A Matter of Abstraction The quest for abstraction plainly influenced developments in contemporary aesthetics in Québec and Canada. This exhibition from the Musée Collection re-examines that quest, which Montréal School artists pursued in a profoundly original way beginning in the early 1940s, simultaneously with the main international movements. The exhibition comprises 104 significant works by fifty-six artists who were among the most important figures in the artistic renewal that took place during these decades of change. The panorama it describes—extending over seventy years, from 1940 to 2010—focuses on Québec works in the Collection. Primarily thematic, the exhibition is laid out chronologically in a historical perspective. It highlights an experience of form and colour firmly rooted in the non-representational and non-verbal, mainly within the aesthetics of painting and sculpture—at times radically different, and continually renewed from the early 1940s on.1 Throughout the exhibition space, which is fluidly organized in ten open Josée Bélisle zones, vantage points are provided on large groups of works as well as on certain single pieces. The division Curator of the Permanent by section immediately sheds light on their diversity and Collection complexity while giving free rein to the expressive power evident in each of them. 1 In “Commentaries on Some Current Anchored both in the present and of the gestural impulse (Marcelle Words,” Paul-Émile Borduas wrote, in history, this exhibition begins Ferron, 1960), deep commitment “Abstract: . That which operates with a relatively recent spectacular to the material and the raw organic on pure qualities, not on realities.”2 monochrome mural by Guy Pellerin nature that defines it Paterson( (no 228 – Ici / Ailleurs, 1993), Ewen, 1962), transformation and Abstraction is often defined in terms which is immediately provided juxtaposition of the horizontal line of what it is not: the absence of with a foil by a mosaic of ten small (Ulysse Comtois, 1965), and finally figuration, the intention not to refer paintings executed between 1938 (on the adjacent wall), extremely to the real world, a lack of specific and 1973. Various approaches concise geometric language (Claude guidelines for interpretation, the to the gradual development of Tousignant, 1973). elimination of all anecdotal content. abstraction may be discerned in Abstract art deals with line, colour this close grouping: attachment Pellerin’s large red monochrome and matter for their own sake. to organic and Surrealist motifs —with its five neither entirely The emphasis is on rhythm and (Alfred Pellan, 1938), allusions geometric nor entirely organic the articulation of forms in space, to cosmic floating and a lavish relief motifs that seem to dissolve the physical presence and flat deployment of matter (Paul-Émile into the surface and then stand surface of the painting, the radical Borduas, 1943 and 1946), out from it—is pointedly echoed simplification of sculptural volumes. the persistence of a marine by other monochrome works, also horizon (Fritz Brandtner, 1952), (but differently) red, throughout Although the human body and its entanglement of linear motifs the exhibition: Rouge sur blanc, Abstraction: Abandoning the Intention to Represent representation in various thematic (Edmund Alleyn, 1956), luminous 1956, by Jean McEwen; From contexts remained a major concern superimposition of patches of Cadmium Red Deep, 1979, by for many artists throughout the colour (Jean Dallaire, 1958), an Louis Comtois; and Rouge nos 2, 3, twentieth century, the quest for pure energetic, gestural, all-over filling 5, 6, 1997, by Françoise Sullivan. abstraction took its place as the of the surface (Jean-Paul Riopelle, Even though they appear to operate dominant voice in the renewal of 1956), dynamic fragmentation in the same register, each is unique artistic expression. by way of gesture or its absence, a calm or agitated texture, and 1 The founding of the Contemporary Arts Society obvious or tacit structure. by John Lyman in Montréal in 1939 serves as the starting point for the Musée’s research, exhibition program and collection. At that time, the CAS expressed artists’ opposition to the academic stance of official painting and their desire to renew the language of the visual arts. 2 Refus global (Montréal: Mithra-Mythe, 1948); quoted in English from Paul-Émile Borduas, Writings, 1942–1958 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1978), p. 73. 2 2 The first gallery contains paintings preconceptions, and a freedom compositions of vibrant and by Paul-Émile Borduas from 1945 of gesture attuned to immediate complex multiform colour that to 1957 and Jean-Paul Riopelle sensations. He constantly suggest parallels with Abstract from 1949 to 1961, as well as transformed and simplified the Expressionism. three sculptures by Robert Roussil pictorial object by defining it with from 1954. omnipresent gesture and accident Sculpture’s move away from the and a dynamic dichotomy of concern for representation and An essential figure in the history figure-background. The energetic toward abstract forms progressed of Québec and Canadian art, the effervescence and ferment of decisively in the 1950s. One of the painter Paul-Émile Borduas was matter that characterize his New main forces in this renewal, Robert also recognized as a teacher, York period, from 1953 to 1955, Roussil exploited the expressive theoretician, essayist and critic. changed in Paris, between 1955 qualities of wood in a manner all When the collective manifesto Refus and 1960, to a chromatic or his own and developed a formal global was published in Montréal monochrome asceticism that led vocabulary in which the principles on August 9, 1948, Borduas—its to black-and-white compositions of growth, life force and attachment author and main instigator—and of exceptional conciseness and to the organic nature of the material the fifteen others who signed it 3 moving absoluteness. predominate. Characterized by the committed a political and aesthetic dynamism of vertical development, gesture that would have a lasting Jean-Paul Riopelle, who signed his work shows great expressive ideological and visual influence. Refus global and painted a power. The Musée has both the important watercolour for its cardboard Paul-Émile Borduas Archives and cover, is surely the member of the Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Robert Roussil the Borduas Collection, consisting Automatiste group who achieved of 123 works. the greatest international fame. A student of Borduas at the École du Borduas abandoned the canons of meuble in 1943–1944, Riopelle the established traditional genres of very early on developed an original still life, portrait and landscape in visual language characterized by a the early 1940s. Assimilating the repeated fiery gesture dynamically Cubists’ ideas about composition distributed over the entire pictorial 3 The sixteen signatories were Borduas, Madeleine Arbour, Marcel Barbeau, Bruno Cormier, Claude and subscribing to the liberating surface. Successively using drips, Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, Muriel Guilbeault, discharge of the “superrational” applying brusque overlapping Marcelle Ferron, Fernand Leduc, Thérèse Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Maurice Perron, Louise impulse, he formalized the basis strokes and spreading the paint Renaud, Françoise Riopelle, Jean-Paul Riopelle of his approach to painting: no with a spatula, he created animated and Françoise Sullivan. 3 3 “Superrational Automatism: and fluidity of the gesture, while original feature and why it has been Unpremeditated plastic writing. insisting on visual cohesion and prophetic internationally.” One shape demands another until individual identity. a feeling of unity is achieved, or a After 1954, these artists pursued feeling of the impossibility of going In “L’épopée automatiste vue par their work along new paths, in the further without destruction. During un cyclope,”5 Claude Gauvreau attempt to control and organize the process, no attention is given to aptly expressed their intentions: “I the freedom of gesture they had content.” Paul-Émile Borduas4 must insist on this point. Surrealism achieved. properly speaking rests upon a Borduas came in contact with depiction of the interior world. young students and their friends Automatism (perhaps improperly 4 “Commentaries on Some Current Words,” when he was teaching at the speaking), in its mature form, rests in Refus global; quoted in English from The Automatistes (1945–1954) Borduas, Writings, p. 74. École du meuble in the early on non-figuration of the interior 5 La Barre du jour, January-August 1969, 1940s. With his interest in the world; that is its incontestably p. 71. authentic spontaneity he detected in children’s drawings and his particular adaptation of Surrealist automatic writing to painting, he devised an aesthetic program that the artists around him embraced enthusiastically. The group was given the name Automatistes in 1947. Besides Riopelle, the main artists were Fernand Leduc, Marcel Barbeau, Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Françoise Sullivan (at the time more strongly attracted to the possibilities of dance), Pierre Gauvreau and Claude Gauvreau. These artists pushed to the limit the aleatory and the accident, and the frenzy 4 4 The years following the advent of rejected atmospheric space and Automatisme and its affirmation as an overabundance of matter. In the main approach to non-figurative the wake of Neo-Plasticism, they expression in Montréal