John Boyle, Greg Curnoe and Joyce Wieland: Erotic Art and English Canadian Nationalism by Matthew Purvis A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Mediations Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2020, Matthew Purvis i Abstract This dissertation concerns the relation between eroticism and nationalism in the work of a set of English Canadian artists in the mid-1960s-70s, namely John Boyle, Greg Curnoe, and Joyce Wieland. It contends that within their bodies of work there are ways of imagining nationalism and eroticism that are often formally or conceptually interrelated, either by strategy or figuration, and at times indistinguishable. This was evident in the content of their work, in the models that they established for interpreting it and present in more and less overt forms in some of the ways of imagining an English Canadian nationalism that surrounded them. The dissertation contextualizes the three artists in the terms of erotic art prevalent in the twentieth century and makes a case for them as part of a uniquely Canadian mode of decadence. Constructing my case largely from the published and unpublished writing of the three subjects and how these played against their reception, I have attempted to elaborate their artistic models and processes, as well as their understandings of eroticism and nationalism, situating them within the discourses on English Canadian nationalism and its potentially morbid prospects. Rather than treating this as a primarily cultural or socio-political issue, it is treated as both an epistemic and formal one. The artistic material discussed consistently revels in irony, negativity, sarcasm and parody, treating abstraction, politics, and pornography on exchangeable footing and frequently mocks or derides the sociological value of art while simultaneously positing itself as a nationalist art. This, paradoxical or absurd though it may be, I think is important, because it demonstrates a need to shift from reducing nationalism in its artistic ii expression to a mode of meaning production and community formation to recognizing that it can be, and was, something quite different. For these three artists, nationalism was conceived not so much as the affirmation of a living community but of its deadness, noting its irreality, celebrating its destruction, or satirizing whatever values it could claim. Eroticism was consistently treated as a form of fragmentation or self-erasure and tied to deliberate abjection. In Curnoe, Boyle and some of the other Regionalists, art was a radical materiality that denied any privilege to meaning or experience, denigrated the value of the viewer, perverted a rational sense of representation, effectively treating the subject as another machine for processing matter and refusing it narrative substance. In Wieland something quite different occurred. She created a hyper-symbolic mode of imagining the world that derided the subject and their phenomenal life as little more than excrement and treated the symbol or stereotype as the vessel of a holy transcendent reality. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Brian Foss. Without his faith in this project and his unwavering support, this dissertation would not have been possible. Special thanks also go to my committee members, André Loiselle and Will Straw. All three gentlemen were very sporting to tolerate my excessiveness. Thanks also go to my external examiner, Anna Hudson, and my internal examiner, Patrizia Gentile, for graciously agreeing to participate in my dissertation defence. This work would have been impossible without the assistance of the archivists of Québec and Ontario. I owe a debt of gratitude to the staff at the E.P. Taylor Research Library and Archives at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the librarians of the D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario, those at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and the MacOdrum Library at Carleton University, the staff of Library and Archives Canada, the National Gallery of Canada and the Clara Thomas Archives of York University, the staffs of Artexte, La Médiathèque Guy-L.-Coté, Archives gaies du Québec and Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the McIntosh Gallery Curatorial Study Centre and the McKays of London for allowing me to view works in their private collection. Special thanks also go to my lover, my friends and my family. Generous financial support for my dissertation research was provided by the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of contents v List of illustrations vii Introduction 1 Chapter One: Eros and idiom 25 1.1. Eros in Canada 25 1.2. Pornographic ‘politics’ in the hothouse of erotic art 42 1.3. The nation that dared not speak its name 56 Chapter Two: The bawdy politics of passionate functionalism 79 2.1. Trudeau’s mania: Passionate functionalism 82 2.2. The nihilists of Canadada 92 2.3. The Problematic of English Canadian nationalism 109 Chapter Three: Anti-politics and erogenous regions 139 3.1. The rejection of politics: Boyle, Curnoe and continental refusal 140 3.2. Oregionalism and Originality 159 Chapter Four: Erotic geography and pornographic history 180 4.1. The erotic landscapes of Sou-west-o 181 4.2. Pornographic History 192 4.3. Illuminations of the poète maudit 204 Chapter Five: Camp Canada 219 5.1. True Patriot Love; Beavering among the mandarins 220 5.2. Cosmetic Nationalism and the Rococo 238 Chapter Six: Romantic materials 259 6.1. Spirit, beast and scatology 260 6.2. The lips of Canada; (in)articulation and the horrors of romantic realism 277 Chapter Seven: The art of lust 296 7.1. Arctic eroticism 296 7.2. The art of lust 306 7.3. Liebestod for Canada 319 Conclusion 337 v Illustrations 346 Bibliography 390 vi List of Illustrations Figure 1: Installation for La Chambre nuptiale (1974-1976) Figure 2 : Crowd waiting to enter La Chambre nuptiale (1974-1976) Figure 3: Francine Larivée, La Chambre nuptiale; l’autel de la femme (1974-1976) Figure 4: Francine Larivée, La Chambre nuptiale; lit tombeau et autel du couple (1974- 1976) Figure 5: Francine Larivée, La Chambre nuptiale; l’autel de l’homme (1974-1976) Figure 6: The Pedestal vol. 1 no. 1 (Fall 1969) Figure 7: The Pedestal vol. 2 no. 1 (Feb. 1970) Figure 8: Dennis Burton, Bay-Bloor-Yonge (1963) Figure 9: Barrie Hale, “The Group of Sex,” The Telegram, September 17, 1966, 13. Figure 10: Joyce Wieland, Balling (1961) Figure 11: Joyce Wieland, Laura Secord Saves Upper Canada (1961) Figure 12: John Leonard, Portrait of Sharon (1971) Figure 13: John Leonard, The Great Canadian Nude no. 9 (1974) Figure 14: Badanna Zack, A Flock of Great Canadian Geese (1975-76) Figure 15: Badanna Zack, Phallic Object (1972) Figure 16: Badanna Zack, Phallic Object (1972) Figure 17: Badanna Zack, Tumescence Detumescence (1973) Figure 18: Graham Coughtry, Two Figures 8 (1962) Figure 19: Poster for Dennis Burton’s Garterbeltmania series and ‘environment’ at Hart House Figure 20: Dennis Burton, Niagara Rainbow Honeymoon I (1967) Figure 21: Dennis Burton, Niagara Rainbow Honeymoon II (1967) Figure 22: Dennis Burton, Maple Sugar (1967-1968) Figure 23: Claude Breeze, Strange Fruit (1964-65) Figure 24: Claude Breeze, The Matriarch (1964-65) Figure 25: Claude Breeze, The Homeviewer No. 1: Mother and Child (1967) Figure 26: Claude Breeze, Transmission Difficulties: The Dignitaries (1968) Figure 27: Claude Breeze, Twilight Pages (1972) Figure 28: Claude Breeze, Twilight Pages (1972) Figure 29: Claude Breeze, Sunday Afternoon: From an Old American Photograph (1965) Figure 30: Lynching poster circulated by the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee and reproduced in The Ubyssey Figure 31: Harold Town, Enigma (c. 1964) Figure 32: Harold Town, Enigma (1964) Figure 33: Harold Town, Enigma (1964) Figure 34: Harold Town, Enigma 1972 (1972) Figure 35: Newspaper coverage for the bombing by Paul Joseph Chartier (1966) Figure 36: Greg Curnoe, Family Painting #1, In Labour (1966) Figure 37: Greg Curnoe, Family Painting #2, The Woolworth’s Rattle (1966) Figure 38: Greg Curnoe, Family Painting #3, Under the Apple Tree at Mitchell Hts. Cor. Robert & Walter Sts. (1966) Figure 39: Greg Curnoe, Family Painting #4, For the Mad Bomber, His Infernal Machine (1966) vii Figure 40: Greg Curnoe, The True North Strong and Free, #1–5 (1968) Figure 41: Greg Curnoe, For Ben Bella (1964) Figure 42: Greg Curnoe, A Great Canadian (October 2-9, 1965) Figure 43: John Boyle, Little Daisy (1974) Figure 44: John Boyle, Little Daisy (1974) Figure 45: John Boyle, Making Bombs (1965) Figure 46: Greg Curnoe, Kamikaze (1967) Figure 47: Greg Curnoe, Kamikaze (1967) Figure 48: Ron Martin, World Painting (1970) Figure 49: Ron Martin, Early One Colour Painting (1972) Figure 50: Ron Martin, Water Drawing (1973) Figure 51: Greg Curnoe, Goodbye/Cancel (1961) Figure 52: Greg Curnoe, Blonde (1963) Figure 53: Greg Curnoe, Open Slowly (1962) Figure 54: Greg Curnoe, From Behind (1962) Figure 55: Greg Curnoe, Blue Book # 2 Figure 56: Greg Curnoe, Map of North America (1973) Figure 57: Greg Curnoe, Spring on the Ridgeway (1964) Figure 58: Greg Curnoe, Feeding Percy (1965) Figure 59: Greg Curnoe, Chaste Nude (1964) Figure 60: Greg Curnoe, Girdle (for Arnold Rockman) (1963) Figure 61: Greg Curnoe, Art is the Complement of a Weak Mind (1964-1965) Figure 62: Ad for the Sanden Electric Herculex No. 7 Figure 63: Greg Curnoe, Looking at Three Members of the Student Wing of the Nihilist Party Through Blue Glasses (1964-1965) Figure 64: Greg Curnoe, The Vision of Dr. Bucke (1964) Figure 65: Titian, Diana and Actaeon (1556–1559) Figure 66: Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1770) Figure 67: Robert Harris, A Meeting of the School Trustees (1885) Figure 68: George Reid, Mortgaging the Homestead (1890) Figure 69: C.W.