From the Roaring Twenties and the Group of Seven to the Automatistes and the early Cold War, Canadian artists lived through and embodied an era of global tumult and change. With an interweaving of historical narrative, lavish illustrations, and writings by many of Canada’s most revered cultural figures, Lora Senechal Carney illuminates the lives, perspectives, and works of the era’s painters and provides glimpses of the sculptors, poets, dancers, critics, and filmmakers with whom they associated. Canadian Painters in a Modern World gives readers direct access to a carefully curated selection of writings, artworks, photos, and other documents that help to reconstruct the public spheres in which artists including Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, Alex Colville, Lawren Harris, David Milne, and Pegi Nicol MacLeod circulated. Each of the book’s eight chapters consists of a narrative about a key issue or debate, focusing on the relationship of art to politics and society, and on how these are negotiated in an individual’s life. Relating artistic engagement with and responses to the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Cold War, Senechal Carney discovers a common desire for new connections between art and life. Revealing continuities, ruptures, and watershed moments, Canadian Painters in a Modern World showcases artistic production within specific socio-political contexts to shed new light on Canadian art during three decades of conflict and crisis.
Cover
Canadian Painters in a Modern World, 1925–1955
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
List of Canadian Artists Named in This Book
List of Pre-1960 Writers on Art Named in This Book
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
Preface
1 Lawren Stewart Harris, Europe, and the Bodhisattva in the Next Room
Lawren S. Harris, Review of Romain Rolland’s book Mahatma Gandhi and his exchange with John D. Sinclair, 1925
W.G.M., “A Subscriber Writes of the Group Show,” Canadian Bookman, June 1926
From an anonymous editorial comment on the Société Anonyme exhibition, Canadian Forum, 1927
Anonymous, from “Classifying Canadian Art,” Canadian Bookman, 1927
Lawrence Mason, from “‘Modern Art’ Displayed in International Exhibit at Toronto Art Gallery,” The Globe, 1927
Lawren S. Harris, from “Modern Art and Aesthetic Reactions: An Appreciation,” 1927
Lawren S. Harris, from “Creative Art and Canada,” Supplement to the McGill News, 1928
Lawren S. Harris, from “Theosophy and Art,” Canadian Theosophist, 1933
2 Discovering David Milne
Donald W. Buchanan, from “David B. Milne,” 1935
David Milne, letters to Alice Massey, 1935
Graham McInnes on a Milne Exhibition, from his art column in Saturday Night, 1935
Graham McInnes on another Milne exhibition, from his Saturday Night art column, 1936
David Milne, from a letter to Donald Buchanan on the subject of Buchanan’s biography of Morrice, 1937
A Coda: Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau on Milne, from a letter to Maurice Hébert, 1935
3 Emily Carr and the Wordless Speech of Things
Emily Carr, from the journals written during and after her 1927 trip to Ontario
Emily Carr, from a talk given in Victoria, 1930
Emily Carr, from the 1930–1934 journals, with letters from Lawren S. Harris
From Emily Carr’s later journals, 1935–1937
4 The Spanish Civil War and the Moral Duty of Artists
Statement for the Montreal exhibition of Fritz Brandtner’s paintings, 1936
Henri Girard, from “La vie artistique – Fritz Brandtner,” 1936
Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, “Chronique des beaux-arts: Louis Muhlstock,” 1936
Charles Comfort, “Where I Stand on Spain,” 1936
Frank H. Underhill, from a review of The Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, 1936
Elizabeth Wyn Wood, from “Art and the Pre-Cambrian Shield,” 1937
Paraskeva Clark, from “Come Out From Behind the Pre-Cambrian Shield,” 1937
Walter Abell, from Representation and Form, 1936
G. Campbell (Graham) McInnes, “New Horizons in Canadian Art,” 1937
Norman Bethune, from “An Apology for Not Writing Letters,” 1936
5 Defending Art vivant in Montreal
Henri Girard, from “At Scott and Sons Gallery, J.W. Morrice,” 1933
John Lyman, from “Morrice – The Shadow and the Substance,” 1937
Jean-Charles Harvey, “In Literature, in Art, to Be Free or Not to Be,” 1937
Jacques de Tonnancour, from “Views from the Promised Land,” 1940
Julien Hébert, “Pellan,” 1941
Marcel Parizeau, from “Canadian Painting Today,” 1942
Paul-Émile Borduas, from “Ways of Savouring a Work of Art,” 1943
Fernand Leduc, “Borduas,” 1943
Françoise Sullivan, from “Feminine Art,” 1943
Jacques G. de Tonnancour, from “Roberts,” 1943
6 The War and New Cultural Order
Robert Ayre, from “Exhibition of ‘Art of Our Day’ by Contemporary Arts Society Found Haunting and Significant,” 1940
Walter Abell, from “Art and Democracy,” 1941
John Grierson, from “Documentary Idea, 1942”
Ernst Neumann, from “Some Ideas on Painting,” 1942
Miller Brittain, “Art To-day,” 1942
Frederick B. Taylor, from “Painting War Production,” 1943
Paraskeva Clark, from “Thoughts on Canadian Painting,” 1943
Pegi Nicol MacLeod, “Recording the Women’s Services,” 1945
7 The Automatistes, True Poets
Thérèse Renaud, “Poem,” 1945
Rémi-Paul Forgues, “Surrealism in Montreal,” 1945
Bruno Cormier, “For Modern Thought,” 1945
Fernand Leduc, “All New Consciousness …” 1946
Claude Gauvreau, from “Revolution at the Contemporary Arts Society,” 1946
Madeleine Gariépy, “Riopelle,” 1947
Josephine Hambleton, from “A Canadian Painter of Vision,” 1948
Paul-Émile Borduas, letter to Josephine Hambleton, 1948
Paul-Émile Borduas, from Refus global, 1948
8 Cold War Culture
Miller Brittain, “A Note by the Artist,” 1949
Alex Colville, Statement, 1951
Agnès Lefort, from “Reflections of a Picture Seller,” 1951
Jack Shadbolt, from “Recent British Columbia Paintings and the Contemporary Tradition,” 1951
Alexandra Luke and Jock Macdonald, statements from Canadian Abstract Exhibition, 1952
Manifesto of the Plasticiens, 1955
Guido Molinari, from “The Tachiste Space or the Automatist Situation,” 1955
James A. Houston, from “In Search of Contemporary Eskimo Art,” 1952
Marshall McLuhan, from “Notes on the Media as Art Forms,” 1954
Notes
Bibliography
Index
