Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence

Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence Emily Carr Deep Forest, c. 1931 Oil on canvas Collection of Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust TEACHER’S STUDY GUIDE Spring 2012 Contents Program Information and Goals ................................................................................................................ 3 Background to the Exhibition Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence ........................................ 4 Artists’ Background ................................................................................................................................... 5 Pre- and Post-Visit Activities 1. The Artists ............................................................................................................................................ 9 Artist Information Sheet ............................................................................................................. 10 Student Worksheet ..................................................................................................................... 11 2. Working in the Open Air .................................................................................................................... 12 3. Abstracted Objects ............................................................................................................................ 14 4. Nature in Contrast ............................................................................................................................. 15 5. Antonym Diamante Poetry ................................................................................................................ 16 6. Curator’s Choice ................................................................................................................................ 17 Vocabulary ............................................................................................................................................... 18 Resources ................................................................................................................................................ 19 2 Vancouver Art Gallery Teacher’s Guide for School Programs The Vancouver Art Gallery holds the largest collection of Emily Carr’s work, significant not only in its historic value but also because many of her ideas remain current and resonate with artists today. Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence presents a range of works by historical and contemporary artists that ask us to consider the idea of transcendence —the overwhelming power of nature—and take us from the mundane and everyday to the sublime and awe-inspiring. DEAR TEACHER: This guide will assist you in preparing for your tour of the exhibition Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence , and provides follow-up activities to facilitate discussion after your Gallery visit. Engaging in the suggested activities before and after your visit will reinforce ideas generated by the tour and build continuity between the Gallery experience and your ongoing work in the classroom. Most activities require few materials and can be adapted easily to the age, grade level and needs of your students. Underlined words in this guide are defined in the Vocabulary section. The tour of Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence has three main goals: • to explore the work of Emily Carr and artists from the Art Gallery’s collection, • to consider the connections in the works to the idea of transcendence , • to examine each artist’s individual approach to art in terms of their ideas, materials, technique and inspiration. 3 THE EXHIBITION: Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence The exhibition Emily Carr and the Theatre of Transcendence showcases paintings and drawings from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s significant holdings of Carr’s work. The forest landscapes that she produced from 1930 through the early 1940s clearly illustrate her interest in transcendence and the natural world. These images are accompanied by a variety of works from the Gallery’s collection, ranging from artists of Carr’s generation to contemporary artists who are using a range of materials to explore the idea of transcendence through their art. Emily Carr was often skeptical of organized religion, preferring to find her spiritual connection in the open air, as a “great breathing among the trees.” Like many artists of her time, she was intrigued by theosophy, the basis of which is the belief in an infinite, all-connecting power that unites and transcends all religions. In the 1920s, Carr met Lawren Harris, a founding member of the Group of Seven and an enthusiastic supporter of theosophy. Harris encouraged Carr to continue her explorations of British Columbia’s forest landscapes, believing her to be one of Canada’s leading modernist painters. The work of the accompanying artists in the exhibition, both contemporary and historical, continues to express the desire to transcend everyday experience and transform it into something that can be described as transcendent . Karen Bubas’ large-scale photographs present mysterious scenes reminiscent of movie stills. Her subjects are women dressed in a way that links them with the overwhelming scenes from nature they find themselves enveloped by. Kevin Schmidt created huge back-to-back slide projections of the forest at night. Nature itself is clearly not enough—he brings in lights and fog machines to generate the perfect scene that nature failed to present for our experience. Mina Totino used materials literally—chalk from the very cliffs that the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich painted as his contemplation on the idea of the sublime—as if the chalk could bestow the status of all that is transcendent onto the canvas. This exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain curator of British Columbia art. 4 ARTISTS’ BACKGROUND Emily Carr (1871–1945) “I longed to get out of church and crisp up in the open air… Only out in the open was there room for Him. He was like a great breathing among the trees… In the open He had no form; He just was, and filled all the universe.” One of the most important British Columbia artists of her generation, Emily Carr is best known for her work documenting the totem poles of First Nations peoples of BC and her paintings of the forests of Vancouver Island. Her paintings express her strong identification with the British Columbia landscape and her belief that a profound expression of spirituality could be found in nature. Carr was struck by the connection between art and the “universal life force” she sensed in every aspect of the natural world she depicted. Carr was born in Victoria, BC, in 1871, the same year that British Columbia officially became a province of Canada. She studied drawing and painting in California and England, and in France, where she studied the bright colours and new painting techniques of the French Post- Impressionist artists of the time. On her return to British Columbia, she began travelling extensively along the BC coast to Alert Bay and the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), and up the Skeena River, documenting First Nations art. This was an extremely unusual activity for a woman at the time. In these works, highly influenced by her French training, she used bright Fauvist colours and, often, broken brushwork. Her work was poorly received—she was in fact ridiculed for it. Dejected, Carr made a living by running a boarding house, raising sheepdogs, making pottery and giving art lessons. Between 1913 and 1927, she produced very little painting. In 1927, Carr’s work was included in the exhibition West Coast Art: Native and Modern at the National Gallery in Ottawa . This exhibition was her introduction to other artists, particularly members of the Group of Seven, who recognized the quality of her work. In the 1930s, Carr began devoting most of her attention to landscape , particularly the forest, as her subject matter. Greatly influenced by her exchange of letters with Lawren Harris, Carr sought to capture a sense of the spiritual presence that she experienced in nature. Her work became increasingly abstract as she experimented with shape, form, colour and movement. In the late 1930s, as her health worsened, Carr began to focus more energy on writing, and she produced an important series of books in which she told the many stories of her unconventional life. She died in 1945 in Victoria at the age of seventy-four. The works in this exhibition include Deep Forest , c. 1931, Abstract Tree Forms , 1931–32, Three Cedar Trunks , c. 1937, and Pines in May , 1929–30. These paintings exemplify her mature style, for which she has been recognized as an artist of major importance. Karin Bubas (born 1976) Karin Bubas, born in North Vancouver, is a photographer who lives and works in Vancouver. Her approach to photography plays on the possibilities of creating narrative through a single image. Her work has included images that appear to be either found or staged, but either way, the narrative retains its significance. Whether showing interior details of her grandparents’ home, exterior shots of Victorian houses or nighttime glimpses around doors and windows, her attention to detail and her use of colour, light and texture remain consistent. Bubas studied art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design, graduating in 1998. Her work has been exhibited extensively, both nationally and internationally. 5 Woman with Scorched Redwood and Woman on Beach , 2007, are large colour photographs

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