LE PAYSAGE INDUSTRIEL A
THE INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE I rosemary donegan
LE PAYSAGE INDUSTRIEL A
THE INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE
Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury-1998 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Donnees de catalogage avant publication (Canada)
Donegan, Ro emary Donegan, Rosemary
Sudbury: The Industrial Landscape I Le paysage industriel a Sudbury Sudbury: The Indu trial Landscape I Le paysage industriel a udbury
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of Sudbury, Catalogue d'une exposition tenue a la Galerie d'art de Sudbury, July 30- eptember 20, 1998. du 30 juillet au 20 septembre 1998. Includes bibliographical references. Comprend des references bibliographiques. Text in Engli h and French. Texte en anglais et en franc;ais. ISB 0-9684003-0-2 ISBN 0-9684003-0-2
1. Sudbury ( nt.)-In Art-Exhibitions. 2. Industrie in art I. udbury (Ont.) clans !'art-Expositions. 2. Industries clans Exhibitions. 3. Landscape painting, Canadian-Exhibition . 4. Painting, !'art-Expositions. 3. Peinture de paysages canadienne-Expositions. Canadian- xhibitions. 5. Painting, Modern-20th century-Canada 4. Peinture canadienne-Exposition . 5. Peinture-20• siecle-Canada
Exhibitions. 1. Art Gallery of Sudbury. 11 Title. m. Title: Paysage industriel a Expositions. 1. Galerie d'art de Sudbury. JI. Titre. m. Titre: Paysage industriel a
Sudbury. Sudbury.
7 58'. l 7 I 3 I 33 '0 747 I 3 I 33 c98-900739-1 F
Curator: Ro emary Donegan Commissaire : Rosemary Donegan Editor: Dinah Forbes Redactrice: Dinah Forbes Translation: Maurice Arcand Tr aduction: Maurice Arcand Exhibition and catalogue coordination: Pierre Arpin Coordination de !'exposition et du catalogue: Pierre Arpin Cover illustration: Charles Comfort The Romance of Nickel 1937 CEuvrede la page couverture: Charles Comfort La legende du nickel 1937 © The E tate of Louise Irine Comfort, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, © La uccession de Mme Louise Irine Comfort, Musee des beaux-arts du Canada, Loan from Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa Ottawa, Pret de Ressources naturelles du Canada, Ottawa
Book de ign: TonyJurgilas, RGD, To ny Jurgila Design Inc. Conception du livre: To ny Jurgilas, RGD, To ny Jurgilas Design Inc.
Copyright/Droits d'auteur © Sudbury, 1998 ,.. Printed in Canada/Imprime au Canada Rosemary Donegan
and/et Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury 453 Ramsey, udbury, Ontario, C ADA P3E 2Z7 All rights reserved/Taus droits reserves artgallery ofa sudbury galerie d'art de sudbury messages from the exhibition sponsors I mots des commanditaires de I' exposition
•REDPATH I'm per onally delighted that we have the opportunity to upport uch an ince udbury i a very important mining area for]. . Redpath Limited, we important exhibition. TD ha been a part of the Sudbury community ince the are proud to be a corporate pon or of the Industrial Land cape exhibition. The very beginningof thi centuryand we are very proud of our roo . It is an honour art exhibited here truly represen the mining ector. to a si t with thi tribute to the many individual who have contributed to our mining and indu trial heritage. Pui que udbury e t une zone miniere tres importante pour]. . Redpath Limited, nous omme fier d'etre un commanditaire de ]'expo ition du pay age Je suis per onnellement ravi que notre in titution peut appuyer ce projet industriel. Le reuvresd'art expo ees ici refletentde fa�onreelle l'industrie miniere. d'exposition qui est si important pour notre communaute. TD est une composante importante de la communaute udburoi e depui le debut du iecle et nous ommes Robert S. Brown-Pre ident/President tres fiers de nos racine . 'e tun honneur de participer a cet hommage a tou le individus qui ont construit notre patrimoine minier et industriel.
Gary Welland-VicePresident/Vice-president
....NICKEL CITY STEEL LIMITED .a• on. �lI�� �B. 1
a member of the mining community for more than 2 5 years, ickel City MontpellierGroup Inc. i very plea ed to be a part of the Art Gallery of udbury teel Limited i proud to be a partner in the pre entation of the Sudbury:The and proud to be a ponsor of the Industrial Landscape exhibition. We hope Industrial Land cape exhibition. We are plea ed to support the Art allery of e eryone will take advantage and view the creations of the talented arti ts. We
Sudbury in its effor to rai e community awareness of our heritage and hi tory. would like to congratulate and thank all the volunteer and staffwho make it all We hope that many udburians and vi itor to the region will be able to benefit pas ible. from thi special project. Montpellier Group Inc. nous omme fier de nou a ocier a la presentation titre de membre de l'indu trie miniere a udbury pour plus de vingt-cinq de ]'expo ition ur le paysage indu triel. ou e perons que de nombreux vi iteur ans, ickel City tee! Limited e t fiere de participer dan la pre entation de pourront voir !'expositionet temoigner de reali ation de arti te . ou desirons l'expo ition Le pay age indu triel a udbury. ou appuyon la Galerie d'art de remercier et feliciter taus ceux qui om participera la realisationde cette expo ition. udbury clans e efforts d'accroitre notre comprehension de notre histoire et de notre patrimoine. ous e perons que de nombreux residents et visiteur a la Maggie D. Montpellier-Marketing Director/Directrice du marketing region sauront profiterde cette exposition.
erio Gregorini-President/President other exhibition sponsors I auhes commanditaires de I' exposition
CHESS CONTROLS '""· A • HATCH -
We would al o like to thank the following supporter ou aimerions aus i remercier le organismes suivant pour leur appui:
1nco MCTV �be �ubburp$tar
� myo(jwlede qJ)1 SUDBURY Canadian Patrimoine • ••• Heritage canadlen The grey lady of Coppercliff rose La dame gris de Coppercliff se dressait 574 feet above the smelter sheds, 574 pieds au-dessus des batiments de la fonderie, her faceto the weather le visage expose aux intemperies, her hair blowing in the wind; la chevelure au vent; I was impressed. c'etait tres impressionnant.
1 Charles Comfort, 19351 Charles Comfort, 1935
Charles Comfort, 111elw·Stacks, CopperC/iff!Chemi11ies de fo11derie a CopperCliff. 1936 photo: ational Gallery of Canada, Ottawa/Musee des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa
table of contents table des matieres
Director's Foreword ...... 3 illustrations...... 19 Ackn.owledgements...... 4 Avant-propos du directeur ...... 31
Sudbury: The Industrial Landscape ...... 5 Remerciements ...... 32
Sym bolic Sudbury: The Industrial Landscape ...... 5 Le paysage industriel a Sudbury ...... 3 3 The Group of Seven and the Sudbury Basin ...... 7 Sudbury: symbole du paysage industriel...... 33
The Corporate Image ...... 7 Le Groupe des Sept et le bassin de Sudbury...... 3 5 The Local Community, or 1,'image corporative ...... 36
WhichWay is the Wind Blowing To day? ...... 10 La collectivite locale :
The Union in the Community ...... 11 clans quelle direction le vent souffie-t-il aujourd'hui? ...... 38
Subduing the Earth ...... 1 2 Le syndicat et la collectivite ...... 40 Conclusion ...... I 3 Assujettir la Te rre ...... 41 Endnotes...... 14 Conclusion ...... 42
List of Works...... 1 5 Notes ...... 43
Copyright ...... 1 7 Catalogue ...... 44 Illustrations...... 19 Droits d'auteur ...... 46 directors foreword realization of this exhibition project. In her acknowledgements, Rosemary Donegan offersher thanks. Wewould al o like to extend
Whoever has travelledin the Sudbury region understandsto what our thanks to all those who contributedto this exhibitionincluding extent the landscape can inscribe itselfin the imagination. This is a all the lender . We are gratefulto the Canada Council for the Arts hard, rocky,unforgiving landscape, one that was formed, according to who fundedthe original research portionof this project. We would current thinking,by the impact of a meteorite approximatelytwo billion also like to single out the ational Gallery of Canada and Mine years ago. Thi collision also created a geological formation which Mill Local 598 fortheir very important contributionto this project. holds an incredible wealth of minerals including nickel, iron and other The National Gallery and its staff, particularly Charles C. Hill, elements. During construction of the Canadian ational railway in Curator of Canadian Art, Carole Lapointe, Art Loans Officer,Ann the r 880 , surveyorsdi co ered the wealth of iron oxidedepo itswhich Ruggles, Conservator and Marcel Duguay, FabricationSupervisor, became a major industry after cheap methods of extraction were were all instrumental in ensuring that Charles Comfort's Romance developed. Mining and logging activity has had a remarkable impact ofNickel is being shown in Sudbury forthe very firsttime. Also, we on the local landscape and it is this land cape that has attracted artists would like to thank Roly Gauthier and members of Mine MillLocal throughout the years. More recently, Sudbury has distinguisheditself 598 and the ational Office CAW-Canada for their :financial in terms of its efforts to improve the local environment and the re support of the restoration of the Henry Orenstein mural. The 3 greeningof the region has improved considerably in the last 30 years. restorationwas accomplished under the guidance oflan Hodkinson, This exhibition is the first to study how Canadian artists have Emeritus Professor of Art Conservation, Queen's University who interpreted the Sudbury landscape. The Art G.illeryof Sudbury, with was assisted by Joan Weir, Conservator, and Peter Rodkin on and itsrenewed local mandate, is pleased to present this exhibitionwhich Alisha Piercey, ConservationAssistants. Thanks to their expertise, is also an historical portrait of a community. We would like to the mural has recovered its original colour and brilliance. acknowledge Mr.Alan McKay, who, in r 99 5 retained the services of Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to address our Rosemary Donegan, independent curator. Ms. Donegan has specialized sincere appreciationto the followingcompanies fortheir :financial her research in the areas of art and industry.Through her research and support of this project: Nickel City Steel Limited, Chess Controls, catalogue essay as well as through the selectionof the works exhibited, TD Bank,] .S. Redpath Limited, Hatch AssociatesLtd., Montpellier she brings to light certainimportant themes that run through the work Group Inc., Walden Electrical Limited and Abraflex Limited. It is related to the Sudbury landscape and the community. The G.illery thanks to their generosity that this exhibition and catalogue were also plans to produce a second exhibition in 1999 which will examine produced. contemporaryresponses to the industrial landscape. PierreArpin Numerous individuals and organizations have contributed to the Director/Curator, Art Gallery of Sudbury acknowl edgemenh Allan Sekula; Jane Springer; Robert Stacey; Mercedes Steedman; Ann Suzuki; Jamie Swift; Tess Taconis; Heather Topp; Danielle In the three years that I have been involved in this project, Tremblay, Galerie duNouvel-Ontario; David Wallace and Keith numerous individuals have offered their assistance most Wmterhalder, Laurentian University; Shawna White, Sotheby's generously. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those Canada. who ensured that the original research project has come to fruition I would also like to thank the individual and institutionallenders
in this exhibition:Maurice Arcand; Marthe Brown at the Archives who have graciously agreed to participate in the exhibition: Angus
of Laurentian University; Jane Cameron, Sudbury Paint and Brown, Toronto; Inco Limited, Toronto; Bruce Hatton, Lockerby
Custom Framing; Dave Campbell, United Steelworkers of Composite School, Sudbury; Magna International Inc., Aurora, America; Susan Campbell; Carole Lapointe, Charles C. Hill, Ontario; Henry Orenstein, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Irma Ditchburn,
National Gallery of Canada; Mela Constantinidi and Dorren The Government of Ontario Art Collection, Toronto; The
Martin, Ottawa Art Gallery; ChristinaDel guste, Michelle Landry, National Gallery of Canada; The Ottawa Art Gallery; Franklin Allan McKay and Kelly Smith, Laurentian University Museum Silverstone and Judy Strapp, The Seagram Collection, Montreal;
and Art Centre; Patrick Crowe; Mary Jane Christakos; Stuart The Board of Directors, Sudbury Public Library; Joan Mantle, 4 Cryer; Peter Desilets; Stephen Epstein; George Falconer; Dinah Sudbury Secondary School; Sudbury Mine Mill and Smelter Forbes; Roly Gauthier and Marianne Del Bosco, International Workers Local 598 CAW; Dr. AinoTenhunen, Sudbury; Ivan T. Union of Mine Mill and Smelter Workers (CAW); Sam Gindin Wheale, Manitoulin Island.
andNan cyKearnan, CAW!TCANationalOffice; Cathie Gulkin; Rosemary Donegan
Craig Heron; Ian Hodkinson; NancyJohnson; Renee Johnston; Trevor Jones; Greg Keast; Susan Kennedy; Margaret Koski, Falconbridge; Pamela Krueger; Raymond Lalonde; Brenda Longfellow; Lorenzo Marigo, Inco Archives; Franco Mariotti,
Science North; D'Arcy Martin; Diane Massicotte; Nada Mehes,
Sudbury Public Library; Bob Michelutti, Falconbridge; Peter Morden, Morden Photography; JohnN agansanti; Diane O'Neil,
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Henry Orenstein; Joan Orenstein; Ross Paul, President, Laurentian University; Tom Peters; Sheila Pierce and Liz Armstrong, Magna InternationalInc.; Bob Purcell,
Carol Raccio and Jerry Rogers, Inco Limited; Oryst Sawchuk; sudbury: the industrial landscape
Sudbury's industrial landscape has been the subject of painting, slag heaps, hard-rock miners, smelter stacks and the residential drawing and photography since the turn of the century. These communities that surround them. Yet, the paintings and drawings images of the Sudbury Basin are both historical jndustrial are double-edged: they glorify the industrial prowess of mining documents and icons of modernism in the visual arts. This and smelting; and, at the same time, depict its ecological exhibition brings together paintings and drawings which show a consequences. The artistshave recognized the beauty of the barren local and modernist resthetic developed in response to the landscape. The imagery is further complicated and enriched by industrial landscape. In both their subject and approach, these the number of roles accorded to the Sudbury Basin: at a national images are less determined than photographic documentationand level, Sudbury symbolizes the "New North" and Canada as an illustration.2 Although rooted in the historical tradition of the industrial nation, while locally, it represents work, community, finearts, these paintings and drawings were heavily influenced by everyday life, survival in an industrial centre. contemporary ideas of modernism and modern life. Canadian The meanings of these images are not static. Over time they artists who were aware of the ideas of the avant garde definedart alter and shiftin concert with the complicated economic realities 5 as innovative and inspiring, and their works implicitly engaged of the nickel industry and with changes in public opinion. As a the questions of the modern age: resthetics and the landscape, major supplier forthe munitions industryin both world wars, the industry and obliquely, the environment. nickel industrywas condemned by the artist Laurence Hyde, for This problematic nature of the industrial landscape is made profiting from both sides. "Whichever way the wind .blows" he explicit in these historical depictions of and responses to the wrote, "nickel is safe. No one can do without nickel, and Inco Sudbury Basin, one of the major sites of Canadian looks at her 86 per cent corner of the world's supply and laughs industrialization. The complexity of images and meaning-and silently."3 In the 1920s Monel metal, an Inco developed nickel fig. a their inherently contradictory nature and visual tension-forms copper alloy, was hailed for its innovative designs for household the basis for this exhibition. products. Internationally, at major events such as the Paris World Fair in 1937 and the New York World Fair in 1939, Inco was a fig. b symbolic sudbury: the industrial landscape key exhibitor and promoter of the industrial might of Canada. In 1971, American astronauts used the Sudbury Basin to simulate
Images of the industrial landscape of the Sudbury Basin have a moon walks and to familiarize themselves with rock formations powerful intensity, permeated with the historical symbolism of caused by the gigantic meteorite impact two billion years ago.4 With the rise of the ecology movement in the 1970s, the Basin exhibition in 1920. The Group's love of Canada's geography, what became a symbol of man-made environmental destruction. More we might now see as topophilia, developed on a grand scale into a recently, since Inco built the world's biggest smelter stack, reducing national identity, but it was rooted in specificplaces. The emotion pollutionin the Basin itself, and Falconbridge has become involved and commitment the artists of the Group had for the North, in aquatic reclamation, Sudbury has become a symbol of the new particularly the Shield, was a central theme in their work and to commitment of industry to environmental issues and to the the claims tl1ey made for their art as distinctively and uniquely regeneration of a brutalized landscape. Canadian. Frank Underhill, for example, claimed in 1936, "We It was at the turn of the century that Northern Ontario came Canadians... we Men of the North with our pre-Cambrian Shield, to be known as the "New North", a powerful idea propelled by are going to show the world. You will find in it the members of the myth of"a solemn, empty, resource-rich northern land."5 The the Group of Seven expounding their philosophy of a northern new thinking was that through the heroic efforts of prospectors art."8
and the muscle of corporations and by applying the power of Sudbury occupies a singular place in the Canadian imagination. electricity to natural resources, the New North would be created. Its astounding physical site and its mythical role as a place of Rational scientific capitalism wouldmake it happen. By the 1920s, industrial alchemy, where rock was turned into metal, symbolized 6 the idea of the New North as the economic and cultural futureof the New North. And since the 1920s, the Sudbury area-Copper Ontario was well established. Canadians viewed the North's Cliff in particular-has attracted an unusual number of artists limitless natural resources of minerals and timber and the power whose images attempt to capture in the heroic mould of painting, of hydroelectricity with optimism and reverence. Paul Walton the majesty and overwhelming powerof industry. Frank Underhill, has written that, "a modern myth of progress ... which might be in commenting on the 1920s, noted that Canadian art was "giving called the 'extractionist myth' ... celebrated the wilderness area of expression to what more vulgar fellow-Canadians were expressing North America as a limitless treasure house of raw materials that in skyscrapers and railway extensions and International Nickel."9 had formerly been inaccessible. [These] could ·be discovered and Most artists painted the same sites-the Copper Cliffsmelter, violently extracted from the land by means of modern science the Frood open pit mine, the slag dumps, the stacks-but painted and technology without significant damage to a vast and these sites for different reasons. Many of them, particularly A.Y. supposedly desolate environment. "6 Jackson and Franklin Carmichael, focused their attention on the This concept of the New North was an extension of earlier astounding view of the smelter and stacks. Local artists, such as views "Love of the 'North' or of the 'Wilderness'-and a literal Bruno Cavallo and Nellie Keillor Lowe, were more interested in or symbolic re-baptism in it-[was] part of the national culture."7 depicting the local residential community, although they were This view was held by the Group of Seven, who held their first also drawn to picture the industrial drama. fig. c Common to all of their imagery is the intensity of the landscape. foregroundhills and the ominous grey rain clouds above, creating All of these artists were fa cinated by the hield and its big kies, a subtle, inverted dramatic tension.11 The perspective appears to
water and rocks. The powerful juxtapo ition of massive industry be from outh west of Copper Cliff. His respon e to udbury's and massive land cape produced ome fa cinating imagery. The indu trial land cape wa intense and con ciou . In the ickel Belt attraction to the power of industry i demon trated in the many portrays the drama of Copper Cliffseen fromafar, allowing the painting of the bulging smelter tacks at Copper Cliff.The arti ts larger panoramic landscape to form his statement on the were amazed by the vast scale of the indu trial spectacle, and they environment.12 portrayed obliquely or directly the double-edged beauty of the Sudbury was also a frequentstop forA.Y.Jackson in the 1930s. mills, smelters and refineriesas well a the tack and smoke plumes he travelled back and forth across Canada, he often sketched within the destroyed environment. These image are in the area around La Cloche Hills and Grace Lake. Jackson's contradictory: they eulogize the indu trial land cape, a a formof painting of the Copper Cliff smelter, Smoke Fantasy, u es a ill. 2 nature and a the e ence of orthern culture and society; and, pointillist technique,which is unusual within his vast body of work. simultaneously, they convey the grim reality of the environmental Painted in 1932, it is fromthe period during which the roup of destruction of the natural world. Seven were in the proces of disbanding and when Jackson was 1 experimenting with a variety of techniques and abstract forms. 3 7 the group of seven and the sudbury basin In moke Fantasy, the plume hovers above the grouping of smelter buildings, which disappear into a brown mid-ground The earliest paintings in the exhibition are by Franklin horizon. The central smoke stacks and fumeselaborately rise into Carmichael (1890-1945) and .Y. Jackson (1882-1974), both the atmosphere as the setting sun casts intense purple-blue shades members of the Group of Seven. Carmichael's painting In the over the landscape.Jackson's rather magical fantasyof billowing ill. 1 Nickel Belt captures the smoke of Copper Cliffspiralling upward clouds of smoke celebrates the two recently built 500-foot stacks in the rain against the distant blue-grey-green moulded hill and of radial brick and reinforcedconcrete. Executed in bright purples, valleys, devoid of vegetation. When h was shown in February blues, greys with a touch of pink, the painting i striking in its 1928 in the Group of Seven exhibition at the Art Gallery of lurid pastel colour . To ronto, Fred Jacob in a newspaper article commented: "Frank Carmichael. .. [is] now setting himself to the interpretationof grim the corporate image features of Canadian life. He has put plenty of forbiddingfeeling
10 into In the Nickel Belt." In Carmichael's bird's-eye view the stacks Charles Comfort's (1900-94) association with Sudbury began and smoke plumes are compressed and barely visible between the in the early 1930s when he was commissionedby lnco to undertake various commercial projects. He visited the town frequently to radium mining in Great Bear Lake and nickel mining in Sudbury. photograph and sketch various sites and brought other artists such The Inco display featured Comfort'sThe Romance ofN ickel mural, as Yvonne McKague Housser, Rody Courtice and Isabel displayed with rock samples in the foreground. One reviewer called McLaughlin, to Sudbury, as Housser commented in a letter in the painting "a fine piece of art." 15 1936: "The crowd had a thrilling time at Coppercliffe [sic] Comfort, working with Harold Ayres and Caven Atkins, fig. d cocktail parties,luncheon, dinner, and all afternoonseeing through produced the six-metre-long mural in the fallof 1936. He painted ill 3 the works which must be an astounding sight. They have done the central figure, the hard-rock miner, in the inverted "Y" form . something to the sulphur now which does not kill vegetation or to emphasize a strong aggressive stance and the thrust of
cover the country with a green film as before so that it is not so movement. (The figure is similar to those he was working on in interesting but we are going to stop there on our way home and the To ronto Stock Exchange's horizontal stone frieze andinterior sketch for half a day." 14 vertical wall paintings at the same time.) Comfort's modified Within Comfort's body of work, it is fascinating to see the Cubist style integrates the forms and spaces into a seamless differencebetween his independent art of the industrial landscape portrayal of the process of nickel production. The mural uses and his commissioned work for Inco. Based on sketches done characteristic images of the New North as symbols of modern 8 during his tours of the mines and the Copper Cliff smelter, industrial production. The miner is almost gargantuan and fig. a Comfort produced a series of "scratch board" black and white represents the might of industry, while the earnest scientist gazing advertisements promoting Inco as a corporation. The ads focus into his microscope represents industry's rational objectives. The
on the industrial worker, a symbolic striding male figure working two figures are surrounded by modernist factories, skyscrapers, with tools and machines: miners drilling or shiftinglever on hoists bridges, crank shafts,streamlined trains, automobiles, radio towers or operating the converters that eparate the nickel from the and aeroplanes. Beyond lies outer space, symbolized by Saturn. copper. The accompanying text describes the work in the mines The mural speaks of progress, the future and jobs as Canada and smelters, the development of new uses of nickel and Monel crawled out of the worst of the Depression. Comfort uses the metal for household products. conventions of advertising and illustration in a contemporary fig. b Comfort's mural The Romance of Nickel was commissioned for modernist style to glamorize the power and the heroism of the the Canadian Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair. The mining nickel industry. Comfort, as Terrence Cuneo did in his displays in the Canadian Pavilion, produced in cooperation with commissioned work forInco, limited himself to scenes of miners, Inco and Eldorado Gold Mines, included samples of ore and final scientists and machinery. There are no references to the industrial products made from the various refined metals, such as radium, landscape, the smelter or to the stacks and their effluent of toxic nickel, gold and copper. The displays particularly focused on smoke. Comfortwas familiarwith the contemporary ideas and debate Comfort described the lunar landscape and commented on the within modern art and had been captivated by the Societe sulphurous stench ofthe atmosphere and the burning lava spills Anonyme exhibitionof modem painting when it came to To ronto ofslag. 19 in 192 7. He was also familiarwith the work and industrial murals Mining as a subject matter often attracted artists to the area. of Charles Sheeler, Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera in Evan Weekes Macdonald (1905-72) who had also worked as an the 193os. 16 As Josephine Hambleton commented in 1948, "in illustrator for Inco, painted Frood Open Pit, International Nickel, painting the industrial murals he wanted to express himselfwith Sudbury, focusingon the depth and the huge volume ofthe open none ofthe social effectsof our industrial revolution, the wealth, pit mine. In the absence of any human form, the vast scale of the slums it created, but with its mentality, the mentality which the pit is definedby the spiralling road on which trucks haul ore attempts to reduce every phenomenon, every miracle to a principle to the surface. Macdonald, who was known primarily as an oflogic, a scientific formula."17 illustrator and portrait painter, had earlier produced a series of The paintings Comfort undertook on his own initiative are drawings of miners and local mining communities for the startlingly different from the work he undertook for Inco. They Financial Post and The Northern Miner. A reviewer for Bridle & are landscape views ofthe smelter and the stacks. In Copper Cliff, Golferapplauded him forhaving depicted mining with skill, truth which is foregrounded by the rocky outcrops of Little Italy, the and romantic feeling. 20 9 smelter and converter are blocked out into an abstract built form. Thi description could be equally applied to Terence Cuneo's The centre point is the two large stacks, almost shinunering in (1907-96) painting The Frood-Stobie Open Pit at Copper Cliff,which the sunshine as the smoke rises into the atmosphere. The related depicts the same site. TerrenceCuneo's ability to lay down a scene ill. 4 sketch Chimneysplace the melter and three stacks in the distance quickly and clearly is apparent in his paintings. Cuneo was in a grey twilight of rain and fog. In its minimalism, the almost commissioned by Inco in 195 5 and had officiallysanctioned access abstract paintingis a eulogy to the subtle beauty ofindustrial power to all company property, including underground operations. In and the form of the landscape. Frood Mine Stope, Frood Mine Cuneo uses the strong contrast of ill. 5 The large painting Smelter Stacks, Copper Cliffwas developed brilliant light and pure darkness to create the sensation of an 18 from these sketches and from Comfort's photographs. In the underground mine. Yet the figures ofthe minersare stock images painting, the circling smoke plumesfrom the three stacks coalesce and lack the intensity that comes from physical work and the into a stylized pulsing abstraction, dramatized by the vivid use of tedious daily routine of "drill, blast and muck".21 Cuneo's white and grey. In its glorification ofpure form and colour, the illustrative technique relies on conventional representations of painting is a modernist statement ofits time. While the painting mining-resulting in images that conform to the corporate obliquely questions the consequences ofindustry, in his writings imagination but that are devoid of artistic value. the local com�un·ty, pr ability and apparent detachment were carefullydisciplined, although which way is the wmd blowing today? intensely felt, and resulted in a heightened sense of drama in his work.23
In the r95os artists turned their attention from the industrial A.Y.Jackson was also a frequentgu est of the Sudbury Art Club. sites in favour of the scattered towns and villages of Coniston, Years later, Bruno Cavallo reminisced "We went to the old Creighton, Falconbridge and Garson. They also turned their Creighton town site-A.Y. loved old houses and headframes... attention to ethnically defined neighbourhoods known locally as Jackson would dash offfour or fivesketches on an outing."24 It was Little Italy, French To wn, Polack To wn and Finn To wn. An on a sketchingtrip to Coniston in r957 thatJackson painted Coniston, important factorin this change of perspective was the organization which shows the small miners' houses built into the side of the
of the Sudbury Arts and Crafts Club (later called the Sudbury Art rocks and the smelter in the distance. Interestingly,Jackson'sgrey Club) and the Northern Ontario Art Association by artists like brown palette bears no resemblance to his r932 pink-purple
Nellie Keillor Lowe and Bruno Cavallo. The Sudbury Art Club pointillist vision Smoke Fantasyof the Copper Cliffsmelter. was an important meeting place for local artists, and organized Allan Collier (r9rr-90), a Toronto artist,frequently sketched in
exhibitions,gu est workshops and sketching trips with invited artists the Sudbury area with Bruno Cavallo, whom he had met at the 22 10 such as A Y. Jackson, Carl Schaeferand Yvonne McKague Housser. Ontario College of Art. Collier's interest in mining stemmed from The paintings and drawings capture the variety and individuality his experience working at the Delnite Mine in the Timminsarea in of the villages and miners' houses, the higgledy-piggledy housing the r93os. After the war, he returned to Timmins and painted patterns of Little Italy and the imposed rigid grid of company underground, attempting to represent the miner's point of view.25 housing framedby the local topography of rocks and hills. Collier's painting Dumping Slag, Copper Cliffcaptures the molten ill. 7 Visitors such as Carl Schaefer (r903-95), who encouraged local iron oxide and sand pouring down the embankment fromthe slag painters to explore their own landscape and community, provided train. Painted at an angle, the line of the cliff,with its high impasto ill. 6 an important stimulus. The ink-on-paper drawing View of Copper surface,anchors a dramatic view that captures the classic scene in
Cliffe [sic], Sudburywas done in I 94 7 while Schaeferwas in Sudbury all its heat and intensity. conducting some workshops. The strong linear rhythm of the In the mid r95os Collier was commissioned by Seagram's of
drawing captures the houses lodged among the rock formations,in Canada to paint Sudbury as part of the Cities of Canadaseries. The ill. 8 rows that abrade the Shield outcroppings. Schaeferuses the opacity sketches and final paintings focus on views of downtown and
of black ink to portray the scorched rocks, the heavy clouds and the residentialSudb ury, with the stacks in the distance. Collier presented
ever-present smoke effluent from the stacks in the distance. As an urban view of Sudbury, one that acknowledgedthe nickel industry Graham Mclnnis commented in Canadian Forum (1936), Schaefer's but renders it only as an element within a larger landscape. Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-67), the founder of the Sudbury the union in the community Art Club, was an important artist and catalyst in the local community. She was committed to painting the local area, the In 1956, Henry Orenstein (1918- ), a young artist working in mines and headframes as well as local neighbourhoods such as the fur industry in Toronto, was asked by Weir Reid, the theone depicted in Pearl Street. Many of her paintingsof industrial recreational director of Sudbury Local 598 of the United Mine scenes capture her complex response to the spectacle of industry Mill and Smelter Workers Union, to undertake a mural for the ill. 9 and its almost theatrical beauty.26 In her painting Falconbridge,she beverage room of the Local's headquarters on Regent Street. presents a dense complex of mines and smelter with a lake in the Orenstein, who had studied at the Art Students League in New foreground,while smoke swirls upwards. It is a somewhat playful York in the late 1940s, had been influencedby the social concerns image of almost halo-like smoke fumes in a cobalt blue-grey of Ben Shahn and the spatial formsof the Cubists. He was active palette. In Heat and Cold she depicts the abstract drama of the red in the To ronto left-wing cultural community, having designed hot slag flowinginto the cold snow as it pours down the hill. and built a number of stage sets for community theatre groups
The Sudbury Art Club and Nellie Keillor Lowe in particular and backdrops for union conventions and rallies. convinced Bruno Cavallo, a local sign painter and amateur The union wanted a mural to represent its activities in the 27 artist, to paint local scenes. Cavallo focusedon houses and local community, making udbury a better place to work and live by II villages in such paintings as Coniston, Copper Cliff,and Rear Minto providing a broad range of cultural and recreational activities for Street, Sudbury. He also painted the classic industrial scenes of working people.28 Orenstein spent an intense two weeks sketching Frood Mine and the pouring of the slag. In his 1958 painting the local area, taking the bus to local mines and nearby villages. ill. 10 Coniston, the foregroundrock formationsestablish a centre point The proposed mural was developed fromsketches such as Gatchell, ill. 12 as the street winds off into the distant rocks and the ubiquitous Sudbury and Stack. The sketches are rough and spontaneous, smelter stacks are shown in the distant background. The showing views fromvarious high points of land in a black outline. monochromatic palette of yellows, greys, and browns portrays The loose impressionistic drawing style aptly captures the local the village in a blackened landscape, sandwiched between the landscape. huge rock formations of the Shield. In contrast, the later The final twelve-metre (approximately 39 feet) mural was ill. 14 paintings Copper Cliffand Rear Minto Street, Sudbury focuson painted in si-t:u,which involved projectingthe drawing onto gessoed
houses, with their porches, gardens, fences and washing lines. burlap over plywood mounted on the wall, then painting from a In his paintings fromthe late 198os, Cavallo's brilliant palette is ladder. Orenstein remembers the bar's patrons freelyoffering their used to convey abstract formssuch as the mine headframein his opinions about the mural and their experiences of working in the ill. 11 painting Frood Mine. mines while he painted. 29 At the centre of the mural is the modernist front door of the Subdue the Earth depicts the Copper Cliff smelter in the ill. 13 Regent Street Union Hall with union members standing outside distance and the burnt and barren landscape of tree stumps and the hall, shaking hands and gesturing. The mural attempts to hydro pylons in the foreground. Kurelek has placed himself in
convey the intense bonds of a militant union movement through the painting as a small figure wandering off to the left.The scene
these central figures of workers and their wives. To the left are is immersed in a morbid grey and black fog.In the related gouache the communities of Gatchell and Copper Cliffand the Creighton painting Unclean Spirit outside Sudbury, Kurelek has made the headframe.To the right is a view of Sudbury, showing familiesat barren black rocks the subject of the painting, showing a small the Mine Mill Camp on Richard Lake and the Falconbridge stretch of highway and the ubiquitous telephone poles and hydro smelter and mine shafts. Within the overall mural, the left side pylons offin the distance. It is a powerful, stark image of the
depicting Copper Cliff is more developed and is an ambitious ravaged landscape, with an almost ghostlike red figure (presumably montage of typical scenes. It is in the minor details, the cars the "unclean spirit") roaming the cliffs and gorges. Kurelek's covered with grey ash, the foreground figure of a woman particular view of these matters is a complex version of gardening and the men returning from work, that Orenstein anthropocentrism, inspired by religion, in which he interprets captures the experience of living and working in Sudbury. The the world in terms of the ascendancy of human values and 12 mural avoids any overt depiction of work and only alludes to the experiences over nature. "Asa believingChristian," Kurelek writes, burnt landscape and daily pollution, while showing a humanistic "I see man's exploitation of the minerals in the earth as perfectly view of union life in the community. legitimate and a fulfilmentof God's firstcommandment when he made the first human pairand told them to be fruitfuland multiply subduing the earth and subdue the earth and make it theirs. Therefore,mining insofar as it provides employment for family men who raise up more When he painted in the Sudbury area in the mid 1960s, children and the metals that are shipped round the world to be
William Kurelek's (192 7-77) response to the Sudbury landscape made into earth subduing machines, is a desirable occupation. was rather complex. The two 1964 paintings Subdue the Earth Ecology should of course be taken into account but if not profitable and Unclean Spirit outside Sudbury were inspired by the stark or possible then mining takes firstplace." 31 Yet Kurelek's images beauty of the local landscape. Kurelek commented in his contradict this philosophy. These paintings are damning visual autobiography, "I loved that bleak area round Sudbury where statements of the effects of sulphur dioxide on the local the vegetation is killed by sulphur fumes because it reminded environment. ill. 15 me of the Wilderness of Judea where Christ was tempted by the His painting R.ainyD ay near Sudburyis differentfrom his earlier Devil during his 40 days fast." 30 paintings, as it depicts a slightly overgrown rock-strewn pit or excavation resulting from mining operations. Subdued in its colours and forms, it shows the tentative regeneration of grass and plants. It is an evocative portrayal of the residue and results of mining. Lacking the heavy-handed religious emotion of the earlier paintings, it attempts to grapple with the contradictory beauty and bleakness of the landscape and offershope in the ability of the land to regenerate growth. conclusion
In the imagery of the Sudbury Basin, the head frames, the mines, smelters and smoke stacks appear over and over from different perspectives, angles and styles, forming a codex of imagery which symbolizes local industrial activity. As fewof these works have been exhibited in Sudbury before, this exhibition is a first attempt to develop a critical context for these images. By bringing these images together, this exhibition allows an examination of how the artistic representation of the hard-rock miner, the slag heaps, the open pit mine, smoke stacks and the local environment evolved as a formal Canadian symbol. The exhibition also attempts to challenge historical notions of beauty and resthetics by raising questions of the effect of industrializationon the environment. The exhibition also explores how something so powerful,and yet so destructiveto the landscape as mining and smelting, can still be beautifulin its abstract form. The intense sunlight sculpting the stacks and the sunset colours dancing on the smoke plumes are part of the conflicting visual realities of the historical industrial landscape. Rosemary Donegan-June 1998 12. Megan Bice, Light & Shadow: The Work of Franklin Carmichael (Kleinberg, end notes Ontario: The McMichael Canadian Collection, 1990) p. 70.
1. Extracts from Charles Comfort's unpublished memoirs "Sketches from 13. NaomiJackson Groves, his biographer, commented "It was an extraordinary
Memory" (Copyright© The Estate of Louise Irine Comfort, Ottawa). experiment this picture of a Sudbury mine-forhim to try out pointillism." Sudbury Star, May 17, 1993. 2. There is a large body of photographic images and documents of mining and smeltingoperations. However, as access to the site has been strictly controlled 14. Yvonne McKague Housser, "Excerpts from Letters to Fred Housser,
by the companies, these photographs reflect corporate views and rarely Whitefish Falls, 1936", Northward Journal: A Quarterly of Northern Arts, investigate the local landscape. Their meaning is thereby limited. A wide volume 16, 1980, p. 39.
range of company, union and local photographs of the Sudbury Basin are available in the Sudbury Public Library, Laurentian University Archives, 15. National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Report AC RG 72, volume #30175G, the lnco Archives and Records Department and various provincial and September, 1936. national archives, as well as individual corporate archives. 16. Interview with Charles Comfort,by Charles Hill, Ottawa, Octobeq, 1973. 3. Laurence Hyde, "Death IndustriesInc." Advance,November, 1939, pp. 13, 22. 17. Josephine Hambleton, "The Murals of Charles Comfort" Ottawa Evening
4. "Sudbury Basin Rocks Give Clues to Apollo 16 Mission", Info Triangle,July Citizen, May 1, 1948. 1971.
18. A September, 1936 black and white photograph by Charles Comfortshows 5. H.V Nelles, The Politicsof Development:Forests, Mines & Hydro-electricPower a silhouette of the Copper Cliffsmelter and stacks that is virtually identical in Ontario, 1849-1941 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974) p. 45. to their placement in the painting Smelter Stacks, Copper Cliff, National Archives of Canada (PA-167879). 6. Paul H. Walton, "The Group of Seven and Northern Development", RACAR, xvnh/1990, p. 175. 19. Extracts from Charles Comfort's unpublished memoirs "Sketches from Memory'' (Copyright© The Estate of Louise Irine Comfort, Ottawa). 7. Glen Norcliffeand Paul Simpson-Housley, "No Vacant Eden",AFewAcres of Snow: Literatyand ArtisticImages of Canada (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992) 20. "His ability to discover beauty and poetry in seemingly barren and prosaic p. 6. things was never more strikingly exemplified, while his delineationof strata rock and soil would have delighted the eye of the geologist and mineralogist 8. Frank Underhill, "Review: Yearbookof the Arts in Canada, 1936, edited by in quest of scientific data. That they pleased mining men, always extremely Bertram Brooker", CanadianForu:m,December, 1936, p. 27. critical of anything that concerns their particular activities, is perhaps the
highest praise that could be accorded them." William Colgate, Bridle& Golfer, 9. Ibid, p. 27. December, 1938, p. 23.
IO. As cited in Charles Hill The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation (Toronto: 21. A local Sudbury phrase to describe the experience of working McClelland & Stewart, 1995) p. 325· underground.
I I. Carmichael's related painting of the Cobalt area, A Northern Silver Mine 22. Maurice H. Switzer, Bruno Cavallo: A Conversation (Sudbury: Laurentian (1930), McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinberg, has a similar elevated University Museum and Art Centre, 1991) p. 15.
viewpoint and uses the same blue/grey/green palette to describe the scene, but is more detailed in the geographical relationship of mines, local 23. G. Campbell Mclnness, "Carl Schaefer:Contemporary Canadian Artists", communities and the lakes. The Canadian Fom1n,February, 1937, p. 18. 24. Maurice H. Switzer, op. cit. pp. 15-16. Bruno CavaJlo (1913-1996) Coniston, 1958, oil on ma onite, 58.1 x 83.8 cm (ill. JO) 25. The mining eries culminated in an exhibition of mining paintings at the Collection: Dr. Aino Tenhunen, Sudbury. Royal York Hotel, Toronto in March, 1953. Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) 26. F. W. Hackett, Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967), University Women's Club Copper Cliff, 19 5, oil on canvas, 30.5 x 40.6 cm
Exhibition, udbury, April 13, 1969. (Artists file, Art Gallery of Sudbury). Private Collection, Sudbury.
27. Bruno Cavallo was responsible, along with Ted Szilva, for designing and Bruno Cavallo ( 1913-1996) building what was to become udbury's best known landmark and a popular FroodMine, 1987, oil on panel, 12.7 x 17.8 cm (ill. 11) image of the nickel industry. The Big Nickel, a 30-foot model of the 1951 Private Collection, Sudbury. five-centpiece, was installed in 1967 on Highway 17 on a high point of land directly across fromthe Inco melter. The Canadian Centennial Nrunismatic Bruno Cavallo ( 1913-1996) Park, now part of the Big ickel Mine and run by cience orth, is a popular FroodMine, c. 1968, oil on masonite, 57.1 x 72-4 cm
tourist attraction. Maurice H. Switzer, op. cit., p. 18. Collection: Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury. Donated in memory of the Honourable John A. Goodearle (1929-1997) by his wife 28. Starting in the late 1940s, the growth of anti-Communism in the Canadian Wendy Goodearle. labour movement and McCarthyism in the U labour movement, put Mine Mill under suspicion forits association with left-wingand communist causes. Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) The mural was an attempt to un-demonize the union within the local Pouring the Slag, c. 1963, oil on board, 30.5 x 40.6 cm community. Collection: Ivan T Wheale, Manitoulin Island.
29. Interview with Henry Orenstein, by Rosemary Donegan, Halifax, October Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) 16, 1985. RearMinto Street, Sudbury, 1987, oil on board, 30.2 x 40.0 cm Private Collection, Sudbury. 30. William C. Forsey, The Ontario Communiry Collects: A Survey of Canadian Paintingfrom 1776 to the Present (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1975) p. Allan Collier (1911-1990) IIO. DwnpingSlag, Copper Cliff, c. 1956, oil on board, 50.8 x 71.1 cm (ill. 7) Collection: Sudbury Secondary School. 3I. Ibid, p. IIO. Allan Collier (19u-1990) Sudbury, c. 1952, oil on board, 72.4 x 100.3 cm (ill. 8) Cities ofCanada series list of works Collection: Seagram's Collection, Montreal.
Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) Allan Collier (19II-1990) The Nickel Belt, 1928, oil on canvas, 102.9 x 121.9 cm (ill. 1) Sudbury, c. 1952, oil on board, 29.2 x 39.3 cm Collection: Ottawa Art Gallery. Donated by the Ontario Heritage Sketch forthe Cities of Canada series Foundation. Collection: Seagram's Collection, Montreal.
Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) Charles Comfort (1900- 1994) Sketch for TheNickel Belt, c. 1928, graphite on paper, 29.5 x 33.5 cm Chirnneys, c. 1928, oil on cardboard, 25 x 30 cm (ill. 4)
Collection: Ottawa Art Gallery. Giftof Mary Mastin, 1997. Collection: Angus Brown, Toronto. Charles Comfort (1900-1994) Wtlliam Kurelek (1927-1977) CopperCliff, 1936, oil on board, 2 5 x 30 cm Unclean Spirit Outside Sudbury, 1964, gouache on board, 96.5 x 60.9 cm
Collection: Magna International Inc., Aurora, Ontario . Collection: Sudbury econdary School.
Charles Comfort (1900-1994) Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) Smelter Stacks, CopperCliff, 1936, oil on canvas, ror.9 x 122.2 cm (ill. 5) Falconbridge, UNDATED, oil on board, 60.9 x 76.2 cm (ill. 9)
Collection: National Gallery of Canada, 6666. Collection: Lockerby Composite School, Sudbury.
Charles Comfort (1900-1994) Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) The Romance ofNickel, 1937 oil on canvas, 213.5 x 610 cm (ill. 3) Heat and Cold, c. 1960, oil on board, 76.2 x 60.9 cm
Collection: National Gallery of Canada. Loan of Natural Resources Canada. Collection: Fred Hackett, Sudbury.
Terrence Cuneo (1907-1995) Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) Frood Mine Stope, Frood Mine, 1955, oil on canvas, 60.9 x 76.2 cm Pearl Street, UNDATED, watercolour on paper, 24.1 x 3r.7 cm Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. Collection: Ivan T Wheale, Manitoulin Island.
Terrence Cuneo (1907-1995) Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) The Frood-Stobie Open Pit at Copper Cliff, 1955, oil on canvas, 60.9 x 76.2 cm Untitled (Stumps and Stacks), c. 1960, oil on board, 40.6 x 30.5 cm
Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. Collection: Fred Hackett, Sudbury.
Terrence Cuneo (1907-1995) Evan Weeks Macdonald (1905-1972) Miners leavingthe Cageat the surfaceof the Creighton Mine, 195 5, oil on canvas, FroodOpen Pit, InternationalNickel, Sudbu , UNDATED, oil on canvas,48. 3 x 2 3 cm 16 ry 76.2 x 60.9 cm Collection: Ontario Government Collection, 624428. Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. Henry Orenstein (1918- ) A.Y.Jackson (1882-1974) Gatchell, 1956, sketch for mural Mine Mill Local 598, oil on masonite, 40.5 x Coniston, 1957, oil on panel, 25 .4 x 30.5 cm 5 1 cm (ill. 12)
Collection: Sudbury Public Library Board, Copper Cliff Branch. Donated Collection: Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury, 89-04 3. by Mr. and Mrs.John S. Dowsett in memory of S. Walter Stewart andJames D. Stewart. Henry Orenstein (1918- )
Mine Mill Local 598, 1956, oil on burlap mounted on 5 plywood panels, 3 A.Y.Jackson (1882-1974) panels 104.1 x 243.8 cm, 1 panel 104.1 x 19r.4 cm, 1 panel ro4.1 x 174 cm Srnoke Fantasy, 1932, oil on canvas, 8r.2 x 101.6 cm (ill. 2) (ill. 14)
Collection: Magna International, Aurora, Ontario. Collection: Sudbury Mine Mill and Smelter Workers' Union Local 598/ CAW William Kurelek (1927-1977) Rainy Day NearSudbury, 1966, oil on masonite, 22.5 x 80.5 cm (ill. 15) Henry Orenstein (1918-)
Collection: Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury, 92-024. Sudbury, 1956, sketch for mural Mine Mill Local 598, oil on masonite, 45.7 x 60.9 cm
William Kurelek (1927-1977) Collection: Sudbury Mine Mill and Smelter Workers' Union Local 598/ Subdue the Earth, 1966, watercolour on paper, 5r.9 x 75.9 cm (ill. 13) CAW
Collection: Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury, 69-061. Henry Orenstein (1918-) Stacks, Copper Cliff,1956, sketch for muralMine MillLocal 598, oil on board, 40.6 x 30.5 cm Collection of the artist, Halifax.
Henry Orenstein (1918-) Woman Gardening, 1956, study for mural Mine Mill Local 598, lithograph, 36.1 x31. cm Collection of the artist, Halifax.
Carl Schaefer (1903-1995) View of Copper CliffSudbury, 1947, ink on paper, 30.3 x 45.4 cm (ill. 6)
Collection: Art Gallery of Sudbury/ Galerie d'art de Sudbury, 86-017. copyright
Copyright© The Estate of Franklin Carmichael. The Nickel Belt, 1928
Copyright© The Estate of Bruno Cavallo. Coniston, 1958
Copyright© The Estate of Louise Irine Comfort, Ottawa. Chimneys,c. 1928; Copper Cliff, 1936; Smelter Stacks, Copper Cliff, 1936; The Romance of Nickel, 1937
Copyright© The Estate of William Kurelek and the Isaacs Gallery, To ronto. Rainy Day Near Sudbury, 1966; Subdue the Earth, 1966
Copyright© By permission of Evan Weekes Macdonald's family. Frood Open Pit International Nickel, Sudbury, UNDATED
Copyright© The Estate of Carl Schaefer. Viewof Copper Cliff Sudbury, 1947
i I lustrations
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fig. a fig. b advertisement/annonce publicitaire interior Canadian Pavilion, Paris WorldFair, 1937 featuringthe lnco display with Charles Comfort Charles Comfort's R0111ance the Nickel CanadianNickel in the Home, 1936 vue de l'interieur du pavilion du Canada a L'exposition universelle de Paris, 1937 avec La legende du nickel, la murale de Charles Comfort 20
ill. 1 ill. 2 Franklin Carmichael .Y. Jackson The ickel Belt/La region du nickel, 1928 Smoke Fantasy/Fantasme de fwmie, 1932 photo: Ottawa Art Gallery/Galerie d'art d'Ottawa photo: Sotheby's Canada l
2341 Feet of Chimneys built for The lntemational Hickel Co., of Canada, Ltd
21
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Custodia Canadian Chimney Co., Ltd. · TOftOlffO MOfffllRAL Gu1.•sc HAUPAX VANGOUVUl Alphon, Custodis ChimneyCorutnadlonCo. Custodis (1922) I.J,nij.,j New York Cl,ic8jio London
fig. c fig. d advertisement/annonce publicitaire Charles Comfortworking on The Romance ofNickel 2341 Feet of Chimneys Canadian Mining Journal, November/novembre 1928 Charle Comfort a l'reuvre sur Laligende du nickel 22
ill. 3 Charles Comfort The Romance of Nickel/La legendedu nickel, 1937 photo: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa/Musee des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa ill. 4 ill. 5 Charles Comfort Charles Comfort Chimneys/Cheminees, c. 1928 Smelter Stocks, Copper Cliff!Chemineesde fonderie a Copper Cliff, 1936 photo: Angus Brown, Toronto photo: ational Gallery of Canada, Ottawa/Musee des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa ill. 6 ill. 7 Carl Schaefer Allan Collier View of CopperCliffe [sic], SudburyMte de Copper Cliffe [sic], udbury, 1947 DumpingSlag, Copper Cliff/Leterrill de Copper Cliff, 1956 photo: ational Gallery of Canada, ttawa/Musee des beaux-arts du Canada, photo: Morden Photography, udbury ttawa ill. 8 ill. 9 Allan Collier ellie Keillor Lowe Sudbury,c. 1952 Falconbridge, UNDATEDISANS DATE photo: Pierre Charrier, Montreal photo: Morden Photography, Sudbury ill. 14 Henry Orentstein Mine MillLocal 598, 1956 photo: Ian Hodkinson, Kingston
30
ill. 15 William Kurelek Rainy Day near Sudbury!Journiephtvieuse pres de Sudbury, 1966
photo: Art Gallery of Sudbury/Galerie d'art de Sudbury avant-propos du diredeur conservatrice independante. Mme Donegan s'interesse depuis plusieurs annees a la question de l'art et de l'industrie. Elle nous Quiconque a voyage clans la region de Sudbury comprend a livre ici un texte riche en contenu qui perrnetd' eclaircir certains quel point le paysage s'inscrit clans l'imaginaire. Ce paysage filonsque l' on retrouveau creurmeme des productionsesthetiques rugueux, rocheux, dur en est un qui fut forme d'apres la theorie se rattachant au paysage industriel clansle bassin de Sudbury. Nous courante, par !'impact d'un meteorite il y pres de 2 milliards produirons aussi en 1999 une deuxieme exposition, celle-ci se d'annees. Cette collision a aussi eu cornrne resultat la creation penchera sur des interpretations contemporaines du paysage d'une formation geologique qui recele une richesse importante industriel. en rnineraide fer,en nickel, ainsi qu'en quantites d'autres metaux. De nombreux individus ont contribue a la realisation de ce Lors de la construction du cherninde fer canadien clansles annees projet. Dans sa preface, M me Donegan leur offre ses 1880, les qualites particulieres de la region_ furent decouvertes remerciements. Nous voudrions ici les remercier a notre tour de mais ce n'est que vers le tournant du siecle, alors que futelabore leur genereuse collaboration. Entre autres, nous voudrions une methode d'extraction peu couteuse du rninerai, que Sudbury souligner l'apport du Conseil des arts du Canada qui a accorde devint un centre d'exploitation miniere d'envergure. L'activite une subvention permettant d'accomplir la phase de recherche miniere ainsi que la coupe de bois (que l'on utilisait a l'epoque en initiale du projet. L'appui du Musee des beaux-arts du Canada 31 tant que materiau de construction et en tant que combustible pour aura ete indispensable puisque nous leur sornrnes redevable du bruler la roche clans les chantiers d'abattage) ont cependant eut fait que le tableau de Charles Comfort La ligende du nickel est un impact tout aussi considerable sur le paysage. C'est aussi expose a Sudbury pour la premiere fois. Nous aimerions done paradoxalement !'aspect dur et impardonable de l'environnement remercier M. Charles C. Hill, conservateur de l'art canadien, Mme qui a attire les artistes au fil des annees. Plus recemment, Carole Lapointe, agente aux prets d'reuvres d'art, Mme Anne particulierement clans les trente dernieres annees, la region de Ruggles, conservatrice, et M. Marcel Duguay, superviseur aux
Sudbury s'est distinguee par ses effortsau niveau de l'arnelioration fabrications. Nous voudrions aussi remercier M. Roly Gauthier de l' environnement. et les membres du Syndicat des travailleurs des mines et des Cette exposition est une premiere etude de !'interpretation du fonderies chapitre598 qui ont assure le financement necessairea paysage sudburois par des artistes canadiens. Ala Galerie d'art de la restoration de la murale de Henry Orenstein. Pour la
Sudbury, nous sornrnes fiers de presenter ce projet d'exposition restoration, nous sommes redevables a M. Ian Hodkinson, qui se veut un portrait historique de notre communaute. Nous professeur emerite a l'Universite Queen's qui a supervise l'equipe desirons ici remercier M. Alan McKay, directeur a l'interim, qui a responsable. Cette equipe, composee de] oan Weir, conservatrice, su, des 1995, retenir les services de Mme Rosemary Donegan, et de Peter Hodkinson et Alisha Piercey, adjoints a la conservation, a reussi le remarquable travail dont nous temoignons aujourd'hui Pamela Krueger; Raymond Lalonde; Brenda Longfellow, Lorenzo le succes. Marigo, Les archives de Inco Limited; Franco Mariotti, Science Nous aimerions aussi souligner tout particulierement l'appui Nord; D'Arcy Martin; Diane Massicotte; Nada Mehes,
financiertres genereux des compagnies suivantes: Nickel City Steel Bibliotheque Publique de Sudbury;Bob Michelutti, Falconbridge; Limited, Chess Controls, la banque TD, Redpath Canada, Hatch Peter Morden, Morden Photography; John N agansanti; Diane
Associates Ltd., Montpellier Group Inc., Walden Electrical O'Neil, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Henry Orenstein; Joan
Limited, et Abraflex Limited. Cette exposition et ce catalogue Orenstein; Ross Paul, President, Universite Laurentienne; Tom n'auraient pu voir le jour sans leur appui inconditionnel. Peters, Sheila Pierce et Liz Armstrong, Magna International Inc.;
PierreArpin Bob Purcell, Carol Raccio etJerry Rogers, Inco Limited; Oryst directeur et conservateur Galeried'art de Sudbury Sawchuk; Allan Sekula; Robert Stacey; Mercedes Steedman; Ann Suzuki; Jamie Swift; Tess Taconis; Heather Topp; Danielle remere i ements Tremblay, Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario; David Wallace, et Keith Wmterhalder, Universite Laurentienne; Shawna White, Sotheby's Au cours des trois dernieres annees durant lesquelles j'ai Canada. 32 travaille a ce projet, j'ai pu benificier de la gentillesse et de la J e voudrais aussi signaler la contribution remarquable des generosite de nombreux individus.]'aimerais done profiterde cette preteurs, tant individuels que corporatifs. C'est grace a ceux-ci
occasion pour offrirmes plus sinceres remerciements au personnes que cette exposition peut voir le jour : Angus Brown, Toronto; suivantes: Maurice Arcand; Marthe Brown, Archives de Inco Limited, Toronto; Bruce Hatton, Lockerby Composite
l'Universite Laurentienne; Jane Cameron, Sudbury Paint and School, Sudbury; Magna International Inc., Aurora, Ontario;
Custom Framing;Dave Campbell, Metalurgistes unis d' Amerique; HenryOrenstein, Halifax, Nouvelle-Ecosse;Irma Ditchburn, La Susan Campbell; Carole Lapointe, Charles C. Hill, Musee des collection d'reuvresd'art du gouvernement de !'Ontario, Toronto;
beaux-arts du Canada; ChristinaDel guste, Michelle Landry, Allan Le Musee des beaux-arts du Canada; La Galerie d'art d'Ottawa; McKay et Kelly Smith, Musee et centre artistique de l'Universite Franklin Silverstone et Judy Strapp, The Seagram Collection,
Laurentienne;Patrick Crowe; MaryJane Christakos; Stuart Cryer; Montreal; Le Conseil d'administration, Bibliotheque publique de
Peter Desilets; Stephen Epstein; George Falconer, Dinah Forbes; Sudbury; Joan Mantle, Sudbury Secondary School; le Syndicat
Roly Gauthier et MarianneDel Bosco, CAW/T CA-Canada; Sam des Travailleurs des mines et fonderies, Sudbury; Dr. Aino
Gindin and Nancy Keaman (CAW/TCA-Canada),Cathie Gulkin; Tenhunen, Sudbury; Ivan T. Wheale, ile Manitoulin. Ian Hodkinson; Nancy Johnson; Renee Johnston; TrevorJones; Greg Keast; Susan Kennedy; Margaret Koski, Falconbridge; Rosemary Donegan le paysage indushiel Cl sudbury
Le paysage industrielde Sudburya ere peint, dessine et photographie le symbolisme historique qu'evoquent les terrils, les mineurs a maintes reprises depuis le debut du siede. Les images du bassin de travaillant la roche Inco figure parmi les principaux exposants et promoteurs de la On voyait les espaces naturels de l'Ameriquedu Nord comme un puissance industrielle du Canada. En 1971, des astronautes tresor inepuisable de matieres premieres qui avaient ete americains se rendent clans le bassin de Sudbury pour simuler inaccessibles jusque-la. On pouvait maintenant reperer et extraire une excursion lunaire et se familiariser avec les formations violemment ces ressources a l'aide d'outils developpes par la rocheuses de la region qui sont en fait lestraces laissees il ya deux science et la technologie modernes, sans endommager outre milliards d'annees par un gigantesque meteorite.4 Pendant les mesure un environnement vaste que l'on supposait inhabite. »6 annees 1970, avec la montee du mouvement ecologique, le bassin Cette vision du Nouvel-Ontario etait le prolongement de devient un symbole de la destruction environnementale causee perspectives plus anciennes. «L'amour du 'Nord' et des 'regions par l'etre humain. Plus recemment, et surtout depuis que Inco a sauvages'-et l'idee d'un deuxieme bapteme veritable OU faitconstruire la plus grande cheminee au monde, reduisant ainsi symbolique confere par le Nord-faisait partie de la culture la pollution clansle bassin, et que la societe Falconbridge a demarre nationale. »7 Le Groupe des Sept, qui tenait sa premiere exposition des projets d'epuration des eaux, Sudbury est devenu le symbole en 1920, partageait cette vision du Nord. L'amourdes Sept pour d'un engagement nouveau de la part de l'industrie faceaux grands la topographie canadienne, ou ce que l'on pourrait appeler 34 defis environnementaux, notamment la regeneration du paysage aujourd'hui leur topophilie, allait prendre l'ampleur d'une identite devaste. nationale, mais ses racines etaient en faitancrees clansdes endroits C'est vers le tournant du siecle que l'on commence a appeler bien precis. L'attachementque les Sept ont eprouve pour le Nord, le Nord de !'Ontario, le «Nouvel-Ontario», concept puissant qui pour le Bouclier en particulier, est un theme central de leur reuvre evoque l'image mythique d'un «territoire nordique solennel, vide et va au creur-meme de leur affirmation de leur art en tant et riche en ressources».5 Les efforts hero1ques des prospecteurs, qu'reuvre distinctement et uniquement canadienne. On pense, la puissance des grandes societes et !'application du pouvoir en particulier, a Frank Underhill, qui declarait en 1936: «Nous electrique aux ressources naturelles, allaient creer un nouveau les Canadiens, nous les Hammes du Nord, nous allons prouver Nord ou le rationalisme du capitalisme scientifique permettrait quelque chose au monde entier avec notre bouclier precambrien. de realiser tous les reves. Dans les annees 1920, l'idee d'un Nouvel C'est ici que le Groupe des Sept developpe son concept d'une Ontario representant l'avenir economique et culture! de la esthetique du N ord.»8 province etait deja bien ancree. Les ressources minerales et Sudbury allait occuper une place unique clans l'imaginaire forestieres vraisemblablement infinies et le pouvoir canadien et devenir le symbole du Nouvel-Ontario, en raison de hydroelectrique du Nord impressionnaient les Canadiens et les son paysage spectaculaire et de son role mythique en tant que rendaient optimistes. Paul Walton parle d'un «mythe moderne centre d'alchimie industrielle, ou la roche etait transformee en metal. Depuis les annees 1920, la region de Sudbury-et Copper contradictoires: elles celebrent le paysage industriel en tant Cliffen particulier-ont attire un nombre surprenant d'artistes qu'element de la nature et comme l'essence-meme de la culture qui ont cherche a representer clans leurs tableaux le pouvoir et de la societe du ord, tout en illustrant la tri te realite d'un majestueux et irresistible de l'industrie. Selon Frank Underhill, monde nature! en voie de disparition. les artistes canadiens de annees 1920 «desiraient exprimer ce que leurs concitoyens canadiens ordinaires exprimaient en creant des le groupe des sept et le bassin de sudbury gratte-ciel, des voies ferrees et la International Nickel.»9 Les artistes ont souvent choisi de representer les memes sujets Les tableaux les plus anciens de cette exposition sont ceux de la fonderie de Copper Cliff, la mine a ciel ouvert Frood, les Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) et de .Y.Jackson (1882-1974), cheminees-mais leurs motivations etaient differentes. De qui faisaient partie du Groupe des Sept. Dans le tableau Dans la ill. 1 nombreux artistes,en particulier ceux venus de l'exterieur, comme region du nickel de Carmichael, des tourbillons de fumee Charles Comfort, .Y. Jackson et Franklin Carmichael, ont fixe s'echappent de la fonderiede Copper Cliff,contre un ciel pluvieux, leur attention sur l'image stupefiante de la fonderie et de ses pour se disperser sur des collines et des vallees ondulantes et grandes cheminees. Des artistes locaux, comme Bruno Cavallo et denudees aux couleurs bleu-gris. Lorsque ce tableau fut expose Nellie Keillor Lowe, se sont interesses davantage a la collectivite en fevrier 1928, clans le cadre d'une exposition du Groupe des 35 locale comme sujet, mais meme eux n'ont pas echappe a !'attraction Sept a la Art Gallery of Toronto, Fred Jacob fit le commentaire du drame industriel. suivant clansun articlede journal: «Frank Carmichael semble s'etre fig. c La qualite qui res ort de ces images est l'intensite du paysage. donne pour tache d'interpreter les aspects les plus austeres de la Ces artistes furent seduits par le bouclier canadien, ses lacs, ses vie canadienne. Il a impregne son tableau Dans la region du nickel rochers et son ciel infini. La juxtaposition d'une industrie et d'un d'une atmosphere mena�ante.» 1 ° Carmichael nous presente une paysage ayant tous les deux des proportions gigantesques a fait vue panoramique ou les cheminees et les tourbillons de fumee naitre des images fascinantes.L'attrait de la puissance industrielle sont compresses et a peine visibles entre les collines de l'avant est evident, par exemple, clans les nombreux tableaux qui se plan et les nuages mena�ants et pluvieux qui planent au-dessus, donnent pour sujet les enormes cheminees de la fonderie de creant une tension et une inversion a la foissubtiles et saisissantes. 1 1 Copper Cliff. Frappes par le caractere gigantesque du spectacle La perspective en plongee employee clansce tableau porte a croire industriel, ces artistes reussirent a capter, soit de fa�on explicite que Carmichael l'a peint quelque part au sud-ouest de Copper ou indirectement la beaute equivoque des fonderies,des raffineries Cliff, clans la region des collines La Cloche, ou il avait sejourne et des cheminees et de la fumee qu'elles repandaient sur le pour la premiere fois en 1924 et ou il allait retourner plusieurs territoire devaste. Les images que ces artistes ont creees sont fois. La reaction de Carmichael face au paysage industriel de Sudbury fut intense et consciente. Dans ce tableau, il presente le plusieurs foispour photographier et esquisser divers sites, amenant drame de Copper Cliff en plan eloigne, laissant au paysage avec lui des artistes comme Yvonne McKague Housser, Rody panoramique la tache de livrer son interpretation de Courtice et Isabel McLaughlin. Selon une lettre de Housser en l'environnement. 12 1936: «Les gens se sont bien amuses a Coppercliffe [sic] A.Y. Jackson allait, lui aussi, visiter frequemment Sudbury cocktails, dejeuners, dmers, apres-midi passes a visiter les usines, pendant les annees 1930. Au cours de ses voyages a travers le Ce qui doit etre passionnant a voir. Il parait qu'ils Ont trouve Uil Canada, Jackson s'arretait souvent clans la region des collines La moyen de traiter le souffrepour l'empecher de tuer la vegetation Cloche et de Grace Lake. Dans son tableau de la fonderie de et de recouvrir le paysage d'un depot verdatre comme c'etait le ill. 2 Copper Cliff, intitule Fantasme de fumee,Jackson emprunte une cas autrefois, ce qui sera moins interessant a voir. Nous allons technique pointilliste, chose rare parmi ses nombreux tableaux. neanmoins nous y arreter en rentrant chez-nous pour y passer Peint en 1932, Fantasmede fumee remonte a l'epoque ou le Groupe une demi-journee 3 dessiner.»14 des Sept etait en voie de dissolution et au.Jackson commen�ait a En examinant !'ensemble des ceuvres de Comfort, il est experimenter une variete de techniques et de formesabstraites. 13 fascinantde comparer celles qu'il a realisees de fa�onindependante Dans Fantasmede fumee, la fumeeplane au-dessus des batiments avec celles qu'il a produites pour la societe Inco comme, par de la fonderie,qui se fondentcontre un horizon brunatreau moyen exemple, la serie d'annonces publicitaires en noir et blanc qu'il a fig. a plan. Les grandes cheminees et leur fumeesont representees d'une realisees a partir de dessins qu'il avait faits lors de ses visites clans fa�onelaboree et le soleil qui se couche jonche le paysage d'ombres les mines et la fonderiede Copper Cliff.Ces annonces publicitaires bleues-pourpres. Les nuages de fumee fantaisistes de Jackson representent le travailleur industriel, ce personnage masculin rendaient hommage a la construction recente de deux cheminees symbolique qui perce la roche, actionne les monte-charge et fait de 500 pieds, faites de briques radiales et de beton arme. Son fonctionner les convertisseurs pour separer le nickel du cuivre. tableau est frappant, non seulement pour son style pointilliste, Les textes qui accompagnent ces images decrivent le travail clans mais aussi pour sa palette de tons pastel criards, composee de_ les mines et les fonderies et le developpement d'applications pourpre, de bleu, de gris et de traces de rose. novatrices pour le nickel, telle que !'utilisation du metal Monel pour fabriquer des appareils electromenagers. l'image corporative Inco allait egalement demander a Comfort de realiser une murale La legendedu nickel pour le Pavilion canadien a !'Exposition fig. b Charles Comfort (1900-1994) arrive pour la premiere fois a universelle de Paris en I 93 7. Produite avec l'aide de Inco et des Sudbury vers le debut des annees 1930 lorsque Inco le charge Eldorado Gold Mines, !'expositionsur l'industrie miniere montee d'entreprendre une serie de projets commerciaux. II reviendra au Pavilion canadien etait assortie d'echantillons de minerai et de produits fabriquesa partir de metaux affinescomrne le radium, le publicite et de !'illustration, de meme que le style moderne de nickel, l' or et le cuivre. Elle mettait en valeur l' extractiondu radium l'epoque, pour presenter une vision idealisee d'une industrie du a Great Bear Lake et !'exploitation du nickel a Sudbury, tout nickel puissante, voire hero'ique. Tout comrne les reuvres que comrne la murale de Comfort, La legende du nickel, que l'on avait Terrence Cuneo allait realiser pour lnco, la murale de Comfort entouree d'echantillons de rninerai. Un critique de l'epoque fit s'en tienta des images de rnineurs,de chercheurs et de machinerie, l'eloge de cette murale, qu'il appela une «reuvre d'art sans faire allusion au paysage industriel, a la fonderie, ni aux 15 remarquable.» cheminees degorgeant leur effluentde fumee toxique. fig. d Comfort crea sa murale de six metres de long a l'automne de Comfort etait au courant des idees et des debats de l'art 1936, avec l'aide de Harold Ayres et de Caven Atkins, organisant moderneet il avait ete captivepar !'expositionde peinture modeme sa compositionautour du personnage central du mineur qui perce de la Societe Anonyme, presentee a Toronto en l 92 7. Il connaissait ill. 3 la roche Le SudburyArt Club allait devenir un lieu de rencontre important des puits de mine ... il pouvait executer rapidernentquatre ou cinq pour les artistes de la region, leur offrantun endroit pour monter croquis en une sortie.»24 Lors d'une excursion a Coniston en 1957, des expositions, inviter des conferenciers et organiser des Jackson peint le tableau Coniston clans lequel il carnpe les petites excursions avec des artistes invites comme A.Y. Jackson, Carl rnaisons des mineurs construites a flanc de colline et, a l'arriere Schaeferet Yvonne McKague Housser.22 Les tableaux et dessins plan, la fonderie.Notons cornbienla palette de couleurs grises et realises a cette epoque font ressortir la variete et l'individualite brunes employee par Jackson n'a rien de commun avec le style des villages et maisons de la region, par exemple, le pele-mele des pointilliste et la palette de tons roses et pourpres qu'il avait maisons de Little Italy et le caractere rigide des maisons en rangees ernployes en 1932 pour representer la fonderiede Copper Cliff de Inco, baties sur les rochers et collines. (clans le tableau Fantasme de fumie). Des visiteurs, comme Carl Schaefer (1903-1995) allaient Allan Collier (1911-1990), un artiste deToronto, se rendait apporter une contribution importante en encourageant les sou ent a Sudburypour dessiner en cornpagniede Bruno Cavallo, 39 artistes locaux a explorer leur propre paysage. Arrive a Sudbury qu'il avait rencontre au Ontario College of Art. L'interet que ill. 6 en 1947 pour animer des ateliers, Schaefer realise le dessin a Collier eprouvait pour les mines remontait aux annees 1930, l'encre Vue de Copper Cliff, Sudbury. Employant des lignes fortes epoque ou il avait travaille clansla mine Delnite, pres de Timmins. et rythmees, il represente les maisons de Copper Cliff, juchees Apres la guerre, il est retoume a Timmins pour descendre clans sur des formationsrocheuses et disposees en rangees qui donnent les mines afinde representer la perspectivedu mine�.25 Le tableau !'impression d'avoir ete taillees clans les affleurernents du Le terril de Copper Cliff, realise par Collier en 1956, reproduit le ill. 7 Bouclier. Schaefer profite de l'opacite de l'encre noire pour deversernent de sable et de scories d'oxyde de fer en fusion sur le rendre les roches brfrlees,les nuages lourds qui planent au-dessus terril de Copper Cliff. Peint de biais et rendu au rnoyen et, au loin, les omnipresentes cherninees qui degorgent leur d'ernpaternents sureleves, le terril est le point de mire d'une vue furnee. Comrne l'a si bien dit Graham Mclnnes clans The dramatique et classique qui recele la chaleur et l'intensite. Canadian Forum (1936), Schaefer etait un artiste talentueux et Vers le milieu des annees l 9 50, la societe Seagram's of Canada discipline, dont le detachernent apparent ne pouvait cacher retient les services de Collier pour peindre la ville de Sudbury, l'intensite des sentiments qu'il eprouvait facea son sujet dormant clansle cadre de la serie Vil/esdu Canada. Les croquis et les tableaux ill. 8 a son reuvreun caractere drarnatique.23 realises par Collier ont pour sujet le centre ville et les quartiers residentiels de Sudbury, de meme les grandes cheminees vues de Dans son tableau Coniston de 1958, on aper�oit une formation ill. 10 loin. C'etait la premiere fois qu'un artiste s'interessait a la rocheuse a l'avant-plan, qui est en fait le point central de la dimension urbaine de Sudbury. L'industrie du nickel n'est pas composition, un chemin sinueux qui se perd clans les rochers au absente clans les ceuvres de Collier, mais elle ne constitue qu'un loin et, a l'arriere plan, les omnipresentes cheminees de la fonderie. element parmi d'autres au sein d'un vaste paysage. Employant une palette monochrome composee de tons jaunes, gris Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967), fondatrice du Sudbury Art et bruns, !'artiste nous presente un village au milieu d'un paysage Club, est un personnage important, non seulement en tant noirci, coince entreles enormes formationsrocheuses du Bouclier. qu'artiste, mais aussi comme agent catalyseur au sein de la Cette image contraste avec les maisons, les verandas, les clotures et communaute locale. Mme Keillor Lowe s'est consacree a fairedes les cordes a linge qui sont les sujets des tableaux Copper Cliffet tableaux clans la region, prenant pour sujets les mines et leurs Derriere la rue Minto, Sudbury. Dans les tableaux qu'il executera chevalements, ainsi que les quartiers residentiels comme celui vers la findes annees 1980, Cavallo appliquera sa palette de couleurs qu'elle a reproduit clans le tableau La rue Pearl. Nombre des brillantes a la creation de formes abstraites comme clansle tableau tableaux de scenes industrielles realises par Nellie Keillor Lowe La mine Frood qui evoque les chevalements des puits de mine. ill. 11 laissent entrevoir la reactioncomplexe de !'artiste faceau spectacle 40 industriel et sa beaute presque theatrale. 26 Le tableau le syndical et la col ledivite ill. 9 Fakonbridge-qui se donne pour sujet un ensemble dense de mines et de fonderies, un lac a !'avant-plan, et des tourbillons de fumee En 1956, Henry Orenstein (1918- ), jeune artistetravaillant clans qui montent vers le ciel-semble presque enjoue, avec sa fumee l'industriede la fourrurea Toronto, futcharge de peindre une murale en formed'aureole et sa palette de bleu de cobalt et de gris. Dans clans la taverne du nouveau centresyndical, rue Regent a Sudbury, Cha/eur et froid, Keillor Lowe nous presente une image a la fois sur !'invitationde Weir Reid, directeur des activitesde loisirs de la dramatique et abstraite clanslaquelle des flotsde scories brG.lantes section598 du Syndicat des travailleursdes mines et des fonderies. se melent a la neige qui recouvre le flancdu terril. Orenstein, qui avait fait des etudes avec la Art Students' League de Le Sudbury Art Club et, plus particulierement, Nellie Keillor New York vers la findes annees 1940, etait attirepar la dimension Lowe, persuaderent Bruno Cavallo, peintre d'enseignes et artiste sociale qu'il avait decouvert clansle travailde Ben Shahn, de meme amateur de la region,27 de peindre des scenes locales. Cavallo que par les formes geometriques elaborees par les cubistes. n etait s'interessait surtout aux villages et aux habitations de la region, tresactif au sein de la communaute culturelle de gauche de Toronto comme en temoignent ses tableaux Coniston, Copper Cliffet Derriere et avait con�u et construit de nombreux decors pour des troupesde la rue Minto, Sudbury. Il a aussi peint des scenes industrielles theatre communautaires, de meme que des toiles de fondpour des classiques, comme la· Mine Frood et la coulee des scories. congres et ralliements syndicaux. Le syndicat voulait un tableau qui allait illustrer son role au sein En s'attardant sur les details-des voitures recouvertes de cendre de la collectivite, en tant qu'organisme voue a !'amelioration des grise, une femme qui travaille clans son jardin, des travailleurs conditions de vie et de travail a Sudbury et soucieux d'offrir une revenant des mines-Orenstein reussit a evoquer l' experience des gamme variee d'activites culturelles et recreatives aux travailleurs.2 gens qui vivent et travaillent a Sudbury. Il evite de representer le Orenstein devait passer deux semaines entieresa fairedes dessins, se travail de fa9onexplicite et ne fait allusion au paysage devaste et a depla9ant en auto bus pour visiter les mines et les villagesde la region. la pollution que de fa9on indirecte, preferant nous presenter une La murale proposee sera elaboree a partirde croquis comme Gatchell, perspective humaniste de la vie syndicale au sein de la collectivite. ill. 12 Sudbury, et Cheminie. Esquissant a partir de points d'observation sureleves et employant des traits simples et fonces et un style assujeHir la terre impressionniste degage, Orenstein realise des croquis marques de spontaneite qui saisissent bien le caractere essentiel du paysage. Le peintre William Kurelek( 192 7-1977), qui realisa des tableaux La murale de onze metres fut peinte sur place, clans la taveme aux alentours de Sudbury vers le milieu des annees l 960, a eprouve ill. 14 du centresyndical, ce qui necessita la projectiondes dessins sur un une reaction passablement complexe face au paysage de la region. gros canevas apprete au gesso et monte sur du contreplaque fixeau Les deux tableaux qu'il a executes en 1964, Assujettir la Terre et mur. Orenstein, qui devait monter sur une echelle pour s'executer, Esprit malsain a l'exterieur de Sudbury tirent leur inspiration de la se souvient que les clients de la taverne lui offraient parfois leurs beaute austere du paysage. De dire Kurelek clansson autobiographie, commentaires et lui parlaient de leurs experiences clans les mines «j'adorais la region desolee aux alentours de Sudbury, OU la pendant qu'il travaillait.29 Le point central de la murale est l'entree vegetationavait ete aneantie par les vapeurs sulfureuses, parce que style moderniste du centre syndical, rue Regent, ou des membres cela me rappelait le desert de Judee OU Jesus avait jeune pendant du syndicat sont regroupes, se donnant la main et gesticulant. En quarante jours et avait repousse la tentationde Satan.»30 faisant des mineurs et de leurs epouses le point de mire de sa murale, Dans Assujettir la Terre, on aper9oit la fonderiede Copper Cliff ill. 13 Orenstein a voulu evoquer les liens intenses qui unissent un a l'arriere plan et, a l'avant plan, un paysage brfile,denude et jonche mouvement ouvrier militant. On aper9oit, au cote gauche de la de souches d'arbres et de pylones hydroelectriques. Kurelek s'est murale, les collectivites de Gatchell et de Copper Cliff et les insere clansson tableau, sous formed'un petit personnage qui erre chevalements de la mine de Creighton. Du cote droit, Orenstein a du cote gauche. La scene est enveloppee d'un brouillard morne reproduit le centre-ville de Sudbury, le terrain de camping de aux teintes noiratres et grisatres. Dans le tableau apparente Esprit Richard Lake, la fonderiede Falconbridge et les puits de mine. Le malsain a l'extirieur de Sudbury des rochers noirs et denudes, qui cote gauche de la murale, un ambitieux montage de scenes typiques sont le point de mire du tableau, un tron9on d'autoroute et les de Copper Cliffet des environs, est le cote le plus developpe. poteaux telephoniques et pylones hydroelectriques omnipresents forment une image a la fois puissante et de olante d'un paysage ubtilede es tableaux precedents Kurelek semble vouloir traiter ravage, clans lequel on aper�oit une forme rougeatre et spectrale la beaute et l'au terite contrastantes du pay age et offrir l'e poir (vraisemblablementl' «esprit malsain») parcourant le falaises et les que le paysage pourra e regenerer. gorges. La perspective de Kurelek est en fait une forme complexe d'anthropocentrismequi tire on inspirationde la religion. Kurelek conclusion offre ainsi une vision du monde ou le valeurs et !'experience humaine dominent la nature. «En tant que chretiencroyant>> ecrit Dans l'imagerie du bassin de udbury, certains sujets, tels les Kurelek «je vois !'exploitation des richesse minerales de la Terre chevalements, les mines, les fonderies et les cheminees par l'homme comme une activiteparfaitement legitime et comme reapparaissent a maintes reprises, mais toujours sous un angle, une l'accomplissement du premier commandement de Dieu, lorsqu'il perspective, ou un style different, creant une iconographie qui crea l'homme et la femme et leur commanda de se multiplier et symbolise l'activite industrielle de la region. Etant donne que tres d'assujettir la Terre. !.;exploitation des ressources minerales de la peu de ces tableaux ont ete expose a udbury jusqu'ici, la presente Terre e t une activiteparfaitement legitimecar elle cree des emploi exposition est une premiere tentati e pour situer les image clans pour des peres de famille qui perpetuent la race humaine et elle leur contexte. Reunir ce images permet de tracer !'evolution des 42 produit des metaux qui sont expedies partout clansle monde pour representationsartistiques des mineurs, des terrils, des mines a ciel fabriquerles machines qui nous permettent d'assujettir la Terre. II ouvert, des chemineeset du pay age en tant que symbole formels faut, bien entendu, tenir compte de la question ecologique, mais du Canada. lor qu'il n'est ni rentable, ni possible de le faire, l'activiteminiere Cette exposition vise aussi a mettre en cause des notions doit passer avant tout.»31 Toutefois, les images de Kurelek traditionnellesde beaute et d'esthetique et de soulever des questions contredisent ses propos. Ses tableaux con tituent en fait une touchant !'impact de !'industrialisation sur l'environnement. Elle condamnation des effets nefastes de !'anhydride sulfureux sur cherche a examiner comment une chose aussi puissante et l'environnement de la region. destructrice que !'extraction et la fu ion du minerai de fer peut Le tableau intituleJournee pluvieuse pres de Sudburyde Kurelek acquerir une beaute saisissante lorsqu'elle est consideree sous un differede ses tableaux precedents du fa.itqu'il represente une carriere angle abstrait. Au grand jour, les cheminees des fonderies ou une fosse rocailleuse que des plantes sauvages ont commence a empruntent des formessculpturales; au couche du soleil, les couleurs ill. 15 envahir. Cette reuvre,aux couleurs et aux formesattenuees, illustre dansent clans le nuage de fumee: clans le paysage industriel, les eloquemment la regeneration hesitante des herbes et des plantes. realites visuelles renferment toujours des contradictions. Ce tableau est un portrait eloquent des effets et resultats de !'exploitation miniere. Sans recourir a l'emotivite religieuse peu Rosemary Donegan, juin r 998 notes 1 1. Dans Mine d'argent du Nord-un tableau similaire realise en r 930 clansla region de Cobalt-Carmichael employa a nouveau une perspective en plongee et la meme palette de bleu,de gris et de vert. I..:agencementgeographique des mines, 1. Extraits des memoires inedits de Charles Comfort,intitules «Sketches from des collectivites locales et de lacs y est, toutefois,plus elabore. Ce tableau fait Memory» (droits d'auteur, succession de Louise Irine Comfort, ttawa). partiede la Collection McMichael d'art canadien a Kleinberg (Ontario). (t:raduction fibre) 12. Megan Bice, Light & Shadow: The W01·k of Franklin Cannichael, Kleinberg, 2. 11 existe un vaste en emble d'images et de documents photographiques Ontario, Collection McMichael d'art canadien, 1990, p. 70. portant sur le travail clans les mines et les fonderies. Toutefois, puisque l'acces a ces sites a toujours ete trictement contr6le par Jes societes minieres, ces 13. elon Naomi Jackson Groves, son biographe, «ce fut,pour Jui, quelque chose photographies ant tendance a refleter la perspective des societes et de tout a fait extraordinaire que d'experimemer un style pointilliste pour » n'examinent que tres rarement le paysage local. Leur signification est reproduire une mine de udbury. Sudbury Star,le 17 mai 1993. (traductiun Libre) forcementlimitee. Une vaste gamme de photographies du bassin de Sudbury, prises par Jes societes, Jes syndicats ou d'autres membres de la collectivite, 14. Yvonne McKague Housser, "Excerpts from Letters to Fred Housser, est accessible a la bibliotheque municipale de Sudbury, clans Jes archives de Whitefish Falls, 1936", Northward Journal: A Quarterly of Northern Arts, l'Univer ite Laurentienne, au departement des archive et des dossiers de volume 16, 1980, p. 39. (t:raduction libre) lnco, clansles archives d'autre societes privees, de meme que clansdiverses archives provinciaJes et nationales. 15. Archives nationaJes du Canada, Ottawa, Rapport AC RG 72, volume n° 30175G, septembre, 1936. 3. Laurence Hyde,"Death Industries Inc."Advance, novembre, 1939,pp. 13, 22. (t:raduction fibre) 16. Entrevue avec Charles Comfort,realisee par Charles Hill, Ottawa, le 3 octobre 1973. (t:raduction fibre) 43 4. «Sudbury Basin Rocks Give Clues to Apollo 16 Mission», Inca Triangle,juillet 1971. (t:raductionfibre) 17. Josephine Hambleton, "T he Murals of Charles Comfort" Ottawa Evening Citizen, le 1•r mai 1948. (t:raductiontibre) 5. H.V Nelles, The Politics of Development:Forests, Mines & Hydro-electric Power in Ontario,1849-1941, Toronto,Macmillan of Canada,1974, p. 45. (t:raduction 18. Dans une photo en noir et blanc prise par Charles Comfort en septembre fibre) 1936, montrant la silhouette de la fonderie et des cheminees de Copper Cliff,l'agencement des elements est presque identique a celui du tableau 6. Paul H. Walton, «T he Group of Seven and orthem Development», Smelter Stacks, Copper Cliff.Archives nationales du Canada (PA-167879). RACAR, xvnhh990, p. 175. (t:raduction fibre) 19. Extraits des memoires inedits de Charles Comfort,intitules «Sketches from 7. Glen Norcliffe et Paul Simpson-Housley, «No Vacant Eden», A Few Acres Memory» (droits d'auteur, succession de Louise Irine Comfort,Ottawa). ofSnow: Literatyand Artistic lmages ofCanada,Toronto, Dundurn Press, 1992, (t:raduction fibre) p. 6. (t:raduction fibre) 20. «Ce don qu'il avait de decouvrir quelque chose de beau et de poetique clans 8. Frank Underhill, «Review: Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, 1936, edited by des sujets en apparence steriles ou banales ne s'est jamais manifeste d'une Bertram Brooker», Canadian Formn, decembre, 1936, p. 27. fa�onaussi saisissante. La fa�onqu'il a reproduit les couches de roche et de terre aurait ravi n'importe quel geologue ou mineraJogiste a la recherche de 9. Ibid,p.27. donnees scientifiques. Le fait que ces reuvresont plu aux mineurs, qui sont toujours prets a critiquer tout ce qui touche leur domaine d'activite, est sans ro. Cite clans Le Groupe des Sept: L'bnergence d'un art national, Charles Hill, doute le plus bel hommage que !'on ait pu leur rendre.»Wtlliam Colgate, Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1995, p. 325. Bridle & Golfer, December, 1938, p. 23. (traduction libre) 21. Une phra e familiere en anglais qui definit le travail clan Jes mine . catalogue 22. Maurice H. witzer, BrunoCavallo: A Conversation, udbury, Mu ee et centre de ar de l'Univer ite Laurentienne, 1991, p. 15. (traductionLib re) Franklin Carmichael (1 90-1945) Dans la region du nickel, 1928, huiJe ur toile, 102,9 x 121,9 cm (ill. 1) 2 3. G. amp bell Mclnne , «Carl chaefer: Contemporary Canadian Arri ts», Collection: aJerie d'art d' ttawa. Don de la Fondation du patrimoine de The Canadian Forum, fevrier, 193 7, p. r . (traduction Libre) l' ntario. 24. Maurice H. witzer, op. cit. pp. 15-16. (traduction Libre) Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945) E qui e pour Dans la region du nickel, c. 1928, mine de plomb ur papier, 2 5. Le point culminant de cet exercice a ete une expo ition de tableaux sur !es 29,5 x 33,5 cm mine organisee a !'hotel Royal York de Toronto en mar 1953. Collection: GaJerie d'art d' ttawa. Don de Mary Ma tin, 1997. 26. F. W Hackett, ellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967), xposition du Univer ity Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) Women's Club, tenue a udbury du 13 au 30 avriJ 1969. (Do ier des arti te , Coniston, 1958, huile ur ma onite, 5 ,1 x 318 cm (ill. 10) Galerie d'art de udbury). (traduction Libre) Collection: D' Aina Tenhunen, udbury. 27. Bruno a alJo et Ted zilva furent re pon able de la conception et de la Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) con truction du Big ickel, qui est de enu le point d'interet le mieux connu Copper Cliff, 19 5, huile ur toile, 301 5 x 4016 cm de udbury et un symbole popuJaire de l'indu trie du nickel. Replique du Collection particuliere, udbury. cinq ou canadien de 195 1 et me urant 9 metres de hauteur, le Big ickel a 44 ete erige en 1967, pre de la route 17, ur une elevation qui e trouve Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) directement en face de la fonderie de Inca. Le Pare numi matique du La mine Frood, 19 71 huile ur panneau, 1217 x 17, cm (ill. 11) centenaire canadien, qui fait maintenant partie de la mine Big ickel, ous Collection particuliere, udbury. la ge tion de cience ord, e t une attraction touri tique tre populaire. Maurice H. witzer, op. cit., p. 1 . Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) La mine Frood, vers 1968, huile sur ma onite, 57,1 x 7214 cm 2 . Ver la findes annees 1940, a la uite de la montee de l'anticommunisme au Collection: Art Gallery of udbury/Galerie d'art de udbury. Don offert a ein du mouvement ouvrier canadien et du maccarti me clansle mouvement la memoire de :VhonorableJohnA. oodearle (1929-1997) par on epouse ouvrier americain, le syndicat Mine Mill fut l'objet de su picions en raison Wendy oodearle. de son a ociation avec de cau e considerees de gauche ou communi te . Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) 29. Entrevue avec Henry renstein, realise par Rosemary Donegan, Halifax, le Le deversementdes scories, ver 1963, huile sur panneau, 3015 x 4016 cm 16 octobre 1985. Collection: Ivan T Wheale, tie Manitoulin. 30. William C. Forsey, The Ontario Community Collects: A urvey of Canadian Bruno Cavallo (1913-1996) Paintingfrom1776 to the Present, Toronto, Art Gallery of ntario, 1975, L'arrierede la rueMinto udbury, 1987, huile ur panneau, 30,2 40,0 cm p. 110. (traduction Libre) Collection particuliere, udbury. 31· Ibid, p. l IO. Allan Collier (1911-1990) Le deversementdes scories, Copper Cliff,ver 1956, huile ur panneau, 50,8 x 71,1 cm (ill. 7) Collection: udbury econdary chool. Allan Collier (1911-1990) A.Y.Jackson(1 2-1974) udbury, vers 1952, huile ur panneau, 72,4 x 1003 cm (ill. 8) Coniston, 1957, huile ur panneau, 25,4 x 30,5 cm Tire de la erie de Villes du Canada Collection: Le Conseil d'administration de la Bibliotheque publique de m Collection: eagram's ollection, Montreal. Sudbury, succur ale Copper Cliff. Don de M. et M • John . Stewart en souvenir de S. Walter tewart et de James D. tewart. Allan ollier (1911-1990) udbury, ver 1952, huile sur panneau, 29.2 x 39.3 cm .Y.Jackson (1 82-1974) E qui e pour la erie des Villes du Canada FantaS1ne de fumee, 1932, huile sur toile, 1,2 x 101,6 cm (ill. 2) Collection: Seagram's Collection, Montreal. Collection: Magna International, urora (Ontario). Charle Comfort (1900-1994) William Kurelek (1927-1977) Cheminees, er 192 , huile sur carton, 25 x 30 cm (ill. 4) Journie pluvieuse presde udbury, 1966, huile sur masonite, 22,5 x 0,5 cm Collection: Angus Brown, Toronto. (ill. 15) Collection: Art Gallery of udbury/Galerie d'art de udbury, 92-024. Charle Comfort(1900-1994) Copper Cliff, 1936, huile sur panneau, 25 x 30 cm William Kurelek (192 7-1977) ollection: Magna International Inc., Aurora (Ontario) . Asmjettirla Terre, 1966, aquarelle ur papier, 51,9 x 75,9 cm (ill. 13) Collection: Art Gallery of udbury/Galerie d'art de udbury, 69-061. Charles Comfort(1900-1994) Cheniineesde fonderie, CopperClifJ,1936, huile sur toile, 101 ,9 x 12 2,2 cm (ill. 5) William Kurelek(192 7-1977) Collection: Mu ee de beaux-arts du anada, 6666. Espritmalsain a l'exttfrieurde zufbury,1964, gouache ur panneau, 96,5 x 60,9 cm Collection: udbury econdary chool. Charle omfort(1900-1994) 45 Ln legende du nickel, 1937 huile sur toile, 213,5 x 610 cm (ill. 3) ellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) Collection: Mu ee de beaux-arts du Canada. Pret de Re ources naturelle Falconbridge, ANS DATE, huile sur panneau, 60,9 x 76,2 cm (ill. 9) du Canada. Collection: Lockerby Composite chool, Sudbury. Terrence Cuneo(1907-1995) ellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) Chantier d'abattage de la mine Frood, 1955, huile sur toile, 60 9 x 76,2 cm Chaleur et froid, vers 1960, huile ur panneau, 76,2 x 60,9 cm Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. Collection: Fred Hackett, Sudbury. Terrence Cuneo(1907-1995) Nellie Keillor Lowe (1914-1967) La mine a ciel ouvert Frood- tobie a Copper Cliff, 19 5 5, huile sur toile, 60,9 x La rue Pearl, SANS DATE, aquarelle sur papier, 24,1 x 31,7 cm 76,2 cm Collection: Ivan T Wheale, Ile Manitoulin. Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. ellie Keillor Lowe(1914-1967) Terrence Cuneo(1907-1995) Sans titre C ouches et cheminees), vers 1960, huile sur panneau, 40,6 x 30,5 cm Les minewrs quittant la cage a la sortie de la mine Creighton, 19 5 5, huile sur Collection: Fred Hackett, Sudbury. toile, 76,2 x 60 9 cm Collection: Inco Limited, Toronto. Evan Weeks Macdonald(1905-1972) Ln mine a ciel ouvert Frood, InternationalNickel Szufbury, SANS DATE, huile sur toile, 48,3 x 23 cm Collection: Gou ernement de !'Ontario, 624428.