more reviled creature. In the following passages by Bloore, Morton and Simmins, a relationship between professional statu - measuring up, the kind of painting one does - whether abstract-expressionist or cubist, and the kinds of institutional spaces one has access to, intersect. In a 1978 interview with historian and curator, Joan Murray, Bloore boasts that during his tenure as director of the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, he "killed off' a regional artists' association. He says, "1 killed off the Saskatchewan Society of Artists. 1 hop 1 did. They seemed to think they have a right to [an] exhibition every year. Forget it. You don't have. They have no rights." [We realfy wanted to go against the main tide of the way things were going at that time. .. . v]he pnnciple work that was being [done] by the teachers in the [public schools and high] schools- the art teachers, you know-- that sort of thing. And it was pretty traditional. It was sort of bumping up against the edge of cubism, but not much farther than that (Morton 1997).
SIMMINS: Goldrnan was the son, and he was one of the absolutely, extrernely excluded. . .. Well, he wasn't just like--he didn't measure up to the boys. INTERVIEWER: Was his work awful or was he just an awful person? SIMMINS: He was sort of a neo-cubist painter and he didn't fit in the theme of things (Simmins 1998).
Clearly, the kind of work is equated with the quality of the work. But so too is the stature of the artist. In curating the May Show Bloore reveals this super emphasis on the art- maker. "1 don? select anything --- 1 selected people'' (Bloore lm).However, clearly visible in the above quotes is the relationship of status to different kinds of institutional spaces. Professional artists could have formal or as with Godwin, informal access to the exhibiting institution. The Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, newly opened in 1953, was the only "Agallery in the province. Furthemore it was physically housed within, and supported by the Regina College Schod of Art, a post-secondary fine art institution. Like a series of nesting cups, the School of Art, was contained by Regina College proper which was, by extension, supported by the University of Saskatchewan. By contrast, amateurs had severely limited exhibiting opportunities - demonstrated by Bloore's unapotogetic maintenance of "in" and "out" groups. They were associated with the older, less prestigious vocations of secondary and public school teaching. The new fields of cultural expertise were tied to pst-secondary and cultural institutions. Although rapidly developing throughout the postwar period, they were still few in n~rnber.6~This last point may
partially explain some of the ngorous attention to activities across multipIe locales which the five artists exercised. Arguably, to be part of the "in" group required careful and aggressive construction of an appropriate self.
63 When Regina College became the "Regina Campus" of the University of Saskatchewan, its student endment was approximately two hundred (O'Bnan, 7 1). In the decade before, the whole communiq of intellectuals and artists was small. The facdty at Regina College SchooI of Art consisted of Lochhead, McKay, and Bloore. Wolfram Neisson taught sculpture. Pat Weins, married to Clifford Weins, taught pottery. Simmins stressed "~Jouwouldn't believe how smdl it was" (1998). Figure 28, Diagram: Five Painters in Ottawa in a Page CONCLUSION CLOSER&CLOSER
Tfte nexr iliing t/wy did wus cul of /ter /mir, whicft liad grown ouf k.... When tIwy fiad crrt down fur enoccgh they foicnd a cbrh hat. II lrrrd rotred OIJher head ar~d the /mir had just prrslied thrortgh il, like Rrms Zluough wire. Alice Mmro, Who Bo Yoic Tliink Yorr Are?
Whnr is rifisplace? (222)
In essence, we return to rhe same grtestion with which we began: Wfmris tliis place? (227) Edward Soja, Posmodern Geo~rapfies
Soya (1995) wonders how to see the city of Los Angeles in its ideological reach (222), its extraordinary heterogeneity, its restless geographical Iandscape (223),its simultaneous contraries (225). By necessity, description becomes "fragmentary, incomplete, and frequently contradictory . . .. We are constrained," he suggests, "by language" because what we see is spacious and "stubbomly simultaneous, but what we write down is successive, because language is successive" (247). CertainIy as an object of study the Five Painters in Ottawa are more xadily visible, less staggeringly immense, than Soja's urban scape. Nonetheless, descriptive challenges present themselves. In an attempt to see the event, I have looked through fragments of texts, photo,pphs, recollections, paintings (and others). From these strands, sifted through and pinched together, an impression forrns. We move closer. The present story of the Five Paintem is not complete. There are other fragments, favourite anecdotes, possible representations, many known and unknown people who connected with the Five of them in Regina. These, 1 have not mentioned. Soja wisely cautions: "Not al1 can be understood, appearances as well as essences persistently deceive, and what is real cannot always be captured" (S48). One of my purposes has been to complicate and challenge earlier explanations of the Regina Five as an untroubled fixture in the narrative of Canadian art history. This has particularly ken the case with ovemiews such as those by Leclerc, Burnett and Schiff, and Reid. More recent analyses of the penod by Howard and O'Brian, present the Five as indicative of an exciting, dynamic moment in prairie painting. Milethese studies offer important critical interpretations, the Five Painters rernain an aside to the main thrust of their intellectual concerns:O'Brian observes that "having gained recognition at the national level . . .in an exhibition organized by Sirnmins himself, and encouraged by a succession of [Emma Lake] workshop leaders, [the Five Painters] considered themselves in a position to compete nationalIy, even intemationally" (34).The focus of O'Brian's interests, however, are not the artists but the international reach of the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Because not allcan be understoodfroma single account, the present enquiry of the five attempts to evoke the near-forty year-old event. 1 have tried to re-imagine it both cri ticall y and descnptively. In addition to, or as a means of trying to see the exhibition, my concems have ken twofold: the articulation of a spatiaiized, simultaneous history on the one hand, convergences between a few relevant domains on the other. First, the possi bility of a simuItaneous narrative builds upon the combined theoretical notions of the heterotopia, the profound actuality of tirne, spe,andmatter, in addition to the three domains of self, government and others suggested by govemance theory. My intention has been to pursue what their inter-relation makes conceptually possible rather than identify potential inconsistencies. ArguabIy the notion of interdisciplinarity depends upon the possibility of thinking differently. But what would such a history look like? The investigation foms three lateral sweeps, radiating outwards from the nodal centre of the temporal, geographic site - Five Painters in Ottawa, November 1%1. As Figure 28 demonstrates we have literally approached the exhibitionary event from three different but simultaneous
perspectives. The Figure also illustrates the second of rny concerns. The event is pierced by a cornplex of converging domains. Within their contained spheres we find practices and discourses. We find heterotopias: the National Gallery, the regional gallery, the art school, the university become set against the fonnal and informal sites of individual artistic practice - the bar, the studio, the exhibition. Further, the interests and activities of government also
intenect. acting across thern as a movable set of b~undaries?~In the following passage,
Morton thoughtfull y identifies some of this fracturing of experience in time and place. He observes
I was mamed - we were a big family. 1 had to support the farnily, so 1 clearly, had to earn a living for the family and do al1 that kind of stuff, and try to raise the family, help my wife mise the family. So I had to, kind of- when 1 was in business 1 was selling industrial equipment in Saskatchewan - you know, to a very non-industrïalized province at that time. . . but I never mixed that or my art thing with my business. . . . 1 never mixed the two. 1 just sort of shut it off so 1 would get up early in the morning, very early in the moming, and 1 would paint before I'd go to work and corne home. And after the kids were in bed I'd go back to the studio and paint some more at night, midnight or whatever (1997).
Morton lists the private sphere of the family, his business, the business of industrialization,
64 Marianna Valverdi argues that the problem of governance considers the separations between pubIic and private, state and civil society, and those processes traversing thern. M. Valverdi, "Introciuction" Canadian Journal of Sociolo~~19,S Spnng (1994) vi-vii. Rose suggests a diagmm-like wnceptudization: Thestrategies of regdation" making "up Our modem experience of 'power' are thus assembled into complexes" which connect "up forces and institutions deemed 'poli tical' with apparatuses that shape and manage individual and collective conduct in relation to noms and objectives but yet are constituted as 'non-political'" (37-8). the largely agrarian culture of the province, and his practice as an artist as quite separate stresses he was forced to navigate. Certainly, it could be arguai that this fracturing was just
Iife, so that the discipline to go without sleep or leisure become heroic exampfes of the artist
painting against al1 odds.6' While the extraordinary effort, passion, and starnina Morton's
excerpt reveals was certainly real, 1 would like to suggest another possi ble interpretation.
Instead of struggling against adversity, the artist actively rnediates across and within a complex of domains. Morton's statements but Inever mked that or my art rhing wirh my business. . . . I never rnîxed the two. I just sort of shut it offis particularly telling. It is from this notion of across that we may begin to imagine a simultaneous history. Specifically my inquiry has pursued the question of how exhibitionary space was governed. The govemance of cultural institutions includes the exhibition site itself (see Figure 25), although clearly it is not limited to it, hence the tenn ahibiti0nar-y suggests a wider termin. In this rnid-century moment we can witness the expansion of the National
Gallery as it increased the range of its activities both within the country and internationally.
Further, it developed and solidified as a locale of expertise, knowtedgably arbitrating a national fine art product. Sirnmins' comment, "My interest was in the national Canadian art . . .accepting the fact there were pockets of major difference," explicates an understanding of nationhood, and of how the nationalCCUUZdlan art might be materially organized and represented (1998). Cornfort underscores this strategy in the 1% 1 exhibition catalogue when he writes
the Gaifery fias deliberately sought out new artists' associations or "schools" in a policy that is truly national in scope. Among the rnost
65 See Duncan, Chapter Five "The Modern Art Museum: It's a man's world" for an anaiysis linking the artist as heroic with abséract painting, 102-132. interesting exhibitions have been: Folk Painters of the Canadian West; Painters Eleven (Toronto); Six East Coast Painters, and the Montreal Non- Figurative Artists' Association (NGC l%l b).
These exhibitions, Iike Five Paintenfiorn Regina, situate the artists in regions. As Simrnins suggests, collectively they rnay describe a whole but they do so as packets. Not one of these exhibitions, for instance, would represent the essence of Canada in a way that the Ontario based Group of Seven presumed. In this discourse of constructing and representing nationalisrn, state interests cannot be ignored. The ideological reach of the National Gallery clearly found a parallel with govemment, just as, structuraIIy, it was interconnected through systems of
management and fiscal controI (see Appendix 5). This is not to suggest that the Gallery is or was a puppet of state control, but rather, my thought has been to descri be the complexities of power and autonomy as govemance at a distance. FinaIly we corne to the artists. It is here that the question of identity emerges as an
engagement with practices of care of the self, Professionalization and standardization in the burgeoning institutional fields of cuItural management and expertise clearly had parallei concems in individual art practices. RepeatedIy the Painters assert their cornmitment and their drive to create themselves as professional and senous. Godwin points out that although they had ben amateurs before Newman's visit, they quickly made a critical transition in their thinking so that, as Bloore States, they had the drive ro be something more. They were working dong the way. Artists became, in effect, cultural experts. Who they were as professional, creative individuals, how they produced themselves by their own means toa#anacertanstate, became as much an art form as the painting bat they were doing.
The governance of cultural spaces, as it rnanifests in the instance of Five Painters from Regina, simultaneously works a mu1 tiplici ty of problems. 1 have sought to indicate some of its complexity and diversity by concentrating on a few points of convergence.
Such an approach does, I think, provide answers to those simple but persistent questions:
Why these five artists? Why this particular moment? Who did they think they were? What did they think they were doing? It probiematizes the most often cited explanation, that it was because thefirst rune the National Gallery had ever put on a show ofa living group of painrers, while recognizing that in many ways it was the first time. But what is this place we have corne to? In corning closer to the event, in outlining some of its features, repercussions and possible significances we have in the process, hopefully, captured some of its excitement. Luchhead thinking back said "anything was possible." APPENDIX 1
FORWARD BY CHARLES F. COMFORT
Five Painters frorn ReoinaKina Peintres de Reoina ,Exhibition Catalogue Forward by Charles F. Cornfort, Director, the National Gallery of Canada, 30 November, 1%1. (NGC 1961)
For a number of years the National Gallery of Canada has orga- nized and circulated across Canada a senes of important exhibitions with the purpose of stimulating regional development and evaluating the diverse styles and varieties of expression being produced within the area of contemporary art. While still supporting the exhibitions of the estab- lished art societies, the Gallery has deliberately sought out new artists' associations or "schools" in a policy that is truly national in scope. Among the most interesting exhibitions have been: Folk Painters of the Canadian West; Painters Eleven (Toronto); Six East Coast Painters, and the Montreal Non Figurative Artists' Association. The growth of art consciousness, and the gathenng together of a group of very talented young artists in the city of Regina over the past decade, has been a truly remarkable phenornenon. It is very difficult to explain why such a dramatic growth of artistic activity should have taken place there, especially in view of the brief history of the Province of Saskatchewan and its relative isolation from centers of aesthetic stimula- tion. A good deal of credit should go to Dr. W. A. Riddell, now Acting Principle of the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus, who not onIy was responsible for supervising the construction of the finest sniall art gallery in Canada, but for many years tenaciously supported the strug- gling art school. 1 am convinced that without the existence of these two institutions, and the fortuitous successive appointments of R.B. Simmins and R. L. Bloore, the milieu which fostered artistic activity over the past ten years could not have been created. The paintings these five artists from Regina - Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay and Morton - demon- strate the artistic vigour of the art of painting on the prairies. They show the potential that exists when brilliant minds live together in a city which, despite healthy controversy, provides a stimulating environment for artists and art lovers. I should like to thank the staff of the Norman Mackenzie Gallery for willingly undertaking the arduous task of assembling and crating the paintings selected by the Natiocal Gallery, and the artists too for their sincere CO-operationin making this exhibition possible. APPENDIX 2
LEITERS, MEMORANDA, & ARTICLES
The following collection of matenal, comprised of letters, memoranda, and a newspaper articles, relates to the Five Painters from Reoind Cinq Peintres de Re~inaexhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1961. In its organization the material follows a loose chronology of events immediateIy surrounding the exhibit, beginning with Richard Simmins' letter inviting the artists to participate in August, 1%1.
Letter from Richard Simrnins, Director of the Exhibition and Extension Services, National Gallery of Canada, to Ken Lochhead, Regina. August 37, 1961 (Collection NGC Archives)
You will recall that 1 was recently in Regina organizing an exhibi- tion called Five Painters from Regina and 1 do hope you will participate in this exhibition which will be shown at the National Gallery from approximately November 30 to December 2 1, 1961.
The National Gallery is prepared to pay for al1 charges in connec- tion with cratinp, packing, photography, insurance and transportation and in addition, we propose to produce a modest catalogue as a permanent record of the exhibition.
The works i am particularly interested in by you are:
1: Eclat 2. Wobble Tree 3. Medieval Landscape 4. A Flourishing Condition 5. Agitation 6, 7,8. Three drawings presently in Bloore's office.
We require for the catalogue an artist's statement of approximate- ly 250 to 400 words, plus an 8 x 10 glossy photograph. While 1 realize many artists do not care to produce statements, in this case we are inter - ested in the infIuences which have made your painting as it is, a compre - hensive statement of your values and ideals. It is important that we have this material in not later than September 15 and 1 would appreciate your CO-operationin this regard.
Ken, tfiings may becorne a little complicated with you as Russell Harper wants you to send certain works to Ottawa for the Polish Exhibition. In my opinion the exhibition abroad should have pnority so if you choose any of the works listed above 1 would be grateful if you would replace them with works of equally high calibre.
Memorandum from Richard Simmins, Director of Exhibition Extension Service, the National Gallery of Canada, to Miss Shirley Sklov. September 26, 1%1 (Collection NGC Archives)
Would you be good enough to have the attached invitation printed as soon as possible. You might suggest to Mr. Arthur that we have a different type of format for this invitation - something rather spe- ciaI !
The invitation should be received by the generai public not later than 12 days prior to the program and the usual announcement should be made in the three Ottawa newspapers.
Letter from Ronald BIoore to Richard Simmins, the Director of Exhibition Extension Services, The National Gallery of Canada. September 27, 1%1 (Collection NGC Archives)
1 am returning the fonvard by Charles Comfort and your introduc- tion to the exhibition "Five Painters from Regina" immediately. You did not note whether 1 am to make comments upon the fonvard under the sig - nature of Charles Comfort, but without an invitation I must point out cer- tain rather questionable remarks or implications made in it. On the one hand it indicates that there was no artistic tradition in Saskatchewan and on the other it speaks of the original vision of Norman Mackenzie. What is more, and 1 quote, "The original vision from whence followed the com- munity realization that art was important", does not follow. There has 1 54 never been a community realization that art was important here. The uni- versity was put into the position of maintaining a tradition of an art school founded in the thirties by Augustus Kenderdine and developing an art gallery. As you realize, public support has nothing to do, even today, with support of art here. The only community which, and for presumably prestige reasons, has supported the arts is the University of Saskatchewan. Norman Mackenzie as 1 understand it, did not provide funds for the present School of art, and the implication that the School of Art and the Art Gallery are cornbined institutions named in his honour, is misleading. 1s it wise to Say that this [the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery) is the finest Gallery on the prairies when it is the only art gallery constructed as such out here? I disagree entirely that the existence of institutions has anything to do with the development of art in this city; for example, the University of Manitoba has a large art school and the city of Winnipeg has a very active gallery and the [Five Painters frorn Regina] exhibition comes from Regina. Edmonton has a less fortunate situation but it has a department of art and a srnall art gallery and yet the exhibition comes from Regina. The same can be said for Saskatoon; institutions are physical plants which happen to house certain individuals. The crux of the matter is not the institution but the people who are attracted to them. 1 personally disagree with the emphasis in the second paragraph that we demonstrate the artistic vigour of art on the prairies. And finalIy, in paragraph 2, it is stated that we live away from "vibrant aesthetic stimulation" and in this second last paragraph the forward indi - cates that we live in a "stimulating environment for artists and art lovers." I challenge the Director to personally name one art lover, what- ever that might mean, in this city, outside of ourselves and Nora McCullough. There are a few but the implication that they are nurnerous is misleading. Everyone loves an old master but not exactly the Five Painters from Regina.
Relax Richard, except for certain factual changes, 1 enjoyed your introduction and 1 appreciate it very much. 1 wish to congratulate you upon yoii complete candour. 1t is rare to read a statement in Canada by a cntic who, in his own way, sits out on limb as dangerously as the artist. By the way, what happened to the quote from the eastem cntic who gave the reasons why art could not develop on the prairies?
Page 2 (second Iine, second paragraph): Herman Cherry is the name you want. (Might 1 point out that none of us have attended al1 the [Emma Lake] Workshops?) Page 3 (Iast paragraph): In so far as 1 am aware, the following are the only sales which Godwin has made: paintings to The National Gallery, Ontario College of Agriculture, and a Mr. Windus of Philadelphia; drawings to the same Mr. Windus, the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery and Mrs. Douglas Morton; he has not sold to any major pri - vate collector in Canada.
Page 4 (last paragraph): It is only within the past year and not two or three years that Lochhead has settled down to a "consistent idiom quite free and independent." He did not paint after his return from Europe until the beginninp of the SchooI Art summer session last year.
In the same paragraph might 1 make one suggestion; following "with a general sense of humour" add "in art!"
Page 5 (first paragraph): 1 do not think it is quite accurate to state that 1 make a constant search for new materials. 1 have been using paint- scraping and putty knives constantly since 1957 and except for a couple of years when I used stove pipe enamel, my materials have been damn near academic. As an aside might 1 Say that 1 go along whole-heartedly with what you have in quotation marks in that paragraph.
Page 6 (line seven and following): Art has not participated in con- trolled LSD and mescaline experiments although al1 of us, with the exception of Lochhead, hope to take part in such a scientific exploration some time during this academic year. 1 believe Art has had certain drugs in the past but not these particular ones; 1 doubt that those he has had would have changed his aesthetic vision.
Page 7 (third last line): Might 1 suggest that it rnight be unwise to read the ouija board to suggest that Morton is progressing toward Neo- Dadaism and in the last sentence, continued on the last page, Morton has been in exhibitions of course locally, including the May Show and was in the Montreal Spnng Show a year or so ago.
Last page (tenth line): The name you want is Cherry.
Once again, my congratulations.
We had a lengthy discussion at 5.00 yesterday over some beer and it was decided that the title for the Panel should be "Painting as an Art." The Five Painters from Regina wish to know whether you can bring in a critic such as Robert Fulford to participate. We feel we must make initial statements at the beginning but will not tell each other what we plan to Say and then with that and the critic, we can begin to discuss things with out the use of a chairman. Let us say that this part will last for twenty minutes to half an hour and then we would Iike to have questions written out by the audience and collected. These would be read to us by the cd- ic. The break in writing out the questions and their collection would serve as a seventh-inning stretch. The questions we would endeavour to answer, singly or otlienvise and, of course, would appreciate them direct- ed towards specific individuals. None of us, and this is particularly true for those who work on the Regina Campus, wish to be introduced other than as painters and citizens of the country. We wish to be, for a happy period in Ottawa, simply painters.
P.S. - Oh, another point Richard. 1 wonder if you really rnean, concerning my painting, "A cornpletely dehydrated emotionalism." 1 am a little uncertain about that.
This morning, in conversation with Dr. Riddell, he stated that art has been taught at the College and now the University, since its inception in 1911 with very few breaks. So again, with reference to the forward by Dr. Comfort, 1 find it rather hard to go along with the idea that there has been no tradition in Regina. And one final point apropos of the forward, does the expression 'brilliant minds' really convey what is intended? (That is in the second last paragraph).
And more. I've just tarked over the fonvard with Nora. She'll probably drop you line. By the way [. . unreadable person's name. .] can hardly be written off - or even Kenderdine. There has been an art depart- ment at the main campus since the thirties. And of course your accurate reference to the artists Workshop is missing from the forward. etc. The English version of the Five Painters from RepindCina Peintres de Reoina exhibi- tion invitation.
The Trustees of the National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery ~ssociationof Ottawa invite you to attend a symposium*
Chairman: Kenneth Lochhead. The PaneIists: Ronald Bloore, Ted Godwin, Arthur McKay, Douglas Morton
to mark the opening of the exhibition Five Painters from Regina on Thursday 30
November 1961 at 8:30 at the National Gallery Auditorium. Admission is free. "Meaning and Purpose in Contemporary Art. (Collection URA)
Letter from the Secretary for Circulation, Exhibition Extension Services, at the National Gallery of Canada to Ron Bloore, Regina. November 15, 1961 (Collection NGC Archives)
This is just a note to Say that 1 checked and found no more arrangements had been made for your visit than the ones 1 men - tioned when you telephoned. 1 spoke to Mrs. Simrnins, though, and she added to what 1 knew the facts that the lunch December 1 will be from 1230 to 3:ûû p.m., the guests yourselves and a few painters from, a few Gallery people, and a few Canada Council people. 1 don't remember if 1 told you it was a male affair.
The informa1 gathering after the symposium is at the home of Mr. And Mrs. Tovell, members of the National Gallery Association of Ottawa. He is in Extemal Affairs. RBS [Simmins] likes Mrs. Tovell fine and 1 do too. Her party is not strictly male.
Your anival time of 12 noon still sounds fine, then, and I guess by now you will have changed your time of departure for New York. Letter from Richard Sirnmins, Ottawa to Krys Verrall, Toronto. August 30, 1998 (Personal collection)
1 think you are getting caught up in details that will add Meto whatever thesis you're attempting to develop. The importance of the [Symposium] was that this was unbelievably, the first time the NGC had ever sponsored an evening Iike this by a group of artists. The emphasis was [previously] always on the art historical approach . . . with a few exceptions. The annual reports will confirrn this. A new art movement; a new approach with artists . . . that was rny contribution. No, 1 never said "there were banners with the artist' pic- tures reproduced on them very large" for the simple reason that there weren't. That type of sophisticated display came at a much later date in most Can. art museums. Robert Hume, the NGC exhibition designer at the time, might know more about the hanging. He lives in the Toronto area. The stage of the old Lome Building's auditorium was shallow, designed for lectures or films. And yes, there were panels . . . actually ordinary white curtains that merely covered the screen. Okay, here we are. No banners. No photos either in b/w or colour. No, a symposium of this sort had never been done before. Were banners ever used before? I'd Say yes but 1 can't recall now. Paul Arthur, Toronto, who designed the catalogue might be able to help. 1 should imagine the old auditorium is still there & in use. You should check next theyou're in Ottawa. Have you discussed the pane1 with Ted Godwin? If not, do so.
"Daughter 'Digs' Him Best: Five Young Regina Painters Open Their Gallery Exhibit" Ottawa Journal. I Novernber 1961. (Collection NGC Archives)
Five young Regina painters made their Ottawa debut Thursday night by opening a display of their modern art at the National Gallery. And more than 400 persons were there to see a group of artists and works that Gallery Director Dr. Charles Comfort has described as "a remarkable phenornenon of the Canadian Prairies." The exhibition of about 40 decidedly "contemporary" works continues until Dec. 26 on the fourth floor. The painters are Ronald Bloore, Ted Godwin, Kenneth Lochhead, Arthur McKay, and Douglas Morton, al1 in their mid-thirties, with the exception of Mr. Godwin, 29. Chairman Lochhead started the panel off with a Louis Armstrong quote about jazz - "If you got to ask what it is, then you'll never know." Was this true of contemporary art? APPRECXATION INTUITIVE The panel seemed to agree appreciation of modem art is "intu- itive". But this intuition was in part based on "intellectual background". "It is very difficult for a painter to try and tell a non- painter how to look at a painting," commented Mr. Morton. He said he had trouble expraining his work even to his own family . Mr. Godwin, on the other hand, thought his little daughter
" 'digs' my painting best." He emphasized that he wasn't kidding. Mr. McKay agreed, that the viewer must "feel first and think later," because "you get the full impact of a painting before you start thinking." About mid-way into the discussion, panel members decid- ed they hadn't corne to grips with the "meaning and purpose of contem - porary art", which raised the basic question: "Why are we here?" NO STANDARD Mr. Bloore pointed out there was "no standard, no ultimate detenninant" for modem art. Time was the only real judge. Why does modem painting lack "collective symbols" that "the public" can readily understand? Perhaps, thought Mr. Bloore, because the public no longer believes in anything strongly enough to have collective symbols. So the only validity for the painter was "personal validi - ty." Al1 a painter can do, added Mr. Morton, was to continue being, in his paintings, "as human as he can possibly be" and hope to strike a few responsive chords in the viewing audience. And "al1 kinds of people do respond," Mr. Mckay said. COMMON GOAL He pointed out during the question period after the discus- sion that Canada does not have a "significant" painter or sculpter. But the Regina group and other Canadian schools along with the National Gallery Association, are al1 pursuing the common goal of producing in Canada a "really creative art form," he said. Guests viewed works of the painters foIlowing the sympo- sium. Reactions ranged from looks of deep, satisfying concentration, to "Why, my own child could have painted that!" The Five Painters from Regina (only one, Mr. McKAy, was actually born in Saskatchewan) were guests at a Gallery luncheon today, and then return to their prairie occupations - including coI1ege lec - turing, manufacturer's agent, and gallery curator. APPENDIX 3
FROM INTERVIEWS WITH RONALD L. BLOORE & RICHARD B. SIMMINS
Excerpt from Richard Simmins', former Director of Exhibition Extension Services, National Gallery of Canada, interview with Krys VerraII. February 1998.
INTERVIEWER: [Wlhat 1 am particularly interested in is the exhibition itself and why--1 guess the big questions--are why did the National Gallery organize a regional exhibition of Five Painters at that particular moment? What was hap'pening in the Gallery at that point in time?
SIMMINS: O.k. 1 worked directly for a guy called Donald Buchanan. He was the individual that period most interested in contemporary art. You have to remember how pitifully small the National Gallery was. It had a tiny full time staff: Kathleen Fenwick - Chief of Pnnts and Drawings. There was Ron Hubbard who was Chief of - in fact, 1 don' t think there was even a curator of Canadian Art. Ron Hubbard was the European and Canadian curator. And he was not interested in contemporary art. Now I'd come from Regina where, despite a right winged art his - tonca1 background, 1 was running a small gallery. But the best exhibi- tions you could get were contemporary art exhibitions. So I lived on a diet of contemporary art exhibitions for five years before 1 came from Regina to Ottawa. Plus the fact that 1 was closety associated with both McKay and Lochhead. And I've bot a very fond spot in my heart for Lochhead because he offered me my first job in Canada. And of course 1 learned a lot from Roy Kiyooka, who's never meritioned as part - seldom mentioned - as apart of that Regina scene. So when I hit Ottawa 1 was a contemporary oriented person - really for the rest of my life. Now I initiated the show and persuaded both Buchanan and Charles Comfort to go ahead with the show. Now the importance of the show--1 cannot under-estimate the importance of it. This was the first time the National Gallery of Canada had ever organized an exhibition of living Canadian artists. Now that's an absolute fact. It's not been docu- mented before. Now there were group shows exhibited in the National Gallery but never organized by them. The same holds true for one man or solo shows. The National Gallery, up uiitil the time 1 was there, never 162 organized a solo show by a living artist. They would exhibit them if orga- nized by Montreal or Toronto, or perhaps Vancouver, but they never initi- ated the show themselves. You had to be dead to get the National Gallery to give you a show. Naturally, you know, like a writer, you work with the scene you know best. The scene that I worked with principally when 1 was there was the contemporary scene. Now in theory 1 was supposed to do exhibi - tions for circulation across Canada. Now what happened was 1 fiIIed a hiatus - a vacuum - which existed at the National Gallery. 1 started to do shows which were not only across Canada but sbrted to get shown at the National Gallery. That was the beginning of the end of rny career at the National GalIery --
Excerpt from Ron Bloore's interview with Krys Verrall. December, 1997.
INTERVIEWER: 1 am still interested in the Mav Show because visually, 1 am still trying to imagine what it would look like. And it seems to me the whole notion of curating a show that has different kinds of things in it is -- 1 guess, 1 think of it as being more contemporary then that show would have been in the 1960s. . . --
BLOORE [Weins] had a room. He had a room al1 to himself. How did we select the works? 1 simple said to the guys, "O.K. We need "x" num- ber of works. You select them. You can hang yourselves," is what 1 said. And that's what they did. They brought in their works. I think 1 only had to clip one guy back - Ken back - because lie had about few too many works. He was in a very productive rnood at that tirne. It was a very--The stuff was al1 right up to date -- sixty, sixty-one. Boom. Simple as that.
INTERVIEWER: Except that Cliff's stuff covered a longer range of time.
BLOORE: 1 really don? recall that right now, I'd have to see the cata- logue, 1 think. Yeah, well, architecture takes, 1 mean you don't get your idea--you got to get a commission first. You got to have somewhat of a reputation in town to get somebody knocking on your door and you don' t Say, "Hey, wiIl you design my summer home?" Designed for somebody down in the Que'Appelle Valley which is very, very nice. But it takes time for the fame to come in. You go into the studio, beaten it up, you can knock one off in a day. Twice as long as it took Van Gogh to do a painting. So that's how the work was selected. 1 didn't want to do it. Whenever 1 did have a show up of a contemporary artist it was up to them.
INTERVIEWER: Up to the artist?
BLOORE: Unless it came from a rented show.
INTERVIEWER: 1 find it very interesting, to--the mix--
BLOORE: It worked very well. We took up the whole gallery.
INTERVIEWER: What was the was over-arching-?
BLOORE: That this was Five Painters, one sculptor, one architect work- ing right in Regina. And hanging right in the building called Regina College. With the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, a branch of that. And right up above the gallery - 1 always found how lovely it was - the schooi of art where Lochhead and McKay and earlier, Roy Kiyooka, had taught. So it was al1 very nicely knit kind of thing. It was a five or six or seven man show.
INTERVIEWER: It was making a kind of visual presentation of a cre- ative presence?
BLOORE: Which is really--no one who came out [for the Canadian Museum Director's conference] expected to see the gallery completely hung witli contemporary art--local painters. It went over very, very well, obviously.
INTERVIEWER: And Neisson's stuff too?
BLOORE: And Neisson's stuff too. Apparently he has had contact in the past, the recent past, 1 suppose with Ken Lochhead up in Ottawa. 1 think 1 did tell him the National Gallery didn't want his stuff. 1 certainly, 1 had to tell Ken, or rather, Cliff, that the National Gallery wouldn't take his stuff, no rnatter what argument 1 made. Which is too bad because it would have been a little bit more imaginative.
INTERVIEWER: It would have been very unusual. BLOORE: Yeah. But we were al1 fi'iends. We al1 thought and talked together, and argued together, speculated together. 1 must Say, 1 knew what 1 was doing. It worked. Roy, sure, he had been a big part of it, but not at that point in time. There's a reason: that it was economic too. Ha! 1 never thought of that one before in my life.
INTERVIEWER: That it was economic?
BLOORE Well, didn't have to pay for having his stuff shipped in. Ha. 1 just never thoupht of that before. No, that was never my consideration, it was just-- We have no installation shots--nothing--of the show.
INTERVIEWER: Of the Mav Show?
BLOORE: No. No. Didn't think about it. 1 was new to the business. 1 couldn't. Didn't have money to hire somebody to come in and bke shots. 1 didn't even try rnyself. 1 didn't even think about it. 1 mean, we were just-- 1 was just piitting up an exhibition--contemporary exhibition-that wasn't costing me--wasn't costing the Gallery any money.
INTERVIEWER: Sorry to keep going back to this point but 1 find it very interesting that the May Show which--
BLOORE Named after the month.
INTERVIEWER: Named after the month. And then it became the Five Painters from Regina which is a very different kind of vision.
BLOORE: EssentiaIly the same paintings went up. There were just fewer.
INTERVIEWER: But by framing it as those Five Painters instead of those seven--it becomes--the whole package becomes a very different package.
BLOORE: Somewhat. 1 mean it could have been seven painters from Regina.
INTERVIEWER: Except that - the Regina Seven - except that two of you weren't painters.
BLOORE: We weren't thinking that way anyways. So help me. When we put up the Mav Show 1 knew 1 had to have an exhibition for the
1 6s Canadian Art Museum Directors' Organization. I had to have something on the wall. Didn't want--the local collection is not that interesting. And 1 thought these guys were pretty God darnn good. Stand up anywhere in the country--the work they were doing. And so, nobody knew anything about Regina. Lets let them know that here - in the middle of the cultural Siberia of Canada - there's actually something going on with these peo- ple. That was all. We never thought of it in terms of any kind of history. Just another show going up for a specific purpose as far as I was con - cerned. Simmins then changed his mind that it was o.k. from being not o.k. The show was fine. It was just sort of exciting for us. Finally they flew us down to Ottawa. There was a panel discussion there. God damn - big white panels behind us that looked like tomb Stones. Ken went to pore some water at the beginning and the microphone was nght there - gurgle, gurgle - 011God. APPENDIX 4
TWO EXHIBITION CHECKS LISTS: THE FIVE PAINTERS FROM REGINA/ CINQ PEINTRES DE REGINA AND THE MAY SHOW
The following pages contain the check lists from the National Gallery of Canada exhibi - tion, November 1%1, and from the Mav Show, May 1961 at the Mackenzie Art Gallery. The lists appear as Figures since 1 have trkd reproduce them as closely as possible to how they appeared in their respective catalogues. However, with the NGC list 1 have inserted current information on the paintings where known.
Figure 1. Following page. . The Five Painters from Re~indCina Peintres de Regina exhibition check list. (NGC 1961)
Figure 2. See page xix The Mav Show: An Exhibition of Significant Contemporary Art Created in Regina, Organized by the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, May 9-August 31, 1%1, exhibition check Iist (Mackenzie 1x1) Figure 1.
RONALD L. BLOORE 1. Paicting No 1 (1959) Oil on masonite. Huile sur carton. 4û"X48" 2. The Establishment (1959) Oil on board. Huile sur carton. 48"X48" Collection: Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Johnson, Regina 3. Painting (1960). Oil on board. Huile sur carton. 48"X%" 4. Sign No 5 (1% 1) Oil on masonite. Huile sur carton. 48"X78 5. Painting (1%1) Oil on masonite. Huile sur carton. 48x96" 6. Drawing (1x0) Ink on paper. Encre sur papier. 26"X20 112" 7. Drawing (1%0) Ink on paper. Encre sur papier. 26"X20 1/2" Collection: Dr. W.A. Riddell, Regina 8. Drawing (1%1) Ink on paper. Encre sur papier. 26"X20 112"
TED GODWIN 9. Blue Move (1961) Oil on canvas. Huile sur toile. 78 1/2"x65 1/2" 10. Amber Deep (1%1) Oil on canvas. Huile sur toile. 78 112"x 66 112" 11. Red Grew (1x1) Oil on Canvas. Huile sur toile. 78 1/2"x 66 112" 12. Light Swim (1960) Oil on canvas. Huile sur toile. 68"X56" 13. Late Summer (l%l) Oil on canvas. Huile sur toile. 49"X6û 314" 14. Drawing (l%l) Wax crayon. Pastel à la cire. 1 1" x 8112" Collection: Noman MacKenzie Art Gallery 15. Feel (1961) Ink drawing. Dessin d'encre. 16 1/4"x14 1/47 16. Double (1961) Ink drawing. Dessin d'encre. 20"x13"
KENNETH C. LOCHHEAD 17. Wobble Tree (1%1) Gesso and oil on board. Gesso et huile sur carton. 48X72" (Collection: Frank Sojonky, Vancouver) 18. Medieval Landscape (1961) Gesso and oil on board. Gesso et huile sur carton. 36"X48 19. Eclat (1960) Gesso and oil on board. Gesso et huile sur carton. 48x36" Collection: Mr. and Mrs. A.W. Johnson, Regina 20. Stampede (1961) Gesso and oil on board. Gesso et huile sur carton. 48X48" 21. Minotaur (1960) Gesso and oil on board. Gesso et huile sur carton. 72"X48 22. Three Faces of Nature 1 (1961) Oil 0x1 paper. Huile sur papier. 219'X26" 23. Three Faces of Nature II (1x1) Oil on paper. Huile sur papier. 21"X26" 24. Three Faces of Nature II1 (1%1) Oil on paper. Huile sur papier. 2lWx26" ARTHUR F. MCKAY 25. *Effulgent Image (1961). Enamel on board. Email sur carton. 48 3/4"x48 3/4" Collection: Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Weins 26. Microcosrn (1960) Enamel on board. Email sur carton. 48 1/2"x72 314" 27. Darkness (1%1) Enarnel on board. Email sur carton. 7WX4.83/4" 28. Inward (1961) Enamel on board. Email sur carton. 48 518x48 3/4" 29. The Void (1961) Enamel on board. Email sur carton. 48 3/4"x48 3/4" 30. Image of Potential(1961) Enarnel on board. Email sur carton. 48 1/4"x48 1/2" 3 1. Interior Space (1959) Enamel on paper. Email sur papier. 209'X26" Collection: Ronald L. Bloore, Regina
DOUGLAS MORTON 33. Three Blue (196û) Oil on board. Huile sur carton. 5lWX51" 34. Green Night (1961) 0i1 on board. Huile sur carton. 5lWX55" 35. Untitled Red (1960) Oil on board. Huile sur carton. 51"X48" 36. October Collage (1%1) Collage on board. Collage sur carton. 37. Brownscape (1961) Oil on board. Huile sur carton. 41 1/2"x48" 38. Auction (1961) Oil on board. Huile sur carton.
* Exhibited in Ottawa only1Exposée à Otbwa seulement Figure 2.
RONALD BLOORE 1. LA FORET MECANIQUE Enarnel on board. 1958 Collection A.F. McKay, Regina 2. PAINTING #1 Oil on board. 3. WHITE WALL Oil on board. 4. PAINTING #2 Oil on board. 5. PAINTING #2 Oil on board. 6. DRAWING Drawing. Collection of K.L. Lochhead, Regina (Ottawa) 7. DRAWING Drawinp 8. DRAWING Drawing 9. SIGN #1 Oil on board. 10. SIGN #2 Oil on board.
TED GODWIN 1. PAINTING #l Oil on canvas. 2. PAINTING #2 Oil on canvas. 3. PAINTING #3 Oil on canvas. 4. PAINTING #4 Oil on canvas. 5. PAINTING #5 Oil on canvas. 6. ORGANIC #1 Pastel 7. ORGANIC #2 Pastel 8. DRAWING #1 Brush and ink drawing 9. DRAWING #2 Brush and ink drawing 10. ORGANIC #3 Ink drawing 11. ORGANIC #4 Ink drawing Collection of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery
KENNETH C. LOCHHEAD 1. TRANSIT Gesso and flat black on board. 196û 2. ECLAT Gesso and flat black on board. 1960 3. SLANT Gesso and flat black on board. 1960 4. MINOTAUR Gesso and flat black on board. 196û 5. WOBBLE TREE Gesso and fiat black on board. 1961 6. Insecticide Gesso and flat black on board. 1961 7. GERMINATION Gesso and flat black on board. 1961 8. SURVIVAL Gesso and flat black on board. 1961
! 9. MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE Gesso and flat black on board 1%1 10. HONEYSUCKLE Gesso and flat black on board. 1%1 11. IRON MAN Gesso and flat black on board. 1961 12. VIBRATIONS ON THE PLAINS Draw ing. Collection of the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery 13. EVERYBODY'S DOING IT Drawing. Collection of the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery 14. ENCOUNTER Drawing. 15. NO SWORD SCHOOL Drawing.
16. SCRIPT Drawing. ,
ARTHUR McKAY 1. INTERIOR Oil on canvas. Collection of C. Weins, Regina (Vancouver) 2. VALLEY LANDSCAPE Enamel on paper. Collection of F.J. Wagner, Regina 3. ORGANIC STRUCTURE Enamel and fiat black on paper. 4. DARK INTRUSION Enarnel and flat white on board. 5. EPIC THEME Enamel and flat white on board. Collection of the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery 6. DESCENDING Enamel on paper. Collection of M. Brownstone, Regina 7. UNTITLED PAINTING Flatblue, white and enamel on board. 8. THE VOID Enamel on board. 9. EFFULGENT IMAGE Enamel and white on board. Collection of C. Weins, Regina 10. MICROCOSM Enamel and flat white on board. 1 1. DARKNESS Enamel and flat white on board.
DOUGLAS MORTON 1. UNTITLED #1 Enamel on board 2. OCTOBER RED Enamel on board 3. BURLAP BALLOONS Enamel on board 4. a) JUNGLE Enamel on board 4. b) JUNGLE Enamel on board 5 LA VIE Enamel on board 6. THREE BLUE Enamel on board 7. WINTER NIGHT Enamel on board 8. UNTITLED #2 Enamel on board 9. SNOW BLUE Enamel on board 10. KEN'S NYLON Enamel on board 11. EGYPT Enamel on bard 12. THE BROWN ONE Enamel on board
WOLFRAM NIESSON 1. MOTHER AND CHILD Gum wood 2. WOMAN Walnut 3. CREEPING CHILD Brass 4. MAN IN THE ATOMIC AGE Gum Wood Collection of K. C. Lochhead, Regina 5. COMPOSITION IN THREE ELEMENTS Granite Collection of K.C. Lochhead, Regina 6. RECLINING Brass 7. SITTING CHILD Brass 1956 8. SNAKE Bronze 9. CALL Redwood burrow 10. MAN IN STEEL Nickel
CLIFFORD WEINS 1. SPORT LODGE, Student project Catskill Mountains 2. CHAIN STORE, Student project U.S.A. 3. UNDERGROUND AND DRIVE-IN BANK, Student project Rhode Island 4. SEMI-PERMANENT HUT FOR BOY'S CAMP Rhode Island 5. ARTIST'S STUDIO Balgonie 6. DOCTOR'S WAITING ROOM Regina 7. MERRILL AGENCIES Regina S. CIVIC CENTRE Moose Jaw 9. FIVE ROOM SCHOOL Pense 10. ST. JOSEPH'S CHURCH AND MODEL Whi tewood 1 1. GLIDDEN PAINT STORES Regina 12. ST. MARK'S SHOP Lumsden 13. BELL CITY MOTEL Reoina 14. BALGONIE SCHOOL Balgonie 15. INTERPROVINCIAL STEEL WEIGH STATION Regina 16. INTERPROVINCIAL STEEL OFFICE BUILDING . Regina 17. EIGHT ROOM SCHOOL Lumsden 18. GYMNASIUM, ASSEMBLY, PUBLIC SCHOOL BOARD Regina 19. KENLEY APARTMENTS Regina 20. MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH Regina 21. SUMMER RESIDENCE (under construction) AND MODEL LeBret APPENDIX 5
PATH OF FISCAL CONTROLAT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA AFïER 1951
Nikolas Rose (19%) writes that "And the enclosures of expertise are to be penetrated through a range of new techniques for exercising critical scrutiny over authority - bud - get disciplines, accountancy and audit being three of the most salient" (54.) Although not elaborated in my discussion of the Five Painters and the National Gallery of Canada, fiscal procedures played a critical roIe in state relations with ''am's length" cultural institutions Iike the National GaIIery. (See Table 1) The budget was prepared and sub- rnitted by the Gallery's Business Administrator. Financial Statements were audited before subrnission to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. However, authori ty passed directly from the Board of Trustees to the Minister. The Board served as a con- tact point between the institution and government. The Director reported to the Board and the Board reported to the Minister. (M. King 1996,33-7) TABLE f
PATH OF FISCAL CONTROL AT THE NGC AFTER 195 1
Parliament Annual Parliamentary Appropriation - lCabinet Committee Consolidated Revenue Fund
President of the Treasury Board - Special Operating Treasury Board Account
I I - National Gallery Purchase Account Minister of Finance Ministry of Finance
Minister of Citizenship Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and Immigration
- - Auditor General of Canada
Chairman of the bard Board of Trustees - NGC of Trustees - NGC
Director of the NGC
- Business Administrator APPENDIX 6
CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE BODY OF THE TEXT & HYPERTEXT
In the Body of the Text
1. Five black and white archival photographs of the artists, Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay, Morton. Letter from Susan Campbell, Head of Reproduction Rights and Sales, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC).
2. Bloore's work: Painting #1 (courtesy of the Mackenzie Art Gallery), The Establishment (courtesy of the NGC), Painting, 1960 (courtesy of the artist), Sign No. 5 (courtesy of the artist), Drawing No. 7 (courtesy of the NGC). 1) Letter of consent from the artist, Bloore 2) Contract from the Mackenzie Art Gallery 3) Contract frorn the National Gallery of Canada 4) Letter from Susan Campbell, Head of Reproduction Rights and Sales, NGC.
3. Godwin's work: Blue Move (courtesy of University of Regina (URA) ), Amber Deep (courtesy of the URA), Red Grew (courtesy of the artist), Drawing (Organic #4) (courtesy of The Mackenzie). 1) Letter of consent from the artist, Godwin 2) E-mail correspondence from Selina Coward, Archives Assistant, the University of Regina Archives 3) E-mail correspondence from Jennifer Churchill, Art Technician, The Glenbow Museum 4) See contract from the Mackenzie Art Gallery, dated February 10, 1998.
4. Lochhead's work: Medieval Landscape (courtesy of the artist), Eclat (courtesy of the NGC), Stampede (courtesy of the artist), Minotaur (courtesy of the artist). 1) Letter of consent from the artist, Lochhead 2) See letter from S. Campbell, NGC, dated November 13, 1998.
5. McKay's work: Effulgent Image (courtesy of the Mackenzie Art Gallery), Microcosm (courtesy of the AGO), Darkness (courtesy of the Mackenzie Art Gallery), The Void (courtesy of the EAG). 1) Letter of consent frorn the artist, McKay 2) See contract from the Mackenzie Art Gallery, dated February 10, 1998 3) Contract from the Art Gallery of Ontario 4) Letter from D.B.G. Fair, Curator of Historical Art, The London Regional Art and HistoRcaI Museurns 5) E-mail correspondence from Bruce H. Anderson, Registrar, The Mackenzie Art Gallery 6) Bruce Dunbar, Registrar, The Edmonton Art Gallery.
6. Morton work's: Three Blue (courtesy of the artist), Green Night (courtesy of the artist), October Collage (courtesy of the artist), Brownscape (courtesy of The AGGV), Auction (courtesy of the artist). 1) Letter of consent from the artist, Morton (a) 2) Letter of consent from the artist (b) 3) Letter of consent from Jonathan Lathigee, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
7. Black and white archival photograph, Five Painter from ReginalCinq Peintres de Regina, 1%1. See NGC contract dated May 14, 1998.
8. Black and white archival aenal photograph courtesy of the Department of National Defense. Letter of confirmation to K.P. Aspila, Director of Intellectual Property, Department of National Defense, Ottawa.
9. Black and white archival photograph of the artist, Ted Godwin. See letter from S. Campbell, the NGC, dated November 25, 1997. Mt. Krys Verrall York University 4700 Keete Street Room S7f 9 Ross Mrth York. Ontario M3J 1P3
Dear Mr. Verrdl:
Ir. respcmse ta your recenr reqrwst, wa are pleased to enclose a bleck and white photograph of 5 archivai photographs of the artists participating in the 1961 e%hibitioci. "Five Painters from Rugfna': Bl~ora.Gadwtn, tochheod. McKsy and Momn tor use in yoor Moetars thesis on the 6.
Also enc!osed you witt find our icwoice for the purchmo 01 rhe photographie materiai.
It is ti pleasurc to be of assistance to you.
Susan CampbeJL He& Reproduction Rights arid Sales (Regisiraiiaril a (6131 990.0542; Fux: 46t 3) 990-9980 Interner: [email protected] Enck. hercky agrcc to a:iow for the repoductian of Painting No ? (1959) Thc EsraLlkhrrirznt C 1 cS.W) Fainmg { 1960) Sign No 5 (i961j Paimng i i 36 ! Drawing ( 7 460; Drawing f l %O! cxhiw& in rhc 136 1 MC exhibition fivc Pa'mfs hmRminaiCinu Peintres oc iZcama in i j Ki'ys \Jcmiïs Mas-.er of Art: Intcrdiscipltna~thecir groject, ThRcciim 5: ti?rrr~ertionsi~ gwcmancc. riovcrr~mcrnand visual omductiofl and 2)in thc interna mm;iomnt of thc a forc mentioned shesis, pve 6ix, publistted online tnmugii the Art Gallery of York University. The Master oi Arts thcsis will be writtm under Mc direction ot Pmfe!ssors Renate Wickms (Chair, S~pcrvkùnqCommittce ), Rob Albrinon and Tirn Whitcr. The interna: project is mgsupW by Lee R~doey.AGMl €ducation Officcr and Jack Laing. AGYU ~lssistmt curator- realizc fbt these two projecfs arc educaüonal and that no tinawial imcfits are ex@& to acmfrom txm. .-. -*--'MACKENZJG ART GALLERY
National ihilcry Mu& clcs hcaux+wts dCPnada du Cad h 1s a pmtsure ta bm af assistance to ym.
Head Hepraductiari Rights and Se4s CRminnt)6nl w [el31 8966542: Fax: 1613) 990.9986 Enck. CmFORM FOR THE PUWTION OF VfSUAt MES From: Sdina Coward [email protected]~ To: Krys Verrall ckverrall @YorkU.CA> Subject: Regina Five Website Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 09:40:49 -0400 (EDT) Priority: NORMAL X-Mailer: Simeon for Windows X-Authentication: lMSP Mime-Version: 1.0 Status:
Here's the information on the three slides:
"Painting No. 1" by Ron Bloore
SIide 344- Title:
Date: Colour: Photographer: [Ron Bloore] Additional Information: Work: "Painting No. 1" - 1959 Date: 1975 Medium: Sire: Collecter: Location: Winnipeg Art Gallery Event: Ronald Bloore, Sixteen Years, 1958-1974
This slide is located in 86-72: Ron Bloore papers siide collection.
"Green Night" by Doug Morton if17 Title: Works of Art Date: -- Additional Information: detail of #14 Work: "Green Night" Date: 1961 Medium: oil and enamelhasonite Size: 51" x 48" "Stampede" by Ken Lochhead
#124 Tïtle: Other Attists and Works Date: -- Additional Information: Lo-1; Artist - Ken Lochhead Work: "Stampede" Date: 1961 Event: Creemore Show, 1981
The above two slides are located in 87-43: Doug Morton papers SIides col 1 ection .
The numbers in front of each title are the numbers of the siides in the collections.
You will need ?O obtain permission from the artiçts themselves (this is a courtesy as these works were done before 1988 and you don7 need, officially, to obtain permission from the artists) and the photographer of the slides. In this case, you will need to contact Ron Bloore and Doug Morton and find out who are the photographers and obtain written permission. Their addresses are as follows (if you don't have thern al ready):
Ron Bloore XXXXXXXXXXX Toronto, Ontario M6G 3H
Doug Morton XXXXXXXXXXX Victoria, British Columbia V8Y 2K
I am assuming that you will be requiring prints from these slides. Please let me know if this is the case.
I will take a look in the papers here and see if there are copies of the other two that you are needing. I will let you know what I find.
Please let us know how the website progresses.
Selina Coward Archives Assistant University of Regina Archives University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan CANADA S4S 0A2 Phone: (306) 585-4014 FAX: (306) 586-9862 X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.2 Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:21:10 -0700 From: "Jennifer Churchill"
Dear Ms. Verrall,
I have received your email requesting reproduction permission for Ted Godwin's work Red Grew. We greatly appreciate the notification of your intentions to reproduce this work for both a web site and a written document for your thesis project on the Regina Five.
Reproduction permission for the works in Our collection is a fee incurred for the reproduction of the photograph of the work, not the work itself. In your case, you have received a d~gitized image directly from the artist, and are thus not required to pay Glenbow a reproduction fee.
Good luck ~Mthyour thesis! If you have any questions, or require further clarification, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely, Jennifer Churchill Art Technician Tel. 403-268-4134 Fax.403-265-9769 [email protected] cxpaxed ta acc w from them.
Art Gallery of Ontario Reproduction Rights Form
Krys verra11 - ..- . -.- ennihai-iriD Nwda~a&wt 9 a&Gw)iirUGYh
TOrQntO, Ont.. n6R 1x9
Uarch 30, 1998 - P.---. -- m rdc~unlgl-. KEN Arthur Canadran, 1926 ficrocosm ~961 cul on nasonite 182.6 x 320.0 Cai ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO, TORONTO LRAHM
re. Arthir HeKay, üarkncss (1960>
Ynur iettet regarding a @hotograph of tlie above work has heen iarsaarded ta ry affiee. fhfortunatcly. wr institution has noither a photograph nnr a ncgatlve of this particulsr pshtjng. A firrthîr complication ia that the wark )Las been on loan for over a year to the .HacKenzie Art Gallery fn Hegina md 3s part ai a tourin* exhibition. This mcans That it iu diffic?~ltto iaiaMiate 1 y proeute the raquestd phr~trjptapli at this tjoe,
Rowever, 3 have ancloscd a photocapy OP a photocopy. Tt aay assist you but its quality of r+preduction is poor. The HacKenzSa may be able r0 belp y3u sIme the mark probably was photagrsphed fat the exhib5tfarr azd tour.
Hy apologies for the defay in respcmdjng: our staff and uork tjae is liait4 and rducee.
Yours sincercly,
D.R.G. Fair, 8 Curator of Historinal Art From: "Bruce H. Anderçon"
May 22, 7998
Dear Krys
I don't have a slide of Darkness. We had a 4 x 5 colour transparency made for the exhibition catalogue. Why not just scan the reproduction in the catalogue on a flat bed scanner to get a digital image? It's okay by us if it is okay with Art as long as you credit the source (photo:Don Hall, emibition catalogue etc.)
Bruce
Bruce H. Anderson Regiçtrar MacKenzie Art Gallery lncorporated 3475 Albert Street Regina, SK, S4S 0G3 (306)522-4242ext443û The crcdit line mwappear wiùi &a imsge in yaur publication. thme Blue (1966) wM@tC1961) NGC üfWkd Red (1960) October Codliigçr (1961) Auctim (1961) ahi~tedin the 1961 MC-Ri- in 1)
tel: 416-736-822. f3r: 416-630-8634, obnail: Ch* of the Supervisory Gcrmniittee. Renate Wkkens, QhR..can be readwl ar: York University, Fine Arts Cultural Studtes, Wm«S Cdkgc, 4700 Kerrle St North Yarlc, OmriO M3J 1P3 te!: 41 6-736-5822. fak; 416-650-8034. e-mail; Mr. Verrall, Attached, please find a scan of the Morton image, Brownscape, from the AGGV exhibition catalogue. it should reproduce upt O about 4x5 with Iittle to no image degradation. if you need a larger reproduction, please write bac k and 1 will send a larger scan. Could the aggv also please receive a copy of your thesis when complete? thank you jonathan Attachment converted: PocketHammer530FMF:brownscape.jpg(JPEGIJVWR) (000246C5) ------Jonathan Lathigee Systems Administrator / Membership Assistant Art Gallery of Greater Victoria t.250.384.4101 f.250.361.3995 K.P. Aspila Di rector lntellectual Property National Defense Headquarters 101 Colonel By Dr. Ottawa Ont. AI A 0K2 Fax: 61 3-992-8872 Dear Mr. K.P. Aspila, I am writing regarding our telephone conversation of 13 October. In that discussion I requested permission to published a National Defense aerial photograph in my Masters Thesis. Following is a brief description of my project and the number for the negative I am interesteci in using. As a fine art and photegraphic historian, rny thesis focuses on one exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1961: the Five Painters from ReginaCinq Peintres de Regina. Through this exhibition I investigate early government fundjng of the arts in Canada. The project includes a great deal of archivai visual documents from the National Gallery Archives, the University of Regina Archives, including other sources. I have been able to amass approximately forty images, primarily of the exhibited art works. By seeking out the aeriai photograph I want to give the reader a visual sense of a larger context. I hopthis bnef description of my project is satisfactory. My hope is to complete the thesis by the winter of 1999. Roger Champaign of the Department of National Defense Photo Unit has located three negatives appropriate for my needs. These were taken Sept. 1964. The negative numbers are: CEPEI 9-1, 19-2, 19-3. Withait being able to see them I have arbitrarily chosen CEPE 19-3. Thank you for your assistance, Sincerely, Krys Verrall, Masters Candidate Graduate lnterdisciplinary Studies, York University 1. The Five Painters from RegidCina Peintres de Reoina exhibition catalogue. Letter of confirmation to Serge Thériault, Chief of Publications Publications Division, National Gallery of Canada. 2. Black and white photograph of the Regina Five, Regina 1%1, courtesy of URA. Letter from Selina Coward, Archives Assistant . 3. Video captures from video recording of the opening ceremonies of the Arthur F. McKay: A critical Retrospective, February 1997. The Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina. Courtesy of independent film maker Mark Wihak. 4. Letters of consent from the artists Bloore, Godwin, Lochhead, McKay, Morton. 5. The Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA) Art Collection, York University. Letter from Seth Feldman, Dean of Fine Arts. 6. The Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) Art Collection, York University. 1) Letter from Lee Rodney, AGY U Education Offker. 2) Introductory page to Dve Blue from the AGYU on-line internet site. 7. Letters of consent from the artists Bloore, Lochhead, McKay, Morton. 8. Letters of consent from the artists Godwin, Lochhead, Morton. Serge Theriault, Chief of Publications Publications Division, National Gallery of Canada 380 Sussex Drive, P.O. Box 427, Station A Ottawa, Ont. KIN 9N4 March 13, 1998 Dear Serge Thériault, Re: publication of portions of the National Gallery of Canada catalogue Five Painters from RegindCinq Peintres du Regina on the world wide web JI was pleasure meeting you in Ottawa last month. In our conversation I explained my interest in the catalogue was educational. As a complete text it forms a integral part of my interdisciplinary MA thesis. An artist's/curatorial project for the internet accompanies my thesis research. At the time of Our meeting you indicated your concerns regarding publication was that the National Gallery be properly and completely acknowledged. The site is now up and available through the Art Gallery of York University's site. Although my project is still in progres, I hope that you find what is up satisfactory. On March 16 1 will present my MA thesis work in a colloquiurn at York University. At this time the www artist's/curatorial DYEBLUE will also be presented. This site represents a merging of fields of practice for me as an artist, curator and academic. The results have kenpretty rewarding. I have enclosed a flyer and card for your information. If you have further concerns please contact me. Sincerely, Krys Verralt; BFA Masters Candidate, Graduate lnterdisciplinary Studies, York University From: Selina Coward Dear Mr. 1 Ms Wrrall: Thank you for your enquiry about the Regina Five. Summer would indeed be a good time to come to view the materials from each of the members. Unfortunately, I wjll be away durhg the spring andlor summer. 1 will try to inform you as to when I will be away so that you can plan your trip accordingly. Please be sure to give us about two weeks' notice when you plan on coming. I had done some work on each of the Regina Five collections except for the last one from Ron Bloore. I should be able to assist you when you arrive. The photographs in the Doug Morton papers (87-43) were taken in February of 1987. 1 don't think these will meet your needs. The one that can be viewed on the lnternet was taken in 1968. This one, 1 think, is one of the few that has the entire group together in one shot. The catalogue from 'Five Painters from ReginalCinq Peintres de Regina' has individual shots of each but they are taken in the time frame of the November 1961 show at the National Gallery. I have photocopied the cover, photographs and credits from this show and am sending via mail to you. Please let me know if you don't receive them in two weeks and 1 will resend them. Unfortunately, these photcgraphs are not in Ken Lochhead's papers where I found the cata- logue. I don? know of any other source for a group photo other than possibly contacting the National Gallery under the reference number in the back of the catalogue. (1 am inciuding that reference number.) Photographs are available to researchers under the following conditions: if the photographer is known permission must be obtained by the researcher before copying is permitted. If the pho- tographer is not known, a reasonable attempt has to be made to find the photographer by the researcher (suggested source is usually the donor). Should a photograph be used by a researcher the University of Regina Archives must be credited along with the collection number and title of the collection where the photograph was obtained from. If copies are to be published in a catalogue, book, manuscript, thesis, etc. it is a good idea to state your intentions before - hand to the Archives. All copying will be handled by Archives staff and Audio-Visual Services at the University of Regina. Reproduction cost consist of reproductive costs and a small service fee. No materials can be removed from the University of Regina Archives. As to the details of your study of the Regina Five-are you interested only in the Five before or after they went their separate ways? The more details you can supply on what you desire to study would also help me in having matarials available for you. I hope I've given you the information you require. Thank you for your enquiry. I look fonivard to seeing you later in the year. Yours truly Selina Coward Archives Assistant University of Regina Archives University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan CANADA S4S 0A2 Phone: (306) 585-4014 FAX: (306)586-9862 X-Sender: [email protected] Mime-Version: 1.O Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 21 :54:15 +O600 To: kverrall @yorku.ca (Krys Verrall) From: [email protected] (Mark Wihak) Subject: Re: Video Status: Hi Krys, Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you re: video clips on the web page. It's alright with me, but I guess the final approval has to corne from the artists themselves. They've given me their wntten permission to use the videtaped material for my documentary, but that wouldn't include pasçing that material along to a third party for transmission on a new bit of media like the WWW. Sorry if this seems like passing the buck, but I think it is a necessary step to take as I hadn't got their phor approval for anything along these lines. If they say yes, then go ahead and use it. Mark ir is U~JD=~.[PUP * ~-ntt~pst- L F. Got your letter. I've taken reading week off to work on my thesis, but I'm still doing sorne 'work' from home. Your proposal sounds interesting. I think that the AGYU might be amenable on three conditions: 1. you frame it as an artist's project, not as curatorial as you (originally) proposed to inseri your work amongst others; 2. you get wri tten permission from al1 living artists to use their work in this way, in the case of a dead artist you'll have to deal with their estate; 3. Our office and staff are extremely overtaxed until mid april, if you do wish to carry this out, it would be contingent upon space and time. The sumrner is usually better. Cal1 me at 964-3361(leave message with a number where you can be contacted) to discuss this further if you want within the next week, otherwise I will be in the office on March 3. You will eventually have to approach both Jack Liang and Loretta Yarlow with regard to this, as you know, this type of project fall more witt-iin their jurisdiction than mine. Lee CONSENT FORH FOR THE PUBLiCATDN OF WSUAL MAGES in 1) Krys- ferrsif's MasPer of&& lnterriiaciplinary üwsk proje&, The Regina 5: 1rrtBfl9diOnôingcwamarioe,gouemmecitarrdvisualprobudiwrmd2)#rthe hbmet mnpnmt dihe a fae men- thesis, Oye Blue, publim onfine lhmugh the Art Gallety d York UnivarSity. tel: 4167365822, fax 41 645043034. -il; [email protected]*. Yod University. Fine Arts Cultural Studies. Winters col kg^. 4700 K& St. North York Ontario. M33 1P3 tel: 4 1 6-736-5822. fax; 4 16-650-8034. e-mail: [email protected]>. kreby agcee to alhfor the reproduction of Dated thk Q day of -- Wou r --199 7- tel: 41 6-736-582 2. fax: 41 ô-650-8034, e-ma& [email protected]~. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Art Gallery of York University. Dou~lasMorton: Paintin~s1949-1971. North York: Art Gallery of York University, 1972. ------Ted Godwin: Paintincls Prints October 21 - November 9. 197'1 . North York, Art Gallery of York University, 1971. ------Artists on Carnous: works bv teachino members of the Facultv of Fine Arts October 29 - November 13. 1970. North York: The Art Gallery of York University, 1970. Arthur F. McKav: a critical retros~ectiveo~enino ceremonies. Produced and directed by Mark Wihak. Unedited video footage. 1997, videocassette. Bloore, Ron. Interview by author, 11 December 1997, Toronto Ontario. Tape recording. Personal collection. ------Interview with Joan Murray. 10 January 1978, Toronto Ontario. Collection URA and Library: Artist's File: Ronald L. Bloore. a------Correspondence. September 27, 1961. Collection NGC Archives. Boiiltbee, Jeny. "Ottawa Exhibit by City Artists" The Leader-Post. Nov. 28, 1% 1. Collection URA and Library: File: University of Saskatchewan, Regina. Campus Faculty-Bloore. Burns, Mike. Persona1 communication with author, 14 JuIy 1997, Regina Saskatchewan. Campbell, Cyndie, Head, Archives, Documentation and Visual Resources, NGC. Personal communication with author, 9 February 1998, Ottawa Ontario. Coward, Selina, Archiva1 Assistant URA and Library, to author, February 27, 1997. E-mail correspondence. Persona1 collection. Davitt, Patrick. Reoina Leader Post. Sat. Oct. 17, 1987. Collection URA and Library: file: Regina Five. Godwin, Ted. Interview by author, 25 October 1997, Cal- Alberta. Tape recording. Persona1 collection. Kiyooka, Roy Kenzie. Homage to Debussv (Lamer). Painting. Art Gallery of York University, York University, Toronto. Lochhead, Ken. Interview by author, 10 February 1998, Ottawa Ontario. Tape recording. Persona1 collection. ------"Kenneth Lochhead, 35: Medieval Landscape," Ottawa Journal, Dec. 9, 1961. Collection NGC Archives: Artist's File: Ken Lochhead. Mackenzie Art Gallery. Mav Show. Exhibition catalogue. Regina: Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1%1. Collection URA and Library. McKay, Arthur F. Interview by author. 29 November 19W, Lion's Bay B.C. Tape recording. Persona1 collection. Moon, Robert. "Art Atmosphere of Regina topic of Ottawa discussion" Reaina Leader -Post. December 1, 1%1. Collection NGC Archives: Exhibition File: Five Painters from Regina. Morton, Doug. Interview by author. 30 November 1997, Victoria B. C. Tape recording. Persona1 collection. National Archives of Canada (NAC). RG 2, A-5-A vol. 2745, File # 1-8-59-22-9 59. NGC and Archives. Five Painters From ReginaKina Peintres de Reoina. Exhibition File. Ottawa Citizen. "International Trends in Prairie Painting" 2 December 1% 1. CoIlection NGC Archives: Five Painters From Reoina Exhibition file. Simmins, Richard. Interview by author. 9 February 1998, Ottawa Ontario. Tape recording. Personal collection. ------Ottawa, to Ken Lochhead, Regina Saskatchewan, 17 August 1%1. Correspondence. Collection NGC Archives: Artists File: 1% 1-65,86-29: Ken Lochhead. ------Ottawa, to the author, Toronto Ontario, 14 February 1998. Persona1 collection. Verrall, Krys. "Dye Blue, Emma Lake and its relocations: an exhibition proposal with seven artists." Exhi bition proposal. Collection of the author, 19%. Secondary Sources Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photogra~hv,trans. Richard Howard. New York HiIl and Wang, 1995. Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Photooraphv in print: writinps from 1816 to the resent ,319-338, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Vicki Goldberg. New York: Simon and Schuster, c1981. Bennett, Toiiy. The Birth of the Museum. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. Berger, John. Wavs of Seeing. London and Harmondsworth: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972. Brent, Doug. "Guest Editor's Introduction" in Houmal Vol. 6, No. 3, August 19%.On- line. AvaiIable at: hanover.edu/philos/ejournal/archive/v6n3/~6n3.html . Bryden, P. E. "Liberal Politics and Social Policy in the Pearson Era, 1957-1968.'' Ph.D. diss., York University, 1994. Burchell, Graham. "Liberal government and techniques of the self' in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism. neo-liberalism and rationalities of yovernment, eds. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, Nikolas Rose. London; Chicago: University College London Press; University of Chicago Press, 1996 Burnett, David, and Marilyn Schiff. Contem~oraryCanadian Art. Toronto: Hurtig Publisliers Ltd. with The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983. Clifford, James. "On Collecting Art and Culture" in The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988. Crow, Thomas. The Rise of the Sixties. New York: Perspectives, Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 19%. Dean, Mitchell. "Foucault, government and the enfolding of authority" in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism. neo-liberalisrn and rationalities of oovemment, eds. A. Barry, T. Osbourne, N. Rose. London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ------2. London: Routledge, 1994a. ------" 'A social structure of many souls': Moral regulation, government, and seIf- formation." Canadian Journal of Sociolo~v,1, 2 Spring, 1994b, 145-168. Deleuze, Gilles. Foucault, trans. & ed. Seari- Hand. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 1986. Donaldson, Peter S. "Digital Archives and Sibylline Fragments: The Tempest and the End of Books." Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998.On-line. Available at, iath.virginia.edu/pmc/cument.issue/8.2donaldson.htmI#ref4? Duncan, Carol. Civilizin~Rituals: inside the ~ublicart museums. New York: Routledge, 1995. Flynn, Thomas. "Foucault as parrhesiast: his Iast course at the College de France (1984)" in The Final Foucault, eds. J. Bemauer and D. Rasmussen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Thinos: An Archeoloov of the Hurnan Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. ------The Use of Pleasure: The Historv of Sexualitv Volume 2, trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. ------"Technologies of the Self' in Technolo~iesof the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick H. Hutton. Amherst: University of Massechuettes Press, c. 1988a. ------"The Political Technologies of 1ndividuals"in Technolooies of the Self: A seminar with Michel Foucault, eds. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, Patrick H. Hutton. Amherst: University of Massechuettes Press, c. 1988b. ------"History of the Present: On Probelmatization" Spino. 1988~.16- 17. ------"Aftenvord: The Subject and Power" in Michel Foucault: Bevond Structuralism and Herrneneutics by Hubert Dryfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. ------"Governmentality" in Ideoloov and Consciousness 6, Autumn, 1979,s-21. ------"Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" in Lan~uame.Counter-Mernory: Selected Essavs and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard. Ithica, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. Fraser, Ted. R.L. Bloore Sixteen Years: 19%- 1974. Exhibition catalogue. Windsor: Art Gallery of Windsor, 1W5. Gordon, Colin. "Foucault in Britain" in Foucault and Political Reason, eds. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, Nikolas Rose. London: University College London Press, 1996. ------"GovernrnentaI rationality: an introduction" in The Foucault effect: studies in c~overnmentaIity,eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, Peter Miller. Hemel Hempstead, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 199 1. Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modem Art. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985. Heath, Terrence. Ronald L. Bloore: Not Wlthout Desim. Exhibition catalogue. Saskatchewan: Mackenzie Art Gallery, 1993. Howard, David. Arthur F. McKay A Criticd Retroswective. fihibition catalogue. Regina: Mackenzie Art Gdlery, 1 997. ------"Bordering on the New Frontier: Modernism and the Military Indus trial Complex in the United States and Canada, 1957-1965.'' Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1993. ------"From Emma Lake to Los Angeles: Modemism on the Margins" in The Hatside of the Landscape: the Emma Lake Artists Workshovs, by John O'Brian. Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1989. Jarvis, Alan. "Art Means Business" Royal Military College of Canada Review, Vol. XXXVIII, 1957,44- 153. Jockel, Joseph T. No Boundaries Upstairs: Canada. the United States. and the Origins of the North American Air Defense. 1945-19%. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987. King, John D. H. "A Documented Study of the Artists' Workshop at Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, of the School of Art, University of Saskatchewan, Regina, from 1955 to 1970." BFA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1972. King, Martha J. "The National Gallery of Canada at Arm's Length from the Government of Canada: A Precarious Balancing Act." MA thesis, Carlton University, 19%. Kozloff, Max. "Through the Narrative Portal" in The Privile~edEye: Essays on Photoara~hy.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Leclerc, Denise. The Crisis of Abstraction in Canada: the 193s. Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: NGC, 1992. Litt, Paul. The Muses the Masses and the Massev Commission. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Mahon, Michael. Foucault's Nietzschean Genealoov: Truth. Power. and the Sub-iect. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Moulthrop, Stuart. "Hypertext Essay :Adrian MiIes. 'Hyperweb"' in The Electronic .Journal of Postrnodern and Interdiscidinarv Criticisrn. Postmodern Culture and Oxford University Press, Vol. 6, No. 3, May, 1996.On-line. Available at: iath.virginia.eddpmc/text-only.5%/conten.S%.html NGC. Catalopue of the National Gallerv of Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Art, Vol. 1. A - F, eds. Charles C. Hill, Pierre B. Landry. Ottawa: NGC, 1988. ------Annual Report of the Board of Trustees for the fiscal year 1%1- 1%2. Ottawa: NGC, 1%2. ---mm--- Annual Report of the Board of Trustees for the fiscal year 1%0- 1%l. Ottawa: NGC, 1%Ia. ------Annual Report of the Board of Trustees for the fiscal year 1959-1%0. Ottawa: NGC, 1%0b. ------Annual Report of the Board of Trustees for the fiscal year 1958-1959. Ottawa: NGC, 1959a. . ------Five Painters from ReoinaKina Peintres de Regina. Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: NGC, 1%1b. ------Alfred Pellan Retrospective. Exhibition catalogue. Ottawa: NGC, 196ûa. ------Folk Painters of the Canadian West. Ottawa: NGC, 1959b. O'Bnan, John. The Flatside of the Landsca~e:the Emma Lake Artists Workshotls. Exhibition catalogue. Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 1989. Palmer, Terri. Under Over and Around the Net: Intem~tinothe Utopian Subiect of the Internet. 1998. On line. Available from, eserver.org/cyber/rnainframe.html. Ramsay, Ellen Louise. "The promotion of the fine arts in Canada, 1880 1924: The development of art patronage and the formation of public policy." P.h.D. diss., University of London, 1988. Reid, Dennis. A Concise History of Canadian Painting. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988. Rheingold, Howard. A Slice of Life in MYVirtual Cornmunitv. On-line. 1992. Available at, eserver.org/cyber/mainfram,htrnl. Robertson, Clive. "Invested Interests: Competitive and DysfunctionaI Autonomies within the Canadian Art System" in Fuse XVI 3, Spring 1993, 12-22. Rose, Nikolas. "Governing 'advanced' liberal democraciesWinFoucault and Political Reason: Liberalism. neo-IiberaIism and rationalities of povernment, eds. Andrew Barry, Thomas osborne, Nikolas Rose. London: University College London Press; University of Chicago Press, 19%. Skidmore, Colleen. "Dorothy Knowles' Rural Landscape Painting: Modernity and Tradition in Saskatchewan." MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 1989. Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geoxaphies: the reassertion of space in critical social theoy. London: Verso, 1989. Tippett, Maria. Making Culture Enolish-Canadian Institutions and the Arts before the Massev Commission. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. Tuele, Nicholas. Doug Morton RCA. Introduction by Ronald Bloore; preface Patncia Bovey. Exhibition catalogue. Victoria, British Columbia: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1994. University of Regina. The Reoina Five Painters. Regina: UR4 and Library, 1998. On-line. AvailabIe at, uregina.ca/-library/archives/reginaSaShtrnl. Valverdi, Marianna. "Introduction" in Canadian Journal of Socioloov, 19, 2 Spring, 1994. ideritity atid creative pi-ochictian . York UniversitJl, Fine Arts Cu- Studies, Winters Cdkge. 4700 Kt!&? st Nom Yark, Ontario, M33 7P3 Signature; ISE Lee Rodney ART GALLERY OF YORK UNIVERSITY NI45 Ross Building York University 4700 Keele Street, North York X-Sender: Irodney@postof#ice.yorku.ca(Unverified) Mime-Version: 1 .O Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 09:27:36-0400 To: kverrall @yorku.ca From: 1 rodney@ yorku.ca Subject: proposal Status: