Document generated on 09/28/2021 7:42 p.m. Vie des arts English Report Volume 50, Number 201, Winter 2005–2006 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/52581ac See table of contents Publisher(s) La Société La Vie des Arts ISSN 0042-5435 (print) 1923-3183 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review (2005). Review of [English Report]. Vie des arts, 50(201), 74–79. Tous droits réservés © La Société La Vie des Arts, 2006 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ SACKVILLE, Realists, and Surrey is a prime ex­ less and strong ones at that. Along NEW BRUNSWICK ample, are often overlooked in our the same Unes are a pair of early art history. It is easy to see why as paintings by Fredericton, New many of their works appear drab FULL SPACE: Brunswick artist Molly Lamb Bobak, when compared with the easy going who is one of the few artist in Full MODERN ART FROM THE landscapes of the Group of Seven. Space, if not the only one, who is FIRESTONE COLLECTION A little ink and watercolour such still alive and active. The artists in OF CANADIAN ART as Surrey's Factory, which is in the this exhibition were the familiar 28th 0ctober-18th December 2005 exhibition, is not the kind of thing names in the Canadian art world The Owens Art Gallery many collectors of the time would when I moved to Canada in 1967 to * % 61 York Street have liked to put on their walls when teach art at the University of Alberta. k Mount Allison University they could have lovely landscapes. Now they seem to have faded from Tel. 506-364-2574 Social Realism also later lost out sight and become footnotes in the www.mta.ca/owens when it was identified with Marxism, art history books. They are better This exhibition features a selec­ Communism and Socialism, but than that and this exhibition was a tion of works from the Ottawa Art there was a period prior to the good way to look at them again and Gallery's Firestone Collection of Second World War when many of understand how modern art came Canadian Art and was put together our artists clearly identified with to the fore in Canada. Contemporary by Emily Falvey, the Ottawa gallery's these very values. The Red scares of Canadian artists owe a debt to these left behind after the life has ended. present curator who is a former the 1950s and the post war boom pioneers who deserve a hard sec­ They also interpret all powerful Mount Allison University art history changed all of that, and our artists ond look. earth forces, as registrations, tiny student. Falvey also edited the ex­ had to look elsewhere-that where Virgil Hammock fines and exagerrated striations. The cellent catalogue for the exhibition was Modernism. surface may be that of an artwork that features two fines essays: one by This exhibition has three very for the artist, but the carries allu­ Esther Trépanier, Director of the fine small paintings by Jean Paul QUÉBEC CITY sions to more universal physical Ottawa Art Gallery, and the other by Riopelle, Paul-Emile Borduas and forces. Whether in biology or geol­ Gemey Kelly, Director of the Owens Marcelle Ferron, all done between ogy, or astrophysics these forms are Art Gallery. Kelly.s essay, A Definite 1955 and 1958. In fact, all the works LUDMILA ARMATA: transitional as they are universal. Image: The Representation of the in Full Space are modest in scale LETTERS FROM THE Working on steel plates, or del­ Social in Canadian Art of the 1930's which, to my mind, is not such a bad CENTRE OF THE EARTH icately assembling miniature works and 1940's speaks to the essence of thing, as it proves that artworks to Engramme in boxes after cutting them out, Lud­ the exhibition which is the transition not have to be large to be important 501, rue de Saint-Vallier Est mila Armata integrates a sense of of Canadian art from its emphasis or good. The three works by these At the heart of matter there is time, of the density and shape of on the landscape to a focus on ur­ Automatistes clearly demonstrate a matter. At the core of the earth- time, and of the perpetual changes ban imagery. There are also works new direction for Canadian art in the there is some unseen force, an en­ that seismic movements enact, as in the exhibition that invoke the be­ 1950's. It is pure abstraction and ergy that abounds. We can only much sound as matter. The seismic ginnings of Modernism in Canadian painting for painting's sake, with no imaghine what the sources there are shifts on the surface of earth be­ art, mainly through the paintings reference to social issues. This is or could be. We cannot define, have come a digital dance, with scatalog- of the Automatistes, but that Que­ not to say that these artists were not never seen the centre of the earth. ical notations, scratchy effects,... bec-based movement occurred in interested in social issues. Their art Nevertheless the seismic shifts and vertical vortices open up and then the 1950s and outside the scope of was very much a part of the Quiet tectonic plate movements affects close. There is a repetition of Une Kelly's essay. Revolution that was to follow in our lives. However brief in intensity, in many variations. The fines are Canada, in spite of its vast French speaking Quebec, but that these phenomena can generate Uke voices that speak to us from wilderness, is an urban nation, how­ is a whole other topic and there is tsunamis, earthquakes... Ludmila some distant and inhuman, less than ever, the landscape paintings of the no room here to get into details. Armata's Letters from the Centre of conscious source. The ongoing Group of Seven were central to how Borduas and his followers are a the Earth series (2005), her etch­ change is an effect of motion, or we saw ourselves as a nation in the very important part of the history ing Poem from the Centre of the affect of energy. All this passes first three decades of the 20th cen­ of Canadian painting. Borduas Earth (2005), the Shadow & Shape through the earth and is para­ tury. Increased urbanization and the could achieve results in a small series (2005) created in boxes with phrased in Armata's art. Energy Depression were to change that vi­ painting, such as his Formes ou­ pins and fragile tiny cut-outs a la moves towards a surface and speaks sion. In this carefully curated exhi­ blier, 1958, in this exhibition, that Henri Matisse in white paper on to us, Armata's art seems to suggest. bition these changes are reflected many other Modernist painters black and vice versa, or black on The energy, eventually moves on­ through art. The large Firestone could not in wall sized works. black and white on white are like ward, and dissipates, dissolves Collection is the cornerstone of the There are other pictures in the entomological and exemplary exer­ altogether. Her art has this aspect Ottawa Art Gallery's collection and, exhibition by artists who were well cises in aesthetics. Also on view are of sensitivity for the dissolution of in fact, has a very large number of known in early second half of the the large scale Tectonica (2005) things, even of histories, and this is Group of Seven works. Falvey looked last century such as B.C. artists Jack series of etchings that can be as­ the personal and autobiographical at the less popular, but important, Shadbolt, who is represented by sembled in a variety of ways on a part of her art, all abstract even so. works in the collection for the ex­ two fine paintings Night Harbour wall. Armata's Tectonica series What a metaphor for life itself! hibition, such as the urban land­ Image, 1959, and Italian Town, emphasizes the surface of things, With this art, we can fully under­ scapes of underrated Montreal artist 1961. These paintings are more ab­ and the traces that are felt or even stand how time can be a metaphor Philip Surrey. Many of these Surrey stractions than the non-objective left by energy, even the way life's for life, (particularly as it affects the works are Montreal street scenes of works of the Automatistes, but they traces are ultimately ephemeral and physics of the world we are in). working class neighborhoods. Social are Modernist paintings none the exist at a moment in time, orcan be 74 VIE DES ARTS N°201 ENGLISH Ludmila Armata has created a Désilets are all represented with spectrum of artists such as Robert body of work that not only refer­ their various takes on the city and Roussil, Armand Vaillancourt, and ences the unseen, the invisible by it's discontents, as well as it's star­ Jean-Paul Mousseau, among others. drawing sometimes fluid, other- tling, harsh beauty and disorienting Largely self taught, Vittorio defies times nervous, very physical mo­ vision. With largely new contribu­ categories, yet helped to pioneer a tions in a push and pull tug of war tions, three of the six have contri­ certain bold pictorial and symbolic battle with the surfaces and density buted works in medium that is now style.