Stealing the Show: Seven Women Artists in Canadian Public Art 9780773564732

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Stealing the Show: Seven Women Artists in Canadian Public Art

Focusing on art commissioned for display in public places, Stealing the Show highlights the artistic achievements of seven prominent Canadian women artists: Marcelle Perron, Anne Kahane, Rita Letendre, Gathie Falk, Joyce Wieland, Jerry Grey, and Colette Whiten. In the past, few women artists were commissioned to create public works of art. These seven artists received most of the commissions awarded to women between 1958 and 1988, although until now their sizable body of work has been given little attention. Taking into account the purpose of public art - to enhance the environment and communicate with a public often perplexed and sometimes alienated by works of art - Gunda Lambton assesses the appeal and quality of commissioned works by these artists. She highlights the difficulties that many women artists encounter and combines detailed biographies of the artists with an examination of their work. This book will appeal to those interested in art as well as art historians, urban historians, women's studies specialists, and policy makers. GUNDA LAMBTON is an artist and writer living in Alcove, Quebec.

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Stealing the Show Seven Women Artists in Canadian Public Art GUNDA

LAMBTON

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1994 I S B N 0-7735-1188-1 (cloth) I S B N o-7735-n89-x (paper) Legal deposit third quarter 1994 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publication has also been supported by the Canada Council through its block grant program. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Lambton, Gunda, 1914Stealing the show: seven women artists in Canadian public art Includes bibliographical references and index. I S B N 0-7735-1188-1 (bound) I S B N o-7735-n89-x (pbk.) i. Women artists - Canada, z. Art, Canadian. 3. Art, Modern - zoth century. 4. Public art. i. Title. N6540.L35 1994 704'.042.'o97i 094-900494-4 Typeset in Sabon 10/12. by Caractera production graphique, Quebec City

Contents

Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 3 I

MARCELLE PERRON 2

ANNE

3

RITA 4

5

7

34

LETENDRE

GATHIE JOYCE

6

KAHANE

15

65

WIELAND

JERRY

COLETTE

FALK

50

GREY WHITEN

8l 98 112

Epilogue 127 Appendix One Questionnaire 137 Appendix Two Public Commissions 138 Appendix Three Exhibitions 143 Notes 185 Bibliography 197 Index 207

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Illustrations

COLOUR

PLATES

i Marcelle Perron, stained-glass panels, 1968, Champ de Mars metro station, Montreal xiii 2 Anne Kahane, La Mer, 1974, Canadian Embassy, Islamabad xiv 3

Rita Letendre, Sunrise, 1971, Neill Wycik Residence, Toronto xv 4

Gathie Falk, Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker, 1973, Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa xvi

5 Joyce Wieland, Defendez la Terre I Defend the Earth, 1972-73, National Science Library (now the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information), Ottawa xvii 6 Jerry Grey, Tiles of Time, 1982-83, Ottawa Police Station

xviii

7 Colette Whiten, eight untitled figures, 1986, Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, Toronto xix ILLUSTRATIONS

IN TEXT

8 Marcelle Perron, Mirror of Aviation, 1975, International Civil Aviation Offices, Montreal 28 9

Marcelle Perron, Stained-glass dome and indoor stainless-steel sculpture, 1981, Place Vendome metro station, Montreal 31 10 Anne Kahane, Mother and Child, 1959, Rockland Plaza, Montreal 39 ii

Anne Kahane, Memorial to Captain E], Stevenson, 1962, Winnipeg airport 42

viii

Illustrations

12 Rita Letendre, Joy, 1977, Glencairn subway station, Toronto 13

60

Rita Letendre, Seikotan, 1978, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal 62

14

Gathie Falk, Veneration of the White Collar Worker, 1973, Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa 71

15

Gathie Falk, Beautiful British Columbia Multiple Purpose Thermal Blanket, 1979, BC Central Credit Union 76 16 Joyce Wieland, Barren Ground Caribou, 1978, Spadina subway station, Toronto 92. J

7 JoYce Wieland, The Ocean of Love, 1989, Via Rail, Transcontinental train 96

18 Jerry Grey, The Great Canadian Equalizer, 1979, and The Canadian Mosaic (detail), Jean Talon Building, Ottawa 103 19 Jerry Grey, Glass mural, 1989, Saint-Vincent Hospital, Ottawa no 20 Colette Whiten, Unfitted, 1977, Government of Canada Building, North York 117 21 Colette Whiten, People Sculpture, 1983, Sudbury 123

Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

My special thanks to all those who contributed to this work with their suggestions, their time, and their permission to quote and use illustrations. The staff at the National Gallery Library was tireless in giving assistance to my research, as was that of the slide library of the Art History department, Carleton University, especially Barbara Stevenson, who allowed me to read, and quote from, her 1987 master's thesis for the Institute of Canadian Studies. Natalie Luckyj of the Department of Art History and Patricia Smart of the Institute of Canadian Studies - both at Carleton University - made many helpful suggestions during the early stages of this book. Special thanks to them, and, particularly, to the seven women artists, Marcelle Perron, Anne Kahane, Rita Letendre, Gathie Falk, Joyce Wieland, Jerry Grey, and Colette Whiten, who contributed so much during their interviews with me, often providing their own photographs to illustrate their work. I would like to thank Visual Arts Ontario, Ann Rosenberg of the Capilano Review, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Maclean's Magazine and Time (Canada) for their generous permission to quote comments by the seven women artists in their publications. Lastly, my very special thanks to Peter Blaney of McGill-Queen's University Press, and to Claire Gigantes, whose patient editing has greatly contributed to the work's clarity.

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Abbreviations

A AM ABAC AGO CAR CAS CSGA HAG ICAO LPLAM LRAG MAC MM FA NGC NSAG OCA RCA UBC u of A u of T uwo VAG VAS WAG

Art Association of Montreal Agnes Etherington Art Centre Art Gallery of Ontario Canadian Artists Representatives Contemporary Arts Society Canadian Society of Graphic Art Hamilton Art Gallery International Civil Aviation Offices London Public Library and Art Museum London Regional Art Gallery Musee d'art contemporain Montreal Museum of Fine Arts National Gallery of Canada Nova Scotia Art Gallery Ontario College of Art Royal Canadian Academy University of British Columbia University of Alberta University of Toronto University of Western Ontario Vancouver Art Gallery Vancouver Art School Winnipeg Art Gallery

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i Marcelle Perron. Stained-glass panels, Champ de Mars metro station, Montreal, 1968. 7.62. x 60.96 m overall. Commissioned by Ministere des Affaires culturelles du Quebec. Photo: Editions Image.

2, Anne Kahane. La Mer, 1974. Laminated-pine carving, 0.61 x 8.9 m. Commissioned by the federal Department of Public Works for the Canadian Embassy, Islamabad, Pakistan. Photo: the artist.

3 Rita Letendre. Sunrise, 1971. Drywall mural, 18 x 18 m, for Neill Wycik Residence, Toronto. Benson and Hedges "Artwalls" commission. Photo: the artist.

4 Gathie Falk. Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker, 15*73. Ceramic mural, 2.75 x 8.35 m. Commissioned by Department of Public Works for the Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa. Photo: Wolf Professional Photo Service.

5 Joyce Wieland. Defendez la Tene I Defend the Earth, 1972-73. Quilted cloth assemblage, 193 x 716.3 cm. Commissioned by the Department of Public Works for the National Science Library (now the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information), Ottawa. Photo: Wolf Professional Photo Service.

6 Jerry Grey. Tiles of Time, 1981-83. Glass-mosaic mural, 3.05 x 17.3 m. Commissioned for the Ottawa Police Station by the City of Ottawa. Photo: the artist.

7 Colette Whiten. Eight untitled figures, 1986. Life-size plaster-and-burlap cast of one of four couples. Foyer of head office, Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, Toronto. Photo: G. Lambton.

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Stealing the Show

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Introduction Women's art is neither a style nor a movement ... and for the most part succeeds in bypassing the star system ... It raises consciousness, invites dialogue and transforms culture.1

The qualities in women's art described above by Lucy Lippard are the very qualities we seek in public art. In fact, the following examination of the public art of seven women artists is the result of an earlier enquiry into public art in general, its possibilities, prerequisites, and shortcomings, the controversies that have arisen over the subject in recent years, and the variety of ways public art is perceived in a country like Canada, which covers such a vast area and comprises such a multitude of cultural identities. The number of women artists who received public commissions in the last thirty years is relatively small: the seven artists discussed here have executed most of the commissions given to women for art in public places in Canada during that time. However, the quality of their contributions far exceeds their representation in terms of numbers, as the following chapters will demonstrate. Public art by women artists preceding these three decades, while not singled out as such, has been well documented in general histories of Canadian women artists (see below). The term "public art" has been questioned because of its vagueness: it may refer both to art in public places and publicly financed art. In an ArtViews issue devoted to art in architecture, Hennie L. Wolff, executive director of Visual Arts Ontario, suggests that a precise definition or another new term is badly needed.2 Terms like site-specific and site-sensitive have been suggested and are useful when referring to art created for architectural spaces. However, free-standing sculpture out of doors - war memorials, for instance, or fountains - may be created for a specific site, but parks and buildings around such works often change through the years. Museums, as often as not, are "public" buildings too, yet we speak of "museum art" as opposed to "public art."

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Stealing the Show

Both the Oxford Dictionary's definition of public art as "concerning the people as a whole, the community in general and ... open to general observation, done or existing in public" and the term "site-specific" could be applied to certain recent installations that would not fall into the category of museum art. One project was "Waterworks" (1988), organized by Visual Arts Ontario and a team of local and international architects and artists, using a functioning Toronto infiltration plant as a site for paintings, sculpture, and multimedia installations. They were displayed for three months and attracted a large public. Two other such installations were Musee de Science (1984) and La Donna Delinquente (1987), both in Montreal. These were accessible for an even shorter time and also attracted a large public. Montreal artists Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe used, respectively, an abandoned post office and an old vaudeville theatre, public spaces that did not promise any kind of permanence. Installations of such a transient nature, though in public spaces, would be considered exhibitions rather than public art because we associate public art with some kind of permanence. Such projects express the spirit of a particular time, and that is an important aspect of public art. But the majority of works seen as public art last through decades, sometimes through centuries, and have to weather changes in attitudes and ways of seeing. What has distinguished public from private art is that it is perceived by larger, more diverse groups of people than works selected for those interested in visual and intellectual experiments, followers of specific art movements, groups that frequent art galleries of their choice, or private collectors. Public art, in communicating with a large audience, has to apply to various strata of cultural conditioning. To be appreciated, such works have to penetrate a screen of "habits of seeing." If an iconography is used to which a large part of the public is accustomed - that of figurative art using Renaissance perspective, for instance - a work may be more easily understood. There is, however, always the danger of using the lowest common denominator in order to put art "within reach" of the public. The works that succeed best, that maintain a high standard yet manage to communicate, often operate on several levels. They may be figurative but the figures may be symbolic, may have other levels of meaning, may include irony and social criticism (see chapters 4 and 5). Such works invite dialogue for those of the public who fathom their full message. Then, there are works that may have a formal appeal, an elegance or harmony due to certain laws for visual variables that need not be fully understood to make the work acceptable. Still other works - for example, those by Marcelle Perron

Introduction

5

or Rita Letendre (chapters i and 3) - may satisfy through the emotional power of colour alone. "When the artist creates his work," Jean Duvignaud remarked, "he seems to incorporate into it an invisible community, the spirit of society, in which the social substance, the 'manna' which holds the secret of our future existence, is crystallized."3 The "spirit of the times" or communal spirit is expressed in public art commemorating a communal sorrow, such as war memorials. Other works in public places may express communal pride: Michelangelo's David, which stands at the centre of a public square facing south, expresses defiance towards Rome for all of the city of Florence. FOR SOME YEARS, ARTISTS and theorists have tried to lay down guidelines that would lead to an understanding of direct experience of art (and that would be useful in assessing public art). In the 19608 and 19708 Rudolf Arnheim pointed out the importance of visual thinking, which in his opinion preceded logical or linear thinking. At the same time, Roland Barthes reformulated concepts of "communicative signs."4 One of the most interesting works in this field is Fernande Saint-Martin's Semiologie du langage visuel (1987). Saint-Martin realized that, in the work of some of the theorists mentioned, such as that of Roland Barthes, the analytical concepts of visual language were still dominated by those of verbal language, the "logos" developed (as sociologists point out) in patriarchal societies. Saint-Martin remarks on the differences in perception among societies and groups that have been culturally conditioned in different ways. One of the most common examples is perspective. We take for granted artificial rules of perspective that were created to indicate depth in a two-dimensional framework; those developed in the Renaissance are still culturally the most accepted in our Western industrialized societies. People conditioned to see depth this way have some difficulty coming to terms with work in which other rules have been applied. Saint-Martin further points out that colour, one of the most important ingredients of art, is also one of the most evasive: the retina constructs colour according to the way it receives refracted rays of (originally white) light. Perceived colours are further modified by colour fields that surround or border the colour on which the eye has focused. Even colours at some distance from it influence its hue, and this influence is also exercised by colours the viewer perceived previously. It matters whether the eye moves from left to right on the picture plane, for instance, but this visual habit may not be as prevalent in societies that read from right to left, or bottom to top. The eye

6

Stealing the Show

constantly adjusts to all these factors, now seeking compatible colours, now complementary ones. If both exist in the vicinity of the colour primarily perceived, the oscillation from one experience to the other is felt as vibration. This experience is produced (consciously or unconsciously) by certain paintings. We see it in some works by Rita Letendre (chapter 3). The influence of colour on human emotions has been recognized for centuries; several of the artists discussed here have deployed its power. But there are individual differences in the way we perceive colour, even in the names given to colours. Entire societies, as Saint-Martin points out, have no word for grey; or the word for grey and brown, or blue and green, is the same.5 We need only think of the Inuit of northern Canada, who have a multitude of words for white and snow, to realize the difficulty of finding universal laws for visual perception. Another factor that may influence perceptions of colour and shape in a particular epoch is that of the pace of life. This has accelerated during the past thirty years; so, in some instances, have the levels of noise to which we are exposed. Joanne Tod's painting Infiltration (for "Waterworks," 1988) is as site-specific as can be imagined, and was especially created for the lower-level pumping station of the R.C. Harris plant in Toronto. But, as the architect George Baird remarked, from any point except close by, it "unfortunately surrenders to the indifferent roar of the pumps in this majestically inhospitable realm."6 Noise, hurry, low light levels, and inaccessibility also plague some subway art (as detailed in chapters 3 and 5). These questions of perception are important for public art. Since different conditions prevailed in other times, theories concerning public art will have to be re-examined according to their epoch. In small, cohesive societies - both in history and prehistory - the artist and public shared the same visual vocabulary. As Merleau-Ponty wrote in 1964, "Space is an older communication with the world than thought."7 Verbal signs (once they came into being), because of their logical structure and linear presentation, were unable to express visual, spatial, multidimensional language. Verbal language cannot express simultaneity, the very characteristic of spatial experience. Freud tied the latter to the unconscious: "As time is ignored by the unconscious, space is non-existant in consciousness."9 One might imagine that works with a direct appeal to the unconscious, works that do not have to be understood through the "logos," would be those most accessible to a wide variety of people. But memories and structures from the world of logic are part of our heritage; they are present in each person and often create barriers to direct experience. This is one of the reasons why some artists use

Introduction

7

photography and texts - which are tied to memories and structures from the world of verbal language - usually as a comment on a society we all share. Combinations of texts and photographs were used in the late 19808 by women artists to make specific feminist and social statements. The 1986 National Gallery of Canada ( N G C ) exhibition "Songs of Experience"9 contained many examples of such work: political comments like Los Desaparecidos by Jamelie Hassan, the paralleling of words and images in Nancy Johnson's work, all express a dissatisfaction with the modernist retreat from the uncomfortable realities of the world as well as with the discursive logic of language. Such works, because of their impermanence, are seldom chosen for public commissions. But the ideas they contain throw a new light on the work of women artists of the past three decades. We now find that within the framework of modernism, the public art of women artists has subversively incorporated such ideas in powerful visual language. ART E X P R E S S I N G SHARED C O N C E R N S , art in public places, art publicly commissioned: these have existed for a long time. Invariably they relate to some form of public or private patronage. While used as means of communication in prehistoric times, visual language was related to ceremonies, often religious, involving other aspects of culture - music and dance. Such ceremonies continued in historic times, with the churches coming to the fore as powerful patrons. Art as used in Canadian native societies illustrates how deeply the visual part of a culture is related to all its other aspects. Public art could glorify the power of a person or a whole group. Duvignaud points out that the potlatch, or "giving of gifts," the ostentatious display, has played a part in the development of patronage for public art, which sought to achieve permanence in time, immortality for whole societies. Once states and municipalities officially used public funds to commission art, the concept of "public art" began to relate to patronage as much as to display in public places. As Deanne Petheridge puts it, state patronage makes government officials and politicians arbiters of taste.10 Formerly, taste had been a prerogative of private collectors: it may have been eccentric, but selections of art were dictated by often "passionate" dedication to art and artists. More recently, corporations have taken the place of such patrons. They, as well as government officials, increasingly rely on consultants whose choices are often determined by the star system, or by fluctuations in the international art market. In Canada, the term "public art" is fairly recent. In the 19608 and early 19708 publications and symposiums usually referred to "Public

8

Stealing the Show

Monuments" or "Outdoor Sculpture." A survey for the City of Vancouver in 1972 used the term public art.11 In 1980, the Department of Culture in Alberta published a survey of public art in that province. In the same year, some Canadian works, mostly outdoor sculpture, were included in Public Art - New Directions, published in New York,12 while the Quebec Ministere des Travaux published an impressive work on art commissioned under its program of spending one percent of the budget for new public buildings on art.13 In 1982, Visual Arts Ontario published a comprehensive survey, Art in Architecture, which gives case histories of publicly and privately financed works for public buildings in Central Ontario. Except for the Quebec survey, the patrons of what was termed public art in all these publications were both public and private. Corporate sponsors like Benson and Hedges initiated programs like the "Artwalls" of the early 19705; "Art in Advertising" at the Eaton Centre in Toronto and many works commissioned by Lavalin in Montreal were private commissions for public places. The 1980 Alberta survey lists public art displayed at the universities in Calgary and Edmonton, which seemed to reflect the vigorous increase of public commissions by Shell, Home Oil, Husky, and many banks. Both towns also show many examples of art financed by public funds, such as that at the Government of Canada building in Calgary, completed just before 1980. Universities, hospitals, and other institutions have used a mixture of private and public funds for works that are publicly displayed; many universities use works from their extensive private collections for such displays, but some have also commissioned new works (see chapter 2). The public spaces in some of these institutions have allowed more time for thought and leisurely contemplation than spaces in shopping malls or subway stations. A great deal of the public art of the last three decades - from the late 19505 to the late 19808 - has been entirely financed from public funds. The 1980 Quebec survey is an example of such public funding. The most ambitious program, the federal Department of Public Works (DPW) scheme of setting aside one percent of building budgets for works of art (if these buildings are open to the public), occurred in the middle of this period, between 1964 and 1979. The Department of Public Works based some of its selection procedure on that of the Ministry of Transport, which had started a program of commissioning art for new airports in the 19508. The pamphlet Art in Our Airports (n.d.) by E. Meysick-Fracke describes this first attempt by a federal ministry to commission art for public places. A volunteer selection committee was formed in 1955, consisting of the chief architect

Introduction

9

in Air Administration at the Department of Transport, the consulting architect for each terminal where art would be installed, professors of architecture, and, usually, two art experts. Architects were in the majority and cast the deciding vote. The Public Works art program had an art advisory committee, which contained an equal number of art experts and architects. A conscious effort was made to involve the artists at an early stage of planning. However, the consulting architect of the building in question still had the power to nominate the artists. Some problems arose from the unwieldy nature of this body, as detailed in chapter 7, and there was little consultation on lighting and maintenance of the works after their installation (chapters i and 4). At the height of this program, in 1974, a group of architects and artists got together to make an attempt at appraisal. The architects were K.C. Stanley, chief architect of the Department of Public Works with responsibility for its fine-arts program; Steve Irwin, whose projects include the National Science Library in Ottawa and the Government of Canada building in North York; and Ron Thorn, architect of Trent University and the Shaw Festival Theatre. The artists were Michael Snow, Walter Redinger, Hugh Leroy, Robert Murray, and Ed Zelenak. All these artists had executed public commissions, several of which had been received with hostility by the public. There was no woman artist at this meeting, though a number of commissions had been given to women. The panel did, however, include a woman art historian, the anthropologist Joan M. Vastokas, who had given considerable thought to the functions of public art. Vastokas was aware of the importance of every aspect of art in the Amerindian society on which, in 1975, she gave a paper at an international symposium on "Art in Society" at Leicester University in England. She pointed out that Northwest Coast art was not simply a by-product of culture but "a vital part of the totality of the culture itself,"14 that is, part of mythology, ritual behaviour, and world view. Like Saint-Martin a decade later, Vastokas warned that we could not appraise such works of art by applying analytical methods from linguistics. She quoted Arnheim's remark that "vision is the primary medium of thought"15 and urged the appraisal of Northwest Coast art and architecture in terms of cognitive patterns, a visual system independent from that of language. What Vastokas was describing was the (public) art of societies in which a visual vocabulary was shared by artist and public. Every shape and line in such works has a meaning beyond its physical presence, much of it relating to man's place in the universe. Of public art discussed by the 1974 panel (which had the misleading title "Sculpture,

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Stealing the Show

a rebirth of humanism"), she remarked: "I think it's a tragedy that art doesn't relate to people. If it doesn't, what's it for?" 16 Her point of view was not shared by others on the panel. The sculptor Ed Zelenak maintained that "if art reached a stage where it was completely accepted ... by the public, it would be a bad state of the nation ... To move ahead, there has to be a great amount of unaccessability [sic] ... because every time you create something new, it's something that some one hasn't seen before."17 The architects did not contradict Zelenak's point of view. Two decades have elapsed since Zelenak's sculpture Traffic, displayed in Ottawa's Confederation Square in 1971, caused a public controversy. The public has not come to terms with this work; on the contrary, Zelenak's modernist point of view - its tendency to separate the artist from society - is now being questioned by some artists and critics. With regard to architectural sites, the sculptor Walter Redinger added, "I really don't give a damn if it marries with the building or not ... Maybe architects should just provide some neutral slabs and we could put the works on them."18 In the Jean Talon Building in Ottawa, Redinger had the opportunity of using a "neutral slab" for a relief mural. But the public was hostile and the work was eventually removed. These points of view are not necessarily those of all male artists; but they have never been expressed anywhere by women artists. Contrasting with the points of view expressed by Zelenak and Redinger are Martha Fleming's remarks about the people who came to see her own and Lyne Lapointe's works Musee de Science and La Donna Delinquente, which were installed in public spaces but not publicly funded: "It's a myth that people who haven't seen a museum wouldn't understand art ... There is a mass audience and what they have in common is not the 'lowest common denominator.'"19 Jerry Grey, who created a mural for the same Statistics Canada building for which Redinger had executed his public commission, said a few years earlier, "Too much public art seemed to me simply largescaled museum art, good in itself, but requiring more attention, sophistication and experience than most people bring to public places."20 Grey, like Vastokas, had given some thought to art "within reach" of the public. She sought themes, human or political, that would move the public and so create dialogue, and she used such themes for works of a high artistic and technical standard. Remarks by these women artists, and those by Vastokas and Saint-Martin, show an awareness of the parameters of public art that seemed to have escaped the architects and artists on the 1974 panel (though they have been

Introduction

11

discussed in more recent debates on public art). Could it be that women theorists and artists, through the social conditioning of gender, had developed greater-than-average sensitivity and social awareness? Public commissions executed by women artists have seldom met with hostility and bewilderment. Their number is small and women artists may have tried especially hard to earn the respect of sponsors and public; but could that be the only reason why their work seems to meet with almost universal approval? Could it be that women artists were in a particularly good position to be in tune with the public thinking ar\d feeling of their own time? The feminist movement has increased social awareness in women, even in those not closely connected with it. Contemporary art by women has a resonance absent in many other works, as pointed out by Philip Monk in 1984.21 Much of their art makes us aware of man's precarious position within the environment he himself has created, but it also illuminates our present existence by a sense of new freedom. AS M E N T I O N E D E A R L I E R , the history of public art by women before 1945 has been included in general art histories. Several women sculptors in the first half of the twentieth century won a place for women in this field. Vision and Victories: 10 Canadian Women Artists 19141945 (1983), by Natalie Luckyj, celebrates their achievement. With reference to public art by the women sculptors Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, and Elizabeth Wyn Wood,22 Luckyj quotes a maxim from The Public Monument and Its Audience (1977), by Marianne Doezema and June Hargrove: "A public monument possesses a responsibility apart from its qualities as a work of art, in that it is finally evaluated in terms of its capacity to generate human emotion."23 This capacity, so important for public art, we find continued in the work of women artists in the second half of the century. The earlier women artists created many works for public places, in stone, bronze, marble, and wood. Their technical ability was readily acknowledged. Their confidence may have been part of the first feminist movement of this century. Two of them - Loring and Wyle - came from the u s, where, in the nineteenth century, there had been a group of remarkable women sculptors who had executed a number of commissions for public places, a tradition that had encouraged these two sculptors in their studies.24 Histories of Canadian art contain information on these women artists as well as on those of a later date. The magazine Canadian Art and regional publications singled out individual women artists after World War II. The number of women attending art schools and

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Stealing the Show

becoming professional artists increased in the second half of the twentieth century. Why, then, have so few women artists received public commissions in the decades examined there? In the Ministry of Transport's "Art for Airports" program of the 19505 and 19605, there were, among forty commissioned artists, only two women: Micheline Beauchemin was asked to do a tapestry for the Toronto airport, and Anne Kahane a sculpture for the Winnipeg airport. A work published in 1985 by the National Capital Commission in Ottawa, Sculpture Walks, contains only one work by a woman artist, Frances Loring's sculpture on Parliament Hill of Robert Borden, prime minister during World War I. The federal one percent program under the Department of Public Works, despite the equal number of art experts and architects on its art advisory committee, increased the number of women artists commissioned to only 35 out of 161 works.25 This percentage is only slightly higher than that in the public art of Calgary (2.7 works by women out of 177), while at Edmonton the percentage is higher (39 out of 166 listed in the Alberta survey of public art in 1980). Could the small number of commissions given to women artists, particularly in the 19505, be related to the antifeminist backlash noticeable after World War II? This might be hard to prove. It is more certain that, as the Royal Commission on the Status of Women pointed out, the new commercialism that arose in the 19508 placed art in a value context not unlike that of the stock market.26 Prices for "name" artists were manipulated according to what is often called the "star system." This new set of values found its way through international consultants into the art advisory committees for public art. Such values, while they may relate to aesthetic perceptions of a particular time, have little to do with the way art is perceived by the general public, or with its suitability to an architectural site. THE CHAPTERS THAT FOLLOW examine the public art of seven women artists in the context of their life histories, studies, and other work. Their own attitudes towards public art were conveyed to me in personal interviews, while I used a questionnaire, wherever possible, to gather opinions about their public commissions (see Appendix i). I also consulted numerous documents regarding the artists' collaboration with architects and the way their works were chosen, installed, and maintained. The detailed records kept by the federal Department of Public Works on all artists commissioned under the one percent program between 1964 and 1979 were particularly useful in this respect.

Introduction

13

Some very recent public commissions have been included because, though they were given after 1988, they throw a significant light on the way the artists are now being viewed, or have been rediscovered, as it were, because of intensified debates on public art, and because new work by women artists has illuminated their contributions. Marcelle Perron, in the 19405 a member of the Automatists, signed a manifesto with this group of avant-garde artists that demanded complete social change. During many years she searched for a medium that would express her social commitment and eventually found it in stained glass. She used a technically innovative method to produce glass panels that have transformed Montreal metro stations and shopping plazas, churches, prisons, and courthouses in provincial Quebec towns. In painting she remained faithful to the spontaneity of the Automatists: the social awareness of their ideas is expressed in her public art. Like the Automatists, the sculptor Anne Kahane was acquainted with Surrealism; but while the Automatists adopted the revolutionary ideas of the Surrealists, Kahane was influenced by the formal ideas of Surrealism, together with those of Cubism and Expressionism. Though she made no distinction between public art and her private work, her deep concern for the human condition brought her close to the public. She was the only woman sculptor in the Ministry of Transport's program for art in airports and in the 19705 received several federal commissions. Rita Letendre moved in her painting from the spontaneity of the Automatists to deliberate control of the colour field. Associated with the Montreal Plasticiens and American hard-edge painting, she eventually developed a distinctive style of her own. Within the confines of modernist abstraction she achieved a particular kind of resonance that communicates itself to the public; this is hard to perceive unless one is confronted with the exact dimensions, the luminosity, of the original. She received a number of commissions from u s corporations and, in Canada, commissions financed by both private and public funds. While many, if not most, public commissions were the result of competitions, some artists have not taken part in these for reasons explained in chapter 4, which deals with the public art of the Vancouver artist Gathie Falk, In ceramics, soft sculpture, and large-scale paintings, Falk celebrates the "Giving of Gifts." Everyday familiar objects - chairs, apples, suburban gardens, sections of the sea, clouds - are juxtaposed in ways that give them new meaning. Falk's public art is highly sophisticated; it speaks for our anxious society in sensuous, beguiling work that masks irony and social comment.

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Among the artists discussed here, Joyce Wieland is the most conscious feminist. An artist of exceptional courage and vision, she has, like Falk in her way, again and again broken the mould that might have restricted her work to move on to audacious visual statements on ecology, feminism, and nationalism. She expresses feminism through her choice of medium - needlecraft, quilting, embroidery - using their "softness"subversively for her strong statement, and she openly relies on collective production with other women. The Vancouver-born artist Jerry Grey shares Wieland's nationalism but expresses it in different ways. Her early art was influenced by international critics and artists who, in the 19608, were visiting the Canadian prairies, where she was then living and working. From controlled and deliberate studies incorporating these influences she moved to much more spontaneous art; all her public commissions show the meticulous planning and technical mastery she had acquired earlier. Like Perron, she has given considerable thought to the social functions of public art. When Colette Whiten developed as a sculptor, conceptualism had begun the process of dematerialization of art and relocated it from a private to a public context. The public is involved from the beginning in the life-size figures Whiten cuts from wood or metal, or casts in plaster. Very often the imprint people leave is a negative, a shell negating the institutional values of preservation and stability usually stressed in public art. But people continue to relate to works that recall the physical presence of others - and sometimes themselves; works in which the human element is so pervasive. As the chapters that follow will reveal, the public art of these seven women artists presents not only an astonishing variety but a quality of social awareness and commitment that exceeds the restrictions of styles or movements and foreshadows some of the concerns women artists of the 19905 show more openly.

CHAPTER

ONE

Marcelle Perron If I need colour in my life, I think that millions of others also need it.1

With this remark, made with reference to one of her public commissions, Marcelle Perron expressed her willingness to share with society the aspect of her art that she sees as most significant: "To me, colour is life. It is most important."2 Instead of expressing only her own feelings, Perron is willing to communicate with others through her sense of colour to facilitate universal self-expression, an important aspect of public art. As mentioned in the introduction, colour is one of the most personal, the most elusive, elements in visual communication. Perception of colour varies not only from society to society but from person to person. Yet there seem to be some universal reactions to colour. The dependence of mood on colour has long been recognized and has had some bearing on the change of colour schemes in institutions such as hospitals, psychiatric wards, and prisons. Decades before Perron received any commissions, women art experts did not hesitate to find words describing the power of her colours. Herta Wescher, editor of La Cimaise (in the 19505 the only Paris art journal dealing exclusively with contemporary art), wrote about Perron's exhibition at Munich's Galerie Dorothea Leonhart that "the intense colours of [Perron's] paintings among the black, white, grey and beige of paintings covering the walls of European galleries are like a fanfare in a major key in the middle of a symphony composed entirely in the minor mode."3 Expressing herself in paintings on canvas was not enough for this artist. She sought a medium that could transform the colours around us and eventually found it in stained glass. Using this material, she began adding colour to huge areas in several Quebec courthouses, in Montreal metro stations (so different from the grim, dark subways she had known in Europe), and in a number of shopping malls. The power

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and influence of these colours far exceeds the dimensions of the works installed. IT WAS E A R L I E R OBSERVED THAT one of the functions of the artists creating public art is to give a voice to their own society. Perron executed her public art for Quebec and as Quebecoise. Except for one commission for a church in Saskatoon, all her public commissions have been within Quebec; even her 1973 federal commission was for Place du Portage in Hull, Quebec. How did this frail, small, convent-raised woman gain the power to do all this? To become a full-time professional artist was difficult enough for a girl born in Louiseville, Quebec, in 1924. But then, Perron was not raised to fit into a patriarchy. After the age of seven she was brought up by her father. Joseph Alphonse Perron, a progressive, freethinking notary, respected the individualism of his daughters as he respected that of his sons, Jacques and Paul. The sons became physicians, and Jacques, like Madeleine, the eldest daughter, was also a writer. Marcelle, the third child, was hospitalized at the age of three with tuberculosis of the bone: "I was aware of death when quite young. My awareness of death is ever-present ... it is the wall at the back ... and the curious thing is that you appreciate life more."4 When Marcelle's mother died of TB her father did not remarry; he spent a great deal of time with his children and they had access to his well-stocked library. "By the time I was twelve, I had read Balzac, the Russians, Leon Blum [critic, social philosopher, first socialist premier of France]. At home we ... discussed ... anything we wanted ... we read all the books that were forbidden ... I went off to boarding school with boxes of books from my father's library, all on the Index. I was dismissed from two colleges because of these books." Perron mentioned in several interviews her father's interest in architecture, saying that she herself would have liked to become an architect. This architectural inclination is an important factor in her public art. But for both father and daughter the times were wrong; he became a notary and she "liked to work in a studio, when I was a boarder with the good sisters ... To become an architect at that time would have meant mainly office work so I chose painting."5 At the College Marguerite Bourgeoys in Montreal, Perron graduated with a "diplome en lettres et sciences." Aged seventeen, she wanted to study art in Quebec City, where her brother Jacques was then studying medicine. At first her father refused to send her to art school. "But he said I could go when I said 'You say liberty always costs something, so I will pay for it by living it.'"6

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Perron stayed at Quebec's Ecole des Beaux Arts only for a year. She liked her instructor, Jean-Paul Lemieux, because he read Proust, but she could not accept his "painting in grey ... They taught us in an amiable academic way, cut off from society and from the artist's role in society."7 The pressures of traditional Quebec society were strong, and they coincided with the young woman's urge to have a family. "Having the power to give life ... gives you a different awareness of the world."8 In July 1944 she married Rene Hamelin, a lawyer like her father, and settled in Montreal. In 1945, after the birth of her first child, she suffered an emotional crisis. She had continued painting but lacked a sense of direction. During this period of self-doubt, "in an act of bravery"9 she telephoned Paul-Emile Borduas, whose paintings she had seen and admired. "I am nobody, I am young, I'm all destroyed,"10 she told him. Borduas took the tramway to Perron's home to look at her paintings, which at this time were influenced by Symbolism. He covered up all but a corner of a painting, a background done with the palette knife. "'Only the background is real painting,' she said. 'The subject ... is literature.'"11 From then on, Perron travelled three times a week to 1'Ecole du Meuble, where Borduas taught, to take part in discussions of her own and other students' work. She found answers to questions that had not been addressed at her art school. "For Borduas, the artist's role was social. That attracted all of us ... I was, after all, brought up by a father ... who at the time trade unions began organizing, took their part."12 Borduas had for some years been the central figure in a group composed in part of students at Montreal's Ecole des Beaux Arts, and in part of his own students at 1'Ecole du Meuble. At his studio, at Claude and Pierre Gauvreau's apartment, at the Cafe La Hutte, this group of artists discussed philosophy, poetry, and, of course, contemporary art movements. "We were all influenced by Surrealist literature, not by painting ... none of us, except for Borduas for a brief moment, have even touched the same kind of form ... Surrealist space is very academic."13 What Borduas's group wholeheartedly accepted in Breton's Surrealist manifestos was spontaneity, the power of the unconscious. They developed their own avant-garde movement, rejecting the figurative in Surrealist art. They named their movement Automatism, after the title of Borduas's painting in a 1947 exhibition. During the years 1945-47, Perron painted with renewed vigour, though by 1947 she had two small children. That year, for the first time, a painting of hers was accepted at the spring show of Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). To her amazement, her work, along

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with that of Jean-Paul Mousseau, was chosen by a panel of art experts to represent Canada at the World Youth Festival in Prague the same year.14 Perron's 1947 paintings, for instance, Yba or Champs Russes, illustrate Borduas's definition of Automatism, in which "emotion was the theme, automatic gesture the style, nature the source."15 Perron did not see Automatism as a school of painting: "Contrary to what people think now, this little group was only a sensitive [photographic] plate registering the vital concerns of the times."16 To register these vital concerns, the group discussed the idea of a manifesto, which was to appear at the time of an exhibition planned for the late summer of 1948. In the end, this manifesto appeared on its own, but the paintings Perron showed a few months later at her first solo exhibition in January 1949 were painted during that eventful year. The manifesto, Refus Global, was published on 9 August 1948 by Librairie Tranquille, Montreal. It contained a long essay by Paul-Emile Borduas and contributions by the poet Claude Gauvreau, the medical student (later psychiatrist) Bruno Cormier, and the artist-choreographer Francoise Sullivan. Amazingly, seven out of the fifteen who signed Refus Global were women, only eight years after women in Quebec obtained the vote. One of these was Marcelle Ferron-Hamelin.17 In Refus Global's emphasis on individual freedom, intuition, and the irrational there were echoes of surrealist manifestos. But what shocked the political authorities in Quebec were its references to the Russian, French, and Spanish revolutions, and statements like "We envisage mankind, freed from useless chains, fulfilling the uncharted, necessary order of spontaneity in resplendent anarchy."18 Religious institutions were appalled by such phrases as "To the devil with holy water sprinklers and the 'tuque.'"19 Even enlightened liberals criticized the authors of Refus Global for their existentialism and their lack of firm plans for action.20 Thirty years later, Perron remarked that in 1948 the signatories had rejected the past and resented the present, but "there was a spirit of openness towards the future ... the unanimous desire to create a new art of living ... As Borduas once remarked: 'We should have said global acceptance of life and its riches.'"21 Those who had signed Refus Global found themselves blacklisted by the Quebec government and by church authorities. In September 1948, Borduas was dismissed from his position at 1'Ecole du Meuble; he returned to his studio at Saint-Hilaire, where his students continued to visit him. Criticism levelled at Perron's first solo exhibition was affected by the general response to Refus Global. In January 1949, the twenty-five-year-old artist showed seventeen paintings and five pieces of sculpture at Librairie Tranquille, which

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19

had published Refus Global. On the single page devoted to the arts in Le Devoir, Adrien Robitaille remarked scathingly, "Do those of the Refus Global refuse all technique? They do - and we - the public and myself, refuse our interest."22 Maurice Huot, writing for the conservative La Patrie, showed an unexpected tolerance when he admitted the possibility that "the world may have made a step forward and left the critics behind."23 What might be of interest to contemporary critics is that Huot singled out Racines qui voient mes yeux, which in some retrospectives is dated i95i.24 Huot described Perron's five pieces of sculpture as "quelques formes deroutantes."25 Perron's next exhibition, shared with Jean-Paul Mousseau in 1950 at Montreal's Comptoir du Livre, consisted entirely of pieces of sculpture. It is a pity that none of this early sculpture has survived: Perron would not return to sculpture until she began using it, industrially produced and combined with glass, in her public commissions of the 19705 and 19805. In 1950 Fernand Leduc, one of the Automatists, returned from Paris with new paintings. His description of the tolerant atmosphere in Paris impressed his friends all the more since two students of the Jesuit-run College Sainte-Marie had been expelled for attending the opening of Perron's show that year. Montreal artists began to demand more courageous attitudes from exhibition committees. In March 1950 the Automatists Perron, Mousseau, and Bar beau were joined by other young Montreal painters in a demonstration against the jury of the Art Association of Montreal, or A AM, which arranged the spring shows at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The newcomers included Paquerette Villeneuve26 and Robert Blair, a Jesuit-trained poet and painter with whom Perron shared her next exhibition, in November 1952., at the hall of the Theatre Gesu, Montreal. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts did open its doors in 1952. to some of these young artists. When Borduas was asked for an exhibition of his work at Gallery XII, he suggested a group show; the museum agreed on condition that he himself choose the paintings. The MM FA exhibition, entitled "Paintings by P.E. Borduas and by a Group of Younger Montreal Artists," included Perron, Bar beau, Mousseau, Gauvreau, and several newcomers. This was the last time Perron exhibited with her Automatist friends in Montreal. In 1953 the group around Borduas began to disperse. Leduc and Riopelle were in Paris; Borduas himself settled in New York in September of that year. Between 1947 and 1953 Perron had developed from a gifted amateur to a serious professional artist. However, in the Quebec society of the

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early 19505 the role of housewife and mother was seen as more important. Perron now had three little girls and could not hope, in that society, to function as a serious painter. In 1953 she came into an unexpected inheritance, which, with careful management, would allow her to travel and study. She decided to go to France, where Riopelle and Leduc had met with considerable success. In October 1953, Ferron, aged twenty-nine, left Montreal for France, taking her three children with her. She later described something of her battle for custody of the children and her husband's antagonism towards her painting in Combat, a French journal that gave feminists an early voice.27 For the next two years Perron travelled extensively, spending months looking at galleries and observing life, now in Athens, now in Sweden, now in Italy. Her paintings in Montreal had been dark and violent, but now her colours became clear and joyous, as in Retour d'ltalie (1953-54). Syndicat des Gens de Mer (1954) expressed Perron's continued interest in Canadian labour organizations, an interest shared with her brother Jacques, now a physician in Montreal's poorest district. Perron's first exhibition in Europe was in "Phases de 1'Art Contemporain" at Galerie Creuse, Paris. The critic Herta Wescher began to take an interest in the young artist. When Perron found that, having signed Refus Global, she was blacklisted even in France, Wescher helped to arrange exhibitions for her in Paris, Brussels, and Saarbriicken, so that, as an internationally accepted artist, she would be granted permanent residence. In 1955 Ferron settled in Clamart, a Paris suburb. In her critique of Perron's 1956 solo exhibition, her first in Paris, Wescher drew attention to an aspect of Perron's paintings that through the years would become more pronounced: the juxtaposition of transparent and opaque areas. Wescher noticed this in the artist's gouaches, "with their superimposed layers of transparent luminosity."28 After nearly a decade of painting, Ferron was given her first solo exhibitions in Montreal by two women gallery owners - Agnes Lefort in 1957, and Denyse Delrue in 1958. Of the first, the critic Rodolphe Repentigny wrote: "Perron's major - and contradictory - preoccupations are with matter and transparence. She achieves the third dimension as if, instead of 'taches d'aquarelle' there were pieces of coloured glass."29 Repentigny saw in Perron's 1958 exhibition the best nonfigurative art shown in Montreal at that time. Criticism in Montreal had changed in scope and perceptiveness since Perron's first show in 1949, and artists and critics alike found a new voice in the magazine Vie des Arts, which began to appear in the mid 19505.

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Canadian Art, too, now paid more attention to Quebec artists. In the 1955 summer issue, Pierre de Ligny Boudreau wrote an article on Perron in which he pointed out the strong emotional content of her painting, while "the innate construction in her work remains invisible."30 Perron was in Montreal for her solo exhibition at Galerie Agnes Lefort in 1957 when Canadian Art published an article on Canadian artists in Paris, in its summer issue.31 This referred only briefly to Perron, after describing visits to other studios. From her brother Jacques's address in Ville Jacques Cartier, Perron fired off a letter to Donald Buchanan, editor of Canadian Art, that was highly critical of the article. She included an impressive list of her exhibitions in France, Canada, and the us, and of critical articles about her work in New York's Art News, the Swiss Magazine Du, and La Cimaise in Paris. In particular, she emphasized her participation at Iris Clert, a Paris minisalon frequented by major art collectors, where works were seen by appointment only. Privately, however, Perron had become critical of the elitism of small, avant-garde galleries. She was looking for a different technique, one that would reach a larger public. In 1958 she began to study at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17, where a lively group of Canadian artists, most of them from Montreal, were then studying.32 Perron enjoyed their companionship as much as the challenge of new techniques: "Etching demands a discipline, a precision, care and awareness of materials quite unlike painting, which obeys every impulse ... To let yourself be guided by this kind of craftsmanship enlarged your outlook as an artist ... Printmaking has had an enormous influence on my painting."33 While Perron was involved in stimulating experiments shared with others, Borduas, who had also settled in Paris in 1955, painted in comparative isolation. He continued exhibiting in New York and, on Perron's advice, did some travelling. She, who saw colour as a key factor in painting, found it hard to accept Borduas's use of black and white at this time and occasionally went so far as to argue with her former mentor. Ill, and knowing he had little time, he replied, "If you lend me another life, perhaps ..."34 Through Perron Borduas met Wescher, who was then organizing the exhibition "Spontaneite et Reflexion" for Galerie Arnaud in Paris. In this, Perron and Borduas were the only Canadians among artists from Germany, Israel, and Switzerland. In May 1959 Borduas had his first one-man show in Paris, at Galerie Saint-Germain. Only Perron among his former students stood by him. Fernand Leduc had returned to Canada, and several of the former Automatists, including Barbeau and

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Mousseau, had joined his new movement, "Les Plasticiens."35 Riopelle had long gone his own way and was now internationally known. In January 1960, his work was included with that of Perron and Borduas in the exhibition "Antagonismes," at the Pavilion Marsan, Musee du Louvre. This show was still on, and Perron was in Montreal for the opening of another solo exhibition at Denyse Delrue, when Borduas quietly died in February 1960. He had longed to return to Canada during his last years, but had never done so. "There are those who by their quality of being ... mark an entire epoch. Borduas was one of these,"36 Perron wrote in a section of Aujourd'hui dedicated to Borduas's memory. "One of the key problems in Borduas's last period was the actual 'presence' of a painting; he wanted it to be read by the public without being necessarily understood."37 Perron and Borduas, like all those who had signed Refus Global, believed in the social importance of art, in its powers of communication. Of Borduas's last paintings Perron remarked that he had achieved the "seemingly impossible. Each painting has an individual life, a sense of intense reality."38 Perron herself was seeking this "presence, this intense reality," and she continued to be preoccupied with the juxtaposition of matter and transparence. In printmaking, by using hard and soft rollers, opaque and transparent ink, she created a feeling of depth different from traditional perspective. This difference is shown in her multimedia print Composition, which illustrated an article in Canadian Art (see note 33). In her painting, Perron began to use large spatulas, on which the colours from her palette mixed differently with each stroke applied. There is a much greater emphasis on a single area in paintings like Le Signal Dorset, 1959, where a broad, dark stroke of the spatula dominates the centre of the painting. Her paintings of 1961 and 1962., Dunes Puissantes and Les Falaises, refer to cliffs and sand dunes; they contain stark forms in intense colours, flowing from a neutral background. That nature remained important in Perron's paintings was clear from the works sent to Sao Paulo in 1961, and others in the show "Borduas, Riopelle e la giovane pittura canadese," which in 1962. travelled from Paris to several Italian galleries. The exhibition catalogue of the latter referred to Perron as "an artist of vast resonance."39 Interest in Quebec painting was aroused in Italy by this exhibition and the 1962 Festival des Deux Mondes, in Spoleto, Italy. The survey "2.5 ans de peinture au Canada franc,ais" firmly classed Perron with "Les Pionniers; Le Mouvement Automatiste." It led to the first retrospective of the Automatists, "Mostra del Movimento Automatista

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Canadese," held in November and December iy6z at Libreria Einaudi, Rome. The retrospective showed gouaches, drawings, and prints by Borduas, Perron, and the other five Automatists. For Perron, 1962. was a high point. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam bought Dunes Puissantes. This museum included her work in the Peter Stuyvesant collection, which travelled worldwide. Introduced by the critic Herbert Read, "the Art Gallery in the Factory" demonstrated a new interest in making art accessible to an unsophisticated public. The same year, Wescher organized a solo exhibition of Perron's paintings at Munich's Galerie Dorothea Leonhart, one of the most courageous avant-garde galleries in Germany. In her catalogue introduction, Wescher stressed the "closeness to nature [in Perron's paintings] though there is no figurative content ... One senses other dimensions, another temperament, and in the special case of Marcelle Perron, an unbroken vitality, hard to find in tired old Europe."40 Wescher saw another important aspect of Perron's painting, one that caused the dynamic tensions in her work: "To paint, for her, means to deal with life, to solve its problems, to create her own unconquered world."41 However, the power to deal with life, to create her own world, for Perron was not enough. She became restless, striving for a breakthrough. In 1962. she adopted a tall format for her painting Hommage a Virginia Woolf. In a later discussion, the artist seemed quite unaware that she had also used this format for other paintings in which women figured, for example her auto-portraits and one entitled La folle diva (1985), and that it had, in fact, human proportions.42 To reach a wider public Perron thought of outdoor murals and, on one of her Montreal visits, discussed this idea with the architect Louis Lapierre. She was interested in the new, weatherproof medium called epoxy, which could be added to any colour she mixed herself. To broaden her technique, she began to study with the architect Pjotr Kowalski at his Paris studio.43 In 1963, Lapierre gave Perron her first public commission, a contract to paint an outdoor mural on the building of the Railway Union in West Montreal. "That I, a woman, should have been commissioned to paint a mural of about 1000 square meters - that would have been impossible ten years ago."44 That year, finally, Perron found the very medium for which she had been searching, one that would express transparency ana the intensity of colour she had admired in the stained-glass windows of French cathedrals. "Quite by accident, I entered a little-known Paris gallery with a large exhibition of glass slabs on which artists had worked at the time of their creation. For me, it was a revelation. In a flash I knew

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I had before me the means of expression I had sought for many years."45 Perron at once set out to study the newest methods of producing stained glass. She found the ideal teacher in Michel Blum, a French inventor who had developed new techniques for making stained-glass panels: protecting inner layers of blown antique glass by two outer panels of clear glass, thus creating a "sandwich" of great strength. All seams and joints between shapes forming the inner layer were made of acrylic, dispensing with the heavy lead framing formerly used. Between 1963 and 1965, Perron commuted from Clamart to Blum's Paris studio. She made a large number of experimental panels; in 1965, she took the twenty-five she considered her most successful ones to exhibit in Montreal. In Quebec, the "quiet revolution" had changed attitudes towards the arts, which were now seen as vital. Funds were found to include art in new buildings. The Ministere des affaires culturelles gave Perron a research grant to develop stained-glass techniques in Quebec industry. In the winter of 1965-66, she settled permanently in Montreal. Life in Paris had been stimulating; Perron also confessed that she had seen it as a great advantage to artists that paint dealers were only paid twice a year. This had given her the chance to paint large canvasses instead of the tiny gouache paintings she had first exhibited. However, she need not have worried about supplies. She did not paint at all during the next seven years, but devoted them entirely to work in stained glass. Perron had brought Blum's patent with her from France and now had to find a factory where glass panels could be produced, using her new technique. She found this in the firm Superseal, a factory of human proportions with a staff willing to go along with experiments. "We made some blunders ... We had to learn to cut antique glass, to mount it and to improve the joints to suit the Canadian climate. To produce quality work which would inspire architects, one has to go to industry. It's an entirely different way of working and very exciting."46 During the next years Perron spent whole months working in the Superseal factory near Saint-Hyacinthe, south of Montreal. She experimented with various types of glass, such as bottle and melted glass. The first commission she completed at Superseal was a window for the prison chapel at Saint-Hyacinthe, in 1966. For Expo '67 the architect Roger D'Astous used thirteen large modular glass panels by Perron, creating a forty-five-metre wall. The school of architecture at the University of Toronto asked Perron to exhibit her work there in 1967; in 1968 the university's Hart House asked for a similar exhibition. She was asked to lecture at Laval

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25

University's school of architecture in Quebec City. Perron had entered the world of architecture; her working methods for public art, as she later pointed out, were totally different from the spontaneity of her painting. Perron's first major public commission in stained glass was for panels for the Champ de Mars metro station, officially opened in June 1968. These glass panels were a gift from the Quebec government to Montreal's Metro Commission. They form the three sides of the station that are above ground, so that the artist could use the varying effects of full daylight and did not have to depend on any artificial lighting. At night, however, the artificial lighting inside the station reverses the process, giving the colours a new warmth as their glow falls onto the pavement of old Montreal (Figure i). The colour panels alternate with shapes of clear glass in which images are constantly changing: in daylight they show parts of old Montreal's cityscape; at night, their shapes are clearly defined for those outside by the strong indoor lights of the station. The antique glass from which the colour panels were cut had been specially produced for Superseal and, according to Perron, was "so sensitive that it seems to move when you walk in front of it."47 For each colour, mixed according to her instructions, she cut out actualsize paper shapes. In the Superseal factory she could be seen in a forest of parallel sheets of glass, seeking to "manufacture, grind, proportion her pigments ... rejecting all the present day commercial paste of chemical colours which fade and disintegrate in a few years."48 During this time, Perron often expressed her desire to reach out to people who pass through the metro on their way to work: "Glass is an entirely beautiful material ... I wanted to adapt it to modern construction ... to contribute something joyous, something a little sensuous."49 She was delighted by a letter from a cleaning woman who rode the metro every day and described her feelings about Perron's floating shapes: "Rain or shine, there is always warmth in my heart [when I see them]."50 The critic Jean Sarrazin wrote in Vie des Arts, "She discovered that the canvas on the wall has hardly any meaning anymore except in necropolis museums or in the naphtaline of middle-class livingrooms ... Metro stations, advertising, places of work and leisure, these are the new 'raisons d'etre' of the artistic creation."51 One indication of public respect for the stained-glass panels at Champ de Mars is their survival for two decades in downtown Montreal without vandalism. It is also a tribute to the durability of Perron's imported technique, applied to panels forming three walls 7.62. metres in height.

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During the next few years, Perron concentrated on work of smaller dimensions and on still further experiments. She joined "Creation," a group of Quebec artists, architects, writers, and sociologists who sought contact with research centres, construction industries, and government organizations. She sought technical advice from the sculptor Andre Fournelle, who spent some time at Superseal to help her find a satisfactory combination of glass panels with industrially produced metal sculpture. Between 1968 and 1970 Perron experimented with unusual types of glass for private commissions, created stained-glass windows for Sacre Coeur church in Quebec City, and contributed glass panels to the Quebec pavilion at the 1970 World Exhibition in Osaka. Some of Perron's experimental glass panels, created between 1966 and 1970, were included in the retrospective "Marcelle Perron, 1945-1970," at Montreal's Musee d'art contemporain (MAC). The next comprehensive retrospective at this museum, "Borduas et les Automatistes" (1971-72), included only Perron's early paintings. But in 1972. the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, in "Marcelle Perron: 1'artiste dans 1'industrie et 1'architecture," presented a balanced survey of paintings and stained glass. There were no paintings more recent than 1965, but the flowing shapes in Arcadia or Cosmos Rouge (both dated 1965) presage stained-glass shapes in the 1968 Champ de Mars installation. A painting that has similar characteristics is the 1964 Des visages et des rails, which was acquired in 1981 for the lounge of Salle Wilfred Pelletier at Montreal's Place des Arts. In this painting (as in Arcadia and Cosmos Rouge], a large shape painted in heavy blacks and reds is juxtaposed to more transparent areas that seem to recede into the background. Added to the lounge many years after the building's completion in the early 19605, the painting became "public art" without giving the artist the chance to assess its environment. Such a chance seemed possible in a 1973 federal commission for a new building at Place du Portage in Hull, Quebec, which houses government offices, stores, and restaurants in a ramified building with several phases. The architect who had nominated Perron for the creation of glass panels on two floors of Phase i was Daniel E. Lazosky of Montreal. Perron created eight rectangular stained-glass panels 3 metres by .65 metres each, six of which were installed on a mezzanine level, while two others, on a lower level, were complemented by four hanging disks 1.25 metres in diameter. Both installations could be seen from the entrance to Phase i. The installation was dependent on artificial lighting placed exactly where both architect and artist had planned it. The colours of the

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panels could be seen as a whole from a distance, but from close up, on either floor, would have been changed and modified according to whether they were seen against the light, with the light, or when overlapping panels produced new combinations. Neither artist nor architect, however, could foresee the time, a few years after the installation was in place, when the lights would be extinguished as an economy measure. There are artists who include light as an intrinsic part of an installation, as Michael Hayden did in his public commission for the National Science Library, also in 1973. This should have provided a safeguard against economy measures like those at Place du Portage. But as Douglas Richardson pointed out, Hayden's light installation was, in fact, overwhelmed by ceiling lights provided for in the architectural plan.52 The installations in both buildings took place at very nearly the same time. A contract clause regarding lighting and maintenance of works could have prevented the too-brilliant lighting of one and the lack of lighting for the other. As it is, Perron's installation can only be appreciated on bright sunny days at noon, and even then, only part of the installation is clearly visible. Perron's free-standing rectangles at Place du Portage were the first steps in a direction she took during the next years, when she began to combine industrially produced sculpture with stained-glass panels. Using this combination, she created a mobile for a shopping mall at Thetford Mines, which had an affinity with some of the sculpture created by Franchise Sullivan, another signatory of Refus Global who in the 19605 turned to sculpture. The affinity with Sullivan's plexiglass spirals is even more noticeable in Perron's next commission from the Government of Quebec, a gift to the International Civil Aviation offices (ICAO) on Sherbrooke and Mansfield streets, Montreal (Figure 8). This free-standing outdoor sculpture incorporates both mirrors and stainedglass panels. Mirror of Aviation (1975) operated on several levels, most, but not all, of which are related to colour. While one sees part of the inner spiral of this work through colour panels, mirrors at the back of the sculpture reflect not only the shapes seen through colour panels but also reality: highrise buildings opposite, and the open sky above. This mixture of illusion and reality is subtle, not always appreciated at this busy intersection. Though 9.14 metres high, the work also has anthropomorphic qualities. Some critics have described it as a totem;53 arrangements of rectangular stained-glass panels around colourless, opaque glass disks lead upwards to the complex stained-glass-andmirror arrangement that could be seen as the head, even the brain, of the totem. The mirrors respond to a necessity: people on the sidewalk

8 Marcelle Ferron. Mirror of Aviation. 1975. Stainless-steel sculpture, mirrors, stained glass. Height 9.14 m. International Civil Aviation Offices, Montreal. Gift from government of Quebec. Photo: G. Lambton.

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nearest the Aviation building could not see Mirror of Aviation in its totality if it were not for these mirror reflections. The work is a little too far from the pedestrian intersection at Sherbrooke to be appreciated from there, but those for whom it was, at least partially, intended - the staff who work inside the building may enjoy the full colours of the stained glass panels directly, without mirror reflections. Michelle Tremblay-Gillon speaks of this work as "a jewel in a city of concrete ... the artist certainly contributes an affirmative vision to our culture; her verve, free forms and vivid colours also cause us to question they grey, hard and concrete, often inhuman environment ... in which we live."54 Also in 1975, Perron designed and installed stained-glass panels at the courthouse in Amos, in northern Quebec. The architects Monette, Leclerc, and Saint-Denis allowed the artist to create what amounted to glass walls as an integral part of the building. These window-walls have the appearance of solid blocks of coloured glass. The shapes are simpler than those at Champ de Mars. Their effectiveness is caused by an almost total lack of clear glass among the blocks and by their gold, crimson, and yellow colours; the transmitted daylight creates patches of warm colour on the polished floors of the building that resemble large patches of sunlight. IN THE M I D - S E V E N T I E S FERRON started painting again. After a visit to the Orient she acknowledged the influence of Chinese brush paintings. What fascinated her was that oriental painters had preserved spontaneity while treating "each element from a distance and from close-up."55 She had also come to realize that her early paintings owed their gestural quality to her use of the spatula. "Who speaks of gesture refers to the tool. I had spatulas three feet long and the tool more or less 'wrote' the painting. The gesture ... created its own dynamic ... Then, suddenly, you realize that the tool is responsible for the choreography and you abandon the tool and question the whole thing."56 In the mid- and late seventies the public saw more of Perron's early canvasses than of her recent work, in travelling exhibitions like "Three Generations of Quebec Painters" or "De la figuration a la nonfiguration," both in 1976, and in "Frontiers of Our Dreams", Quebec painting of the 19405 and 19505, organized for the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) by Ann Davis in 1979. A year earlier, the thirtieth anniversary of Refus Global was celebrated by an exhibition at Montreal's Musee d'art contemporain and by another at Toronto's La Chasse Galerie; Perron was invited for both occasions. She was also noticed, finally, in Western Canada: she had a solo exhibition at

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Vancouver's Equinox Gallery in 1975, and in 1978 she received her only public commission west of Quebec, for a stained-glass window in the Eglise PAlliance in Saskatoon. But most of her commissions were in Quebec, where, in 1976, the Saint-Jean Baptiste Society bestowed on her the Prix Philippe Hebert. The greatest contribution Perron has made to Quebec architecture consists in glass murals for three floors of the new courthouse in Granby, Quebec, completed in 1979. To improve the depressing courthouse atmosphere, the architect, Breton, added administrative and family-service offices to the building and asked Perron to install her coloured window-walls on every floor. The panels she created were not, like those in Amos, rectangular blocks of colour, but sweeping shapes somewhat like those at Champ de Mars. There are also focal points in these panels, circular shapes reminiscent of suns, moons, the human eye. The upper panels are lighter and clearer than those below, with their greater variety of intense colour, so that there is, as in Perron's paintings, a feeling of landscape. Perron's new fluid paintings, many of them watercolours, had been shown at Galerie Gilles Corbeil in Montreal, but her exhibition in 1981 at the Centre culturel in Drummondville brought them to the attention of a wider public. Through her acquaintance with oriental painting her work had gained a new grace and simplicity; these paintings are less stormy than her canvasses of the 19505 and 19608. Perron was to return to the spatula, eventually, but a greater serenity remained part of her late painting. In her public art, Perron continued to be a deliberate and meticulous planner and designer. In 1981 she was commissioned with another work for a Montreal metro station, at Place Vendome: a stained-glass domed roof and a piece of sculpture suspended beneath this, well above the subway trains and crowds. The sculpture was an arrangement of metal tubes, industrially produced after Perron's design. This Xylophone en couleur resembled gigantic, slightly twisted pipes of Pan, its shapes enhanced by the gold and crimson of the stained-glass dome above it (Figure 9). The horizontally suspended steel pipes (3 metres by 13.5 metres) were to conduct the strong air current in the station in such a way that sound would be produced. But the engineering problem was a costly one, and in the end the part of the project that was to provide a musical element was not completed. The strong air currents in this building unfortunately had other effects: people are inclined to huddle in protected corners, once they have descended the stairs to the trains. Those on the upper level have to struggle with doors that, when a train pulls out and sucks air downwards, are almost impossible to open. There is, however, one

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9 Marcelle Perron. Stained-glass dome and indoor horizontal stainless-steel sculpture, 1981. 3 x 13.41 m. Place Vendome metro station, Montreal. Photo: G. Lambton.

quiet place from which Perron's work may be contemplated in peace: a pedestrian bridge that crosses the station near the stained-glass dome, almost at the level of the suspended steel xylophone. There, the pipes with their varied lengths and angles are seen from the side rather than from below, and details are grasped rather than the whole work; but the vivid colours of the stained-glass panels are closer, and, in a way probably not planned by either artist or architect, the work transforms that part of the station where people are not too busy to look. In 1983 Perron was awarded the Prix Borduas by the Quebec Ministere des affaires culturelles, the first woman ever to receive this prize. That she was committed to women's rights as much as to Quebec was shown in her participation that year in the show "Actuelle I" at Place Ville Marie, Montreal. She described the fighting spirit of the women who had signed Refus Global: "We dared to be ourselves and found ourselves in the avant-garde ... Nowadays, artists are producing objects for consumers ... We now talk of a 'culture industry.' Critics ... have become 'artists' managers.' Talking about art has replaced art."57 In 1985 Perron lost not only her eldest brother Jacques Perron but her old friend Gilles Corbeil, and these two deaths left her in a state of shock, unable to paint. But as Herta Wescher had mentioned long

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ago, art was Perron's way of dealing with life. When she began painting again, she returned to her old tools, her spatulas and palette knives. One stimulus came from Simon Dresdnere in Toronto, who asked Perron to participate in the May 1986 exhibition "The Automatists Then and Now," which showed new work by the artists as well as works from the time of Refus Global. Ray Ellenwood's new translation of the famous manifesto was also available at this gallery. One of Perron's new works for this exhibition was a witty Autoportrait with an enormous, twisted, totem-type head ("because everything originates in the head"58). Dresdnere was so impressed by Perron's new paintings that he asked her for a solo exhibition later in 1986. While she prepared for this, she also completed a public commission for a shopping mall in Canada Place, part of the new highrise Chateau Champlain at Bonaventure metro station in Montreal. This commission was from the Lavalin corporation, which was known for its strong support of the arts.59 Perron had executed a number of smaller commissions for them in stained glass; for the large sculpture at Canada Place she provided only the concept. The steel parts were manufactured by Anodoro Limited. Superseal produced the stainedglass panels. Rectangular raccou slabs, contrasting with the transparent circular glass panels, were created by Monique Bourbonnais-Ferron,60 the wife of Marcelle Perron's youngest brother, Paul. The piece occupies a space beside an escalator connecting two floors, so that it may be contemplated from the escalator itself, from the second floor, and from the ground floor. Like Mirror of Aviation, the work is free standing; it suggests a tree with steel branches supporting the round stained-glass panels. There are no mirrors, but the glass panels reflect some light from the window above and some artificial light from the boutiques below, so that there is a constant interplay of different kinds of light,, some reflected, some transmitted through the amber, red, and golden panels. The commissions for the three metro stations, and the Granby and Amos panels, are Perron's most architectural work: the courthouse and metro panels because they are integral parts of a building, the Canada Place sculpture because it is manufactured according to the concept she provided. In a radio interview in 1980, and in later interviews with me, Perron stressed the different approach she uses when engaged on a public commission. Then, all her work consists in deliberate planning, while in her painting she obeys a poetic inner voice. Deeply conscious of being a Quebec artist, she has yet remained more universally committed than some of her compatriots. The commitment of the Quebec government to public art owes as much to the woman artist Perron as she owes to it, but her philosophy transcends

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national boundaries. In her public art she consciously seeks a voice to express a world more universal than her own. Her commitment to the world of women has found expression in one of her latest works, the window for the library of Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Quebec, dedicated in 1991 to the fourteen young women in the Ecole Poly technique of Montreal who died because they had dared to enter a maledominated area. Unlike verbal language, visual language is not limited. We do not need a translator to feel the impact of Perron's public art. It has been designed with all of us in mind.

CHAPTER

TWO

Anne Kahane: Humour and the Human Condition

The sculptor Anne Kahane has received numerous commissions for public art: three of them federal, one from a university, two from corporations, and two (for Expo '67 and Place des Arts, Montreal) from corporations that used a mixture of private and public funds. Sculpture, in stone and bronze, has long played a prominent part in public art; as noted earlier, the public commissions given to Frances Loring, Florence Whyle, and Elizabeth Wyn Wood gained recognition for women sculptors even before World War II. But Kahane's aesthetic was different from that of these sculptors, different too from that of Marcelle Ferron, her contemporary, whose ideas on art had been formed in the same city of Montreal. Kahane's Montreal environment was created by European artists who had come to Canada after their formative years. Their aesthetic incorporated aspects of Middle European Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism, and their art, whether painting or sculpture, remained largely representative. Much of it was related to the human figure. The human body has been the subject of three-dimensional work since time immemorial. In public art in particular, the human form has been used for so long that memories of visual encounters with such sculpture are evoked whenever a new piece is seen. Such memories can be evoked by even a very simplified and abbreviated shape indicating the human body, and Kahane made full use of this in her art. As the critics Herbert Read and Strzeminski have pointed out, sculpture presents the problem of being three-dimensional while the eye appraises two dimensions only. To this two-dimensional impression of a threedimensional work we add memories of visual, mimetic, tactile, and kinetic experiences. Unlike the sculptors mentioned above, Kahane used wood for many of her carvings. Wood has a quality that relates to nature; if left rough,

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it often evokes tactile memories. She used flat planes and angles to stress the two-dimensional in a three-dimensional work, and she juxtaposed the simplified human figures she created in social situations: groups talking or waiting, a mother swinging her child. Even when the rough, warm quality of wood is not used, when the figures are smooth, as in the 1959 Mother and Child, a commission for a Montreal shopping mall created in metal, a joyous relationship between the two figures is expressed in a strong, flowing movement that is very different, for example, from a stone carving on the same theme by her contemporary Julien Hebert, whose work is governed by a sense of classical restraint.1 Human relations, the human condition, nature; these themes appealed to the public. In the late 19708, when Kahane's public commissions were abstract works, their subjects - La Mer, The Forest - were still related to nature. ANNE KAHANE WAS BORN IN V I E N N A in I9Z4 and came to Canada as a child of two. She was influenced early on by artists who, like herself, had come from central Europe. Fritz Brandtner2 for some time played an important role as teacher and polemicist in Winnipeg and Montreal, where in 1938 he became a founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society (CAS). Brandtner was a German Expressionist with a passionate concern for man's social condition. As Dennis Reid points out, "Unlike many of the early members of the CAS, Brandtner saw his art as an exhibition of his various human concerns."3 Such sympathies were also expressed by Ernst Neumann,4 who was born in Hungary, and Louis Miihlstock,5 born in Poland, who during the Depression portrayed the unemployed on Montreal streets. Anne Kahane, a shy, impressionable child, also observed people on the streets. They eventually became the subject of her first major works. Kahane was an only child. Her mother was a dress designer, and it was perhaps natural that the daughter turned first to commercial art. While still a student at Strathcona Academy, Kahane took night classes at Montreal's Ecole des Beaux Arts. After graduating from high school she went to a commercial art school, then worked for a year at a commercial engraver's studio. At art school Kahane came in contact with Surrealism, brought from Paris by Alfred Pellan. In the early 19405 she also saw exhibitions by Jewish artists other than Miihlstock and Neumann, such as the Russian-born Aleksandre Bercovitch,6 who taught night school and was considered an influential teacher by many young artists. Kahane became a competent graphic artist and continued drawing and making prints; her graphic art is considered an important part of

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her total oeuvre. But in 1945 she was not satisfied with her work; frustrated, still not knowing what she wanted to do, she decided to enlarge her horizons by going to the Cooper Union art school in New York. During the war, an influx of European artists had contributed to a rapid growth of indigenous art movements in New York, suddenly the centre of world art. Between 1945 and 1947, while Kahane studied painting, drawing, industrial design, and wood carving at Cooper Union, she saw works by Jacques Lipchitz,7 Ossip Zadkine,8 Alexander Calder,9 and Henry Moore.10 She felt an affinity with Lipchitz and Moore in particular. Although by then the Automatists in Montreal were also showing their work, it was in New York that Kahane became aware of abstract art for the first time. She admired it but did not, then, have any wish to imitate it. She found works by Brancusi11 and Max Bill12 "so beautiful, so pure, there is a kind of human connection: the spirit comes through. But I ... cannot get that spirit without the human form."13 Just as Perron had shown both sculpture and paintings at her first exhibitions, Kahane, during her New York years and on her return to Montreal, was interested in both. "You do not commit yourself to either painting or sculpture: you commit yourself to art."14 The first works by Kahane accepted, in 1948, by the AAM for the spring show of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts were paintings. The following year her copper sculpture The Pigeon was shown in the AAM sculpture section, and in 1950 her contribution was Bird, a wire construction. Before selecting wood as her favourite medium, Kahane experimented with various metals and copper tubing and found objects like dress hangers and clothes-pegs that to her suggested human or animal forms. Kahane used copper tubing and plastic wood to create the maquette for a monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner, in an international competition organized in 1953 by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England. She was the only one of three Canadian finalists to receive an award. Though no financial boon, this award lent confidence and prestige to the young artist and brought her to the attention of art critics. Artists had already taken note of her work: she had been asked to join the Society of Canadian Sculptors in 1952. The existential anguish expressed in the maquette for the Unknown Political Prisoner is not found again in Kahane's work until the mid1960s. In this hollow figure parts of the human skeleton are combined with spikes of barbed wire. "You see the outline of a man ... the prison bars, which are also the binding chains, are one with the ribs and they extend into the sharp spikes which are the symbols of torture; the work

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is a powerful synthesis, an impressive and moving realization of the theme."15 Before 1953-54 Kahane was restricted by her workspace, an unheated garage at the home she shared with her mother on Maplewood Avenue in Montreal. That year, she began working in a small basement studio in the house of friends on Byron Avenue and eventually moved to this new address, to live close to her place of work. Kahane used ready-made planks for her wooden sculpture, emphasizing their two-dimensional quality, even when they were carved into three-dimensional shapes. She would obtain planks of pine or basswood at a local lumberyard, where she would have them cut into manageable pieces before transporting them to her small working space. In 1955 Kahane carved a larger work, Queue, a group waiting for a bus or ticket office. The figures, ten men and women and two children, made of polychrome basswood, are embodiments of gestures - resigned, expectant, tense, or relaxed. Purchased by the National Gallery of Canada and widely exhibited, Queue remained a favourite with the public. The charm and sophistication of Queue, and the strength of Kahane's redwood carving The Ballgame, which in 1956 won first prize for sculpture in the Province of Quebec, led to Kahane's first commission, Facade, in the same year. The idea for The Ballgame developed from the artist's observation, from a bus, of a crowd watching a football game. Although not very large, the work achieves a sense of massiveness through the densely packed figures. No space is left between them. It would be difficult to count the many, almost featureless, faces turned this way and that to follow the game. The work is not polychrome like Queue; the uniformity of colour further accentuates the carving's solidity. British critic Charles Spencer considered The Ballgame Kahane's most ambitious work. He rejected any comparison to primitivism or folk art as "quite unfounded; rather, there is a high degree of sophistication ... a strong visual curiosity in the ordinary world around her."16 The carved groups Kahane created in 1956 combine all these characteristics. Snowstorm, a group of people huddled together in heavy winter coats, won first prize at the Winnipeg Show. Airshow, which resembles The Ballgame in the treatment of a crowd - but now watching a performance overhead - won first prize there a year later. Facade has something in common with all these group carvings. A composition of eleven figures, it is closely related to Queue in the loose organization of the group, and to The Ballgame in the uniformity of colour. The colours of redwood and mahogany in the work echo some

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of the colours used in its architectural environment. Commissioned by architect David K. Linden, Facade occupies almost an entire wall in the lobby of an office building on Victoria Avenue, in Montreal. Linden was a town-planning consultant who wished to integrate art into architecture, as had been done in Mexico and South America. Architect and artist worked so closely that it is hard to tell which came first, the decor of the lobby or the sculpture. The wall behind the sculpture is of light travertine marble, the opposite wall of mahogany panelling, the colour of Facade. Except for entrance and elevator doors, there are no distinguishing features to this zy-by-iy-foot lobby to compete with Kahane's work. For its time the building was modern: of medium height, it was carefully designed to fit into its area, a border region between residential Westmount and industrial sites to the southwest. The building and its functions have not radically changed in the last thirty years. There are still offices on the upper floors, and on the ground floor there is a cafeteria. All those who want to reach offices or cafeteria have to pass Facade; yet in the course of thirty years there has never been any vandalism in this lobby: the sculpture is well preserved and without a scratch. One metre high and three metres long, Facade is much larger than either Queue or The Ballgame, though still below life size. In 1955 Kahane had had the greatest difficulty getting Queue (only 63.5 centimetres high) up the narrow stairs from her basement studio. She therefore carved the figures for Facade in four separate groups and one single figure, then assembled the finished figures on a mahogany base at the site they were to occupy. The groups are interrelated by the warm tones of mahogany and redwood and by their gestures. Seen from the centre of the lobby the figures seem to talk among themselves. As in Queue, they are people glimpsed on the street, anonymous in overcoats and business suits. The slightly smaller female figures, in narrow skirts and voluminous capes, are not different from the males in facial or body characteristics. In Facade, the figures relate to each other more closely than in Queue, where most of them face in the same direction. But there are also those that are isolated, particularly the single figure that seems to stare straight into the lobby and so conveys his solitude. Most of the daytime lighting comes from the large entrance doors. There are also ceiling lights, which at night slightly change the aspect of Facade. However, an inconspicuous source of light hidden in the mahogany platform supporting the eleven carved figures provides steady illumination at all times. The slight reflection of any light on the polished planes of the wooden figures varies, depending on the viewer's position and the time of day, and makes the group come alive.

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10 Anne Kahane. Mother and Child, 1959. Life-size brass outdoor sculpture, Rockland Plaza, Montreal. Private commission. Photo: the artist.

The building for which Facade was commissioned is still in the same hands and the owners, who in 1956 paid Kahane five hundred dollars for these carved figures, are very proud of the work and still have the maquette. During the next few years Kahane experimented with metal, creating some sculpture in brass. This was the medium for Mother and Child (Figure 10), a commission for Montreal's Rockland Shopping Plaza, where it would stand out of doors, so that its weatherability was of importance. In spirit and emphasis this sculpture has much in common with figures Kahane had carved from wood in the mid-1950s (Play Time, The Rider, Mother and Child) on the "mother and child" theme. But, while angularity is stressed in the wooden sculpture, the brass shapes are smooth and curved, though there is, still, a sense of the two-dimensional in the metal strips of which they are formed. The two figures, which are slightly above life size, seem to perform a joyous dance, held together by the circular movement that connects mother and child in the upper loop of the sculpture. A correct description would be "parent and child," since the mother, like the figures in Facade, has no distinguishing female characteristics. The adult figure

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grows treelike from the ground; two planklike legs join in an equally planklike torso. In spite of the great simplicity of the shapes, the spirit of parental tenderness, of interdependance, comes through. In 1960, Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, received a grant from the Canada Council to commission a Canadian artist with a sculpture for an annex wall of their Memorial Library. Five sculptors were invited to participate. Three accepted. Kahane's maquette was unanimously approved by the committee. Because of its relationship to the library wall as permanent background, Sculpture Wall, completed in 1961, was created as relief sculpture and has a relief effect. The flatness of the six separate figures is accentuated. Carved from mahogany planks 3.4 metres in height, they are much larger than life size; they are interlinked and have a youthful stance appropriate for a university campus. Features are indicated by incision. Normally convex shapes are carved as concave and there are hollow spaces where one expects solidity in the components of the human body (as in some Cubist works or those by Henry Moore). In the years before 1960 Kahane had become interested in the relationships between flat planes, vertical and horizontal, to create depth, as in Waiting Group (1959) and Rain (1958). Such flat planes in Sculpture Wall have different functions and the illusion of depth is minimized. The vertical nature of the figures is counteracted by the incised lines that suggest their interlinked arms. The planks end in simplified, abbreviated legs without feet, mere supporting columns a feature, also, of Facade and Mother and Child. A comparison of the finished version of Sculpture Wall with the maquette illustrates the sensitivity of the artist in relating her work to the architectural site. In the finished work, the colour of the wall, visible through holes in the dark wood, has become an integral part of the relief sculpture, necessary to its design. The viewer has to see it frontally, not from a variety of viewpoints as for the free-standing sculpture Mother and Child, where the background varies according to the viewer's position. For Sculpture Wall the background is permanent, its function in relation to the whole work is predictable and very skilfully used. After 1961 Kahane began to accentuate the rough, "live" quality of wood, the play of light caused by the cuts of her chisel. "Unpolished wood has a quality of breathing and scintillating, of catching every flicker ... A rough finish ... retains that immediacy of the surface which is sacrificed by polishing."17 Leaving chisel marks on the surface of wood sculpture - showing the artist's hand and working methods - was characteristic of German

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Expressionism. Kahane later dedicated a carving to the German expressionist Gerhard Marks.18 In the early 19605 she may have become particularly susceptible to their influence through her marriage, in 1961, to the German expressionist artist Robert Langstadt. The couple settled in the part of West Montreal known as Notre Dame de Grace; there Kahane finally had a large studio. As noted earlier, Kahane was the only woman sculptor commissioned for art in new airports, under the program of the federal Ministry of Transport. Her commission in 1962 for the Winnipeg airport was for a memorial to Captain FJ. Stevenson, the Manitoba pioneer on whose land the airport was built. Kahane's Memorial to Captain FJ. Stevenson (Figure n) expresses the idea of flying. From a mass of rock and indistinct shapes of birds - which could fly before earthbound man - a single figure emerges, looking upward. The movement of the bulky mass seems to accelerate towards the summit. The z. 15-metre-high mahogany sculpture is placed on a flat metal base without a pedestral, directly on the floor of an airport overpass. When first installed, this monument created some controversy: a number of Winnipeg citizens had expected a realistic portrait of Captain Stevenson. Eventually, such a portrait was adde.d elsewhere in the airport. If the controversy was soon forgotten, this may be due to the site of Kahane's memorial. As pointed out in Canadian Art,19 the enclosed bridge between two buildings, where the monument stands, was not to be its permanent site. The glance of the main figure seems to be directed at a lighting fixture above. The light from this fixture flattens the contours of the carving's lower part. All this was to be temporary, but the work was never moved. The overpass where it stands leads to a building now mainly used by maintenance crews who pay little attention to the sculpture. Unfortunately, it is seldom seen by tourists and airport visitors. Kahane's other Winnipeg commission, also in 1962, was a sculpture for the chapel of the Winnipeg General Hospital. A much smaller work (1.25 metres high), a protective figure embracing a smaller one, it shows the characteristics of her wood sculpture of this time: the wood is rough hewn, gaining an elemental vitality that would be lost in smoothing the surface. Though the material is different from that used for Mother and Child, there is the same expression of deep feeling. Song of the Earth, commissioned in 1963, was for Montreal's Place des Arts. The committee charged with choosing artists for the new Place des Arts building in Montreal received several private donations as well as financial help from the Province of Quebec. Among eight

ii Anne Kahane. Memorial to Captain F.J. Stevenson, 1962,. Mahogany carving, height approx. z.O5 m. Winnipeg airport. Commissioned by Federal Ministry of Transport. Photo: the artist.

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artists chosen, Kahane and Micheline Beauchemin were the only women. Kahane's three-metre-high two-part sculpture was destined for the lounge of Salle Wilfred Pelletier. As this "grande salle" would be used for concerts, the artist chose a musical theme, that of Gustav Mahler's "Song of the Earth." She listened to this music while carving and gave the finished piece the title of the composition. The sculpture was formed from eight three-metre-long, ten-centimetrewide mahogany planks. These planks had to be joined inconspicuously to form the mass of the material the artist would eventually carve. Kahane had followed the same procedure for her Winnipeg airport commission. She described her working methods to interviewers from the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Montreal Star, and the Montreal Gazette. The preparatory work alone took two months before carving could even begin. The mahogany slabs, glued together, had to be affixed to slender steel legs on which the work stood during the period of carving. The two parts were interrelated by line and movement, suggestive of a contrapuntal theme. As the title indicates, the work portrays the relationship between man and the earth. Human figures rise from the "land" mass and confront one another. They are supported by other, half-formed figures rising from the lower part of the carving. Kahane explained to her interviewers why she preferred mahogany to teak or walnut, which were either too hard or too soft. She liked "the directness [of wood]. There's no melting or twisting. Also, I can handle it, physically, which is important. Anything in stone is so heavy and bulky."20 When Song of the Earth was installed, the metal legs that support the two interrelated parts were inserted into a white concrete base with a serrated edge. Kahane found that this base greatly detracted from the look of the work and asked the architect several times to change it. This has never been done; moreover, the plaque on the work gives the donor's name instead of the title, which is so important to an understanding of the piece. After completing Song of the Earth and before her next public commission in 1967, Kahane created a series consisting of Falling Figure (1963), Falling Man (1964), and Broken Man (1965). The wood now shows fewer tool marks; the stark, angular shapes of the planks are still accentuated, but this time to express existential anguish. Victim (shown at the annual Royal Canadian Academy [RCA] exhibit in 1966), a figure broken entirely in two, effectively illustrates Kahane's dark view of the human condition.

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Critics were impressed by these works, shown at Montreal's Galerie Agnes Lefort: "an exhibition of exceptional format, one of the important Canadian shows of the season ... Since she stripped her work of every frill, effect and superficiality ... Kahane has entered a class that no longer permits us to treat her as 'just another Canadian talent' ... Her statement is deeply serious, yet free of sentimentality and pathos."21 Critic Rea Montbizon recognized Kahane's affinity with the Italian sculptor Marino Marini. 22 Both have parallel graphic and sculptural awareness; both develop, in their portrayal of mankind, "from a transient, jesting humanity to a mankind inextricably caught in its predicament." 23 Montbizon saw Marini's "Mediterranean man unbroken by his cosmic fears, while Kahane's view is less transcendental. Her humans are falling, bent or broken ... or irrevocably separated by their individual isolations. This is ... not personal drama, this is existential tragedy."24 Robert Ayre, who had written about Kahane's 1953 maquette for the Unknown Political Prisoner, saw this early work as a forerunner of what, in 1966, he termed her "nameless, faceless men, forever falling, or broken in two at the waist and put together (maybe upside down) by the careless gods."25 Ayre's words aptly described Kahane's Expo '67 commission, Man on His Head. At first glance, this work seems to be a humorous comment on man's "upside-down" world: an attractive over-life-size pinewood carving, impressive, without any connotation whatever, in its elegant form. But the connotation is there and goes deeper than the humorous comment. For the figure of man is cut in two: the head and arms are supported by the lower trunk, which rests on monstrously large and heavy legs and feet, quite unlike those of early Kahane sculptures. The piece is effective on three levels: as an abstract threedimensional work, well balanced and satisfying in itself; as the lighthearted comment implicit in the title; and as a work that poses a more probing question about man's purpose and direction. On this question the artist was more reticent in her public work than in private creations of that time. Man's lack of direction is expressed in Runners, a work exhibited the same year in "Sculpture '67," a Toronto outdoor exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada. Here too the three figures are split: the upper halves run in a direction opposite to that of the legs. In her comments on this work for the catalogue Sculpture '67, Kahane asked the question "Which way are they going? Or rather, which way is the world going? ... I always start with a dual concept: a human idea and a formal idea combined."26

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Kahane used cedar wood for Runners and smoothed the surfaces as she had for Man on His Head. "Where the vital issue was strong projection of an image out-of-doors, both for weatherability and for visual clarity, I went back to the rainshedding polished surface." 27 Runners, like Kiteman (RCA 1967), has a mechanical aspect: the figures are puppets of a technical age. Kiteman, exhibited in Stratford's "People in the Park" in 1969, is "assembled" like a machine. The arms are struck into the hollow body without losing their nature as planks. They could be seen as the wings of an airplane. A kite-shaped piece of Dacron covers the back of this figure. Kiteman was part of Kahane's 1969 retrospective at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University), where she had begun teaching in 1965. Kahane's Double Image, in the show "Panorama de la Sculpture au Quebec," 1970, also has the mechanical aspect of Runners, while Group (RCA 1970) continues with the simplified, rounded shapes of Man on His Head. In the early 19705, Kahane seemed to have reached a synthesis of both directions, when she made a leap to complete abstraction for two large public commissions from the federal Department of Public Works. LA MER (Figure 2), a laminated-pine carving for the Canadian Embassy in Islamabad, occupied Kahane for nearly four years, from 1970 to 1974. The architect, Isadore Coop of Number 10 Architectural Group, Winnipeg, had great respect for Kahane's work, consulted her regarding site and lighting, and insisted that Kahane personally install the finished piece in 1974 and attend the opening of the building. The working drawing was made in 1970 and Kahane started on the project the next year. By 1972 she had completed carving on several parts of La Mer and was beginning to smooth the parts that had been sanded. The work was held up that year by civil war in Pakistan; but the large, laminated-pine planks could not easily be stored and continued to disrupt the Kahane-Langstadt household. Before the heavy planks could even be laminated to create the necessary volume, a protective false floor had to be installed in Kahane's dining-room, which during the years she worked on La Mer became her studio. The 8.3-metre-long work had to be done in several stages. While the part on which the artist was working occupied the dining-room studio, the other parts rested on sawhorses in "what used to be the livingroom."28 Preparation of the wood, laminating and shaping, took months before carving could even begin. Once the carving was done, the sanding began. This created so much dust that no one in the house was allowed to smoke. For this project Kahane, for the first and last time, had an assistant, Jean-Leon Deschenes, one of her sculpture students at Concordia.

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Deschenes saw the shape of La Mer as that of a human torso laid horizontally. The rounded shapes that compose the piece were to evoke the rhythm of slow-rolling waves. One of these waves is larger than the others, and this bulk gives the work its anthropomorphic aspect. Small hollows, which in the finished version appear as dark flecks, suggest the pattern of many small waves. The three sections that composed La Mer were finally transported to Islamabad. The artist made the long journey - with government help - to install the work and attend the opening. Due to excellent lighting and a site that encouraged quiet contemplation, she found the response to La Mer largely favourable. Kahane had good relations with most of the architects for whom she executed public commissions, but found work with Isadore Coop particularly rewarding. During the years Kahane was primarily occupied with this commission, she had little time or energy - or space - to complete other sculpture. She produced some graphic work, experimenting with abstract woodcuts. The angular shapes of her print series Structures are echoed in the abstract shapes of her second large commission from the Department of Public Works, The Forest. For Structures, Kahane printed with rectangular pieces of wood inked with transparent relief ink, creating various patterns. Where two rectangular shapes overlapped, a third, more opaque, shape was the result. By changing the positions of the blocks the artist created new negative and positive spaces, opaque and transparent areas, with the same rectangles of wood. The Forest, commissioned for the Great Lakes Forest Research Centre in Sault Ste Marie, took two years to complete. This time Kahane knew what to expect with such a large installation. She so arranged her design that she could work on separate parts of the piece in her studio. These parts were smaller than the parts of La Mer, and they were not assembled until they reached the architectural site in Sault Ste Marie. For The Forest Kahane took her theme from nature, while the severe rectangular shapes are reminiscent of her abstract Structures. A vertical arrangement of tall, narrow shapes leaning in various directions, as trees will in a mature forest, the work occupies a central position in the main lounge of the Forest Research Centre's administration building. Its flat base of bricks harmonizes with the one-metre-high brick parapet around a stairwell to lower floors. The lighting proved to be a problem: skylights gave the wrong emphasis to the top part of the work. Lights to emphasize properly the play of light and shadow - very important in The Forest - were promised but had not been installed by the time of the opening. After

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repeated complaints by the artist, one skylight was later completely closed off; but the effect, without additional lighting, was not what Kahane had in mind. Public response at first centred largely on the $2,0,000 Kahane had received for this work. The sum had not allowed her to pay for an assistant; it covered two years' work. Since it also had to cover materials, shipping, and insurance, the artist's net income was much less than what a teacher of her experience would have received for the same amount of time. But in Northern Ontario, where there is a great deal of unemployment, the sum seemed enormous to the taxpayers who contributed to it. The Sault Ste Marie Star published the opinions of some people who worked in the building or visited it. The thought of the cost of The Forest quite overwhelmed one woman, who eventually thought the work quite beautiful, though "at first ... I didn't know it was art. I thought it was left-over lumber."29 One staff member who told the Star that there had been a controversy when the work was first installed later tempered his remarks: "The word controversy may have been used incorrectly ... some people like it and some don't. Each person has his own feelings about it."30 A three-day open house, during which other works by Kahane were exhibited, gave members of the public a chance to ask questions about The Forest. The Research Centre published a booklet about the artist, with a reproduction of The Forest on the cover. Lack of understanding, suspicion, and hostility were further dispelled by an encounter with Kahane. Some of those who came to the open house were impressed when Kahane told them that, as a woodworker, she had built her own furniture. Others, after looking at her other work, wondered why she had not also used the human form for her public commission. "The Forest shows life," she replied, "and life is related to people."31 In an interview with a local TV station, Kahane emphasized the importance of public commissions in giving purpose to the artist's life. "The artist wants people to realize what she is doing. Getting that awareness from other people is a constant struggle ... it takes years until you find your own way and others can see your way."32 In 1976-77, with the aid of a Canada Council grant, Kahane began to experiment with new materials. Her recent work (Couple I, Couple II Tango), shown at the Forest Research Centre, was of planklike dancing couples, more than life size, interrelated like enormous clothes-pegs. Now she created even thinner plywood figures, which she painted with acrylics. She started using thin aluminum sheets as she had once used paper cut-outs. These metal sheets could be bent

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into figures that lacked the rigidity of her constructions in wood. In Seated Figure on Slab, made of two sheets of aluminum, the base also assumes an importance, almost equal to that of the figure itself. Her first show of this new work was at Toronto's Merton Gallery in 1978. While Kahane was engaged in these experiments she was invited to become resident sculptor at the Fine Arts department of McMaster University, in Hamilton. Up to then she had taught sculpture once a week at Concordia University in Montreal. She hoped that a resident sculptor would, like a writer in residence, find time for her own work. In 1980 she and Langstadt pulled up stakes to settle in Hamilton, Ontario. They were leaving an environment in which Kahane had lived most of her life, and where both had many friends. At a 1981 retrospective - "Anne Kahane, Sculpture, Prints and Drawings, 1953-1978" - at the McMaster Art Gallery, Kahane showed some of her new figures made from bent aluminum sheets. She had tried to discard all anecdotal qualities from her work, but the public, like the Hamilton critic Grace Inglis, missed the "warm, rounded, human expression"33 of the artist's earlier work in wood. A precious aspect of her sense of relevance to the individual was lost, according to Robert Ayre. John Bentley Mays was the most perceptive in seeing the challenge in Kahane's new metal figures and in her graphic work: "interesting ideas about the body and how it moves and exists in space ... hard ideas that seem to have gotten pulped and homogenized over the years. It would be interesting to see an entire show of these drawings and more sculptures which share their integrity and energy."34 Mays could see that Kahane wanted to break out of an earlier mould. "Whenever people categorize me," she remarked, "I tend to switch to another medium or a different style."35 After her 1983 exhibition at the Hamilton Art Gallery Kahane had four further exhibitions, two in Ontario and two in Quebec. She stopped producing sculpture after the mid-1980s, though she continued making woodcuts for some time. In the late 19805, after the death of her husband, she retired to Montreal. Kahane had received many commissions under the federal one percent program, which was discontinued just when she was meeting new challenges she had set for herself, when her work had gained new dimensions through formal disciplines demanded by abstract art, and when most of it - important for outdoor sculpture - was also weather resistant. One work that had all these qualities endured both physically and in the affection of the public. The 1959 brass sculpture Mother and Child was seen as sufficiently important to be given a new place, after

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being carefully stored by the Rockland Plaza corporation during renovations, when the plaza was expanded in 1989-90. Kahane was invited to the new opening. Facade, an even earlier commission, has also endured. Not all corporations have been as sensitive to the feelings of the public. Large international corporations, which see art as an investment, follow trends in the international art market, where artists fall in and out of favour according to the aesthetic of a particular time. This changeability of aesthetics is seldom concerned with the way viewers see a work. Several artists have been victims, like Kahane, of these rapid changes, among them the artist who has received more corporate commissions than any other woman - Rita Letendre, the subject of chapter 3.

CHAPTER

THREE

Rita Letendre: Vibrations Colorees

The dynamics in Rita Letendre's public art, as in all her work, are caused by tension between colours. Unlike Perron, she makes no distinction between paintings for public spaces and those created to express herself. While Perron transformed public areas through colours that transmit direct light, Letendre in her public and private art used reflected colour in a way that provides the viewer with what might be called a "total experience" of colour. It is important to experience her work in its full dimensions, for the large space her work occupies forces the eye to travel from one part of it to another, while the colours of a small reproduction are grasped in one glance. In particular, Letendre's early and late work has a "cosmic" quality, conjuring up great storms in nature, or the peace of a vast open sky. During the mid-period of her oeuvre, she created the "vibrations colorees," using fine lines of additional colours (complementary as well as compatible). As explained in the introduction, such vibrations are due to the vacillations of the retina choosing now one, now the other, of these additional colours in relation to a larger colour field. Letendre's work adds a glow to public places, but architects have often seen it as merely decorative. As Barry Lord put it, "since the artist and architect developed separate 'castes,' the artist working in an architectural context can usually hope to be wholly successful only if he is content to be wholly decorative."1 Letendre was successful, with such works as Irowakan, in competitions like that for Toronto's Royal Bank Plaza in 1976, which demanded that artists adhere completely to the architects' plans. She had only one publicly funded commission - from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) - and even that was financed in part by corporate donations. The TTC used the same New York art consultant who advised Benson and Hedges in their "Artwalls" program, Letendre's first Canadian commission, in 1971.

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That this came a decade later than Kahane's first commission was due in part to Letendre's long sojourn in the us, where, as demonstrated in her 1974 retrospective at Palm Springs, California, she was seen as "a leading exponent of the colorist movement."2 She had gained a place in the international art market. In Central Ontario, funding for public art increasingly came from corporations influenced by this market. RITA L E T E N D R E WAS BORN in Drummondville, Quebec, on i November 1918, the eldest daughter of a French-Iroquois mechanic.3 She remembers her mother as often unwell, with a house full of crying children. As with Perron, an illness when Letendre was about three provided an escape, the way to a new awareness. The little girl hurt her finger in a set of gears on which her father was working. The wound became infected, and the child was sent to recover on the farm of her maternal grandparents. There, running through open fields, she suddenly found that she was free, isolated, in perfect peace. She found a serenity that the still tries to recreate in her studio, "alone with my thoughts, my brushes, my painting."4 She did not return to her parents until she was about five years old, when the family moved to Saint-Majorique-de-Grantham. They were received in the town "with gibes and cobble-stones. Boys would beat me up because I was a metisse and my grandfather a witchdoctor who doubtless had a hand in scalping some saintly missionaries."5 Years later, when Letendre was asked whether she was Amerindian, she replied, "I am myself, Rita."6 She never did take up cudgels on behalf of either her Iroquois or her French heritage, but continued to defend her own identity as a woman artist. At school, when she found that her teachers admired her drawings, she took comfort in producing something appreciated by someone in authority. In high school, "where girls only thought of boys, and boys were allowed to have base-ball matches while girls had to do music and embroidery,"7 one nun gave Rita geography books to read. They made her dream of far-away lands, and her mother would find her reading till late at night. In 1941 the family moved to Montreal, where both parents found factory work. There was no house, only two small rooms in a shabby downtown building. The thirteen-year-old Rita inherited the four children. The memories of those years consist of hands skinned at the washboard, smells of burnt food, and, worst of all, noise. "I had no friends, only my life as duster and dishwasher."8 Then, on the radio (bought with several months' savings by her father), she heard about the municipal library. She found it, paid five

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cents, and started looking at the shelves. A librarian showed her some artists' biographies, one of Rembrandt, another of Van Gogh. "I thought that, if, in the nineteenth century I had been a man, I would have become a painter. I imagined, then, that in the twentieth century, photography had taken the place of painting." "I could have perished in this ignorance, but ... a customer in the restaurant where I worked, one day took me by the hand and conducted me to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. That's how I discovered, when I was sixteen, that there was still some art in the zoth century."9 Letendre was nineteen when she had finally saved enough to take classes at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. "We were given a sheet of paper, a piece of charcoal, and were asked to draw an antique, some plaster cast or other. I had never seen a piece of charcoal. It broke in my hand. I needed a whole box to finish my huge, smudged design."10 Letendre's aim at the time was to become a commercial artist, to find a profitable profession. At the Ecole des Beaux Arts the atmosphere was very different from the hostile environment of her school days. "I liked the intelligence and sensibility of Jacques de Tonnancour, but after a year and a half I had enough. One day, Ulysse Comtois, my class mate who became my best friend, took me to see Paul-Emile Borduas, the originator of the Automatist movement. I came out of this meeting much impressed. Painting ... could be an explosion of colours, forms, energies ... Around 1950 I dropped all anecdote and recognisable images from my painting."11 Letendre did not exhibit with the Automatists until 1954, when she, Comtois, and other young artists took part in the exhibition "La Matiere Chante" at Montreal's Galerie Antoine. Borduas, then living in New York, came to make the selections for this show. Each work was to evolve from an "accident" that had occurred during the process of painting. In the following year, Fernand Leduc and some other Automatists who had shown with "La Matiere Chante" staged another exhibition, "Espace '55," at Galerie XII of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Again, Comtois and Letendre took part in the exhibition, the first show of the group that called itself "Les Plasticiens." These artists now opposed the spontaneous expression of the unconscious, replete with associative meaning, sought by the Automatists. They restricted themselves to the "plastic facts": tone, texture, form, line, the relationship between these elements and the ultimate unity of the painting. As Ann Davis points out in Frontiers of our Dreams (1979), there were really two groups: the original Plasticiens who formed an association in 1955, and a second hard-edge school active from about 1956. Letendre for many years continued painting under Automatist influence, but

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eventually, in the 19605, when she had been in contact with works of art all over the world, her painting took on characteristics of the hardedge school, sometimes known as "Espace Dynamique," developed from the Plasticien movement. In 1956 she joined the Non-Figurative Artists' Association of Montreal and exhibited at Molinari's Galerie L'Actuelle. In the mid-1950s Letendre could still only paint in her spare time. Several of her artist friends formed a small cooperative gallery, L'Echourie, "where the painters painted the walls with house painting brushes, the sculptors fixed the doors, the designers cleaned the heating system."12 It was here that she had her first solo exhibition in 1955. Between 1956 and 1960, while working as a photographer for Radio Canada, Letendre had solo exhibitions at Galerie L'Actuelle (1956) and Galerie Arteck (1958). "Nobody bought our work. People thought we were out of our minds to paint colours and forms that were nonfigurative. Some even thought we were communists, which gave us a little notoriety at least."13 However, at Michel Lortie's short-lived Galerie Arteck, Lortie's father came to the rescue: "At the opening he bought one of my paintings for 50 dollars; many of his friends liked it but fear or shame hindered them from imitating him. Furious, Lortie bought another of my paintings. One of his companions was shamed into buying one too. At the end of the evening, I had sold eight paintings. I was in heaven."14 In 1959 Letendre won Quebec's "Prix de la jeune peinture" and, in 1960, the Prix Repentigny. She spent all of her prize money - three hundred dollars - on new materials, so that she could create large canvasses. These had an immediate success. Letendre sold fifty-three canvasses in 1961 and could finally begin to live on her painting. Her work of the next few years showed a struggle between formal structure and lyrical dynamism. Charles Delloye, counsellor for visual arts at the Quebec Delegation in Paris, saw this conflict as the basis of Canadian art: "A limited number of ... important Canadian artists have never ceased to contend with this impossible synthesis ... Rita Letendre belongs to their group [and] embodies an authentic and fundamental development in contemporary art."15 Though not figurative, Letendre's early paintings made reference to landscape. Guy Viau believed that her work was influenced by the grandeur and nobility of the landscape of Gaspe, where Letendre had spent some time in the early fifties. Letendre herself, amused by the subjective descriptions of some of the critics, was offended by their references to gender and race - their remarks that her fiery audacious work betrayed the Indian blood in

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her veins, or that "it was difficult to believe that a woman could have painted these canvasses."16 Dorothy Cameron, who organized a solo exhibition of Letendre's work at her Toronto Here and Now Gallery, sent the painting Accelerando (1961) to the 1962 exhibition "19 Canadian Painters" at the Speed Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky. The painting, which was purchased by the museum, is dominated by a shape that presages the arrow that became, ten years later, a prominent feature in Letendre's work. Arrow-shaped patches on a dark ground, but in more ragged form, also appear in Mer d'un autre age (1961), Letendre's painting in the show "25 ans de peinture au Canada franc,ais," at the 1962. Spoleto Festival in Italy. In the exhibition catalogue Paquerette Villeneuve categorized Letendre as one of "the Post-Automatists, [for whom] the door had been opened by those who had, in a sense, fought their battles for them. New ways of expression were possible, painting had entered the second half of the zoth century."17 With the help of a Canada Council grant, Letendre was able to travel to Europe for the first time and attend the Spoleto Festival. She was enchanted with the brilliant Mediterranean light and shared a studio at Spoleto with the Russian-born sculptor Kosso Eloul. The two later travelled to Israel, where she stayed for a few months, working in a light that she found even more extraordinary than in Italy. Her canvasses dried quickly in the arid climate, so that she accomplished a great deal. She found that the artists in Israel had something in common with American artists, "perhaps because it is a new country."18 Letendre would later use words from Hebrew and Italian, as well as from Amerindian languages, in some of her titles (Sharan, Atara, Sima, Oradek), if their sound conveyed the splendour or power she wanted to express visually. In 1963, Letendre and Eloul settled in Montreal, where Letendre immediately had a solo exhibition at Galerie Camille Hebert. The painting Triangle (1963), shown the same year at the Here and Now Gallery in Toronto, illustrates the development in her painting during her year in Europe. It is divided into two opposing areas, one dark, the other much lighter and painted with more animation. The painting is still lyrical and emphasizes texture; its organization points in the direction of Letendre's later, diagonally divided, paintings. In 1965 Eloul was asked to take part in a sculpture symposium at California State University in Long Beach. Letendre travelled with him, and, as in Israel and Italy, she was delighted with the strong southern Californian light. The director of the symposium, Kenneth Glen, had been asked to find a painter for an outdoor mural on an overpass at the university. He chose Letendre, who had seen Perron's mural for

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the railway union in Montreal. She convinced the architect at Long Beach that the epoxy colours used by Perron could resist the salty sea breezes and hot sun of Southern California. Up to then, epoxy paint had been used in the us mainly for spacecraft engines. Because of its prohibitive price it was not yet on the market for artists. Letendre sought out a company that produced epoxy paints, Flex Coat, and persuaded the manager to mix the required pigments, brought from Cincinnati, with the epoxy medium. She and her assistant, Ken Onamasa, then applied them to the wall above the throughway, spending the greater part of two months, from morning till night, on the scaffolding. The mural Sunforce is painted in vivid yellow, black, and green; a shape descending from above violently breaks into another form, which seems to split under the impact of the upper wedge. In its stark simplicity this mural resembles Letendre's painting Obstacle in the 1968 NGC Biennial. During the five years Letendre stayed in California she was strongly influenced by American art, particularly the hard-edge paintings by Frank Stella. In 1965 she attended the Tamarind printmaking workshop19 as guest printer: she learnt printmaking techniques and made up artist's proofs, which were then run off as editions by the workshop. Both Tamarind and Gemini,20 a printmaking workshop Letendre attended in 1966, printed editions for well-known American artists. Serigraphy was the printmaking medium Letendre saw as best suited to her own work. One method for making serigraphs is to use profilm cut with a knife. Letendre liked the sharp edges and clean shapes this method produced. Her prints soon found their way into exhibitions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she and Eloul lived in the late 19608. Both continued to travel to New York, Montreal, and Toronto and exhibit in these cities. Letendre's serigraphs won first prize at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition ( C N E ) in 1968. IN 1970 L E T E N D R E AND E L O U L returned to Canada and settled permanently in Toronto. That year, Benson and Hedges were sponsoring their "Artwalls" program for various Toronto buildings. The artists were chosen by a committee that included the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and a consultant from "Arts and Communications Counselors," a firm with headquarters in New York. Letendre's design Sunrise (Figure 3) was selected for the Neill Wycik Building, a students' housing cooperative near Ryerson Polytechnic on Gerrard Street. Sunrise was to cover an 18 -by-18-metre area on the west gable of the top seven floors of a twenty-two-storey building. Letendre's

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experience while painting Sunforce in California six years earlier was put to good use in this outdoor mural. Her design, however, has sharper outlines and the dark wedge, dividing two fields of gold, green, and orange, thrusts upward rather than down. As in California, Letendre used epoxy paints and, with her assistants, spent many hours on the immensely high scaffolding. Known as "Highway Reaching for the Sky," the mural, universally popular, became a Toronto landmark. "Visible from far off, as one approaches, little by little the mural reveals itself, and the dominant yellow of the triangles subdivides into various rhythmic shades. Rita Letendre has purposely cut off the top left corner of the surface to emphasize the visual impact of the bright arrows."21 In 1978, a new construction by Omnitown Developments Ltd threatened to obscure the mural entirely. There was a public outcry, unprecedented in that ordinary Torontonians were defending a modern work of art against a money-making venture. "To the artwall, men,"22 Dick Beddoes urged in the Globe and Mail. He appealed to the Ratepayers' Association of McGill-Granby, the ward in which the building stands; to David Silcox, director of cultural affairs for Metro Toronto; and to critics and art-gallery curators. The pressure from ratepayers and from Ryerson students was so strong that, though Omnitown Developments erected their new building in 1979, leaving only inches between Sunrise and their highrise, they felt obliged to sponsor a second mural by Letendre, which was to occupy the east wall of the Neill Wycik Building. Because of a vertical row of windows on this wall, Letendre had to design a long, narrow mural occupying almost all the vertical space left free by the windows. For her 1980 Upward Dream she used softer transitions and warmer colours than for Sunrise. To achieve just the right mix of orange, brown, and yellow, Letendre and the manager of A.N. Shaw Restoration approached a number of companies. Two steeplejacks were employed to paint the mural, 46 metres high and 4.6 metres wide, using a special blend of exterior acrylic latex paint. Ironically, this work too was destined to disappear: the masonry on which Upward Dream was painted turned out to be faulty. The base had to be renewed, this time without a replacement mural. In 1971, while she was still working on Sunrise, Letendre executed a number of hard-edge paintings for corporations in the u s. She classes these paintings as public commissions, but paintings bought or commissioned by corporations were not always accessible to the general public. Even if originally displayed in public areas, these works were often later moved to private offices by the companies that had commissioned them, particularly if they had increased in value, but also

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to protect fragile works from deterioration. They were seen as investments that could be dealt with at will. Now, commissioned in 1971 by the Greenwin Corporation for the residential and office building Berkshire House on Duplex Street in Toronto, is a case in point. Letendre's second commission in Canada, it shows greater variety in its colours than the mural Sunrise. Cool blues and greens on one side contrast with warm burgundies and purples on the other. Each area is dominated by an arrow. The two arrows do not meet in the precise centre and so cause a shift in the painting's dynamic. Along the edges of the arrows there are fine lines of complementary colours, which set up a play of vibrations. Now was exhibited in 1972. at Montreal's Musee d'art contemporain along with five other monumental paintings by Letendre. After this it was displayed in the lobby of Greenwin House for many years, but has now been replaced by a smaller Letendre painting and two of her serigraphs. In 1972. Letendre was commissioned by J.D.S. Investments with another drywall mural, Tecumseth, for the Sheridan Mall in Pickering, Ontario. This gigantic mural, 5.8 by 20 metres, was separated for greater effect from the stores that were dwarfed beneath it by several metres of blank space. Letendre used strong, complementary colours, forming low-slung arrows beneath a dark blue wedge that separated the lower colour field from an upper, equally brilliant, triangle of reds and greens: "Chromatic prisms, which create tensions of light, [are] the essential matter in Letendre's recent work."23 Letendre painted only one more outdoor mural, Urtu, for the wall of Dr Stanley Horowitz's office building facing Davenport Road in Toronto. Although a private commission, Urtu (1972) is seen by a large number of people on a busy street. The mural is in two parts, occupying in all a space of 10.05 by 10.05 metres. Two wedges of dark colour, the larger thrusting downward, the smaller upward in a different direction, seem to echo the dark apertures of four windows, as if the latter were part of the general design. Like other works on not too ambitious a scale that are maintained by people who really care (Kahane's Facade, for instance), the mural has survived and is in good condition. After 1972 Letendre executed all commissions with acrylics on canvas. In 1973 sne painted Rouha for the Cadillac Corporation in Toronto, Summer Solstice for the K. Hood Corporation of Dallas, Texas, and Sunrise II for the lobby of Greenwin Square on Bloor Street, in Toronto. At 2.1 by 5.5 metres, Summer Solstice was so large that Letendre had great trouble getting it out of her studio. Sunrise II occupied a long, narrow space above the lobby's elevator doors. It was one of Letendre's first paintings for a public area showing soft, hazy

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transitions rather than hard edges. For such transitions Letendre had started to use an airbrush. Spraying fine dots of colour rather than painting narrow lines, she created smoother transitions: the eye mixes the tiny dots as it does with impressionist paintings. Letendre's serigraphs did not show such transitions as yet, because in prints she still used the method of creating hard edges with profilm. In 1971, the Richard Feigen Gallery printed an edition of her serigraph Point, shown at Burnaby that year. For some time after that, Letendre maintained a small printmaking studio in New York. In 1972. serigraphs made up part of her solo exhibition at the Malvina Miller Gallery in San Francisco. Reviewer Thomas Albright commented that, "whether Rita Letendre is working on a 60 x 60 foot building or a 12 by 18 inch silkscreen, each piece that she does incorporates an overiding sense of monumentality."24 In 1973 Letendre was one of the few Canadian artists featured in "Process," an International Print Exhibition at the Public Library and Art Museum in London, Ontario, arranged by Kathleen Fenwick of the National Gallery of Canada. After this, however, she stopped making prints for some years, as she could not, in her serigraphs, create the soft transitions she produced with an airbrush in her paintings. She still took part in print exhibitions at times - at New York's Brooklyn Museum, for instance - but was really looking for a permanent New York gallery for her paintings. Ed Fry, of the Guggenheim Museum, explained to me why I found it so difficult: "You have to get used to indifference, as a woman-painter." I tried to put myself into the position of a gallery owner showing the work of a woman and asking himself: Will her paintings increase in value? Will she get married, give up her art, disappear? ... For a woman to succeed, incredible energies are needed ... After this advice by Ed Fry, I told myself: "to the devil with New York." But just then I met Adele Siegel of the Arras Gallery, New York. We understood each other, she liked what I did and invited me to exhibit.25

Letendre admitted in "Forum" - a section of the Toronto ArtMagazine's fifth-anniversary number, which was devoted entirely to women artists - that she had not felt any prejudice against herself as a woman artist during the years she had exhibited with the Automatists and Plasticiens: "Each member of the group [was] important to each other."26 Her background and success made her attractive to those who singled out women artists for International Women's Year. In 1974, she was included in Suzanne Lamy's "Quatre Grandes Artistes du Quebec" in Forces, a Quebec Hydro publication, and, in 1975, in a number of exhibitions and publications celebrating women artists.

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Letendre had her first exhibition at New York's Arras Gallery in 1974. The same year, the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California staged a retrospective of her work, reproducing many of her public commissions as well as her paintings in its catalogue. In 1975 the MM FA organized a ten-year Letendre retrospective, "Vibrations Colorees," first shown at Montreal's Place des Arts and then, during a twoyear tour, at numerous Quebec centres. TWO MAJOR C O M M I S S I O N S took much of Letendre's time between 1974 and 1976. The first of these, for Toronto's Royal Bank Plaza, was the mural Irowakan, which covers the entire north wall on the lower banking floor. The architects for this plaza were Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, and Housden. The selection committee included Boris Zerafa, who was charged with the art program; H.J. Slawek, chief architect for the Royal Bank; and the director of the Royal Bank. There were no artists or art experts on this committee and the architects made a point of choosing artists who "should be willing to work closely with the architect to carry out his intentions for the designated areas in a manner he already envisaged."27 Requirements regarding the artwork were very specific. Each artist was asked to supply sketches or models, sample materials, colours, and an accompanying budget, but no maquette fees were offered. The architects described Letendre's winning proposal, Irowakan, as "lending well to the large scale architectural space of the banking floor, by complementing the sweeping space with strong horizontal movement ... Letendre's work has a sleek 'city' look conveying a tremendous sense of dynamic energy, particularly suited to the downtown Toronto urban pace."28 The sense of dynamic energy has, however, been reduced by a number of factors. The lower half of Irowakan is not visible. The upper part of the 3.1-by-15.6-metre painting, without the lower area of the same colour to balance it, assumes a heaviness because of its dark tones. The horizontal arrow dissecting areas of light yellow and orange seems to have shifted from its central position. The painting recedes into the background behind the tellers' wickets, its energies swallowed by the busy banking area, the urban environment it was meant to enhance. Letendre's next public commission came from the Toronto Transit Commission. The original concept of incorporating art in the TTC'S architectural plans for the new Spadina line was presented by Nina Kaiden Wright, president of Arts and Communications Counselors. In addition to a donation from the TTC, one-third of the funding was to come from private donations, and the largest part from Wintario

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12 Rita Letendre. Joy, 1977. Skylight dome, hand-painted tempered-glass panels, 54 x 6.4 m. Commissioned by Toronto Transit Corporation for Glencairn subway station, Toronto. Photo: G. Lambton.

through the Ontario Heritage Foundation. Ontario artists were invited to submit slides to an open competition. These were screened by an Arts Advisory Committee that included Ms Wright, the architects in charge of each station (as chairmen), three other architects, three art experts, and a representative of the TTC. Thirty-five artists were asked to submit idea sketches for assigned locations. In 1975 twelve artists were selected to produce maquettes, detailed information regarding materials, production time schedules, and cost estimates. The artists were paid for both sketches and maquettes, but were given no fixed budgets within which to work; rather, they were asked to present the best possible aesthetic solutions. Eventually, the twelve artists were reduced to nine, including Letendre, whose maquette was for a spraypainted skylight, Joy (Figure 12), for Glencairn subway station. The architects, Adamson Associates, described the project as follows: "Light, filtering through a vividly coloured, vaulted skylight bathes the platform area in a warm ambience, like the interior of a cathedral. The design, incorporating translucent colour with natural light, is intended to evoke a mood of celebration, visual poetry and joy."29

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In this commission Letendre was given all the freedom she wanted for design, colours, and materials. She worked on it from 1976 to April 1977, when the 318 panels of spray-painted tempered glass were installed. "At first I wanted to use stained glass as you will find in cathedrals, but the weight would have been too much. I then experimented with plastic, but I wasn't happy with the distortion that resulted when the plastic bent ... tempered glass could be smashed but, like the glass of automobile windshields, it would shatter into small rounded pieces with no sharp edges."30 The glass dome, a long, narrow design (54 by 6.4 metres), incorporates bands of electric blues, orange browns, greens, and yellows on either side of a central black arrow that runs the whole length of the station. As in some other very large works by Letendre, the complete design is hard to grasp; unless viewers make a special effort, they see only part of it at one time. At Glencairn, the description of the architect still applies to the finished project: the warm ambience and translucent colours are there, though due to weather or vandalism, a few panels are broken and harsh daylight shines through the cracks. Glencairn is an airy suburban station with light entering from all sides, competing with what the architect describes as the "cathedral effect" of the dome. In the cavelike underground spaces of downtown Toronto, the effect of this dome would probably have been more powerful. It is Letendre's only attempt at transforming light through transmitted, rather than reflected, colours, and she did not really change her design, the one she then used for large paintings, to make her public art more effective. Even her spacious studio was not big enough for some of Letendre's large paintings. To complete the nine-metre-long Kodawanda, exhibited at the Moos Gallery in Toronto in 1977, Letendre rented a vacant store on Bloor Street for two months. As one reviewer described it, the painting was "overwhelming, too large to take in at one glance ... like a Boeing 747 taking off."31 Bought by the Canada Council's Art Bank, Kodawanda did, in fact, eventually find a place at Mirabel airport. In Kodawanda the arrow, once a device to divide a painting diagonally, is placed very low, as if it had become a low horizon line. In Seikotan (Figure 13), purchased in 1978 for Montreal's Place des Arts, the arrow is still there, but it is placed even lower and has become almost invisible. A very slender line at a very slight diagonal, it is framed by bright yellow stripes more prominent than the arrow shape. All the other colours in the painting alternate in subtle lighter and darker variations of greens and greys. The walls of the Salle Wilfred Pelletier lounge also have greenish tones, and these somewhat subdue

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13 Rita Letendre. Seikotan. 1978. Acrylic on canvas, 138 x 430 cm. Lounge, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal. Photo: G. Lambton.

those of the painting. Kodawanda and Seikotan are Letendre's only public art in Quebec, and both were added many years after the airport and concert hall had been planned, so that there was no question of consultation between architect and artist. The changes in composition noticeable in both these paintings were accompanied by the much more gradual transitions described above. In 1977 the artist found a way to introduce the soft airbrush effect of her paintings into serigraphy, simply by spraying liquid stop-out on to silkscreens. The spray hardened in small drops, letting through colours in subtle, mist-like transitions. In 1980, Drummondville - Letendre's town of birth - organized a large exhibition of the artist's serigraphs at its cultural centre. The space created in these new prints was described by critic Jules Arbec as "un espace presque mystique."32 The new lyrical quality in Letendre's work was also noticed by Evelyn Blakeman of the Edmonton Journal. Referring to Letendre's exhibition at the Edmonton West End Gallery in 1978, she described the uncertain depth and movement in these prints as reminiscent of the Northern Lights. Letendre further softened her colour transitions in the late 19705 and early 19805. She began to use pastels in hot colours, returning to landscape in sketches of the Nevada desert, which she exhibited in 1982 at Montreal's Galerie Gilles Corbeil. Her new pastels were also shown at the Graohica Gallery in Edmondon, in conjunction with a

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"Women in Art Conference," where Letendre was guest of honour. Here, her pastels had musical themes - Ode to Brahms, Love Song. The horizontal arrangement of colour bands, the soft transitions between them, are features of Letendre's 1983 painting Daybreak, a commission for the Toronto General Hospital. Light is still Letendre's main preoccupation; but there is less tension, less of the sense of speed and energy of earlier paintings. What the painting lacks in dynamics it gains in meditative atmosphere. Daybreak may be seen as expressing the serenity of the morning sky; the dark blue of the night sky occupies the upper third of the painting. Bands of orange and rose sunrise colours emerge from a ground of lighter blue, shot through here and there with rose specks of light. An almost imperceptible band of black at the bottom of the painting constitutes the horizon. The painting is immediately visible on entering this particular wing of the hospital. The information desk is on the left in the lobby, the painting on the right. Unfortunately, the area directly in front of the painting has been designated as a catch-all for various projects to improve the hospital's finances, so that, as in the Royal Bank Plaza, the painting loses some of its impact and becomes a mere background. Letendre liked listening to music while she painted, and her 1984 commission for the lounge of the Cantel Building at Eglinton Avenue and Yonge Street in Toronto incorporates both music and landscape. Its title, Brahms, expresses this new orientation. The painting evokes a dark, stormy landscape and the music of the late romantic period. The sombre colours at the top range from brown to black. The transition from these to the gold and yellow of the lower part is uneven and ragged, so that the dark area has the aspect of storm clouds above a sunset or a fire. Describing her working methods in a seminar organized by the AGO, Letendre referred to specific colours "that reflect your own spirit ... it's ... finding the relation and the amount and the quantities of the surface that will make it suddenly glow and swing and all that."33 In 1989 Montreal's Concordia Art Gallery held an exhibition of Letendre's paintings between 1953 and 1963 - the Montreal years focusing new attention on the strength of her work. During that year commissions went out to a number of Canadian artists to create murals on steel for the special, newly refurbished Transcontinental train, which was to contain every type of luxury. Officially sponsored by VIA Rail, most of the funding for this elitist project came from large private corporations, not all of them Canadian. The artists were given two big steel panels on which to experiment, because on steel special enamel colours are needed, which would then

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be baked on as colours are in autobody shops. Letendre created two paintings evoking open skies, characteristic of her latest work. The steel surface gave the colours she applied an almost overpowering luminosity. Her first painting, with a wide centre of rose orange colour, has remained in her studio, usurping everything around it, light, space, power, movement. It was, she felt, too strong for the special train, and she offered her second painting, Aurora, for the project. This painting also has a lighter centre, but its upper part contains greys with its faint blues, its lower parts the warm browns and oranges found in Brahms, above a soft, promising morning blue. To understand why Letendre offered her less powerful and dynamic work, one might consider a prediction made by Robert Jekyll during a 1985 controversy over public art: "Art commissions will be increasingly cautious about imposing strong personal statements on public spaces. Rather they will seek out artists and works that will make the space itself more interesting, more entertaining, more alive, or more useful to the people who pass through it."34 Perhaps one has to see all Letendre's work together to appreciate its special quality, its "glow and swing and all that." That a new resonance for her own private painting should have come from a public commission shows that, in certain instances, public commissions provide the challenge of new experiments that the artist might not have found in other circumstances. Letendre's work, beginning with lyrical and stormy paintings, passing through the dynamics of powerful yet restrained colour fields, arrived, in its last forms, at a new, serene lyricism. She has shared all these forms with the public. That this public related to the joyous note, the swing and movement in her work, was demonstrated by the outrage of Toronto citizens when Letendre's mural Sunrise was to be obscured by a highrise. While architects and consultants have tried to subordinate her work and have sometimes seen it as "decorative," or, in Jekyll's words, "alive and interesting," Letendre has, in reality, been as subversive as many other women artists, communicating to a usually receptive public her own sense of elation, her joy, and her strength.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Gathie Falk: A Giver of Gifts

Gathie Falk's public art deals with the complexities of the relationship between artist and public. While Letendre appeals through the direct experience of colour, Falk appeals to the imagination. She makes us take another look at the complex world around us, particularly at things we take for granted. Using a large variety of media - painting, textiles, ceramics - she endows what we think of as ordinary objects in everyday life with a magical significance. She gives a voice to everyday experiences from which no one is excluded. Many everyday objects are household items, and so she seems to evoke a feminine world. Her earliest admirers were women critics and curators. Marguerite Pinney, Joan Lowndes, Ann Rosenberg, Doris Shadbolt, and Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker saw the significance of Falk's work before Pierre Theberge or John Bentley Mays acknowledged her as an innovative artist of some stature. Falk has had a number of public commissions, but she would have had many more had she entered competitions. After a couple of commissions she decided not to waste time and energy on designs that might be on a short list for some time but never used. It surprises her that the public relates so well to works she sees as having a complex meaning. But it is just this complexity that allows people to see her work on more than one level. There is the level of humour or irony, often emphasized by the titles of her work; there is a certain strangeness in the juxtaposition of familiar objects that provokes thought; and always there is the meticulous craftsmanship in whatever this artist undertakes. GATHIE (AGATHA) FALK WAS BORN on 31 January 192.8, in Alexander, a small town in Manitoba. Her family was descended from German Mennonites who for more than a century in Russia had

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preserved their language and folk traditions. Two years before Gathie was born, the Falks, with the help of the Canadian Pacific Railway ( C P R ) and older Mennonite communities, came to Manitoba. Falk was only ten months old when her father died. Her first distinct memories, of the old Mennonite village Hochfeld, are of carrying a vividly blue box and putting it down beside a whitewashed stove of the Russian type. She remembers that "the people in the village lived as they had in the i9th century or earlier ... We lived in a little house with a barn attached to it. We had one cow and chickens - I remember running in shouting 'the hen has laid an egg' ... the fuel we used was mostly dried cow dung."1 Objects cherished in childhood, the egg she carried to the store - "I held it preciously"2 - or the watermelons growing in the field near the house, would later be celebrated in Falk's art: eggs were the first ceramic shapes she formed; the watermelons feature prominently in Falk's Picnic series (1977). When Gathie was five years old the family moved to Northern Ontario. This region, so celebrated in Canadian art, does not feature in Falk's work as vividly as her personal experience of the orderly brightness of Mennonite villages, perhaps because Northern Ontario was not as happy a memory. When Mrs Falk and the children returned to Winnipeg, Cathie's older brothers, Jack and Gordon, dropped out of school to work. During the Depression the family was sometimes on relief, since their mother was often ill. But to Falk this poverty seemed neither abject nor totally distressing. They moved from place to place and finally were able to afford a tiny house with white trim, where they had a small orderly garden, laid out with a centre circle and four square beds marked off by painted stones. The pattern of this garden and the kitchen chair "my mother varnished every year"3 would later appear in the artist's work. Falk loved school; she loved books and she loved music. The family's social life was bound up with the Mennonite community, in which music played an important part. Gathie sang in the church choir. She drew well, but thought of herself mainly as a musician. She was one of three children chosen from the entire school to attend Saturdaymorning art classes in downtown Winnipeg, but "it took two nickels to get there and back. It was hard to come by two nickels. And it was probably the wrong time for me to start, because I was getting into the time of my life when analysis is more important than creativity ... Besides, I had always thought I could draw very well and I found out that there were hundreds of children who drew better than I did ... One day, in art appreciation class, we were shown a painting by

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Gauguin which contained a red dog. I said 'there are no red dogs' and I didn't ever go there again."4 Falk must have been a promising musician. When she was fifteen, a benefactor whose name she never discovered paid for her instruction in harmony and conducting. A year later, in 1944, the family was informed by Canadian Pacific that they had to pay back the money advanced to them when they came to Canada. Since her brothers were in the army, Gathie, aged sixteen, had to go to work. For three years Falk worked as a packer for a supermarket, continuing her music whenever possible and finishing high school by correspondence. Her experience as a packer would influence her early ceramic pieces and, eventually, her public commissions. In 1947, Mrs Falk and Gathie joined Jack, who had settled in Vancouver. For the first few years in BC, Falk worked in a luggage factory sewing in pockets. Packaging, pockets, framing objects in boxes distinguished Falk's art of the early 19705 - particularly feminine preoccupations, some critics have said. In the 19505 Falk still saw herself as a musician; she acquired a violin (a present from her mother) and, eventually, a piano. Her music teacher suggested she go to normal school. "He thought I needed a change of job ... The last thing I ever wanted to be was a teacher ... however, it seemed to be the only thing I could train for within one year ... So I did it, gritting my teeth all the way."5 If she taught with a year's normal school after grade twelve, she still had to make up grade thirteen by taking summer courses. It was then Falk discovered that she could take art classes to upgrade her teaching status. One of her teachers at the University of British Columbia (use) Department of Education was Lawren Harris, who decades earlier had encouraged Emily Carr, as he now encouraged Falk. "I couldn't wait for summer school to start because then I could paint again ... I had a much longer apprenticeship than most artists. I always felt I wasn't ready ... One evening in 1962 ... I said to myself: 'I don't want to have any one standing behind me anymore. I want to paint what I paint and I don't want to have any direction and I don't want to hear any remarks about my work' ... I could work on my own. I had learnt to like what I was doing and to feel that I didn't need any one's opinion about it."6 When Falk had been teaching for about ten years, she heard a colleague say that he would take out his pension fund and go to Europe. She realized that she, too, could do that and paint for a year. First, however, Falk, who was supporting her mother, had to finish payments on the house they shared on 25th Avenue; that took another two years. "Then, after 12 years of teaching, I took out my pension

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fund, I think it was $2000, and I lived on it for a year. I went to the University of British Columbia and took ceramics with Glenn Lewis (a very fortunate circumstance) and I painted the rest of the time. At the end of the year I had money left over and since I was making pottery and beginning to sell it, I took the next year off as well. I never went back to full-time teaching."7 It was with ceramics that Falk's artistic career really began. Pottery and ceramics did not gain prominence in the hierarchy of "high art" until California artists began to use ceramics in a brand of pop art known as "funk." Eventually, ceramic sculpture was given prominence in the Canadian West through artists who had either come from California, like David Gilhooly,8 or studied there, like Victor Cisansky.9 In British Columbia Falk was one of the pioneers in the use of clay sculpture, as Joe Fafard10 had been in Saskatchewan. Falk was thirty-seven when she had her first solo exhibition of her paintings at Vancouver's Canvas Shack in 1965, the year she went to Europe for the first time. In 1966, after a group show at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver, she stopped painting and switched to sculpture, In late 1967 Doug Christmas of the Douglas (later Ace) Gallery in Vancouver asked her to show in his gallery. There she had her second solo exhibition, in 1968, of ceramic arrangements she called "home environments." "Falk emerges from her ... show at the Douglas Gallery as an artist of stature," one critic wrote. "Clay remains an important medium but a number of media have been creatively explored ... Furniture has been flocked, enamelled ... clear epoxy resin ... used to mummify shoes, tables, watery meat, vegetables ... Plexiglass boxes have the effect of Victorian glass bells once used over wax fruit." 11 She saw a grim humour in Falk's eviscerated chicken in a bird cage, and her visceral telephones flowing into transformed furniture. It was this critic, Marguerite Pinney, who later drew the attention of the selection committee for Ottawa's Lester B. Pearson Building to the specific quality in Falk's work. Falk used various forms of printmaking in her mixed-media show. She silkscreened wallpaper for this "home environment"; made up silkscreened games. In Lime Jello, made for the 1969 Burnaby Print Show, she printed with actual household lime jello as Calgary's Marion Nicol had printed with plasticine.12 At UBC'S "Younger Vancouver Sculptors" (1968), Falk's series Man Compositions consisted of ceramic men's shirts, packaged and boxed in plexiglass, presaging the ceramic murals of men's shirts made in 1973 for the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa. The shirt images were continued in drawings, one of which Falk framed for a 1969 exhibition, "The New Art of Vancouver," at Newport

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Harbour Art Museum in California. As a reference to New York pop art, Falk hung a framed Andy Warhol print beside her own drawing. The critic Susan Ginsburg saw Falk's "home environments" as "questioning the way we perceive reality in ... an environment that overflows with inconsistencies."13 Falk's shirt drawings were remarkable in their change of visual reference. The shirt in the drawing illustrating an article in ArtsCanada has no outline, merely part of a pocket, part of a tie, and some buttons, yet is recognizable as a shirt.14 Falk had started her artistic career a decade later than Letendre. A new aesthetic had turned against the art market, the buying and selling of art by collectors. Artists - particularly women artists - began to create an ephemeral art form in which they used objects and gestures, even their own bodies, to produce an event, a ritual, a performance. In the late 19608 Falk became a member of Intermedia, a Vancouver artists' collaborative, and was introduced to performance art by the New York artist Deborah Hay. Falk's mother was now in a nursing home and very ill, and from 1970 to 1973, the artist shared a house with two friends: Elizabeth Klassen and Tom Graff, a performance artist from San Francisco. "Tom lived in the basement apartment, Elizabeth lived upstairs, and I lived in the middle. We found it good to cook and eat together, and we lived like a nice little family of friends."15 Falk's Kitsilano house became part of her art. It was hard to distinguish, at times, between "still lifes" she arranged for exhibition (piles of polished ceramic apples, for instance), and objects destined for daily use. Graff and Klassen travelled with Falk to perform theatre pieces and helped her, between 1971 and 1973, with her demanding public commission for the federal Department of Public Works. "In 1971 we researched thrift shops between Vancouver and Montreal. In 1972., we toured Canada with performance work along with three others; in 1973 we put up my murals in Ottawa. "We had performances across the country, from Charlottetown to Vancouver. We were considered a great novelty, nobody had seen anything like our work."16 Some props in these performances came from thrift shops; others were made by Falk. Plywood clouds were an important feature of one performance, leading to other plywood figures similarly suspended (Herds One and Two). The cabbage leaves Falk solemnly sewed together on a sewing machine during one performance would reappear later in an installation of suspended ceramic cabbages. Doris Shadbolt, in an article on Gathie Falk in ArtsCanada (Spring 1972),17 pointed out this interrelationship in Falk's work. Through repetition of "signs"

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she established a visual vocabulary the viewer could use, though its points of reference changed and provided surprises. In one sense the performance pieces were visual art; but they also related to music, still an important factor in Falk's life. "To make a performance piece is to ... choreograph, or compose, a work of art that has a beginning, an end and a middle, with, preferably, but not necessarily, a climax or several climaxes. Sometimes ... the choreography is worked out like a fugue in music, with one event beginning close upon the heels of another and a third event intertwining with the first two. The analogy of music is apt. One of my works, Red Angel, is like a rondo with theme A followed by theme B, followed by theme A."18 Performance is, essentially, an art combining movement in space with movement in time. Years later, Pierre Theberge, one of the first curators in central Canada to buy Falk's work, spoke of her deep commitment beneath the apparent irony, and of the originality with which women artists are not always credited by art historians. "Many of her ideas were all over the world a year or two later. Yet at the time ... her work seemed too playful ... Now, the work strikes me as being profound and a serious statement on life ... the kind of predicament we're all in. What she was doing seemed prophetic. The disassociation [sic] and disjointing of media, the mixing ... it's astounding, the intuition she had. We, who were part of the defining ... did not understand."19 Of contemporary critics Falk remarked with some scorn: "Influential critics were telling us that art no longer hung on walls, that concept art was the only way to go ... the result of this cultural revolution was that painters kept on painting, sculptors kept on doing what they do, and some of us flamboyant performance artists went our own naughty ways."20 In 1971, Falk received a commission from the federal Department of Public Works for two murals in the cafeteria of the new Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa. Veneration of the White Collar Worker (Figure 14) and Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker (Figure 4) are two separate murals on either side of a stairwell, each taking up an area of about 2.75 by 8.3 metres. They consist of twenty-four ceramic panels each. Work on these panels, even with the help of assistants, took the better part of two years. The architects for this building were Webb, Zerafa, Menkes, and Housden. The contractor was Foundation-Janin and the project manager for the Department of Public Works was Bill Rankin. The Art Advisory Committee, as in all of DPW'S one percent programs, was an equal balance of architects and art experts, who made the selections from artists nominated by the consulting architect. The budget for the

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14 Gathie Falk. Veneration of the White Collar Worker, 1973. Ceramic mural, z-75 x 8.35 m. Commissioned by Department of Public Works for Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa. Photo: Wolf Professional Photo Service.

building was $32 million; most of the one percent designated for art went into sculpture. The bronze front doors alone (by Robert Hedrick of Toronto) cost $74,000. The kitchen equipment for the cafeteria, for which Falk created her murals, cost about twenty times the $18,2,00 she was paid for her work. To make forty-eight panels, each of approximately a metre's dimension, was an arduous task for a ceramicist with a small kiln. Falk overcame the problem as follows: for each shirt panel she prepared the clay by treading on it in an old bathtub. She then rolled the clay as though kneading dough and stored the prepared amount in bins to keep it moist. Then, for each panel, she rolled out the appropriate amount of clay, shaped in into the form desired for one shirt, and cut it into six pieces each of which was small enough to fit her kiln. When fired, the pieces were reassembled on a piece of plywood and fixed to this base and to each other with a mixture of glue and filler. When the material was dry, it was sanded to create a smooth surface. For Veneration No. i two coats of white paint were applied and on to this surface Falk drew hundreds of black lines running diagonally and at slightly different angles on either side of the shirt opening ... She had hoped to use a

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felt pen but the ink disappeared into the surface. All the lines, then, were made in India ink with a special pen. One mistake would have ruined the entire shirt front. There are no mistakes, although it was exceedingly difficult to draw on the undulant surfaces ... For each ... shirt Falk made a ceramic tie of slightly different length, though similar in shape; some with tie-clips, some without. After kiln-firing, these were hand-painted in slightly different tones of red, so that, when in place in Ottawa, the red ties would create a subtle spectrum effect in the mural.21

Falk's assistants helped with the sanding, glueing, and coats of polyester that covered all the panels, each weighing between fifty and sixty pounds. In Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker they helped paint the spectral blues of the work. "[Falk] arranged the shirts of mural No. 2 on her back lawn in the order of the Ottawa placement. She selected a bright blue for the izth panel and, mixing white with the blue, she created ever lighter tones working backward to an almost white for the ist shirt; working forward from 12 she mixed black into the blue and ended the spectrum with an almost black shirt, the 2.4th."22 The panels were efficiently completed long before the building was ready for them: construction was still going on when they were installed by Falk's team. At first, the crews working on the site showed a certain amount of hostility towards the artists. However, by the time the four had finished their work, they were on the best of terms; some cleaning women even asked for a spare ceramic tie as a keepsake. The newspapers were more critical. The Ottawa Citizen featured a cartoon showing a wall of shirts and an elderly lady with a shopping bag asking a security guard, "Would you have size 16 T/2. in short sleeve, please?"23 John Best in the Globe and Mail described the Lester B. Pearson Building as a castle for diplomats that took three years to build and was decorated with $2.10,200 worth of Canadian art, some of which had drawn a hostile reaction from the public. At the time of installation the cafeteria tables were placed at a distance of about two metres from the mural. They have since been moved so close to the wall that the lowest row of ceramic shirts in Veneration of the White Collar Worker can hardly be seen. The chairs are covered with a dark red that competes with the subtle variety of reds in the shirts' ties. One ceramic tie was broken and remained in that state for two years before it was repaired. On the opposite wall of the stairwell, Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker faces a large window. The reflection of the window light on the glossy polyester covering the plaques causes areas of glare; these make it impossible to appreciate the subtle variety of blues in the shirts.

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Here, as in Perron's work for Place du Portage, or Hayden's for the National Science Library - both installed at roughly the same time a closer collaboration between architects and artists over lighting might have resulted in a better display, showing these works to full advantage. A special contract clause regarding lighting and maintenance could prevent changes that might lead to neglect and indifference. The murals had been an arduous undertaking, and in i9yz, just before Falk travelled to Ottawa, her mother had died. Her relief during this demanding project came from making ceramic objects for a series she called Table Settings. Less strictly organized into serials than her arrangements of men's clothes, each of the six "settings" could be seen as an entity. When exhibiting these works in the group show "Realism, Emulsion and Omission" in 1972., Falk again used references to her performance works, placing the ceramics between plastic Christmas trees - the kind she used for her theatre pieces. Another work, 18 Pairs of Shoes, used the serialization of her Ottawa murals. "Perhaps the elegance of subtle variation and extension through repetition was what she learned, essentially, through the hard labour of Veneration of the White Collar Worker."24 In the show "Ceramic Objects" (1973), held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the New York Cultural Centre, Falk showed a series called Single Right Men's Shoes, of which critic Geoffrey James wrote: "Grand Funk" [is] a phrase coined to describe the outpouring of wild, irreverent sculpture in California in the late 19505 and '6os. Since then, Funk has trickled insidously into the mainstream of North American art, attracting a growing number of practitioners and the kind of collector who will pay $1,500 for, say, a case of eight ceramic running shoes by Vancouver's Gathie Falk ... [Falk] is interested not in verisimilitude but in exploring the nature of everyday objects. "I like to do mundane, prosaic things and change them into something special, something beautiful ... People who don't know anything about art tend to like my stuff ... Though they would probably be flabbergasted if they knew a thing cost $500. They think of them as knick-knacks."25

As the quote indicates, Falk could now charge prices that allowed her to live without the aid of grants. Not only the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) but the National Gallery now bought her work, and in 1974 her "boot cases" and series of men's shoes went to Paris for a solo exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Centre, a show Falk herself was able to attend. On her return in November 1974, Falk married Dwight Swanson, a prisoner in the BC penitentiary who had heard her on a radio program and with whom she had corresponded during the last year.

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"I knew a little about people in jail but I didn't know then that it is very hard for someone who has been in jail most of his life to function outside the environment ... The stress of my marriage did not stop me from working but it has undoubtedly affected much of what I have since done. I had decided before I met Dwight that I would make a herd of horses, but the actual drawing of the horses did not happen until I was well into my engagement and marriage. It is probable that my anxieties are reflected in those fleeing horses."26 Like the plywood clouds, the horses were suspended from the ceiling by invisible thread; air currents cause some of them to tremble and the effect of the whole can be electrifying. Writing about Falk in the catalogue for "Some Canadian Women Artists" (1975), Mayo Graham, who had arranged this show for the NGC, remarked, "The Herds are magical, like so much of her art ... There is an intertwinement in Gathie Falk's art (and life) that is both logical and surreal. Commonplace objects - shoes, eggs, shirts - are art images to Gathie Falk. Her selection of these things is a 'veneration of the ordinary' and their material transformation, a celebration."27 David Burnett, reviewing this exhibition in ArtsCanada, concluded that in her willingness to let humour come first, Falk was alone among the women artists in the show. Falk would make humorous references even to the publicity for her shows: a poster for her 1974 Paris show reproduced her drawing of a single right black-and-white "Oxford" in a bootcase. Falk found the framing in a bootcase intriguing and, in 1975-76, made a series of drawings, all framed in this way. One of these drawings, Rearranged Diirer Rabbits in Bootcase, was art historical. Others included shoes or ceramic eggs. The ceramics Falk exhibited in 1977 in "Four Places" at the Vancouver Art Gallery seemed to her to be the darkest of her creations, yet the series Picnics on the surface portrayed peaceful outdoor ceremonials. "They express a lot of the emotion related to the time of my husband's trial and imprisonment. The car with the flames painted on it - featured largely in the trials - related to the other three picnics with flames. I have always been fascinated by fire, from the time of burning the grass every spring in my childhood ... [to] the white, footlength flames darting from the peep hole in the gas kiln. Fire is associated with warmth, danger, excitement and purification. It is a certainty that I went through fire in those years."28 Late in 1977, after ten years of making ceramic sculpture, Falk began to paint again. Her new paintings - East Border, in four parts, and West Border, in five parts - were joyous portrayals of her own and her suburban neighbours' garden borders. They had developed from a series of Instamatic photographs Falk had made of her little garden

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when tulips, foxgloves, and other flowers were at their best. Each "frame" of her photographs slightly overlapped the next, so that not an inch of the border would be missed. Falk stuck to this feature in her paintings. The direct view of part of a landscape without points of reference (a horizon, a foreground, an edge) was something Falk would explore further in the series Night Skies and Pieces of Water, painted in the next few years. In 1979 Falk received a commission from the BC Central Credit Union to create a mural for the foyer of their administration building. She took the suggestion to "warm up" the bleak wall literally and produced a gigantic 5.5^-4.9-metre quilt. Quilt making had been given new status through feminist criticism, particularly in the work of Joyce Wieland, who had adopted the medium of needlework in the 19605 and 19705 (see chapter 5). For Beautiful British Columbia Multiple Purpose Thermal Blanket (Figure 15) Falk used the grid arrangement of the traditional quilt but her emphasis was not, as in Wieland's quilts, on "women's work," needlework and stitching. Nor does she celebrate the grandeur of the Canadian landscape, as in Wieland's 109 Views. Instead, she transformed her own garden paintings on canvas into soft sculpture, stitched over fibreglass insulation to a canvas backing. From elitist "works of art" they were turned into parts of an (albeit oversize) household object. The assistants employed for the stitching were the same people who had helped with the Ottawa ceramic murals. The fifty-six oil-on-canvas panels that formed the mural were paintings chosen from Falk's photographic documentation or her own garden, as her Border paintings had been. The 60.5-by-6o. 5-centimetre squares were arranged in such a way that the panels representing deep, luscious lawn grass gave visual coherence of pattern to the garden vignettes. All the panels were then surrounded by a rich, salmon pink border. "The title 'Beautiful BC' comes from our license plates. The title follows through with the idea of the use of the commonplace made singular, if not exotic."29 The term "multiple purpose" was added tongue in cheek to the title because, as Falk remarked, you could use the piece as a mural, a tent, or a giant sleeping bag. "The visual cliche of a patchwork quilt was, however, transformed by the very quality of the 'soft sculpture,' its size, sturdiness, undulant dimensionality ... it warms and silences the all-brick reception area."30 The grid arrangement of vignettes from gardens so pleased the artist that she decided to continue in this vein on a smaller scale. This is a reversal of the more common procedure of using well-tried methods, for which the artist has become known, for a public work. Falk had

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15 Gathie Falk. Beautiful British Columbia Multiple Purpose Thermal Blanket, 1979. 56 oil-on-canvas squares mounted over fibreglass insulation on canvas backing, 5.5 x 4.9 m. Foyer, BC Central Credit Union. Photo: the artist. hit on an innovation for her commission, then continued to use it. She created eight "thermal blankets" dedicated to various friends. This "giving of gifts" to friends is a theme that runs through all of Falk's work. The intimate, personal quality it bestows, the sense of celebration in a private circle, draws viewers into the circle, touches a corresponding chord.

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For her series of quilts, Falk again used photo-documentation. In addition to representing parts of gardens, the paintings that resulted also represent a friend's way of life. There are table settings, leftovers from meals, children, and flowerpots, all painted in what Ann Rosenberg, to whom one of the Thermal Blankets is dedicated, saw as a Bonnard-like delicacy of handling, a sense of odd perspectives similar to his. The eight Thermal Blankets were exhibited in 1981 at Vancouver's Equinox Gallery. "They have been constructed by sewing nine three foot square oil paintings together into a patchwork design ... encased in [a] i' wide mottled green painted border ... They are vivid scenes, momentary life ... chairs and dressers, lamps and carpets, teacups and saucers, objects of our daily existence are clues to the sensibilities of the gathered friends."31 Instead of celebrating the impressive mountain scenery, the often painted coast lines of British Columbia, Falk drew attention to "everyman's" world.32 EVEN B E F O R E HER C O M M I S S I O N from the EC Central Credit Union Falk had embarked on a series of new paintings, in format as large as her Borders. The Night Sky series was begun in 1978 and continued while Falk worked on the Thermal Blankets. Ann Rosenberg saw in this series a formal/technical relationship with the lawn sections in the credit-union mural. Falk used the identical format for her next series of paintings, Pieces of Water, on which she worked in the early 19808. The titles refer to the dominant news items on the days she was painting - El Salvador, 10% Wage Freeze, Libya - but the news items do not enter into the content of the work. In 1982. Falk exhibited this series at Vancouver's Equinox Gallery and at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto. These two galleries were, increasingly, to further her work during the 19805. Interest in Falk was also growing in Quebec. "L'Art Mis en Boite," at the Musee d'Art St Laurent, combined some of Falk's sculpture with her recent paintings. Vie des Arts featured Falk's Picnic with Red Watermelon (1976) on the cover of its 1982. Summer issue and published an article that autumn on "Falk, transfiguration de 1'ordinaire."33 This article alluded to a new series Falk had just begun, concentrating on the cement sidewalk in front of her house, the shadows on it, leaves strewn across it in the fall. A new studio, designed for her by Rob McKenzie, was constructed in 1984, and Falk finally had an appropriate working space for these large paintings. "For years I was making large stretchers on the floor, with six inches around the stretcher to move in. Looking at the paintings was also difficult ...

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almost the only space available was in front of windows ... so for six years, I lived in darkened rooms because of paintings propped up on boards in front of windows. My new space is unusually bright and a delight to work in."34 In her new series, Theatre in B/W and Colour, Falk continued the grid form of the Thermal Blankets. The reference to photography was now in the title; for instead of using polaroid snaps she was now able to "arrange" objects for painting, often in incongruous combinations, as in Theatre in B/W and Colour: Bushes with Fish. Falk continued using the vocabulary of her earlier installations in Theatre paintings; she also reversed the process, using arrangements she had made for Theatre works to create installations (see My Dog's Bones}. "[Theatre] extends the bounds of realism and packs this enlarged view into the confines of a small space ... [these paintings] reflect life as it is and extend that life to include more than is usually seen."35 For John Bentley Mays, this series, shown at the Isaacs Gallery in 1984, was "in the tradition of garden art ... Falk's works occupy a critical and peculiarly modern place in that tradition. They are devoid of hints of paradisical sex, erotic whispers in the shrubbery, all sensuous fantasy. They show us instead a garden emptied of all that and regimented and installed in the grid patterned urban landscape."36 For all their surface pleasantries, Mays saw Falk's Theatre paintings as anxious works and her vision of nature as "a troubled, untidy rabble of things ... held uncertainly in place by the regimented designs of Culture, which is not much more reliable."37 He expressed the hope that the 1985 Falk retrospective planned by the Vancouver Art Gallery would come to the Art Gallery of Ontario "so that the work of this retiring, thoughtful artist can be appreciated in Toronto and understood better than it is now."38 In 1985 Norman Theriault and Rene Blouin organized for the Montreal International Centre of Contemporary Art a series of ambitious installations titled "Aurora Borealis: The Hundred Days of Modern Art." The show was financed by the Quebec government and the Canada Council, while the store owners in the mall of Montreal's Place du Pare donated their unused boutique space free of charge. The exhibition was one of the biggest shows of Canadian contemporary art ever mounted. Each of the thirty artists, chosen for their contribution to a very specific Canadian perception and point of view, was given a shop space the size of an art gallery. For her installation, Falk used the arrangement of My Dog's Bones in her 1984 Theatre paintings. John Bentley Mays found this exhibition "impressive by virtually every standard. There is little mere novelty or vacant intellectualism ... An atmosphere of deep thoughtfulness pervades the show - which

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should not surprise us, given Canadian installations' roots in the discussions of national identities in the early 19705 ... This is not American art, it is not European art, it is a way to see the polarities and structures in Canadian culture."39 Falk's art is so versatile that one extreme could be seen in Montreal's "Aurora Borealis," another in a show of contemporary Mennonite art at The Meeting Place, Kitchener-Waterloo, where she exhibited The Little Plum Tree in 1986. On the West Coast, Falk is sometimes compared to Emily Carr in her originality and perfectionism, but she has had more appreciation than Carr in her lifetime. Despite her unwillingness to enter competitions, Falk had three important public commissions between 1987 and 1989. The first, Diary, was a series of eight painted panels for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. The artists (but not the actual works) were chosen by the architect Arthur Erikson for the Department of External Affairs. Each panel, 2.4 metres high and 0.75 metres wide, is fitted into a curved wall, like windows into niches about ten centimetres in depth. The tall, narrow paintings of Diary are a record of tulips in Falk's garden, from the bud stage to full bloom, to the last shrivelled petals on the stalks. Though flowers in a daily surrounding interest Falk, the part they play in everyday life is what counts to her, not their specific property as flowers. What Diary records is, in fact, time. And it is the element of time that is the subject of Falk's next public commission. This, too, was a direct commission and involved neither competition nor compromise. In 1988 Falk painted Development of the Plot for the North Vancouver Park and Tilford Odeon Cineplex. The commission came from Garth Drabinsky, in consultation with David Burnett. The four painted panels, 2.1 by 1.5 metres each, are a new departure for the artist. Each has its own subtitle: "Entrance," "Development," "Climax," and "Denouement." In the development of a theme with its beginning, climax, and denouement there are echoes of Falk's performance pieces, staged events that portray a movement in time. Here, in a theatre, these events have found a suitable - and permanent - setting in space. These panels formally relate to a new series on which the artist was then engaged, placing single, unrelated objects in surprising juxtapositions. In the Development of the Plot these are single hands or double arms holding lightbulbs, which introduce the action, fans that turn into windmills, explosives against a background resembling the Night Skies series, and a bushy hedge that resembles a bundle of explosives but throughout the development remains unchanged. Falk was happy about these commissions since she was involved right up to their completion. But for her next public commission, a

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much larger one, the final stages were out of her hands. Salute to the Lions of Vancouver is an outdoor sculpture and, to withstand the climate, it was cast from aluminum and steel after Falk's design. There had been a competition for a sculpture at Vancouver's Canada Place. It was to be based on a story and should stand high enough so that it could be seen by ships entering Burrard Inlet. None of the preferred designs seemed satisfactory. Then Falk was invited by Jane Zeidler, the project manager, to submit an idea. Falk's design for a metal sculpture had to fit into the style and atmosphere of Canada Place; it demanded a great deal of deliberation and redesigning and resulted in very large and complex plans.40 The 6.7-metre metal sculpture, inaugurated on 4 June 1990, draws attention to a story Pauline Johnson had been told by Capilano Indians in B c: two women, daughters of a chief, prevailed on their father to invite their enemies to a festival. With this gesture, the women had created peace for their tribes. As a reward, spirits lifted them up to become two mountains, generally known as the "Two Sisters," or, later, the "Lions of Vancouver." The sculpture is not really designed as an illustration of this story, but as a reminder of it, within the fast-paced Canada Place activities. One sees two lions leaping through double rings. Each ring supports about twenty lightbulbs that illuminate both sides. They are part of the Canada Place atmosphere, but lightbulbs are also part of Falk's vocabulary. Those who know Falk's work will look for hidden meanings, others may accept the work as it stands and will see no link to the story unless they find a reference to it near the sculpture. A text may be an integral part of an installation, but it should not really be required when a work, like this one, is meant to speak for itself. WHAT is GAT HIE FALK'S PLACE among the women artists creating public art? She does not compete for public commissions; she has not expressed any social commitment as Perron has done, has not consciously sought approval for her public art. Almost all her work is done for a group of friends for whom she is a "giver of gifts." For them - and for many others drawn into this magic circle - Falk performs the shaman's function of turning the ordinary object into something imbued with special meaning. And, a true magician, she conditions people to follow her, even into terrains that are difficult of access. Some of the objects in Falk's paintings have a threatening aspect. Her humour, like Kahane's, has its dark side; but viewers are also made aware of a universal message, a state of wonder and serenity beyond the plainly visible, and they keep looking. That is the artist's special achievement.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Joyce Wieland: Ecology, Feminism, Nationalism Wieland is one of the great visionary artists of our time.1

With these words Pierre Theberge described a significant aspect of Joyce Wieland's art, particularly her public art. Wieland has been trying to develop a voice to express her society. The shamanistic function of her art is more deliberate, less mysterious, than Gathie Falk's magic making, which assumes many disguises. Wieland's public art is remarkable for its commitment to issues of ecology and nationalism, and to a woman's vision. The three issues are presented as near-identical, all of them threatened by our carelessness, indifference, and consumer madness. To express her social commitments Wieland has sometimes mixed verbal and visual language, using a variety of mediums common to our consumer society. One medium, the film, can be seen as analogous to Falk's performance art, except that its message is loud and clear, while Falk keeps the audience guessing. The threat to the air we breathe, the food we eat, to wildlife, to the Arctic, is named specifically in Wieland's art, permeates all her work, whether film, painting, or needlework - a medium she chose as a specific (and subversive) woman's message. At first glance, Wieland's public art seems to express only her concern with ecology. Both Defendez la Terre/Defend the Earth (Figure 5), commissioned for the National Science Library at Ottawa, and Barren Ground Caribou (Figure 16) at the Spadina Subway station in Toronto, have threatened species, the threatened earth, as themes; but this earth, these species, are seen as part of Canada. And both are quilted assemblages. Needlecrafts, and the quilt in particular, had once been classed as merely decorative and given secondary status in an art world whose values Wieland opposed, even though she had, like Letendre, become part of this world through her years in the us and the recognition her films had received there.

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While the medium of quilt making in Wieland's public commissions constitutes the feminist message, that of nationalism is harder to find, unless the public is aware of Wieland's attitude regarding the Canadian North. Its threatened fauna - the barren-ground caribou, for instance - have become a symbol of the country itself, threatened by economic and political imperialism. During the eight years Wieland spent in New York, she gradually began to see Canada from a southern vantage point, to equate it with "the North." She was Facing North, as expressed in her 1974 lithograph. Seeing the North as a threatened land, and seeing herself likewise threatened, as female, contributed to her growing solidarity with all women and all threatened species. JOYCE WIELAND WAS BORN on 30 June 1931 to parents who had emigrated from Britain to Toronto in the mid-192.05 with two older children. Her father, who died when Joyce was seven, had been one of the "Five Wieland Brothers" in British music hall. Her mother, the daughter of a Dundee draper, tried to make a living as a seamstress. Joyce's sister Joan, her senior by nine years, became a gifted needlewoman whose craft Wieland later used in her quilts. Wieland was nine years old when her mother died and the sister, who had left school to go to work, became a mother substitute. Traumatic memories of this time were expressed in Wieland's paintings of the 19605. She had tried to care for her mother during her final illness and, afterwards, to assume the role of housewife: "I had to learn to use a gas stove ... and make meals for them [her sister and brother, who worked] ... The next thing I knew my brother came home one day in uniform [during World War II] and that was the end."2 Wieland had started to draw very early. She loved the Beatrix Potter books at the library. At school, her drawings were also influenced by comic strips and movies. For boys at high school she would draw sexy girls. Her first "serial" was "Agent X9," about a woman spy who, through costume and make-up, tried to change her persona. Wieland attended Toronto's Central Technical School for four years from the age of thirteen, at first taking a domestic-science course. At this time (1944), some major Toronto artists, notably Doris McCarthy and Elizabeth Wyn Wood, made Central Tech a stimulating place for beginners in the arts. McCarthy persuaded Wieland to switch to the art course; "she understood that I liked art better than anything."3 After graduating, Wieland worked for some time as a package designer. Packaging and filling pockets remained, for her, a particularly feminine occupation.

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In 1953, Wieland had saved enough to spend three months in Europe. On her return she became a member of the Toronto Film Society. She began to see film as an important means of expression, an art form particularly suited to the times. From the mid-1950s Wieland worked on commercial and educational films, but continued painting and drawing. Artists like Graham Coughtry and Michael Snow who worked at Graphic Films with Wieland made trips to New York to see films and galleries there. In September 1956 Wieland married Michael Snow. From his intellectual approach she learnt to gain critical distance from her work and to move with ease in the powerful art establishment. The sophistication and irony that in her work mask her deepest concerns are a protective veneer she then acquired. Determined not to be overwhelmed by the group of male artists with whom she associated, she looked for models in contemporary art. "My one dream was to become myself."4 The 1959 exhibition Wieland shared with Gordon Rayner at Toronto's Greenwich Gallery showed what influences she had incorporated and what set her apart from male artists like Rayner. "I showed with Gordon in his first show: it was my first show too ... We both had a lot of humour in our work ... He used to say about my work, 'pretty good for a girl.' I can say his work is pretty good for a child."5 One of Wieland's paintings in this show was a self-portrait in a style adapted from Cubism, presenting the same model in profile and full face. It shows an introspective attitude, a face left indistinct, purposely unfinished. In 1961 a group of Toronto artists including Wieland and Snow exhibited at the Isaacs Gallery, calling their show "Neo-Dadaist." Like the original Dadaists they used found objects, letters, and numbers in combination with paints, inks, and crayons. Some of Wieland's paintings of this time, such as War Memories (1960), are haunted by her childhood experiences. Laura Secord Saves Upper Canada, painted a year later, is Wieland's first work showing a female heroine: significantly, one who sets out to save her country. In the Dadaist style, the painting is decorated with small flags and airplanes; such symbolic objects remained part of Wieland's vocabulary in her later patriotic quilts and paintings. In the early 19605 Wieland, working in her friends George and Donna Montague's old coach house, had for the first time a studio with space enough for large paintings. In these new stain paintings she continued using the central image of Laura Secord. The female sexual imagery of her circular shapes, then little noticed by viewers, has lately

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received more attention from feminist critics. The Time Machine Series (1959-61) refers to the female menstrual cycle; Balling, another of her titles, is a slang word for sexual intercourse. Heart On has a title that suggests sex and love, yet refers to haunting experiences in Wieland's early life, sheets soaked with blood when she cared for her dying mother. In the fall of 1962 Wieland and Snow moved to New York. The move had been Snow's idea. Wieland admits that she had been terrified by the New York art scene, but the friendly world of underground film makers was a great attraction. So were the Hudson River and the Seaport Museum; both close to the Snows' loft on Greenwich Street, they provided images for Wieland's paintings. Boat, Sinking Liner, Flicks Pics No. 4, done in story board form derived from earlier commercial work, show a series of accidents and disasters, hinting at the atmosphere of violence in the u s. In New York pop art Wieland found elements that seemed a logical continuation of the Dadaist style and her earlier association with commercial art. She used the image of women's lips (passive moviestar mouths in pop art) to express messages far removed from their erotic connotations. In West 4th the lips are repeated as in filmstrips. They hold cigarettes that seem to be phallic symbols, but on closer examination we find the words "causes cancer" at the centre of the painting. In a later design for a public commission, a stamp honouring Nellie McClung, Wieland used lips to convey a feminist message; her lithograph "Oh Canada" is composed of lip impressions. During her first year in New York Wieland was as disturbed by pollution as she was by the atmosphere of violence. Her paintings Strontium 90 Milk Commercial, Don't Use DDT, and Solidarity, Art, Organic Foods all concern human health and the environment. She began to use art forms other than painting to express her ecological concerns. The first and, in the us, most successful was the experimental film. She had gravitated to the small band of independent film makers whose meetings had a casual, low-key atmosphere very different from "the intense competition and pressure and the high financial stakes of the New York Art Gallery system."6 Her first short eightmillimetre film Patriotism Part II mixed patriotic, household, and sex symbols (hot dogs and the American flag) as her paintings and constructions did. This film, made in 1964, was followed by Water Sark (1964-65) which ritualized a woman's world circumscribed by her kitchen activities. Hand Tinting (1967-68) continued to analyse woman's position as a social being, while destroying formal, illusionistic conventions. Rat Life and Diet in North America (1968) was the first film in which Wieland expressed her view that nationalism and a concern with ecology were nearly interchangeable. She used the style

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of an animal parable for children showing the fate of a group of gerbils that escape from the us to Canada, where they do organic gardening (as many who protested against the Vietnam War were then doing). Eventually, the forces they try to escape also threaten their new environment. Although Wieland later felt that she was excluded from the film scene - male dominated, once experimental films were accepted by major galleries - she is known in the us mainly for her films. Articles in Artforum stressed her importance as an avant-garde film maker; solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco between 1968 and 1986 were of her films, not her paintings. There were no retrospectives of Wieland's paintings in the us. These were included, however, in major group shows of Canadian art, beginning with "19 Canadian Painters" exhibited in 1961 at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The storyboard and film-strip form Wieland used in paintings was also suitable for cartoons. In these she expressed her concern for ecology. The Life and Death of the American City (1967) presents proposals for an "Air Pollution Mask"; it shows a couple trying to picnic beside an industrial site, over the caption "Eat your sandwich before it gets dirty." A section of this cartoon was published with an article called "The Great Stinking Sea" in Canadian Forum in 1968. Three years later the magazine published Wieland's cartoon Aqui Nada. The literal translation of the Spanish is "There is nothing here," a title that mitigates against the happy outcome of the tale. As in Rat Life, Wieland uses a children's fable to mask a nationalist/ecological message in the story of a rabbit that falls in love with a caribou. "Lapin du Nord" is threatened with rape by the drilling apparatus of an industrial robber-baron (representing multinational corporations). Love triumphs in the cartoon; but then, it is a fable. LONG B E F O R E THIS, W I E L A N D had adopted a medium that to her was of the greatest significance and was to predominate in her public commissions of the 19705. In the mid-1960s she moved from constructions using found objects, often culled from street refuse, to the threedimensional medium of "soft sculpture." She made a small quilt for her friends the Montagues, using a photograph of their son, framed and packaged in plastic. Wieland's first assemblages of this kind were hung like film strips. They were sewn with an old industrial Singer sewing machine, or simply glued and patched together. Among American pop artists Wieland most admired Claes Oldenburg: "my favourite and I think the most important artist in the last twenty years in the States."7

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Wieland's first small quilts often referred to films (Stuffed Movie., Home Movie, her own film Larry's Recent Behaviour, 1966) and their main component was plastic, a medium also favoured by pop artists. Plastic had the sheen and sensuous feel of the filmstrip: "Plastic ... was all around ... I liked the material. I laminated it, I sewed it, I treated it like a traditional fabric. I started the idea of ... pocketing, of enclosing stuff in it."8 Some of Wieland's 1966 plastic hangings express her protest against the Vietnam War. In N.U.C. a large plastic dollar sign veils photographs of war scenes. The stuffed plastic lips in Betsy Ross, look what they've done with the flag you made with such care hold a halfdestroyed American flag. This work also hints at the participation of women in the creation of national symbols, prominent in Wieland's show "True Patriot Love" five years later. The artist realized that when sewing quilts she was continuing the line of her mother and older sister. Wieland's sister Joan sewed with the firm small stitches of the traditional quilt maker, and soon Wieland designed quilts that her sister would then complete. "Getting into the making of quilts as 'woman's work' was a conscious move on my part ... There was a highly competitive scene with men artists going on there [in New York]. It polarized my view of life; it made me go right into the whole feminine thing."9 Wieland's first large quilts, The Camera's Eyes and Film Mandala, made from cotton in the traditional way, still used images from her film making: the mandala, a symbol of Eastern religion, meditation, and hallucinatory drug experiences common in the 19605, on closer examination discloses a film reel in its centre. Most important for Wieland during her New York years, however, was a new perspective on her own country. A passionate and concerned nationalism is expressed for the first time in the plastic quilt Patriotism (1966-67), and in Confedspread (1967), which celebrates Canada's centennial. In 1967, when these quilts were exhibited at Toronto's Isaacs Gallery, Wieland became infected with the euphoria of Expo '67. In the winter of that year she travelled to the West, filming the country as she went along. Images of winter, of the North, became part of the vocabulary of her first full-length feature film, Reason over Passion. The title, based on words by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was used in 1968 for two of her best-known quilts, Reason over Passion and Raison avant la Passion. In the execution of these works Wieland mischievously sabotages the meaning of the title: both quilts are double-bed size; rose colours and heart shapes associated with passion belie the (male, intellectual) message of the appliqued letters.

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In 1969, the year Wieland's film Reason over Passion was completed, major us galleries began to show experimental films. It was one of Wieland's bitterest disappointments that her feature film was not accepted by the new establishment, the Anthology Film Archives. "I was made to feel in no uncertain terms ... that I had overstepped my place."10 It was then that Pierre Theberge, curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada, suggested a retrospective - or show of new work - in which Wieland would be able to express her most urgent concerns. "It was happening at the right time and I could spread out ... with all the elements - ecology, history, politics ... women, women's work and the power of all that."11 This was the first retrospective given to a living woman artist by the NGC. The artist had had three other retrospectives, one at a private gallery in London, Ontario (1966), one at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1968), and the third at York University (1969). In preparing for the NGC exhibition, Wieland purposely employed all the textile media that were associated with "women's work" and given a status secondary to "high art": knitting, embroidery, rug hooking, and, of course, quilt making. The Snows had a cottage in Nova Scotia where they spent the summers during their New York years. There, Wieland had come in contact with expert needlewomen, and these she now employed to create pieces for her retrospective. The embroideress Joan McGregor stitched the images of mouths singing "O Canada" in red, white, and blue on a linen background. Other needlewomen knitted flags and embroidered flowers for quilts and lettering for Montcalm's Last Letter and Wolfe's Last Letter, which were to be framed together for the exhibition, joining French and English history. The opening of "True Patriot Love" in 1971 was a Dominion Day celebration, appropriately. The title of the show came from the Canadian national anthem. Images in this show of snow, winter, the North were as prevalent as they were in the film Reason over Passion. The artist found "Mon pays, c'est 1'hiver"12 one of the most powerful statements in the country, all the more so for being couched in the French language, which was also seen as threatened. As the title of the show implied, Wieland's works expressed her identification with her own country, which she saw as vulnerable, female, threatened with economic and political rape. Land and nature were seen as life-giving forces that must be defended. The show was remarkable for its variety of media - bronze sculpture, for example, with its connotations of political monuments. But Wieland's main medium in itself contained a feminist message: needle-

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craft, a lowly female skill, was employed in most of her works for "True Patriot Love." "I wanted to elevate and honour craft, to join women together and make them proud of what they had done."13 All the needlewomen Wieland used were given credit in her 1971 retrospective. Comparing the exhibition "True Patriot Love" to Judy Chicago's Dinner Party eight years later, the American critic Lauren Rabinovitz pointed out that Chicago neither paid her assistants nor formally acknowledged their help.14 In Wieland's mixture of sexual bodily images and nationalist or ecological messages, Rabinovitz saw a bolder statement than that made later by Chicago. The scrapbook appearance of the show's catalogue, printed over the facsimile pages of a Canadian government publication, Illustrated Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, was seen by Rabinovitz as another domestic art - scrapbooking - added to the feminine textile arts featured in the exhibition. The catalogue's hidden message is boldly spelt out in two major works. The Water Quilt retains the grid of the traditional quilt. On sixty-four square white pillows the same number of excerpts from James Laxer's The Energy Poker Game were photoprinted on sensitized cotton. Sixty-four images of arctic wildflowers embroidered on squares of Egyptian cotton mask the pages of text. When these innocent-looking flaps are lifted, the text warns of u s threats to Canadian resources, in particular that of trapping arctic water to meet the needs of ( u s ) industry. For the quilt Arctic Day Wieland drew arctic fauna and flora on circular cushions. Each of the muslin circles is backed by a coloured cloth circle, resulting in an iridescent sheen reminiscent of arctic light on ice. The images of fauna and flora are as delicate as the threatened species they portray; like them, they seem about to disappear. For 109 Views, Wieland discarded the grid of the traditional quilt but used traditional applique and piecing methods for an arrangement of different-sized squares, each representing a landscape in the style of Group of Seven paintings. Simplified outlines of the pre-Cambrian shield, of trees and clouds, predominate. The whole forms an irregular diamond, a horizontal expanse that seems to echo the landscapes. Wieland combined some of the features of the quilts in "True Patriot Love" in her public art of the 19708. As some critics remarked, the exhibition itself was a form of public art, "a cross between a garden fete and a rambunctious bazaar of visual delight."15 Others mistook its folksy disguise for an attempt at folk art, unaware of the serious message hidden beneath the ironical use of perfume, cake, and animals. One letter to the press deplored the attention that Wieland's exhibition, spread out on the NGC'S main floor, drew from the "truly great Picasso

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exhibition upstairs."16 The nationalist, feminist, ecological message of the show lacked the sententious demeanour required for serious propaganda. "It is a hallmark of Wieland's art that the serious is taken lightly and the light-hearted, seriously," wrote Susan Crean.17 In a later interview, Wieland mentioned that she herself was then aware that she was reaching the public. "You could have a direct and an emotional communication, as well as with ideas. I think it worked on every level. Maybe things were referred to that some people wouldn't understand, but they would understand it visually and sensually."18 With these words Wieland expressed what public art is all about. Her awareness of the many levels at which art can be perceived was evident in this show; it led, indirectly, to most of her public commissions in the 19705. Late in 1971 Wieland and Snow moved back to Toronto. Within a few months Wieland received a commission from the federal Department of Public Works for the National Science Library in Ottawa, a building that became a showpiece of the way the one percent program incorporated art within architecture. Architects Shore, Tilbe, Henschel, and Irwin nominated Wieland, together with six other (male) artists. Her design was approved by the Advisory Committee on Art in March 1972. Wieland's quilted wall mural Defendez la Terre/Defend the Earth combines the flower motif and delicate colours of Arctic Day, the applique quilting method and horizontal format of 109 Views, and the urgent message of the Water Quilt. Douglas S. Richardson described it as a work that carried especially well in terms of setting and scale. "Seen from a considerable distance down one of the alleys of space that surround the central octagonal desk in the lobby, it fills the vista effectively and beckons one on, like an intellectual fist in a visual velvet glove."19 Wieland's "soft sculpture" contains a message more forceful than any other work of art in the building, and more appropriate to the building's function. "The latest and most urgent message of the late twentieth century is simply that science, learning, art and humanity come to nothing if we fail to conserve the resources of the natural world,"20 Richardson continued. He pointed out that Defend the Earth has the most painterly qualities among the seven commissioned works. The sensuous colours of the mural draw the viewer's eye to the message long before it can be deciphered. The large floating flower images in soft blues, purples, and pale turquoise could also be seen as clouds in a landscape. The backings of the pieces are in fuchsia, carmine, and orange, so that, as in Arctic Day, there is a hidden glow to these forms. The long,

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slanting letters of the writing below evoke the movement of flowing water. Public reaction to Defend the Earth has been favourable throughout the years since the mural's installation, though the volume of people using this library is restricted because of its distance from the centre of Ottawa. Two other works in the building equal Defend the Earth in popularity: Michael Hayden's light walls on the ground floor, and Nobuo Kubota's blue plywood Waves, below a skylight on the upper floor. One of the stated requirements of DPW'S Fine Arts Program was "close and early collaboration between the artist and the architect ... art must be considered at the time of the architect's preliminary building design concept."21 But the working drawings for the National Science Library were prepared before the Fine Arts Program was approved. As Richardson points out, it is occasionally evident that the artists were not involved at an early enough stage to make suggestions for the modification of space and related functional aspects, or even of lighting fixtures. He cites as the most glaring example the obtrusive "high intensity illumination which tends to kill Michael Hayden's light walls."22 Because of its visual appeal, strong message, and suitability for its architectural site, Defend the Earth is the most successful of Wieland's public commissions. A smaller work of the early 19705, also for a federal program, turned out to be a twofold commission: a stamp design and the decoration of a new post office. In 1971-72 Wieland made twenty-one sketches for a stamp commemorating World Health Year. Only one of these designs was accepted, for an eight-cent stamp. DPW records show that there was a plan to mount Wieland's twentyone sketches on a io.5-by-iz.8-metre plaque at the post office in Mount Forest, Ontario, a beneficiary of the department's program of using art in new buildings. But no installation date is given, and, perhaps because of later budget cuts, the plaque was never installed. Instead, the post office displays framed reproductions of the twentyone sketches. Each sketch, like the one chosen for the actual World Health Day stamp, has a heart as its focal point. The heart, of course, is part of Wieland's vocabulary, used extensively in paintings and quilts, a symbol of love and, in this case, physical health. When Wieland tried to use another part of her vocabulary, women's lips, for a stamp design in honour of Nellie McClung (because McClung's lips uttered a feminist message), the design was rejected. No reason was given. If one looks at Wieland's use of lips, beginning with West 4th and continuing in many versions of embroidered and lithographed lip arrangements, one realizes that for Wieland lips - used

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to form words - signify communication, for example in the singing of O Canada (1970; lithographed), The Maple Leaf Forever (1972.; coloured pencils on quilted cloth), and Squid Jigging Grounds (1974; embroidery on cloth). After 1972 many of Wieland's activities centred on work for Canadian Artists' Representatives (CAR). This organization, which, as its name suggests, represented Canadian artists, was involved in protests against "the takeover of Canadian universities and the takeover of museums."23 In the summer of 197Z, the CAR artists protested the hiring of an American curator by the A G O . They formed a Committee to Strengthen Canadian Culture. Wieland saw native culture as particularly threatened. "The whole goddamn sociology department at Thunder Bay had been taken over by Americans teaching Black studies when Indians were lying all over the sidewalk. They didn't have a study program for that because they coudn't get it from Chicago soon enough."24 Wieland's 1973 exhibition at Isaacs focused on Cree Indians, whose land was being flooded by the James Bay hydro project. She raised money to assist the Indians' court case by selling her prints at Montreal's Saint-Laurent Centre. During the mid-1970s Wieland's energies were almost wholly taken up by her feature film The Far Shore. Her plan was to express her most passionate concerns in the medium for which she was best known internationally to what she hoped would be a large public. However, funds for this project were not public, and finding them proved to be an arduous undertaking. The film, completed in 1976, uses a romantic story to portray relationships between the exploited (woman, nature, the French, the artist) and the hard-headed establishment industrialist who kills what he cannot possess. In spite of its many visual beauties, this film was not a great critical or public success, and by 1976 Wieland was exhausted. While she was engrossed in her work for The Far Shore she had received another public commission, initiated in 1974 by the Toronto Transit Commission. Her design for a large quilted cloth assemblage, Barren Ground Caribou (Figure 16), had been accepted by the TTC, despite objections by an anonymous Toronto Star critic: "Art, to be successful in the subway, must be bold enough to register at a glance as one hurries to a train. It should be detailed enough to intrigue the eye when service is delayed. It should be large enough to be seen over the heads of crowds and vivid enough to cope with the indifferent light of a subway platform. Above all, it must be vandal-proof, abrasion-proof and able to survive Toronto's sharp winds and chilling damp."25

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16 Joyce Wieland. Barren Ground Caribou. 1978. Detail. Quilted cloth assemblage, z x 9.6 m. Commissioned by Toronto Transit Corporation for Spadina subway station. Photo: G. Lambton.

The fragility of Wieland's work had been made brutally clear when 109 views, bought by York University and displayed without protection, had been torn in half in an act of vandalism. "Ms Wieland's stuffed quilt ... is made of soft materials sure to tear and stain underground. To prevent this, the TTC plans to mount it behind a sheet of unbreakable glass and provide a special air conditioner to maintain even temperature and humidity ... Once you put a work behind glass you might as well show it in a museum." 26 It may have been due to Wieland's preoccupation with the The Far Shore that cooperation between Adamson Associates, the architect for the Spadina subway station, and the artist was not as close as it should have been; this may also explain why she did not object to the inclusion of a New York art consultant on the TTC selection committee, only a few years after her protest against American takeover of museums and universities. The architect described the Spadina mural as follows: "The subject is a favourite ecological theme having to do with the preservation of

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our Canadian natural heritage. Here the lordly caribou, those marvellous beasts who roam the barren ground, are seen wandering across the tundra covered with delicate Arctic flora. The quilt is at once intimate and familiar - a very human offering in the purely technological environment of a subway station."27 The intent of Barren Ground Caribou might have been achieved had it been placed so that the public could walk towards it from a distance. There is a long tunnel leading from the centre of the Spadina station to the Kendal Street entrance, where the mural is placed. But the mural is not visible at the end of this tunnel until the public is very close to it, and even then, access is restricted by barriers, so that only part of the work at a time can be fully appreciated. Moreover, since there is no ticket sale at the Kendal Street entrance, it is seldom used. As mentioned in the 1976 Star critique, the quilt is lit, framed, and protected like a museum piece. If there is any Wieland irony in this work, it is that the "barren grounds" are anything but barren: they are the most colourful part of the work. Not the pale ice colour of Arctic Day but the summer gold of lichen predominates over the rose, purple, and blue of arctic wildflowers. Some of the caribou are fairly detailed, others as if seen from a distance, part of a whole that the public really has no chance to appreciate. "It's in a very poor place," Wieland admitted. "I wish they could move it ... in the technological bowels of this thing you need a reference to nature and especially a reference to Altamira ... it should be moved to the Bloor Station or where children can see it, where you're not just dragged onto a train immediately."28 Her reference to the Altamira prehistoric cave paintings shows the artist's serious intention to act as shaman/interpreter. For this, the shared visual vocabulary of artist and public is needed, as it existed in so-called primitive societies - as it still exists in Northwest Coast Indian art, for instance, where, as Joan Vastokas pointed out, art and architecture are a vital part of the totality of the culture, "not simply by-products."29 Wieland was trying to reach the public through visual symbols. But a public bombarded with visual symbols, especially in advertising, will confuse symbols that are often crudely used (reindeer at Christmas time) with legitimate symbols of a threatened environment, because their senses have been blunted. For this reason, some artists use shock methods. But Wieland used simple, familiar shapes to express a theme that was about to become one of society's main concerns. Wieland worked on Barren Ground Caribou for nine months, with the help of her sister, Joan Stewart, and two assistants. The mural was installed in January 1978. While still occupied with this work, the

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artist received another commission, which came, in fact, from the world of advertising. The Art/Advertising Program for the Toronto Eaton Centre was to produce a self-funding street gallery of Canadian art, carrying out the "Life in the City" theme of the mall. The advertising agent Morley A. Arnason and the consulting firm Art Collection Canada were asked by the centre's architects, Bregman and Hamann and Zeidler Partnership, to approach firms in the Eaton Centre with the idea of having advertising executed by Canadian artists. The organizers stated explicitly that the project involved "after-the-fact commissioning ... in existing locations in a completed architectural environment. The artists were not requested to work with the architects at the conceptual phase."30 Written parameters were issued, including the name and sometimes the logo of each of the fourteen advertisers. Two to four artists per project were invited to submit maquettes, for a fee of $250 each. This fee was paid by the advertiser, who retained the maquettes. Most of the artists felt that the fee was too low and some therefore did not participate. Wieland's commission was from the Bata Company: a "colourful quilted, double-sided hanging, [depicting] the famous North Star Shoe."31 The quilted hanging she created represents a running shoe, as requested. This has a totemic look because of its human size and proportions; it is also reminiscent of Wieland's pop-art paintings, which incorporate clothing. Hung in an open space near the escalators, it could be seen from both sides; the colour scheme of one side has been reversed on the other. The joint owners (Cadillac Fairview, T. Eaton Co., Toronto Dominion Bank), as well as the advertisers, were praised in a press release by the Isaacs Gallery, Wieland's agent, for having developed a rare opportunity to make the work of Canadian artists available to great numbers of people. In 1987, a decade after the North Star Running Shoe had been installed, Wieland was not aware that the piece is no longer hanging in its original space. It now graces the Bata Company's head office. Why did she not know - and complain, as Michael Snow did (successfully) when his famous flying geese at the same Eaton Centre were decorated with red Christmas bows? The fate of 109 Views showed what could happen to an unprotected quilt, and it may have been felt that a more protected location was necessary. And then, the geese were more visible: they had in fact been part of a second phase of the project, financed by the centre's main owner, Cadillac Fairview. For this second phase $100,000 was made available, far more than any artist was paid under the Art/Advertising Program.

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Snow, whose original concept for the space had been abstract, had actually bought Wieland's idea for "flying geese," which she considered more accessible to the public. His treatment of the idea was uniquely his, however, incorporating "concerns about time/space/motion/reality and perception."32 To Wieland, the scope and attention given a male "star" artist may have been only too reminiscent of her situation as film maker in 1969 New York. While Wieland did not openly complain, as some artists did, that the parameters set by the companies in the Art/Advertising Program were too restrictive and prevented them from initiating truly creative designs, she may have belonged to the smaller group who "felt that they had produced nothing more than a purely commercial product of which, as fine artists, they were not particularly proud."33 The years following this installation were very difficult ones for the artist. The fatigue of making The Far Shore and the break-up of her marriage, all contributed to low spirits, a breakdown of Wieland's resources. However, in 1978, at the outset of this period, she travelled to Cape Dorset to work in the Inuit print workshop there. "I began to notice light more ... certain kinds of radiances around the edges of objects."34 The mystical light found in the Arctic became associated in Wieland's mind with the way colour and light are seen in anthroposophy, an offshoot of theosophy. In 1979-80, during the process of self-healing, she became involved in this movement, and, drawing with colour pencils, she tried to capture this mystical quality of light. She expressed her new awareness of feminism by including the life-giving figure of Venus in these drawings. For the 1982. "Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture" exhibition on the grounds of the Scarborough Guild Inn, Wieland used the living organisms of a bed of flowers to create a reclining female figure she called the Venus of Scarborough. This goddess figure symbolized nature, the life force, but also something perishable, an ephemeral quality that could not survive the season. The City of Toronto two years later accepted another design by Wieland to create a much larger female figure from flowers on the banks of the Don Mills Parkway, but in the end the money for this project could not be found. Unlike feminists who object to seeing "woman as nature, man as culture," Wieland relates woman to nature, to all living things, particularly those threatened by man's technology. In 1983 Wieland began to paint again. The terrible cost to women artists attempting to combine life and art is portrayed in Experiment with Life, in which flames have nearly consumed the fleeing figure and the world she inhabits. In Paint Phantom (1983-84), another powerful painting of this time, the male who combats the female is, significantly, masked.

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17 Joyce Wieland. The Ocean of Love, 1989. Enamel-on-steel painting, approx. z.i3 x 5 m. Commissioned by VIA Rail for Transcontinental train. Photo: VIA Rail.

During the next few years Wieland also completed several films for which she won awards at the Ann Arbor Festival in 1986. A documentary fim on her own life and work, The Artist on Fire, by the feminist Kay Armatage, was completed for Wieland's 1987 retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This film was seen by Susan Crean as the best critical analysis of Wieland's art and achievement to date. It used a nonverbal medium that Wieland herself excelled in, and that should, in justice, be classed as public art with all Wieland's public commissions. Wieland's interest in the film is expressed in a 1987 commission for the Pantages Theatre in Toronto, under the Cineplex Odeon Art Program. Celebration, a mural in oils on canvas, refers to the theatre's beginnings in the 192.08 as well as to the history of film. The Cineplex murals were carefully installed in a way that would ensure their survival during renovations. When the latter took place, Celebration went on extended loan to the Hamilton Art Gallery. A later commission, from VIA Rail, was the painting on steel The Ocean of Love (Figure 17). Unveiled in Halifax on 28 September 1990, the murals for a refurbished transcontinental luxury train caused a

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controversy as Nova Scotia was threatened at the time with cuts in its rail system. Nothing was known of these cuts when funding for the artists was approved in 1987, or some artists might not have been so willing to decorate a train for an elite public. Wieland's late commissions are less accessible to the public than her work in textiles, because one is now museum art, the other in an exclusive setting. The less-durable medium of textiles better expresses Wieland's commitment to the cause of feminism and nationalism. A fragile medium, symbolic of the vulnerability of nature, women, and the North, it may also be seen as prophetic of a universal movement in the century's last decade.

CHAPTER

S IX

Jerry Grey Too much public art seemed to me simply large scaled museum art, good in itself but requiring more attention, sophistication and experience than most people bring to public places.1

The Great Canadian Equalizer (Figure 18), to which the artist Jerry Grey refers with this remark, lacked neither sophistication nor aesthetic value; it did, however, make an appeal to viewers that depended less on their sophistication than on their willingness to enter a visual experience because of their interest in the artist's theme. Like Wieland and Falk, Grey uses some of her public art to provoke thought. Grey shares Wieland's nationalism, but celebrates rather than defends it. Like Wieland she had a period of close association with international art. Ideas about space and structure brought to the Prairie provinces by New York artists gave Grey insights that in her public commissions helped her collaboration with architects. She found this collaboration rewarding in all her commissions and feels that she has learnt from each one. Like Falk, Grey sees herself as a western Canadian. While Falk moved from the prairies to Vancouver, Grey, born and educated in Vancouver, moved to the prairies in the mid-1960s and eventually to central Canada, where she has survived outside the main art centres. JERRY GREY WAS B O R N on 2,5 February 1940. Her father and mother are fifth- and second-generation Canadians of English descent. Jerry was the eldest of a pair of twin girls. Five children left her mother little time for her own interests. An amateur painter, she was a member of the West Vancouver Sketch Club, which, between 1950 and 1952., was housed in a cottage in the garden behind the Grey's West Vancouver home. There Jerry had her first experience with art. Between ten and twelve years old, she would watch the sketchers, taught by Gerry Tyler. "I loved the smell of paint, even then."2 The physical beauty of West Vancouver had a lasting effect on the artist, particularly evident in her work of the 19808. While the family was not wealthy, no one living nearby was desperately poor. Grey met

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some opposition from her father when she decided to attend the Vancouver Art School (VAS). She financed her studies through parttime work, with the help of two scholarships. One of her jobs was that of secretary for evening classes at the art school, where Jack Shadbolt then taught. Grey recalls his stimulating discussions and appreciated the help of the critic and curator Doris Shadbolt. It was Jack Shadbolt who in 1963 arranged a UBC exhibition of young Vancouver artists, "Six Painters and a Sculptor." Grey's work for the show was figurative, but she and other VAS students were also doing abstract work by then. While working after graduation as assistant colour consultant at Bapco Paints in Vancouver, she was invited to take part in another UBC show in 1964, this time of collage. This would be Grey's last Vancouver exhibition for some time. In the same year she used her reserve of fifty dollars to travel as far east as she could, to friends in Regina. There she found work, teaching drawing and painting part time. In Saskatchewan she discovered what was then one of the most stimulating art scenes in all of Canada. Saskatchewan artists, feeling isolated from international art, had asked a number of prominent artists to lead workshops at Emma Lake, north of Saskatoon. From the late 19508 through the 19608, a number of contemporary New York artists and critics visited Emma Lake, among them Will Barnet, Barnett Newman, and Clement Greenberg. Grey's first workshop leader, in 1964, was the Russian-born New York artist Jules Olitski. New dimensions to her ideas on art came from critics like Lawrence Alloway, through whom she learnt of artists he had known while on the British Arts Council. In the 1965 workshops led by Alloway, nonvisual art forms were included — music by John Cage, for instance. Grey experimented with some of the materials introduced by the visiting artists: Olitski and Kenneth Noland used acrylics, Frank Stella epoxy paints, Donald Judd plexiglass in his sculpture. Equally stimulating to Grey were the Prairie artists, such as Ted Godwin and Art McKay, whom she met at the Emma Lake workshops, and Ronald Bloore, then director of Regina's Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery. A travel grant from the Saskatchewan Arts Board made it possible for Grey to go to New York in 1966. She sees this trip as a milestone in her artistic career. In New York she saw paintings and sculpture of which, until then, she had only seen reproductions. She gained insight into "what certain artists were trying to do and why they were trying to do it."3 On her return, she worked on a number of embossed prints and some sculpture in metal and plastics. Grey's untitled sculpture exhibited at the 1966 Winnipeg Biennial showed how well she understood the interplay of light-reflecting and light-absorbing qualities in these materials.

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In 1967 Grey sought a change of scene and for a year worked as executive assistant at Toronto's Three Schools for Education through the Arts. In 1968 she married Robert McLarty, an economist in the federal civil service, whom she had met in Saskatchewan. With him she moved to Ottawa, where between 1969 and 1970 she was a decent in the education department of the National Gallery. But while she much enjoyed the contact with art of many different periods, she now wanted to spend her energies on her own painting. In 1971 she began working as a full-time professional artist, creating large abstract paintings in her studio on the top floor of the Grey-McLarty house on Percy Street. In 1972. Grey received her first public commission under the Benson and Hedges "Artwalls" program. Three Ottawa artists - Grey, Jim Boyd, and Duncan deKergommeau - were chosen by Brydon Smith, the NGC'S curator of contemporary art, and Mrs Nina Wright, consultant to the sponsors. Grey's design of blue, mauve, and green rectangles was to be painted, under her supervision, on the blank brick wall of Pestalozzi College on Rideau Street in Ottawa. Unfortunately, because the building changed hands and developed financial and structural problems, this was the only design that could not be executed. The abstract design for this commission was planned as rigorously as Grey's studio paintings of this time. For these she kept two notebooks: one for the plan and scaled measurements of a painting, another to record its colours. She would stretch a canvas and begin with pencil notations, making diagonal, vertical, and horizontal lines to form the painting's structure. She then used masking tape to secure straight edges and - moving around the canvas that was stretched on the floor, during long hours of intense concentration - applied acrylic paint in carefully planned areas. These working methods are those of an artist who leaves little to chance - very unlike the Automatists, who relied on chance to reveal subconscious patterns. The underlying geometry of the painting, SaintMartin's "grammar of visual language," was of the greatest importance to Grey at this time, that is, the relationship between the elements of tone, texture, form, line, and the ultimate unity of the painting. During these years Grey sought to discipline moods and feelings, to give them formal expression through well thought out exploration of space and controlled interplay of colours. Rocky Mountain Suite, for instance, is the result of experiences in Banff, where Grey taught in the summer of 1974. Her instruction was based on research into the interaction of colours, as defined by the Bauhaus artist Joseph Albers. While entertaining thoughts on these relationships, Grey vividly experienced the "mood" of the mountains around her, their structure and atmosphere.

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"Once I have decided on a theme for a painting, I choose the colours. The selection process is fairly easy because the mood I want to evoke limits me to a certain range ... The colours themselves suggest a type of mood and I try to relate whatever variations occur in them to that particular mood. Then the painting evolves naturally, taking on a life of its own."4 In 1974 Grey's print Variations on a Theme, made with metallic inks on transparent Mylar, won an award at a juried print competition sponsored by the Ontario Arts Council. The interplay of transparent and reflecting qualities that distinguishes this print also provided a chief interest in the monochrome paintings of Grey's first solo exhibition, at Toronto's Merton Gallery in 1975. Though the paintings seemed to have a repeated uniform pattern, brushstrokes were applied in different directions. When the position of the viewer changed, the pattern itself seemed to change. As the eye moved from one part of the painting to another, a complex rhythm was established through interaction of parts seen and parts newly discovered. All paintings, those entirely in white or black or red, had this quality, but the interplay of reflecting areas was particularly noticeable if the paintings were in metallic colours, like those of the Mylar print. The exhibition also included some smaller works; these suites of watercolours and gouaches were what the artist called "atmospheric" variations on one colour. When they were shown at Ottawa's Algonquin College, Kathleen Walker, art editor for the Ottawa Citizen, described Grey thus: one the one hand, there was the landscapeoriented colourist; on the other, an artist whose work displayed a mathematical orderliness that Walker compared to musical compositions by J.S. Bach. The first was evident in the six Prairie Variations, which despite their small scale express the vastness of the prairie landscape. With one of the large paintings, Remembrance, the artist included a preparatory sketch showing the careful organization of space for the work. Again, it was the relationship of overall perception to particular detail that interested Grey in all this work. During these years of concentrated painting, Grey also began to take an interest in how other Canadian artists managed to survive without added teaching responsibilities or commercial work. From 1974-76 she was Ottawa representative for Canadian Artists' Representatives and coeditor of their Ontario tradespaper, CAROT. Working with CAR gave Grey a different outlook on nationalism in the arts. She decided on a project that might be acceptable for public display; that would express some of her own ideas and relate to the ideas other people had on the same subject. "I had begun to think seriously about public art and its problems ... What I thought was

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needed was a subject - probably political - with enough inherent interest to involve all Canadians." "The idea of the Canadian Mosaic ... an informal group portrait and random mini-history of Canada through its representatives ... and its framework, [Grey's mural] The Great Canadian Equalizer, sprang into being."5 What the artist envisaged was a mural of sixty panels showing Canada's geographical regions; the panel with the portraits constituted "population" and was to be repeated fifteen times. The Canadian Mosaic (Insert, Figure 18) was to function as the heart and soul of the mural. In the realization of the Great Canadian Equalizer visual elements had to be balanced with the informational content of the mural. The huge geographic differences are symbolized by the division of Canada into regions with maps, [dictionary] definitions and charts showing relative land areas that suggest the differences geography imposes. The group portrait, the Mosaic itself, graded to relative populations [through the tone of printing], ties it - and us - together ... The country's population is symbolized by a personal choice of some of the men and women who through culture, personality and deeds, over centuries, have contributed to the Canadian mosaic.6

The 174 portraits for the Canadian Mosaic were drawn from all sections of Canadian life and all periods of Canadian history. Grey's western origin is reflected in the portraits of Emily Carr, Nellie McClung, and three leaders of the United Farm Women of Alberta. Lord Strathcona is included, not because he drove the last spike in the CPR, but because he made a $12.0,000 donation to enable women to study at McGill University. Beside the political figures (Canadian prime ministers, the Queen, Louis Kiel), unknown immigrants are portrayed. To these the artist had added her own portrait in the top right corner, as a form of signature. Grey prepared these drawings to be silkscreened on porcelainenamelled steel panels. She found that this material was nearly indestructible: the silkscreened logo on the porcelain knob of her cookstove resisted any amount of scrubbing. Then she discovered that Louis de Niverville's mural for the TTC'S "Art in the Subways" was executed in porcelain enamel on steel. Grey showed her idea sketches to Marylin Donahue at the design department of the federal Department of Public Works. The commission for this mural differs from other public art described here in that the artist's design preceded that of the architects. In 1975 Ogilvy and Hogg McLean and McPhayden Associated Architects were so

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18 Jerry Grey. The Great Canadian Equalizer, 1979. Mural composed of porcelain-on-steel squares, 3.04 x 4.88 m overall. Commissioned by Department of Public Works for Jean Talon Building, Ottawa. Right: serigraphed square The Canadian Mosaic, 46 x 46 cm. Photo: the artist

impressed by Grey's idea for a silkscreened mural showing Canada's history and geography that they altered the interior design of the ground floor of the Statistics Canada (now the Jean Talon) building, moving the pay telephones originally slated for the area they thought would be suitable for Grey's mural. They estimated it would cost $30,000 to complete. Grey, like the architects, hoped that the mural

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would move swiftly ahead; but then, she was a novice at dealing with DPW and working on such a grand scale. Local artists who had worked on public commissions warned Grey that it would take two years for the drawings to be completed, another year for the mural to be installed, and a fourth year if Grey wanted to make a separate print edition of the Canadian Mosaic serigraph. When The Great Canadian Equalizer was finally installed in November 1978, it had cost $56,420, paying the artist less than $19,000 for three years work, a sum from which all materials, assistants, shipping and insurance had to be paid. "The project has consumed all my time for the past three years. The research alone was straggering. I learned never to trust anything less than three sources of biographical information. Even provincial definitions varied from dictionary to dictionary."7 Behind the visual appeal of the mural lay a formidable amount of organization. The title of the work reflects the enormous diversity of the country. Grey "rearranged" Canada's geographical regions to express the relationship of population to geographical territory; to make these concepts "work visually as pattern, texture, colour ... I don't know how I made the connection, but it occurred to me that my approach to painting and the art of governing Canada presented similar problems.1'8 The mural represents fifteen geographical regions - the ten provinces, Yukon, the territories of Keewatin, Franklin, Mackenzie, and Labrador (separated from Newfoundland for aesthetic, not political, reasons). Four panels are devoted to each region. The first gives a dictionary definition in writing for the region. The second and third represent land area in red and population in black. The fourth panel is geographical: silkscreened maps subtly integrated into a pattern of diagonal, vertical, and horizontal stripes repeat the black, grey, and white of the other serigraphs. The red in each second panel and the black in each third is in proportion to the largest land area (that of Quebec, shown entirely in red) and the largest population area (that of Ontario, shown entirely in black). The third panel, showing the population, is the serigraph The Canadian Mosaic, which is repeated fifteen times throughout the mural. Public response to the work was overwhelming. Hundreds of people attended the opening in March 1979. According to one critic, The Great Canadian Equalizer was "as touchable, understandable and indestructible a work of public art as is possible. The mural puts the lie to McKenzie King's ... observation ... 'if some countries have too much history, we have too much geography.'"9 Artists were equally impressed. Ronald Bloore, who had known Grey during her Regina years, found "the concept and dedication ...

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unbelievable. There isn't a mural in the country that has been researched to this extent. She's taken off in a nationalist way without waving the flag. The mural is immaculate, precise and positive, and that is what [Grey] ultimately is - positive about art, about life and about herself."10 Critic Susan Crean, writing about Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, pointed out that Grey's The Great Canadian Equalizer was a statement about the nature of Canadian society, intended to capture (as Dinner Party was meant to) a largely untold history.11 That the mural was completed and installed three months before the official opening was in itself an almost superhuman achievement. Although the architects had seen Grey's concept in October 1975, the fine-arts committee of DPW did not see the proposal until May 1976 and Grey did not sign a contract or receive funds until April 1978, only seven months before the installation. Until then, except for $2,000 from the Interprovincial Steel Company of Regina, Grey had to provide risk capital for materials, research, travelling, printing, and porcelain firing. During this last, most difficult, year, a mysterious ailment that had plagued Grey for some time was diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. For long periods she worked from her bed, struggling, on good days, to her third-floor studio to complete drawings for The Canadian Mosaic. During the final few months before installation the mural was being silkscreened on panels of porcelain enamel at the Mississauga factory of Broome Porcelain, which had been located with the help of Shirley Fineblit, then teaching at the Ontario College of Art (OCA). Grey hired a number of assistants, including Fineblit, to help with the screening. "In a corner of the plant, her dreams and visions were transmuted with grains of glass, oil, pine and pigment into porcelain's permanence while an endless chain of bathtubs, Broome's regular product, swung through the 1,400 degree F. heat of the tunnel kiln."12 In addition to the physical labour required to complete this mural, there was all the paperwork. "In working with DPW, the onus is on the artist to be his or her own accountant, lawyer, public relations official, secretary - everything ... I find it ironic that the government, when it hires consultants, always pays at least a percentage of the final fee immediately. But that business-like attitude doesn't exist in its dealings with artists - and artists are often not financially aware enough to know when they will lose on a project."13 The saga of The Great Canadian Equalizer was not atypical. Most artists working on public commissions had the same problems; as Kathleen Walker remarked, the public, when looking at costs for public art, should be made aware of the process behind the cost. Grey tried to create some public understanding by demonstrating the process

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behind The Great Canadian Equalizer for a Toronto press conference a month before the mural was installed. The documentation of every step, and of the costs involved, taught Grey the importance of preparing estimates. She would carefully follow the procedure of making precise records during her next public commission three years later. At the time The Great Canadian Equalizer was being installed, Grey knew that she would be travelling to Australia, where her husband was to spend a year studying Australian fiscal arrangements. First, however, she had to complete the print edition of The Canadian Mosaic in the hope that this portfolio would generate some income over the next few years. The edition was completed and bound by December 1979 and was to be exhibited at Toronto's Pascal Gallery. But it did not bring in as much as the artist had hoped it would, despite the considerable publicity surrounding The Great Canadian Equalizer. GREY'S VOYAGE TO A U S T R A L I A in 1981 heightened her awareness of, and sensibility to, landscape. She had travelled through Canada many times while preparing The Great Canadian Equalizer, which was, in fact, an attempt to express the essence of the country, as Wieland's film Reason over Passion had been. In Australia Grey gained, as Wieland had in New York, a new perspective on her native landscape. Perhaps it was the final jolt needed to free the artist from the intellectual preoccupations in her earlier art. The discipline of the "visual grammar" she had developed so consciously now served as structure for spontaneous, at times lyrical, paintings. Impressed by the light in the Australian landscape, Grey made numerous sketches. The climate also did wonders for her health. On her return to Canada, she spent a winter assimilating her reactions to the Australian environment. She was working with renewed vigour, though she had to cope with the break-up of her marriage that year. Most of her watercolours for the solo exhibition "Interpretations," held at Ottawa's Wallack Gallery in 1982, were figurative; some featured the sea or the sky or human figures, but the Australian landscape was the central theme. "The feeling of isolation from the northern hemisphere was always with me ... the contrasts were many ... the sparse vegetation - composed mostly of Eucalyptus trees whose distorted blue-green figures dot the horizon ... "Gradually, contradictions grew into similarities. Their summer is as monochromatic as our winter. Here, people die of the cold; there, they die of heat and thirst. Here, there is always water. Its preciousness was forced upon me."14 In "Interpretations," the heat and light of an alien landscape gave the paintings a quality of surrealism. Australian friends wrote, "We

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always felt that many Australian painters did work with a surrealistic quality as part of a movement, but seeing your work led us to feel that it is probably the other way around, and the landscape imposes that surrealistic quality on the artist."15 In July 1982 Grey was invited to submit a concept to a jury for a public commission, from the City of Ottawa, for a new police station at Elgin and Catherine streets. The mural she proposed, which would occupy one wall of the building's lobby, was for a mosaic that would be composed of small glass tiles. The design would again include portraits, along with the two waterways that had been the raison d'etre for Ottawa when the Rideau Canal was built. The selection committee for the building's art included a police-commission chairman, a judge, the police chief, the architect Idwal Richards, and two art experts. It was carefully balanced to represent both the public and the art community. For this commission Grey planned her estimates and working methods so carefully that, despite delays in the delivery of materials, the mural was completed within a year. The tiles arrived only three weeks before the building's opening, but all the preliminary work had been done and they were installed in good time. There is a wider range of colours in this work, Tiles of Time (Figure 6), than in the Great Canadian Equalizer. The life-size human figures are lined up as for a family photograph. There is a humorous nostalgia in this arrangement; the portraits of fifteen Ottawa police chiefs (from 1855 to the present) do not have the look of official portraits. Figures contemporary to these chiefs - their families and friends - are indicated as blank spaces so that only their outlines give the characteristics of their time. In the background, the Parliament buildings also loom as blank silhouettes, while the two waterways framing the group, the Ottawa River and the falls of the Rideau River, are in full colour. The clothing of the policemen is also colourful, its realism heightened by the collage method of applying buttons and medals. Although Grey had researched the project before submitting a design, many more months of study were necessary for particular areas of the mural. Innumerable hours were spent transferring the maquettes and their colour codes to the large wall in the foyer of the police station. There were about 168,000 glass mosaic tiles, 120,000 of which had to be washed and fastened in the right places by Grey and her assistants. For the faces of the police chiefs the 2o-by-2o-millimetre tiles were still too large, and each had to be cut into smaller parts to achieve the subtleties demanded by the portraits. These demands were met by a well-coordinated team, but any particularly delicate and demanding work, especially on the faces, was done by Grey herself.

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While the team worked on the site itself in the lobby of the building, the police force could see the difficulties involved and the artists' efficiency in installing the work. A great deal of planning had gone into the building itself: the time-and-motion studies determining needs and priorities had taken literally thousands of person-hours and occupied seven volumes. Aware that Grey had taken equal care with her work, the building's staff are very proud of the mural. In spite of all its detail, the mural, which measures 3.5 by 17.5 metres, does not give the impression of being crowded. On the contrary, the feeling of space it creates (mainly through its background) is one of its greatest attractions. The opening of the station, on midsummer's day, was a celebration, its tone heightened by the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Vie des Arts published an illustration of the mural and a description of the earlier Great Canadian Equalizer.16 CBC Television organized a program on the work, and Grey was invited by architects to be one of the lecturers at their National Arts Centre program on "Artists in Public Spaces" in 1985. Between 1984 and 1986 Grey taught at Vancouver's Emily Carr School of Art, the Ottawa Art School, and the Fine Arts department of the University of Ottawa. She began a series of paintings of Pacific Coast landscapes, familiar to her since childhood. Of Grey's 1985 exhibition "Spring," at Ottawa's Robertson Galleries, critic Susan Crean wrote, "These watercolours of west coast broom and wild flora of spring sing and dance before your eyes crazy with light and luminescence ... images of magic erotic nature."17 Since working on The Great Canadian Equalizer, Grey had only painted in watercolours. Between 1985 and 1987 she summoned the energy to create large paintings in liquitex - a variety of acrylic paint - on canvas. The impetus for a series of garden paintings came with the death of the landscape architect George Tanaka, whose gardens Grey knew and loved. One critic wrote of the paintings in her show "Tribute to George Tanaka" that they offered a Canadian point of view on the subject of gardens, often explored ... by both Jennifer Dickson and Geoffrey James. The European garden which has always been their focus is a cultural phenomenon taken for granted ... seen as Earthly Paradise, Enchanted Site, places of pleasure, romance, drama and fantasy ... What of Canadian gardens? ... George Tanaka's Japanese-influenced gardens are urban, beautiful and mostly out of public reach, as one of the two gardens on which this exhibition is based is on private property (the other is in Stratford, Ontario) ... Tanaka's gardens are finely crafted evidence that Canada too can be a garden.18

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While Grey's garden paintings, most of them over a metre square, have a more earthy atmosphere than her Australian watercolours, they share the same, almost surrealist, dream-like quality, a sense of remembrance. The quality of mystery is increased by the uncertain distance, caused by shifting and scintillating light on masses of colour that do not appear solid because of their fragile components - fronds, leaves, petals. The success of this exhibition led to a public commission in 1987 from a Toronto developer for a large triptych to be placed in the foyer of a highrise apartment complex at 33 Jakes Avenue, Toronto. The triptych is of a parklike garden, featuring great trees as well as plants seen from close by. It expresses even more forecefully than the series Tribute to George Tanaka the new direction the artist has taken. GREY'S NEXT P U B L I C C O M M I S S I O N , a glass mural for Ottawa's Saint-Vincent Hospital, is an example of a collaboration between women artists, designers, and craftswomen. The clients, too, were women, for the commission was from the Sisters of Charity, who in 1989 were celebrating their 25Oth anniversary in Canada. Illustrating their contributions to social institutions like hospitals, schools, and homes for the elderly, the artists were also illustrating the contributions of women in Canadian history. The executive director of Saint-Vincent Hospital, Sister Giselle Vadeboncoeur, had asked the designer Anne Carlyle, who specializes in health-care facilities, to propose ideas for improving the hospital's lobby. Carlyle had been a student of the glassblower Shirley Fineblit, who recommended Grey as artist for a glass mural, to be executed by her studio "Glassworks" in Toronto. A concept for the mural and a first maquette were presented to the corporation of the Sisters of Charity in June 1988. It was for five lifesize figures from the hospital's, and the order's, history, grouped around a wall of glass panels that would show the order's achievements in detail. A dominating feature - the starting point for this work and an Ottawa landmark - is the sundial on the walls of the sisters' Mother House. The image of the sundial (Figure 19) tops the glass mural and illuminates the figures of Marguerite d'Youville, who founded the order in 1737; Saint Vincent-de-Paul, patron saint of the hospital; and Elizabeth Bruyere, who in 1845 established the order's offspring in what was then known as Bytown. Of two figures on a lower level, one represents the past history of the sisters, the other the present and future. They are building the wall of glass blocks, on which the history of the Bytown nuns is etched from Grey's drawings. The designer, Anne Carlyle, the artist, Jerry Grey, and the glassworker, Shirley Fineblit, all agree that the Sisters of Charity were the

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19 Jerry Grey. Mural consisting of metal, tempered glass, and kiln-fired glass, 1989. 3.4 x 15.1 m. Commissioned for Saint-Vincent Hospital, Ottawa. Photo: G. Lambton.

most supportive clients in their working experience. Important at the maquette stage, the sisters' ideas were equally helpful for the development of a scale model in plexiglass (for which the corporation paid $4,000). As Grey researched the nuns' history - at the public archives, at the Mother House, and in publications on the life of Elizabeth Bruyere - she began to realize how much Ottawa's history owed to these women. They established a bilingual school in the small rowdy lumber town in 1845, the year of their arrival, and during the next decades founded a hospital, two orphanages, and a home for the aged. Grey's illustrations for the glass building blocks - of immigrants arriving, buildings being constructed, the sisters nursing the sick during typhus and smallpox epidemics - are interspersed with written statements by Elizabeth Bruyere. The designs for the blocks were rearranged several times before they were engraved, from Grey's drawings, on the glass blocks in Fineblit's Toronto studio. The maquette had been approved in September 1988; the scale model, with some alterations, was completed by January 1989. Approval was uncertain until March 1989, which left three months for the mural's completion before the opening celebration in June 1989.

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Moving from maquette to full scale, new complications arose and further alterations had to be made: the artists discovered that the large figures had to be ten to twenty percent larger than life, to give the impression of being life-size figures. To cut them, Fineblit had to go to Iowa, because there was no studio in Canada that could cut threequarter-inch glass figures. During the process of tempering, one large and one small figure shattered in the kiln. They had to be recut. In spite of these difficulties, the mural, and the lighting so important for its effect, were installed by 15 June 1989. Due to the way the glass had been treated, and to careful lighting, there is an immaterial, spiritual quality to this work, which on close examination reveals so many facts. The light is placed so that the figures are seen twice: as shapes cut from glass, and transmitted through the glass on the wall, where the values are reversed. The portions that are opaque (white) on glass appear dark and sharp on the wall, while transparent (and darker) details in the glass figures appear lighter on the wall. The engraved scenes in the glass blocks, through texture and luminosity, evoke some of Grey's early preoccupations with transparence and reflection. The team that created this work, designer, artist, and craftsperson, gave expression to the clients' history and purpose in such positive and accessible terms that the sisters' appreciation infected the entire audience at the opening celebration - the sixty-fifth anniversary of SaintVincent Hospital, the 25oth of the Sisters of Charity. The mural is an example of the team work that has figured increasingly in recent public art and is always conducive to its success. It is equally a work of very high quality that can be appreciated by people who do not consider themselves art experts. Whether Grey speaks for all Canadians (as in The Great Canadian Equalizer], for a community institution (the Ottawa police and their history), or for a group of women who have helped to shape the country's social history, her important contribution is that she does speak for them with all the expertise of her visual language.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Colette Whiten: Public Participation in Public Art

The importance of sculpture in public art is undeniable. It is often more suitable for an outdoor monument than painting. Through its three-dimensional quality and, often, its materials, it relates to architecture, either by conformity or contrast. The human figure has been the main subject of many sculptors, most of the time - as in Kahane's work - as model or formal idea, stimulating the artist's imagination, while the sculpture itself is the artist's invention and creation. As mentioned in the introduction, when Colette Whiten developed as sculptor, a process of dematerialization of art had begun, relocating it from a private to a public context. Whiten's human models participated in the creation of her sculpture by the imprint of their own bodies. The memories of this event are added to the tactile, mimetic, and kinetic responses evoked by life-size replicas of the human body. If the models are also part of the public viewing the finished work, they relate to their own performance. The artist's role is the choreography of this event. Participants in Whiten's work are involved, not, as in Wieland's quilts, in a communal execution of "women's work" with the artist as chief designer; not as models from which the sculptor forms her work in her own way; but as participants in a ritual, with the artist as skilful assistant or unobtrusive director. Whiten's sculptures are realistic, but not in the way this description is applied to "realism" in nineteenth-century paintings. They owe their reality to the imprint of "real people" in a performance as dramatic as Falk's theatre pieces. The shell, the outline, the imprint of the performance owes something to the performer, not only to the hand and eye of the artist, and this is later communicated to a new audience. In Whiten's first public commission, a 1977 untitled work for the Government of Canada building in North York (Figure 20), process and documentation are separate. There is a photo mural of the way

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plywood figures were produced with the help of volunteers. In the 1978 commission for Toronto's Mental Health Centre Whiten uses the wall of wood from which the figures were cut as a form of documentation. The interplay of human-shaped windows in solid sheets of metal and of the same shapes as solid silhouettes set into transparent screens is the main feature of Whiten's 1983 People Sculpture (Figure zi) in Sudbury. Process, performance, and documentation have become one in Whiten's installation of plaster-cast "shells" of four couples in Toronto's Manufacturers Life building in 1986 (Figure 7). The life-size figures document the process of casting through realistic details of tints and texture in their clothes. The odd backward direction of their feet also hints at the casting process and betrays their hollowness. Whiten's first commission was preceded by a number of projects in which the functions of performance, process, and documentation were tested and altered. All this took place in only five years, a meteoric development for a young woman who, before she was twenty-three, had not thought of herself as an artist. COLETTE WHITEN WAS B O R N in Birmingham, England, on 7 February 1945. When she was nine years old, she came to the Oshawa area with her parents, Patrick and Aurora Whiten, a brother, and two sisters. As a teenager, Colette joined her mother in evening art classes but did not think of art as a career. She married in 1963, aged eighteen, and by the time she was twenty-one had two daughters, Shauna and Megan. In 1968, after her marriage had failed, Whiten enrolled at the Ontario College of Art. Her independent and promising work so impressed the Art Gallery of Ontario that she was commissioned with an installation, Untitled (i97i-7z), even before she graduated. On graduation she received the Governor General's medal, an award of $1,500 that enabled her to travel to Munich to take part in an outdoor installation. She was then living with the Austrian-born artist Gernot Dick, who assisted her as model and photographer. Dick was constantly testing his physical endurance in outdoor ventures, mountain climbing or winter camping. Whiten participated in many of these ventures; the endurance tests created pressures, subconscious anguish the artist expressed in her installations of this time. The devices that remained after her casting "performances" had a threatening aspect. In Untitled (1971-72), for instance, after casting the bodies of male volunteers, the scaffolding is left in place. On this structure fibreglass casts of only parts of male bodies are displayed. Rope and strap arrangements reminiscent of medieval stocks evoke instruments of torture in the minds of some

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viewers. The analogy of the subject as "sacrificial victim" was interpreted by feminists as female domination over the male. This was not Whiten's intention. Comparing these structures with work by Mark Prent, Whiten's male contemporary, critic John Noel Chandler found Trent's "use of horror ... anti-humanist, misanthropic, degenerate; Whiten's [work] ... humanist, erotic ... essentially cathartic and redemptive ... The victim escapes unscarred and even renewed after the mimetic ritual is over."1 Chandler described the steps used in this "process": Whiten constructs the scaffolding which will hold the man securely in the determined position while the cast is being made. The part ... [to be cast] is then shaved free of hair and lubricated with vaseline to facilitate removal of plaster. Some of these men have commented upon how distressingly female they look when thus prepared. The subject is then virtually locked into the stocks and plastered. Because ... the plaster hardens very fast, several people must help the artist with the plastering ... there is a general spirit of camaraderie and community ... The usual sexual roles are reversed and the male, when freed, finds himself curiously equal with the female.2

Three of the volunteers recorded their impressions of the ordeal. Whiten sent one of these accounts to the Owen's Art Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick, together with her original drawing for the project. The model's comments and the artist's drawing - concept and reaction - were considered sufficient for the exhibition "Carmen Lamanna Gallery at the Owen Gallery, 1975." The scanty document that remained of the interaction of artist and model showed that, though passive, the model also saw himself as participant. Humour was not lacking in Whiten's work. In Unfitted (1971-72), one man is cast in the infantile position of sucking his thumb. The fingers of the suspended hands and arms of another are touching his toes - but there is no torso. A "sexless man with his arms folded and resting on his knees [reminiscent of Rodin's Thinker] is (also) in the position of a man on the John." 3 The viewer's imagination has to create the bodies for the severed limbs; this reconstruction varies from one person to the next: the viewer's inventiveness is taxed by guessing. In Structure No, 8 (1974), Whiten began to document the process of casting in a different way: the negative "cut-out" of each participant was left as a form of documentation (though there were still photos and videos on display). This new process was used in her three major public commissions between 1976 and 1983. Structure No. 8, a wooden wall almost thirty feet in length, is punctured by four cut-out figures. Up to then Whiten had used her own friends as models; she

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now recruited volunteers from a construction site at Bloor and Yonge Streets, selected at random on the basis of height: each volunteer had to be at least six feet tall. Whiten described the process of making Structure No. 8 in Eclectic Eve, a 1975 Toronto publication featuring women artists. I visited many construction sites: a construction site is barricaded, off limits, and therefore very ... intimidating once you are inside the walls ... I felt ... like a prostitute soliciting. I explained to the men, using sketches and photographs, why I was there. I was extremely vulnerable as the men joked among each other about the prospects of being shaved and confined ... One man offered his help to me as a woman in need, followed by others prompted by what they would perceive as the esoteric world of the artist. Each of the four men realized that he would have to follow through on the verbal commitment.4

Whiten continued the theme and process of Structure No. 8 in another work, Unfitted (February 1975), a brick construction around the outline of one person. The rough outer edges of this unfinished brick wall indicate a body outline, like the outer shell of a plaster cast. Both works were shown in the exhibition "Some Canadian Women Artists" at the National Gallery of Canada in 1975. Whiten's comments in the exhibition catalogue indicate her search for independence of expression. As a metaphor for this discovery of personal freedom, she described a camping trip in which she was roped to two men preceding her, while walking across frozen lakes: "As long as you are attached to the rope, you are also attached, by this life line, to the rhythm of the one at the head of the line. Not only was I last, but I was last in someone else's rhythm ... It reminds me of when I was 16, or when I was married, or a student ... I think about it in relation to my work as an artist and wonder if it is not the prime reason for people accomplishing anything." Eventually, left entirely alone, she felt the independence that, subconsciously, she had sought. "I felt a frightening freedom ... I became aware that I had to register all the landmarks in order to find my way ... Gradually I began to enjoy the experience of being alone."5 One winter Whiten had built a snow wall around Dick, and when he stepped out of this shell of hardened snow she realized that the negative impression in the snow had taken on some of his personality. There was no need to make a cast from a plaster mould: the mould itself would do. For Untitled (September 1975), Whiten made life-size moulds of her own body and those of fellow artists Gernot Dick and Stephen Hutchins. The moulds were each housed in coffinlike fibreglass cases, with

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an exact concave mould of the figure's back half resting in one half of a case, and a hollow mould of the front half resting in the other. The hinged cases were useful supports, serving to hold the plaster poured around the models inside them and, after the model's removal, forming the framework for lifelike hollow shapes within. "The hollowed out figures, self-portraits in negative space, because of their roundness and the way light falls on them, seem to turn to face you as you move by them ... When one of these open mummy cases is closed ... there is a strong sense of there being a 'person-shaped space' in there."6 Using the actual moulds with all their detail, Whiten was able to dispense with documentation entirely: process, performance, and documentation had become one. As critics observed, "What kept [Whiten's] work ... short of successful was the fact that the jigs [she] made to hold her victims were sculpturally more exciting and more admired than the castings they produced ... she has now overcome that problem in an admirably economical and elegant way."7 Chandler compared Whiten's Unfitted (September 1975) with plastercast figures by the American George Segal and pointed out that Whiten's works needed no stage effects for their power. Referring to the long history of making plaster casts, he asked, "Why has it taken us until now to skip one step in this process and exhibit the mold itself as the sculpture? Once [Whiten] did it, it seemed a perfectly obvious thing to do."8 IN

1976,

ONLY

FOUR

YEARS

AFTER

G R A D U A T I N G , Whiten

started teaching at OCA and the Fine Arts department of Glendon College, York University. This was also the year she received her first public commission, Untitled (1977) (Figure zo), from the federal Department of Public Works for the Government of Canada building in North York. Steve Irwin, one of the architects in the partnership of Shore, Tilbe, Henschel and Irwin with Dubois Associates, was in charge of the fine-arts program. The first stage, a survey of artists suggested by the consulting architects, involved looking at the artists' work, their attitudes to art, and their success or failure in architectural contexts. Each artist on the short list would then be interviewed by Irwin and Dubois, who explained the needs of the building. The artists' attitudes towards the architect and other artists they would be working with and towards their own contribution to the building were considered important. After a number of meetings between artists and architects at an early design stage, the artists on the short list, which included Whiten and eleven male artists, were given two months to prepare a maquette, for a fee of five hundred dollars. The list was

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20 Colette Whiten. Unfitted, 1977. Free-standing life-size plywood figures and relief figures in cement wall. Commissioned by Department of Public Works for Government of Canada Building, North York. Photo: G. Lambton.

reduced from twelve to seven because several artists could not bridge the gap between gallery art and built-in-art. As a second stage in the selection process, the artists' proposals were presented to the Art Advisory Committee in Ottawa. Many changes and modifications were recommended by the latter, resulting in enormous problems and frustrations for both architects and artists ... It was the consensus of architects and artists involved in this particular building that the Art Advisory Committee and its "weighty bureaucracy" constituted one of the most glaring deficiencies in the Federal Government's i % program. The artists were shifted around from what they had originally wanted to do [to other sites] ... Most of the artists lost money on the project because they underestimated costs.9

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Whiten was fortunate in not having to change location for Unfilled (1977). Her installation conformed almost exactly to the original description given by the selection committee: "to introduce a 'humanizing' note into an otherwise colossal and impersonal space, and to help relate the building to the people occupying it. Whiten's solution was to employ her usual idiom of the negative/positive cut-out figure. Scattered casually through the ground floor are 30 two-dimensional plywood cut-outs of actual people chosen to represent a cross section of the citizens living and working in the area ... Each flat contour figure is autographed with a statement by the individual in his own handwriting."10 For one wall, Whiten created groups in relief, pressing plywood cutout figures into the concrete before it hardened. A photo-mural, the documentation of the process of making Unfitted (1977), is placed close to the building's main entrance on Yonge Street. The building houses the Canada Employment Centre, Canada Recruiting Centre, and Passport Office. There is a cafeteria on the mezzanine floor and small stores for people who have to wait in the lobby. Seats are provided for those who are waiting or eating lunch; some of the seats face the wall into which the artist had pressed cut-out figures of nursery-school children, their teacher, and a female crossing-guard. The hollows in the concrete wall resemble the concave moulds in Whiten's plaster casting, giving the same illusion of being convex, solid shapes. They incorporate the step Whiten took when she cast Unfitted (September 1975). The cut-out silhouettes are related to her experience with Structure No. 8, though Whiten here used the pieces cut out of wood, not the wooden wall. The photo-documentation was an important part of all of Whiten's work of this period. The engraved remarks link the personal life of the model with the public: "Guess what happened to me today?" is engraved on one of the school children in the concrete wall. Some plywood figures stand as if contemplating the wall on which the children are shown in relief, inviting others to do the same. "Atlas is shrugging," we read on one of these; "Getting married in a week" is written on a tall female figure near the elevators. "Even though it's just cement/I'll leave this world with a dent"- this comment by Eileen Casson (who, according to the photo-documentation, worked in a dry-cleaning store) explains why people liked Whiten's process: they wanted to be immortalized. Unfortunately, many visitors miss the photo-mural, which is near the main door, because they come in through side doors from parking areas. The photo-mural is the only place where the artist's name can be found.

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The natural stance of the life-size plywood figures, dispersed between present-day visitors and employees moving among them, bring the figures close to the building's daily life. Their engraved messages bring them close to us in time as well as space. WHILE W O R K I N G ON THIS public commission, Whiten privately pursued the new direction first taken in Unfitted (September 1975), in which she had used her own body as her first female subject. In Unfitted (1976-77) she cast five seated women in their clothes. The impression their backs made in the plaster is turned towards the viewer, whose participation is invited by placing another bench between the one the plaster casts are sitting on and the audience. This was the first time Whiten used clothed models, and she made an interesting discovery: When I cover my subjects in hot plaster, the natural fibres in some clothes release a dye that is transferred to the plaster. Synthetic fibres don't work this way. And so, if I want a certain colour for a sculpture, I search through second hand clothing stores or depend on my friends to supply the right kind of clothing. The clothes my subjects wear have to be clothes they're willing to part with - literally - since the only way to release them from the plaster is to cut them out of the mold - and cut them out of the clothing too ... what's left behind is coloured and textured plaster.11

In another work of this period, Atlin Enterprises (1976-77), Whiten used real young maples and beeches instead of real people. Body casts of headless and legless torsoes, flattened like sheets, are suspended from lines between the trees, like washing hung out when camping. "Atlin is a place in northern BC where we go every year. The air is clean and the country overwhelming in scale and beauty - anything seems possible."12 Whiten introduced this "untouched environment" into the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in the spring of 1977. The trees stretched their thin branches to the very ceiling of the gallery. Beside these "real" trees, on a wooden platform that supported the installation, a life-size plaster cast of the Toronto artist David Craven stood next to a plaster cast of one of his paintings. The only live parts of the installation were the trees. From 1977 to 1978 Whiten worked on her second public commission, this time from the Province of Ontario, for sculpture placed out of doors in the grounds of the Mental Health Centre on Queen Street, in Toronto. Criticism of expenditure on art and landscaping came from the underfinanced hospital administration, which had had no say in plans

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to put up sculpture in the gardens, and which was faced with staff shortages in the 33o-bed hospital. Their complaints eventually reduced the original $75,000 set aside for art to $3:1,000. Hospital workers thought even that too much to spend "on a lovely landscape, when behind the walls we're having a very difficult time maintaining the staff to keep services going."13 While Whiten said that the budget cuts did not upset her, she observed that "art is always the first thing to get cut off when there are cutbacks. But art feeds people spiritually and emotionally. It should be the last thing cut back. It's always considered frivolous. It isn't."14 The artist continued steadily with her work during this controversy, using hospital staff as volunteer models. As she had done for the Government of Canada building, Whiten drew outlines of her models, then cut their figures out of a wall of weather-resistant Douglas fir. This wall (12..5 metres long, 2.4 metres high, and 0.32, metres thick) she left standing and placed the cut-out figures near it in the now carefully landscaped park. Those sitting on the benches or walking through the park could see the relationship between the human-shaped windows in the wall and the cut-out figures nearby. Because the wood is so thick, the figures have a clumsier look than those in Whiten's previous commission and some critics found them less successful. However, the improvements in the grounds met with positive response from the public: Besides the services provided for our patients, the environment in which these people have to live is just as important ... if not the most important thing. Tremendous improvements have been achieved ... the old stigma of 999 Queen Street is fast disappearing with the new ... open-door policy. Adoption of the new image of the hospital ... [as] a community oriented institution was the best thing that could have happened to this place ... the whole concept ... involves not only services "behind the walls" but also the surroundings ... Art has always been the highest cultural expression of individuality, spiritual depth and maturity ... its value cannot be measured in dollars and cents.15

People who use the park share this opinion; many are neither outpatients nor hospital workers, simply people from the Parkdale area who enjoy the gardens. There is more leisure to enjoy art here than, for instance, in the Toronto subway. One of the hospital workers, sitting on a bench among the sculpture, spoke with satisfaction of the health centre's grounds. From where she sat, she could look through openings in the sculpture wall at trees and grass beyond. The openings were the size and shape of human beings; they were, in fact, records

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of the group to which she herself belonged. As in Untitled (1977), there is a blend of personal and public features that contributes to the appeal of this work. Privately, Whiten continued the casting process, using her own family as models. She created an easel-like structure from planks, which supported the cast of each person. This structure could be lowered from an upright to a diagonal or horizontal position, thus helping to take the weight of the plaster off the model. After the casting was completed, the easel structure remained as frame. "Since [Whiten's] own family had never really understood what she does, she decided to include them all in a conventional family portrait, which turned into ... frozen, persuasive forms that are, ironically, filled with life and vitality."16 In 1978 Whiten was invited by the University of Western Ontario to be their resident sculptor. She started work on a new series of plaster casts, using new friends and trying new procedures. She dispensed with the support of plank frames used for her family portraits and suspended one new cast, Paul I, from the ceiling. To accentuate their sculptural qualities, she rubbed graphite over the mouldings. Whiten used nudes as models, but she did not use female nudes, other than herself - a deliberate departure from artistic tradition, which abounds in naked female bodies. Casting was, in Whiten's words, a "point of contact between myself and my friends ... Certainly, you can't expect just anobody to strip naked and let you wrap them up in plaster."17 When the new works, Paul I, II, and III and Gunther, were shown at the Carmen Lamanna gallery in 1980, they shocked some viewers, who saw them as castrations. John Bentley Mays took exception to this description. He saw the works as "very handsome, finely modelled depictions of nude men, about as horrifying as art school figure drawings of male models."18 Paul I, II, and /// formed part of the exhibition "Prince, Prent and Whiten: Figurative Sculpture," held at Kingston's Agnes Etherington Centre in 1981. In the exhibition catalogue Natalie Luckyj drew attention to the way Whiten had used graphite on these figures "to bring out consistent surface texture and depth."19 Whiten was trying to become independent from sources of light that were so important for three-dimensional effects and the interplay of convex-concave illusions in her earlier "mummy" casts. She began to use imprints of the human body on other objects (as she had in Atlin Enterprises) to retain their presence. An installation she showed at a Calgary solo exhibition in 1981, Susan, Bonita, Mark and Paul, consists of four cots showing, in low relief, the impressions of resting bodies.

i2.z

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At the same exhibition, Untitled (1981) took the imprint of human presence to an impersonal extreme. It consists of a plank structure supporting metal pipes from which bandages hardened by resin are suspended. The imprint of bodies on the bandages is barely perceptible. This work was also shown that year at the First Australian Sculpture Triennial in Melbourne, and later, at the exhibition "3 + 3 + 9" at Toronto's Harbourfront Gallery. It seemed as if Whiten had reached her limit in such conceptual installations, but she managed to add yet another aspect in a 1982 installation, Megan, Paul, Shauna and Jason. The people cast for this work were particularly close to the artist: they were her new husband Paul, his son Jason, and her own daughters, Megan and Shauna. The casts of these people, to whom Whiten felt intimately connected, are two removes from the observer: instead of lying on top of the benchlike structures, as in Susan, Bonita, Mark and Paul, the casts are suspended below the benches. All the viewer can see is their reflection in mirrors, placed on the floor under each bench. The viewer has to strain to see the mirror images. These reflections add distance to casts that are in themselves distant: memories of the process of casting particular persons at a particular time and place. If Whiten seemed to have moved from the personal to the mysterious in her private work, she did not introduce a feeling of remoteness into her public art. For a public commission to create sculpture for Sudbury's civic centennial in 1983, Whiten returned to methods used in her first two public commissions. People Sculpture (1983) (Figure 2.1) was funded by the Chamber of Commerce and the Sudbury Construction Association, with additional donations from Rothmans of Pall Mall and Northern Cable. Ten finalists were chosen from among sixty-five applicants. Only a few months before the installation was to be completed, a panel of three professional art experts and six citizen jurors narrowed down the choice and accepted Whiten's proposal. The work was to be executed in metal by Northways Industrial from Whiten's design and specifications. As she had for her 1976 and 1978 public commissions, Whiten used volunteers and traced their outlines. The result was an arrangement of screens of self-rusting steel, some featuring solid cut-out metal figures in an open-mesh metal screen, others showing the same figures as cut-out openings in solid metal screens. The location of People Sculpture (1983) in a small, slightly elevated park at the corner of Paris and Brady streets in Sudbury makes the work accessible and visible from a number of viewpoints. The

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zi Colette Whiten. People Sculpture, 1983. Industrially produced screens of self-rusting steel, incorporating cut-out and solid life-size figures. Commissioned by Sudbury and District Chamber of Commerce. Photo: G. Lambton.

closest building is light in colour, creating a good background for Whiten's screens, which over time turned a warm dark brown. Seen from the building itself, Whiten's cut-out silhouettes appear as open windows, framing distant buildings, slag heaps, parking lots, whole new streets. There had been some controversy before the work was installed. In May 1983, after Whiten's design was selected, a citizen of Capreol, near Sudbury, deplored the "unoriginal, boring and immature concept of human silhouettes cut from steel panels." In his eyes the artist was "an artist only in the capacity to persuade [the selection committee]. The $65,000 might be better unleashed to boost ... the careers of a dozen local sculptors."20 This was the only negative letter to the Sudbury Star, which also published a careful description of the concept of the work: "to be constructed with interlocking half-inch steel panels, which will be bolted to concrete footings. On these panels will be profiles of figures taken from tracings of people in Sudbury. The chamber's centennial committee ... felt the sculpture addressed the theme 'The Spirit of '837 L'Elan '83' in terms of Sudbury's past, present and future." 21

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The Chamber of Commerce, according to Claire Pilon of the Sudbury weekly Le Voyageur, "wanted to encourage the comprehension and appreciation of visual arts in the community."22 Whiten herself stated that she had some trouble with "the bureaucracy ... some seemed to be particularly mean-spirited. But I never had any trouble with the models."23 What makes People Sculpture (1983) particularly interesting is the variety of effects it obtains without spoiling the work's cohesion. This is due to the way the screens are placed. Those that hold the solid cutouts filter, but do not totally obscure, the background. These open screens alternate with the solid steel panels with their open cut-out figures. All are set into concrete at varying heights. The upper edges of the installation are uneven, like the outlines of gentle hills. Allowing for a foot or more above and below each life-size figure, the screens are sometimes ten, sometimes only eight, feet high, the separate sections spreading concertina fashion. These silhouettes of "immortalized" Sudbury citizens, inviting the participation of the public of the future, allow quite remarkable vistas through human-shaped windows of bright new buildings, newly planted trees, the new town of Sudbury replacing the old, known once for its dreary, desolate ugliness. As Sudbury is Canada's nickel centre, some citizens remarked that nickel rather than steel should have been used, and that the artist's name should be shown clearly on the work, instead of the name of the company that did the casting. Most of them agreed that this work was a good example of public art funded by a mixture of corporate and public donations.24 Clearly visible in the daytime and floodlit at night, People Sculpture (1983) is the most successful example of Whiten's method of using cut-out silhouettes of - and for - a participating public. It meets the requirements outlined by the chairman of the centennial committee that commissioned the work, to "create a link between the human and the physical landscape."25 BETWEEN 1984 AND 1986 another of Whiten's works, Unfitted (1982), travelled with the Art Bank Collection to Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Dallas, and San Diego with the exhibition "Canada Collects: Contemporary Sculpture from the Art Bank." The symposium on public art that took place at the time of this exhibition sparked a nationwide, year-long series of discussions on public art in the u s. During these years Whiten was hard at work on her fourth public commission. This was entirely funded by the Manufacturers Life Insurance Company for its head office on Bloor Street East in Toronto. The

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company's main building was not new, but there was a new extension that had to fit in with the general decor of the main building, a neoclassical style often adopted by banks and insurance companies that spells permanence and solidity. There are floors of travertine marble, walls panelled with cherrywood, and columns that recall Greek temples. Whiten's suggestion was to cast eight life-size figures - four couples from the company - a realistic average of men and women of different ages and walks of life. Some were in business suits, others in jeans or shorts. Whiten used the method she had employed in casting her own family. As the figures are set into four panelled niches, the slight support given to them from the back (in the form of narrow planks) is not visible when they are seen frontally. Their only supports seem to be pedestals of travertine marble, which is also the material of the foyer's floor. From a distance the figures resemble neoclassical statues, in keeping with the decor of the building. The niches that hold the figures occupy the corners of the vast foyer, so that the viewer would see the figures frontally most of the time. Seen straight on, the figures seem solid and quite realistic because of the traces of colour and texture from the clothes the volunteers had worn for casting. But when the viewpoint shifts to another angle, their hollowness is revealed. Most disconcerting is the hollowness of the feet, which seem to point backward and most clearly betray the casting process and the fact that these figures are shells. The work was installed in January 1986. One critic noted that Whiten's figures provide a subtle comment on a setting that spells permanence and solidity, for they stress the opposite: fragility, impermanence. It is in this context that Whiten's figures achieve a poignancy rare for public sculpture. Public sculptures often end up legitimizing corporate spaces. Whiten's figures do not. Being, as they are, intimate traces of life in a material that appears frail compared to marble, they speak of transience and vulnerability and mortality. But they also speak of being frozen in one attitude, one activity, and end up by acting as a conscience to seize the moment we call life.26

Not all Whiten's public art shows this fragility. Much of it, though recording a transient moment, is quite sturdy and conveys a sense of permanence rather than impermanence. As the comments for Unfitted (1977) explain, people sought permanence when "performing" as models. Being drawn into the process of creation, they provided their own personal note in an often impersonal environment. They helped to evoke and recreate moments that will live through them.

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Since Whiten links those who participated with those who later explore the work's visual language, the public has responded well, even where contemporary art may not have been very familiar to viewers. Whiten has never sacrificed her high standards, but, like other women artists, she wants to communicate. "Public art must be accessible,"27 she maintains. She has made this accessibility possible by the "human participation" that is central to all her work and to which other human beings are able to respond.

Epilogue

The preceding chapters, which started as an examination of the public art of seven Canadian women artists, very soon became a celebration of their work. Research on public art in general disclosed numerous controversies, debates expressing hostility, bewilderment, and malaise, as mentioned in my introduction. Controversy has at times led to the complete removal of a publicly displayed work of art, as detailed below. I found no such controversy regarding the work of the seven subjects of this book. Successful public art is largely dependent on teamwork. If either architects or artists see themselves as stars, collaboration can become flawed. Robert Jekyll, whom I have quoted with regard to the work of Rita Letendre, commented that "art commissions will be increasingly cautious about imposing strong personal statements on public spaces."1 This point of view has, however, been contradicted by recent developments in public art, which have included strong statements by both male and female artists. Recent work by women artists has also shown that there can be considerable give and take between architect and artist, often facilitated by the intermediate role of an environmental designer, as in the teamwork for Jerry Grey's glass mural for Ottawa's Saint-Vincent Hospital. In her earlier work for the Statistics Canada building, The Great Canadian Equalizer (1979), Grey found that architects were willing to adjust planned space to accommodate the artist's concept. Both Grey and Perron speak in glowing terms of their experience with architects. Kahane praises the architect for his cooperation over her public commission for Islamabad, though with Place des Arts in Montreal and the Great Lakes Forest Research Centre in Sault Ste Marie, the architects seemed to ignore her requests to alter details in lighting and in the pedestal for her sculpture. And even the most successful and harmonious collaboration during the fifteen years

12.8

Stealing the Show

of the Department of Public Works' one percent program (which made an effort to consult artists at an early stage of planning) had, as Douglas Richardson pointed out, suffered from the fact that the architects' working drawings were complete before consultation with artists took place.2 In the introduction I quoted Ed Zelenak's remark that "to move ahead there has to be a great amount of unaccessability [sic] ... because every time you create something new, it's something that some one hasn't seen before."3 In a CBC interview on 2,7 September 1990, sixteen years after the panel "Sculpture, a rebirth of humanism," the architect Carlos Ott used almost the same words as Zelenak with regard to his latest building. These are instances where both architect and artist see themselves as stars. Ott's influence with Cadillac-Fairview, the company responsible for Toronto's Eaton Centre, is worth remembering. For it was the centre's Art/Advertising Program (see chapter 5) that insisted that artwork had to adapt completely to the planners' scheme. I also cited some statements by Joan Vastokas regarding the importance of art and architecture in indigenous cultures. What Vastokas did not mention was that in the societies to which she refers, the male was usually the builder, architect, and artist, while women were concerned with healing and the creation of textiles (both subjects that have received new attention from feminists). Shelter was a male responsibility and has largely remained so, even in our technological society. Decisions concerning construction, architecture, and the making of art for architecture have remained functions in which women still have little power, though, as mentioned above, they have enjoyed the cooperation of architects in many projects. In the last decade, the number of women architects, and of women in the field of environmental design, has increased, and this development may contribute to further changes. In the teamwork of artists and architects, artists with architectural training have an advantage, as is evident in the public commission created by the sculptor Nobuo Kubota4 for Ottawa's National Science Library. Such training sensitizes artists to the complex relationship of their own work with its environment, a sensibility that can be seen in women artists who, like Marcelle Perron and Jerry Grey, have developed architectural abilities. Designing industrially produced installations put these artists in a position similar to that of architects. Both have lectured architects on the use of art in public buildings. The increased importance of environmental design in art schools may, eventually, produce designers who will bridge the gap between artist and architect; their influence has already been felt in new installations.

Epilogue

12.9

In Grey's 1989 glass mural for Saint-Vincent Hospital, the environmental designer Anne Carlyle played a crucial role. An environmental designer was also part of the team in Toronto's "Waterworks" (1988), with its key premise that "the artist is equally a professional in his or her field as is, say, the project architect, the structural engineer or the interior designer,"5 a premise that contradicts Jekyll's statement, quoted above. The Toronto infiltration plant, the site chosen for "Waterworks," had been designed for R.C. Harris in the 19308 and has strong idiosyncracies that the artists could either challenge or adapt to. The managers of the plant cooperated with the project's curatorial team, which consisted of an urban-design consultant teaching environmental studies at York University; a manufacturer; the director of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, which has a "hands on" adventurous approach; and a woman artist and art expert teaching at OCA. While the power of women is still restricted when it comes to architectural decisions, women art experts, like the one on the "Waterworks" curatorial team, have done their best for many decades to bring women artists to the attention of museums, collectors, and the public. Marcelle Perron, when interviewed, at once mentioned Herta Wescher, the influential critic and editor of La Cimaise. Perron's first major solo exhibitions were staged in Montreal by Galerie Agnes Lefort and Galerie Denyse Delrue, in Paris by Iris Clert and Ursula Girardon, and in Munich by Dorothea Leonhart. Gathie Falk emphasized Marguerite Pinney's role in recommending her work to the selection committee for the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa. Ann Rosenberg dedicated large sections of the Capilano Review to Falk, Joan Lowndes wrote about her for Vie des Arts, Doris Shadbolt for ArtsCanada; Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker staged Falk's retrospective at the VAG in 1985. Jerry Grey acknowledged Doris Shadbolt's support in her development as an artist; Susan Crean has written about Grey and Wieland in This Magazine and Canadian Art. The Montreal critic Rea Montbizon drew attention to profound changes in Kahane's art. Dorothy Cameron in Toronto and Camille Hebert in Montreal exhibited Rita Letendre's work in the early 19605. Mayo Graham, in the catalogue for the 1975 NGC exhibition "Some Canadian Women Artists," gave Colette Whiten and Gathie Falk the space to express their views. The list is too long to mention all the women curators and gallery owners who have provided opportunities for women artists to exhibit and discuss their work. By establishing the reputations of many women artists, the women art experts did, in fact, have an indirect influence on decision making,

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even if their direct powers over architectural decisions were still limited. Women artists have also been most successful at the kind of teamwork established for collective production. Falk's and Grey's teams for public commissions, described in chapters 4 and 6, are cases in point, while Wieland relied on women needleworkers for her many quilted, embroidered, knitted, and appliqued assemblages - all collective productions. Joan Vastokas, when writing about Amerindian art, described our modern preoccupation with "high or fine art ... for consumption of dominant powers ... nonutilitarian ... discontinuous with tradition ... useless to society ... expressing the soul ... of the individual artist."6 The deployment of utilitarian art, crafts that have been "woman's tradition" in earlier stages of our society, undermines notions of "high or fine art." The quilt has become the most celebrated symbol of (anonymous) utilitarian art created by teams of women. Wieland chose this symbol in the 19605. In June 1990 the magazine Gallerie, which celebrates women's art, devoted an entire issue to the quilt.7 Wieland's subversive ways of using the "soft sculpture" of textiles for strong messages was pointed out in chapter 5. Colette Whiten, for the 1988 exhibition "Information Systems," used the old-fashioned feminine medium of needlepoint to mimic the dot matrix of wireservice photo and newspaper images, the mosaic of the TV screen. Her minuscule works in this exhibition portray dominant political figures, often evoking the image of violence and tyranny without actually showing it. Works of this kind, with a political (hence topical) message - the photo-text combinations in Songs of Experience8 for example were seldom considered suitable for public commissions. Some women artists have signed commissions for textiles a new twist by moving these textiles into the realm of sculpture, that is, "high art." They added new materials, such as the plastic or metal tubes used by Joanna Staniszkis and Kaija Harris in the Toronto Dominion Centre (1984), or produced weatherproof fibre sculpture that can be placed out of doors. In Halifax, Dawn McNutt created human figures from copper wire and sea-grass; in St John's, Colleen Lynch wove her sculpture of steel and copper for the outside of the new Confederation Building (1985). As mentioned earlier, some artists have bypassed "official" patronage, whether "publicly funded" or corporate, by using abandoned or condemned buildings, as Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe did in Montreal, for highly sophisticated and adventurous installations. In doing so, they have also managed to bypass current art-world orthodoxies and remain aloof to predominant trends. Thus, they gained

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freedom for their special theme of women's experience, their social criticism. Such installations assumed shamanistic "healing" functions, which, in the indigenous societies mentioned by Vastokas, were also women's functions; just like the collective creation of textiles and other crafts, this aspect of "woman's tradition" has appealed not only to feminists but to women artists in general. The respect for public feelings expressed by Fleming and Lapointe (detailed in the introduction) is, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of public art by women, in addition to collective work and the subversive use of crafts. Margaret Robinette, in her introduction to Outdoor Sculpture, Object and Environment, remarked: "While public art cannot and should not be selected according to public taste, people do like to be consulted about their feelings towards art."9 Feelings shared by artist and public may outlast changes of style. In Montreal, Kahane's sculpture Mother and Child, commissioned in 1959, was stored for several years during the shopping plaza's expansions and renovations. In 1990, more than thirty years after it was first installed, the work was given a new and prominent place and a new inauguration. Its theme - parenthood - is universal. The appeal of colour and dynamic form may also outlast fashion. Toronto citizens demanded that Letendre's Sunrise on the Neill Wycik building should not be obscured. The developer won and put up a highrise, but he had to sponsor a new mural on the other side of the Neill Wycik residence. In Montreal, Perron's Mirror of Aviation was removed during building repairs in 1989, but was carefully restored to its original site when the repairs were completed. While none of the public commissions by women artists were ever removed because of a negative response from the public, there have been removals and replacements of other publicly commissioned works. Sometimes residents in a certain area felt that their private space had been usurped: the removal in 1982 of Twelve Points in Classical Balance, a sculpture by the Vancouver artist Allen Chung Hung, from the residential Dow's Lake area of Ottawa to the much more spacious and neutral "Garden of the Provinces"10 is one such example. But often, the negative response to a work has gone much deeper, leading to controversies like that over Zelenak's Traffic, which in 1974 was moved to a different part of Ottawa's Confederation Square;11 or to the complete removal of Doug Bentham's Prairie from the grounds of the National Science Library, and Walter Redinger's relief sculpture from the Jean Talon Building, both in Ottawa. These removals were due to an impasse - an insurmountable difference in the visual vocabularies of artists and the public. Since taxpayers' money had been spent

131

Stealing the Show

on these commissions, there were extensive debates in the press, in Parliament, and in the Senate. As Robinette points out, public art cannot and should not be selected according to public taste; but respect for public feelings can be expressed in public commissions in many subtle ways. By and large, the work of women artists has given the impression that they cared about the feelings of the public for whom their work was produced. There are male artists who have been equally successful in evoking public response, often through humour; Derek Besant's work for "Artwalls" comes to mind, or that of Louis de Niverville for the Toronto subway. Michael Hayden's light installations in the National Science Library and the Toronto subway, both of which evoke the contemporary urban environment, have an appeal equal to that of works by Perron. These artists have all tuned in to some aspects of a shared visual language. The work of both male and female artists may suffer from instances of bureaucratic bungling, particularly where lighting and maintenance are concerned. Such instances have been detailed in chapters i and 4; they are, unfortunately, common to many public commissions that have no contracts enabling - or obliging - building managements to look after them. Economic and emotional battles complicate the lives of most artists, male or female, but for many women artists they create a special dimension. Women are working their way from a position as objects to one of subject; since many ordinary citizens see themselves as objects, the sense of freedom achieved by those who overcome a position of helplessness is infectious. "It is something of a miracle that women artists survive the demands made on them," Marcelle Perron said in one interview, referring to the time when, as a single parent, she raised three small children. "You had to work so hard painting and doing your regular chores that you really never had time to belong to one of the groups that might have given you support."12 "For a woman artist to succeed, incredible energies are needed," Letendre wrote in Le MacLean (i975). 13 Pisa Honig-Fine, editor of the us publication Woman's Art Journal (which occasionally features the work of Canadian artists), has written extensively on the domestic life of women artists and sees it as a dominating factor. It is also addressed in the Canadian publication Gallerie, where women artists are given a voice. This voice is usually private, but in public art women artists do not only turn their visions inward, "expressing the soul of the artist," as Vastokas put it: there is a sense that their vision encompasses many other visions; "public is not different from private;

Epilogue

133

it is simply a galvanization of many personal visions into common dialects."14 The importance for public art is to share enough of the dialect to communicate, as Wieland mentioned in a 1988 Gallerie interview when speaking of "the great struggle of woman as shaman."15 Art histories of women in public art still remain to be written, and the history of women in architecture lags far behind the few histories available on women's art. This was pointed out in a 1983 working paper by Natalie Kampen and Elizabeth Grossman of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.16 Linda Nochlin's Women, Art and Power (1988) or Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock's Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (1981) alert us to attitudes in art histories written by men that are usually about male artits. I have tried to avoid the terminology developed in these histories. The problem, when writing about women artists, is that a new terminology is still evolving. Film makers and video producers, who have a visual language at their disposal, are closer to solving the problem, as Kate Armatage succeeded in doing in her film on Wieland, The Artist on Fire, and as Monique Crouillere did in her National Film Board piece on Marcelle Perron. The preceding enquiry has been a journey of exploration rather than a thesis with hard and fast conclusions; it seeks to throw new light on interesting aspects of women's art in public places. If collective efforts, or teamwork, the often subversive use of utilitarian art, and respect for public feelings are taken as criteria, we may conclude that commissions given to women artists have met all the prerequisites of public art. However, more research will have to be done, more commissions given to women, before one can maintain with authority that yes, indeed, women artists do succeed in communicating with the public, they do succeed as teams, and their work demonstrates respect for public feelings; that their choice of utilitarian art does undermine the "high art" of the dominant culture and brings their work closer to the art of indigenous societies, where art was and is a vital part of the totality of the culture itself. Since the public art of women artists, at least the work examined here, does seem to be both socially and aesthetically effective, it would be in the public interest - and in the interest of public or private institutions that sponsor commissions - to give women artists a larger share. If it turns out that even large numbers of public commissions executed by women artists succeed as public art, then instead of being a neglected minority, women artists like the seven discussed above will be seen as leading the way.

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Appendices

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A P P E N D I X ONE:

QUESTIONNAIRE

In the following appendix, the works for which this questionnaire was used are indicated with a "Q" after the description of the piece in the lists of public commissions (Appendix Two). Purpose: to assess public response to public art by Canadian women artists. Questions: Background of person interviewed. Male Female Age (approx.): under 35 over 35 over 55 Education: High school Technical school Art school College Response to particular work: i Do you notice it? Yes No 2. Do you see it often? Yes No 3 Do you like it? Yes No Neutral 4 Do you think this work suits its environment? Yes No 5 Does the material used for this work suit the site? Yes No 6 Do you see any message in this work? Yes No 7 Is this message clear? Would most people understand it? 8 Would you replace this work if you had the opportunity? 9 Do you find all or part of this work offensive? 10 Do you think there should be art in public places? 11 Did you realize that this work is by a woman artist? 12 Who, in your opinion, should fund public art: a) the Government (federal, provincial, municipal) b) private institutions (business, churches, etc.) c) fund raising for each project d) a combination of the above Other suggestions 13 Who, in your opinion, should select art for public places? a) architects b) artists or art experts c) those who pay for the project (whether public or private) d) residents of the community where the work is placed e) a combination of the above Other suggestions

Graduate

A P P E N D I X TWO:

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS

MARCELLE PERRON

1963

Exterior-epoxy painted mural (5.48 x 18.2.9 m), Syndicat des Chemins de Per, Montreal West. Architect Louis Lapierre. 1966 Stained-glass windows for prison chapel, Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. 1967 13 glass panels for wall (length 45.7 m), Terre des Hommes, Expo '67. Architect: Roger D'Astous. 1968 Stained-glass panels for three walls of Champ de Mars metro station (height 7.62. m, total length 60.96 m), Superseal installation. Gift to Montreal Metro Commission from Quebec government under the one percent program. (Q) 1969 Stained-glass windows for Eglise Sacre-Coeur, Quebec City. 1972-73 Eight rectangular stained-glass panels (3 x .65 m each); four stainedglass disks (1.2,5 m diameter). Six panels on upper level of Phase i, Place du Portage, Hull, Quebec; two panels, four disks on lower level of foyer. Federal DPW commission under one percent program. Architect: Daniel E. Lazosky. (Q) Window for Canadian Jewish Congress Building, Montreal. 1974 Mobile, stainless-steel sculpture and stained-glass panels, Thetford Mines Shopping Centre, Quebec. 1975 Mirror of Aviation: combination of stainless-steel sculpture, mirrors and stained-glass panels (height 9.14 m) installed outside International Civil Aviation Offices, Montreal. Gift from Quebec government to ICAO. (Q) Stained-glass panels for Palais de Justice, Amos, Quebec (3.66 m x 12.19 m ) commissioned by Quebec government under one percent program. Architects: Monette, Leclerc and St Denis. 1978 Stained-glass window (18.29 x 3-68 m) for Eglise Alliance, Saskatoon. 1979 Three stories of stained-glass windows, Palais de Justice, Granby, Quebec (total dimensions 12.9 x 21.34 m). Commissioned under Quebec government one percent program. Architect: Breton. 1981 Stained-glass dome; horizontal stainless-steel sculpture (3 x 13.41 m); Place Vendome metro station, Montreal. Commissioned by Montreal Metro. Architect: M. Mercure. 1986 Stainless-steel sculpture and stained-glass panels for Canada Place mall in Chateau Champlain, Montreal. Commissioned by Lavalin Inc. Concept by Marcelle Perron. Metal sculpture executed by Anodoro Ltee. Glass panels by Superseal. Raccou by Monique Bourbonnais-Ferron.

Appendix Two

139

1989-90 Stained-glass window for library of Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec, to commemorate the massacre of fourteen female engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal. ANNE KAHANE

1956

1959 1961 1962

1963

1967 1974

1976

Facade: group of eleven carved figures in redwood and mahogany (i x 3 m) for lobby of office building, 310 Victoria Avenue, Montreal. Architect: David K. Linden. (Q) Mother and Child: Two interlinked life-size brass figures, displayed out of doors, Rockland Plaza, Montreal. Outdoor relief sculpture in mahogany (height 3.4 m) for Memorial Library, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB. Memorial to Captain EJ. Stevenson. Mahogany carving (height approx. 2.05 m), Winnipeg airport. Commissioned by Federal Ministry of Transport. Mahogany carving of two figures (height 1.15 m) for chapel, Winnipeg General Hospital. Song of the Earth; two-part mahogany carving (height approx. 3.05 m) for Lounge, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal. Quebec Ministry of Culture, private donations. (Q) Man on His Head: two-piece pine sculpture (height approx. 3 m). Commissioned by Canadian Expo Corporation. La Mer: laminated-pine carving (0.61 x 8.9 m). DPW commission under one percent program for Canadian Embassy, Islamabad, Pakistan. Architect: Isadore Coop, No. 10 Architectural Group, Winnipeg. The Forest: laminated-pine construction (3.05 x 1.8 x 0.61 m). DPW commission under one percent program for Great Lakes Forest Research Centre, Sault Ste Marie, Ont.

RITA LETENDRE

1971

1971

Sunrise: drywall outdoor mural (18 x 18 m). Commissioned by Benson and Hedges for "Artwalls"; west wall, Neill Wycik Residence, Toronto. Now: Acrylic on canvas (1.8 x 5.4 m). Commissioned by Greenwin Co. for Berkshire House, Duplex Street, Toronto. Tecumseth: drywall mural (5.8 x zo m). Commissioned by J.D.S. Investment Co. for Sheridan Mall, Pickering. Urtu: outdoor drywall mural (10.5 x 10.5 m). Commissioned for office building of Dr Stanley Horowitz, Davenport Road, Toronto.

(Q)

140 1973 1977

1978

1980 1983

1984 1990

Appendix Two Sunrise II: acrylic on canvas, Greenwin Square lobby, Toronto. Rouha: acrylic on canvas (1.6 x 1.8 m). Cadillac Co., Toronto. Irowakan: acrylic on canvas (3.1 x 15.6 m). Indoor mural commissioned for Royal Bank Plaza, Toronto. Joy: skylight dome, hand-painted tempered glass panels (54 x 6.4 m). Commissioned by Toronto Transit Commission for Glencairn subway station, Toronto. Seikotan: acrylic on canvas (138 x 430 cm) for Lounge, Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, Place des Arts, Montreal. (Q) Kodawanda: acrylic on canvas (width 9 m); Canada Council Art Bank purchase; displayed at Mirabel airport. Upward Dream: outdoor drywall mural (46 x 4.6 m). East wall, Neill Wycik Residence, Toronto. Daybreak: acrylic on canvas (approx. 3 x 5 m). Foyer, T. Eaton Building, Toronto General Hospital. (Q) Electric Dream: acrylic on canvas (z.i x 6.5 m). Commissioned for IBM head office, Toronto. Brahms: acrylic on canvas (1.2 x z.9 m). Commissioned for lobby of Cantel Building, Toronto. (Q) Aurora: enamel on steel (approx. 2.13 x 5 m). Commissioned by VIA Rail for Transcontinental train in project Of Style & Steel/ D'Art et d'Acier.

GATHIE FALK

1973

1979

1987

Veneration of the White Collar Worker (z.75 x 8.3 m), Veneration of the Blue Collar Worker (2.75 x 8.3 m): two murals consisting of twenty-four ceramic plaques each, installed at cafeteria of Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa. Commissioned by federal Department of Public Works (one percent program). Architects: Webb, Zerafa, Menkes and Housden, Toronto. (Q) Beautiful British Columbia Multiple Purpose Thermal Blanket: soft sculpture (5.5 x 4.9 m) consisting of fifty-six oil-on-canvas paintings (each 60.05 cm square) mounted in grid of traditional patchwork quilt over industrial insulation fibreglass and stitched to canvas backing. Commissioned by British Columbia Central Credit Union for their Administration Building, 144 Creekside, Vancouver BC. Diary: eight oil-on-canvas painted panels showing development of tulips from bud to decline. Each panel (2.4 x 0.75 m) fitted like window into approx. lo-cm-deep niche in curved wall. Commissioned for the Canadian Embassy, Washington DC. Architect: Arthur Erikson.

Appendix Two

141

1988

Development of the Plot: four panels: "Entree," "Development," "Climax," "Denouement" (each 2.1 x 1.5 m) in lounge of North Vancouver Park and Tilford Odeon Cineplex. 1989-90 Salute to the Lions of Vancouver: sculpture, cast from aluminum and steel (height 6.8 m) for Canada Place, Vancouver. Project manager: Jane Zeidler. JOYCE W I E L A N D

1972

Design, World Health Stamp, Canada Post Office commission. Federal DPW commission to display reproductions of twenty-one sketches for World Health Stamp at Post Office, Mount Forest, Ontario. 1972-73 Defendez la Terre/Defend the Earth: quilted wall mural (183 x 716.3 cm) commissioned by federal DPW for south entrance, lobby of National Science Library, Ottawa. Architects: Shore, Tilbe, Henschel, Irwin. (Q) 1977-78 Barren Ground Caribou: quilted cloth assemblage (2 x 9.6 m) for mezzanine floor of Spadina station (Kendal Street entrance). Commissioned by Toronto Transit Commission. Architect: Adamson Associates. (Q) 1978 North Star Running Shoe: quilted hanging commissioned by Bata Industries Ltd for Toronto Eaton Centre (Toronto Galleria, 220 Yonge Street) under "Art/Advertising" program. Architects: Bregman & Hamann and Zeidler Partnership. 1987 Celebration: oil on canvas, 2.13 x 4.57 m. Commissioned by Cineplex Odeon Art Program for lobby of Pantages Theatre, Toronto. Consulting architect: David K. Mesbur. 1989 The Ocean of Love: enamel on steel, approx. 2.13 x 5 m. Commissioned for VIA Rail Transcontinental train. JERRY

GREY

1979

The Great Canadian Equalizer: mural (3.04 x 4.88 m) of sixty porcelain-on-steel panels serigraphed with geographical and statistical information on Canada. Key panel "The Canadian Mosaic" composed of portraits of Canadian pioneers, artists, historical figures. Architects: Ogilvy & Hogg, McLean & McPhayden. (Q) Tiles of Time: mosaic mural (3.05 x 17.3 m) for foyer, Ottawa Police Station. City of Ottawa commission. Ottawa waterways and portraits of fifteen police chiefs (since 1855). Architects: Pye & Richards and G.E. Bemi & Associations. (Q)

1983

142. 1987

1989

Appendix Two Triptych of garden paintings, liquitex on canvas (1.45 x 3.75 m) for central foyer, 33 Jakes Avenue, Toronto. Developer: Ken Rotenberg. Glass mural, 3.4 x 5.1 m, for lobby of Saint-Vincent Hospital, Ottawa, celebrating 25oth anniversary of Sisters of Charity in Canada, 65th anniversary of the hospital. Five life-size figures cut from glass, related to the order's history, above and beside a low wall of twenty glass blocks etched with scenes from the history and works of the Grey Nuns in Ottawa since 1845. Architect: Veronica Nunnde-Pensier. Designer: Anne Carlyle. (Q)

COLETTE WHITEN

1977

1978

1983

1986

Unfitted, 1977: DPW commission for Government of Canada Building, North York (one percent program). Life-size plywood figures produced from outlines of volunteers, freestanding, bolted to floor of lobby. Ten figures cut from plywood pressed into fresh concrete of one wall to create relief effect. Photo mural as documentation. Architects: Shore, Tilbe, Henschel, Irwin; Peters & Dubois and Associates. (Q) Unfitted, 1978: Province of Ontario commission. Douglas fir plank wall (z.45 x 12.5 x 0.3 m), and cut-out figures of volunteers, placed separately from wall. Outdoors in park of Mental Health Centre, Queen Street, Toronto. (Q) People Sculpture: commissioned for Sudbury centennial by Sudbury and District Chamber of Commerce and Sudbury Construction Association. Industrially produced screens of self-rusting steel, incorporating cut-out and solid figures, outlines of Sudbury citizens. Produced by Northways Industrial from Whiten's design. (Q) Eight Untitled Figures, 1986: plaster-and-burlap casts of four couples - one man and one woman in each alcove - at four corners of foyer, head office, Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, zoo Bloor Street East, Toronto. Commissioned by the company. (Q)

APPENDIX THREE: EXHIBITIONS MARCELLE PERRON 1947 1949

1950

1952.

1954 1955 1956

1957

1958

Montreal, MMFA: Spring Show Prague, World Youth Festival Montreal, Librairie Tranquille (solo)

Montreal, Comptoir du Livre Montreal, Librairie Tranquille: exhibition of "les rebelles" who demonstrated against MMFA policies. Montreal, Theatre Gesu Montreal, MMFA, Galerie XII: "Paintings by P.E. Borduas and by a Group of Younger Montreal Artists" Paris, Galerie Creuse: "Phases de 1'Art Contemporain" Saarbriicken, Germany, Saarland Museum Paris, Galerie du Haut Pave (solo) Brussels, Galerie Apollo (solo) Paris, 2.3. Salon des Surindependants Paris, Galerie La Cimaise Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo) Paris, Galerie Iris Clert (solo) Paris, Musee d'art moderne: Salon des Realites Nouvelles Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" Montreal, Galerie Denyse Delrue (solo) Toronto, Jordan Gallery: "Canadians in Europe" Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show"

Huile 5 pieces of sculpture 17 oil paintings incl. Vers la lumiere Tissue aquatique Poussiere d'homme Racines qui voient mes yeux sculpture

gouaches

Golden Eye Rhythm-^ijs''

Oil No. 7-$250

* Prices are included whenever available in the source material used.

144

Appendix Three

1959

Montreal, Galerie Denyse Delrue (solo) Milan, Galleria dell'Arte Contemporanea: "Brera" (solo) Paris, Galerie Arnaud: "Spontaneite et Reflexion" Ottawa, NGC: 3d Canadian Biennial Paris, Galerie Kleber 1959-60 Venice: "La Donna Nell'Arte Contemporanea " 1960 Lugano: 6th international exhibition of drawings and engravings. Montreal, Galerie Denyse Delrue (solo) Paris, Galerie Ursula Girardon: "Inauguration show" (solo) Paris, Musee du Louvre: "Antagonismes" Montreal, MM FA: 77th Spring Show

Huile

Le Signal Dorset

(MMFA)

1961

Montreal, MM FA: "Trends: Non figurative Montreal painters" Paris, Musee d'art moderne: "Salon des Realites Nouvelles" Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno: "Arte Canadiense" (organized by N G C ) Montreal, Galerie Libre Montreal, Galerie Denyse Delrue (solo) Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo) Arvida, Que. Centre communautaire (solo) Sao Paulo, Brasil: 6th Biennial Museu de Arte Moderna

Stratford Ont., Festival Art Exhibition/Windsor, Willistead

Aguafuerte (etching)

etchings

25 oil paintings O Abutre Purpura Ronqueralles Cortone Consommes Sifflantes Pintura i. Similitudes Cercle Nacarat-$f)oo Le Signal Dorset (MMFA)

Appendix Three

1962

Art Gallery/London, Ont., PLAM: "2,5 Quebec Painters" Toronto, Moos Gallery (solo) Munich, Galerie Dorothea Leonhart (solo) Paris, Galerie Arditti/Milan, Galleria Levi/Turin, Galleria La Bussola/ Zurich, Galerie Semia Huber: "Borduas, Riopelle e la giovane pittura canadese"

Spoleto, Palazzo Collicola Festival des Deux Mondes: "25 ans de peinture au Canada franc, ais"

1963

1964

Rome, Libreria Einaudi: "Le Mouvement Automatiste Canadien" St Catharines, Rodman Hall Art Centre: "16 Contemporary Quebec Painters" Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Peter Stuyvesant Collection Winnipeg, WAG: ist Biennial Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo) Montreal, MM FA Both Spring Show London, UK, New Gallery of Commonwealth Institute/Ottawa, NGC: 5th Canadian Biennial Detroit, Wayne State University Rochester, NY, University of Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery Brussels, Galerie Smith (solo) Montreal, Galerie Soixante (solo) Ottawa, NGC/London, Ont., PLAM 84th RCA exhibition Paris: 5ieme Salon International de Paris Sud

i45

incl. Les Falaises Colere Rivee

Ombres palpees La fiole du papera Vegetaux de caresses Les sans cervelle sont en aguet Abolition du peage Syndicat des Gens de Mer Un malade n'est pas une buche Huard Colere Rivee Kanaka Drawings and gouaches

Le Signal Dorset (MMFA)

Huile La Foret Magique-$noo

On the Windy Bay-$noo Fourche de I'eclair

Entitled Ostatsu

Voyage a Spolete-$zooo

146

1965

Appendix Three

Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo) Brussels, Galerie Smith (solo) Paris, Musee d'art moderne: "Salon des Comparaisons" 1966 Quebec City, Que., Musee du Quebec modern glass (solo) Paris, Musee d'art moderne: Composition "Salon des Realites Nouvelles" St Catharines, Rodman Hall Unfitted Art Centre 1966-67 Montreal, MAC 14 works in glass 1967 Montreal, MAC: "Artistes de Montreal; Ghost Hills Zoom Panorama de la peinture 1940-1966" Toronto, University of Toronto, glass panels School of Architecture: "Crafts for Architecture" Saint-Laurent, lie d'Orleans, Centre d'art (solo) 1968 Montreal, MMFA/Stratford, Ont.: Huile "The Art Gallery in the Factory" (Peter Stuyvesant Collection) Toronto, University of Toronto, glass panels Hart House Art Gallery: "ArchiCinetique" 1969 Quebec City, Galerie Michel Champagne (solo) Grand'Mere, Que., Galerie Margot Fisher (solo) Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Galerie Apogee (solo) Montreal, Galerie de Montreal glass panels Toronto, AGO travelling show: "Montreal Graphics" 1970 Osaka, World Fair, Quebec Pavillion glass panels Montreal, MAC: "Retrospective Marcelle Perron" 66 untitled works, 3 works in glass L'ltalie L'Opaque Transparent Syndicat des Marins Chandelle Le Zingaro "Zinzolin" A Bas la Cadene Le Gypaete Pourpre Composition No. 17 Caresses du Matin Chande Loup

Appendix Three Etude No. i La Visitande Rouge Kanaka Ghost Hills Les Dunes Puissantes Ostatsu Colere Rivee Rouserole Effarvate Les Falaises Hommage a Virginia Woolf Fourche d'eclair Arcadia 6 designs for cover of record Voix de 8 poetes Etchings in black and white (one in colour) illustrating Voyage au pays de Memoire de Gilles Renault 1970-71 Montreal, Galerie de Montreal (solo) 1971 Quebec City, Laval University, glass work Pavilion Lacerte Montreal, MAC/Paris, Galeries La vie en fleur entre Nationales du Grand Palais: mes cils "Borduas et les Automatistes" La souffranee, eros et la joie Yba Sans litre Vbidalgo dissout Les champs russes Wapiti 1972. Paris, Centre Culturel Canadien: "Marcelle Perron: 1'artiste dans 1'industrie et 1'architecture" Dunes Puissantes Des glaces et des fleurs Cercle Nacarat Kanitchex Don Quijote Cosmos Rouge Les murs de la nuit Patience de I'ombre Sandia Les Barrens Le Chante perdrix La vie en fleur entre mes cils Retour d'ltalie Hommage a Virginia Woolf Sao Paulo Les Falaises L'Eros et la joie Us ont tous peur Dents de sable Les timbres-poste Sans litre 31 glass panels 2. glass doors J 973 Quebec City, Musee du Quebec/ Sherbrooke, University of Sherbrooke Gallery: "Marcelle Perron Retrospective (solo) Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil (solo) Montreal, Galerie Les Deux B (solo)

147

148 1

Appendix Three

973-74 Montreal, Terre des Hommes, Pavilion du Quebec 1974 Basle, Festival: "Quebec, The Art Gallery Today" Montreal, Universite de Montreal Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (solo) Ottawa, Wallack Gallery (solo) 1975 Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil (solo) Quebec, Galerie aux Multiples (solo) Vancouver, Equinox Gallery (solo) 1976 Montreal, Complexe Desjardins RCA: "Spectrum Montreal" Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil (solo) Joliette, Musee d'Art (solo) Lachine, Bibliotheque Municipale (solo) Montreal, MAC: "Three Generations of Quebec Painters"

1977

1978 1979

1980

Sans titre 1973 Sans titre 1974 (gouache) glass works

Two untitled works

Le Poete enchante Sans Titre La ponche Cosmos Rouge Sans Titre Montreal, MAC: "De la figuration a la Composition No. 17 non-figuration dans 1'art quebecois" (tour, organized by Ministere des Affaires culturelles) Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil (solo) Quebec City, Musee du Quebec: glass works "Artistes et artisans a 1'oeuvre" Toronto, La-Chasse Galerie: "30 Ans Apres" Ottawa, Galerie Calligrammes (solo) Trois-Rivieres, Galerie du Pare (solo) Winnipeg, WAG: "Frontiers of Our Yba Dreams: Quebec Painters in the Cercle Nacarat 19405 and 19505" Retour d'ltalie Montreal, Galerie A: "Les gravures Serigraph de 12, femmes d'ici" Toronto, Moos Gallery (solo): "Pitie pour la Terre" Montreal, MAC (tour): Cercle Nacarat "La Revolution Automatiste" Le poete enchante Montreal, Galerie Continue: "Artists for Amnesty International"

Appendix Three 1981 1983

1984

1986

1987

1988 1989 1990 1992

Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil Drummondville, Centre Culturel (solo) Montreal, Galerie Gilles Corbeil (solo) Quebec City, Galerie Lacerte & Guimont (solo) Quebec City, Musee du Quebec: 5Oth anniversary exhibition Ottawa, Galerie Calligrammes (solo) Quebec City, Galerie Lacerte & Guimont (solo) Toronto, Gallery Dresdnere: "The Automatists, Then and Now. A Survey, 1942-1986"

149

Kanaka

Les murs de la nuit Murs de neige Les Falaises Autoportrait

Toronto, Galerie Dresdnere: "Marcelle Perron, Paintings 1985-86" La folle diva Promenade Mirage L'autre La ligne danse Autoportrait au foulard L'effet de I'or The scarlet letter L'imprevisible Memoires L'oiseau de la mer Two untitled works. Montreal, Galerie Frederic Polardi ink drawings illustrating Dix poemes quasi chinois by Gilles Henault Quebec City, Galerie Madeleine Lacerte: "Retrospective" Hamilton, Moore Gallery (solo) Trois-Rivieres, Musee Pierre Boucher (solo): "Retrospective" Saint-Sauveur, Galerie Michel Bigue (solo)

* Abbreviations given after the title of a work indicate ownership of the piece by the gallery. ANNE KAHANE

1948 1949

AAM: 65th Spring Show AAM: 66th Spring Show

1950

AAM: 6yth Spring Show

Still Life-$ioo The Evening Paper-$ioo The Pigeon-$j$ Bird-$4O

150

Appendix Three

1951 1952

AAM: 68th Spring Show AAM: 69th Spring Show

*953

London, UK, Institute of Contemporary Arts

1954

AAM: jist Spring Show MMFA incl. The Gossip Mother and Child Solca Musician Playtime The Runners Man Sitting AAM: 7zd Spring Show

*955

1956

1957

1958

Cellist-Spo Seated Man-$iso Man with Child-$i^o (Award £25) Maquette: Unknown Political Prisoner Three Figures

A Man Named Joe Group in the Street Acrobat Monday Wash Night Flight Summer White ( N G C ) Woman in Blue The Rider-$2.so Queue (NGC)-$25O Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" The Rider-$zoo AAM: 73d Spring Show Passer-by-$$oo Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" Snowstorm-$zoo Quebec, Musee du Quebec: The Ballgame-$i5OO "Province of Quebec Art Contest" AAM: 74th Spring Show Park Bench-$4$o Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" Air Show-$zoo Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo) incl. Conversation maquettes, drawings, etchings Delegation Montreal, University of Montreal: "Hall of Honour Exhibition" Sherbrooke, University Gallery The Rider Brussels, World Fair Queue Snowstorm (NGC organized) Arm in Arm Delegation Woman in Italy Venice, Biennial (same as Brussels) Toronto, Greenwich Gallery (solo) incl. The Talk NFS Winter-$6oo Follow the Leader$750 Man with Outstretched Arras-$5OO Monday Wash

Appendix Three

1959

1960

1961

1963

151

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute: Winter Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting & Sculpture Ottawa, NGC (tour: Holland, Summer White Germany, Switzerland, New York) Rain (WAG) Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" Toronto, Isaacs Gallery (solo) Snowstorm incl. Follow the Leader Delegation (u of T) Winter Slumber 12 pen drawings Standing Woman 2, woodcuts In the Sun Montreal, AAM: y6th Spring Show Follow the Leader-$j50 Montreal, MM FA Regina, Norman McKenzie Gallery Montreal, MMFA: zooth Anniversary Waiting People (MMFA) of Jewish Canadian Artists Toronto, Isaacs Gallery (solo) Peterborough, Art Gallery incl. Quadrum I Snowstorm Winter Delegation (u of T) Winnipeg, WAG: "Winnipeg Show" The Talk ( N F S ) Winnipeg Follow the Leader-$7$o Man with Outstretched Arms-$5oo Looking U/?-$45o Fredericton, Beaverbrook Gallery: incl. Slumber "Sculpture in Wood" Toronto, Isaacs Gallery (solo) incl. Sleeping Child London, uwo Mclntosh Memorial incl. Delegation (u of T) Art Gallery (solo) Sun Bather Woman with Apron Figure & Distant Figures (LRAG) Montreal, Galerie Denyse Delrue incl. Landscape & Figures (solo) Figure & Rock Standing Boy The Garden Figure and Distant Figures (LRAG)

Appendix Three

i5i

1964

Rochester, University, Memorial Art Gallery/Buffalo, Albright Knox Art Gallery: "Contemporary Canadian Painting & Sculpture" Ottawa, N G C : 84th RCA show/

Waiting People ( M M F A )

Wayfarers-$izoo

LPLAM

1965

Ottawa, N G C : "Canadian Watercolours, Drawings & Prints" Cardiff, Commonwealth Arts Festival

1966

Ottawa, NGC Extension, Tour (with photographs of Kahane's other sculptures) Toronto, Isaacs Gallery (solo) Montreal, Galerie Agnes Lefort (solo)

1967

1969

Ottawa, N G C : 86th RCA show Ottawa, NGC: "Drawings, Watercolours, Prints" Ottawa, NGC: "Three Hundred Years of Canadian Art" Toronto, "Sculpture '67" Ottawa, N G C : 8yth RCA show Toronto, Isaacs Gallery (solo) Montreal, Sir George Williams University: Retrospective, "Anne Kahane: 1954-1969" (solo)

Hamilton, HAG: zoth annual exhibition

1970

Stratford, Rothman's Art Gallery: "People in the Park" Ottawa, N G C : 9oth RCA Show

Figure Study ( N G C ) (drawing) Tumbling Figures-$$o (woodcut) Revolving Door Sleeping Figure

incl. Broken Man Falling Man Small Dorways Figure No. 2 Victim Victim Falling Man (woodcut) Summer White ( N G C ) Runners Kiteman-$i J 47 Bourbonnais-Ferron, Monique, 3Z, 138 Boyd, Jim, 100 Brancusi, Constantin, 36011 Brandtner, Fritz, 35nz Bregman and Hamann and Zeidler, 94, 141 British Columbia Central Credit Union, 75, 140 Bronx Museum of Art, 160 Brooklyn Museum, 158 Brussels, World Fair, 150 Buchanan, Donald, zi Burnaby Art Gallery: i6o-z, 164; Print Show, 58, 68, 153, 157, 161 Cadillac, 57 Cadillac Fairview, 94, iz8 Cage, John, 99 Cagnes-sur-mer, International Exhibition, i57 Calder, Alexander, 36n9 Calgary School of Art, 178 California State Univer-

sity, 54-5 Cameron, Dorothy, 54, 129

Index Canada Council, 47, 54, 78; Art Bank, 61, 1x4, 164, 183 Canada House, New York, 155 Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI). See National Science Library Canada Place, Vancouver, 80 Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 180 Canadian Artists Representatives, 91, 101 Canadian Biennial (NGC), 144-5, J55-7, 169-70 Canadian Cultural Centre, New York, 73, 161 Canadian Embassy: Islamabad, 45-6, 139; Washington, DC, 79, 140 Canadian Guild of Potters, 161 Canadian National Exhibition, 55, 157-8 Canadian Society of Graphic Art, 169, 178 Canberra, Australia: "Canadian West Coast Art," 161 Cantel Building, Toronto, 63, 140 Canvas Shack, Vancouver, 68, 160 Carleton University: Art Gallery, 181; Canadian Printmakers' Showcase,

153, 157-8

Carlyle, Anne, 109, iz9, I4Z Carmen Lamanna Gallery, Toronto, 114, 119, izi, 183-3 Carnegie Institute: Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, 151 Carr, Emily, 67, 79, loz Central Technical School, 8z Centre Culturel Canadien, z6, 73-4, 147, 158, i6i-z, 175 Chicago, Judy, 88, 105 Chung Hung, Allen, 131 Cineplex Odeon Corporation: Art Program, 79, 96, 141 Cisansky Victor, 68n9 City of Ottawa Police Station, 107 Commonwealth Arts Festival, Cardiff, i5z Commonwealth Institute: New Gallery, 145 Comtois, Ulysse, 5Z Conceptual Art, 14, 108 Concordia University, 48; Art Gallery, 63, i5z~3, 160, 175 Confederation Building, St. John's, 130 Contemporary Arts Society (CAS), 35 Coop, Isadore, 45-6, 139 Cooper Union Art School, 36 Cormier, Bruno, 18 Coughtry, Graham, 83

Index Cranbrook Academy Art Gallery, 158 Creation, 26 Crouillere, Monique, 133 Crystal Palace Art Gallery, Madrid, 175 Cubism, 13, 34, 83 Dadaists, 83-4 Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, 174 D'Astous, Roger, 24, 138 de Kergommeau, Duncan, 100 Delloye, Charles, 53 Delrue, Denyse. See Galerie Denyse Delrue de Niverville, Louis, 102, 132 Department of External Affairs Art Program, 140 Department of Public Works ( D P W ) Art Program, 8-9, 12, 2.6-7, 45-7, 69-73, 81, 8990, 102-6, 108, 112, 116-20, 127-9, T 3 T , 138-42 Department of Transport (Art for Airports), 8-9, 12-13, 41-2-, 139 Deschenes, Jean-Leon, 45 de Tonnancour, Jacques, 52de Vorzon Art Gallery, Los Angeles, 157, 160 Dick, Gernot, 113, 115 Douglas Gallery, Vancouver, 68, 161 Downstairs Gallery, Edmonton, 165

Drabinsky, Garth, 79 Drummondville, Centre Culturel, 30, 62, 149, 160 Ecole des Beaux Arts: Montreal, 35, 52; Quebec City, 17 Ecole du Meuble, 17-18 Ecology: in women's art, 14, 81, 84, 87-90, 93, 97 Edmonton Art Gallery, 164, 174 Edmonton University Art Gallery, 164 Eloul, Kosso, 54-5, 160 Emily Carr School of Art, 108, 180 Equinox Gallery, Vancouver, 30, 77, 148, 159, 164-5 Erikson, Arthur, 79, 140 Expo'67 (Canadian Expo Corporation), 24, 44, 86, 138-9, 156, 169 Expressionism, 13, 34—5, 4i

Factory 77, Toronto, 182 Fafard, Joe, 68nio Feminism: in art, 14, 20, 31, 81-2, 84, 86-90, 96-7 Perron, Jacques, 16, 20!, 31 Film: experimental, 81, 83-7; "Far Shore" feature film, 91-2; Festival, Ann Arbour, 96; film makers, New York, 84; Film Society, Toronto, 83

209 Fineblit, Shirley, 105, 109-11 Fleming, Martha, 10, 130-1 Forest City Art Gallery, London, 163 Foundation-Janin, 70 Fournelle, Andre, 26 Fry, Ed, 58 Galerie A, Montreal, 148 Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal, 20-1, 44, 12.9, 143-6, !5°, I52-, 156 Galerie Antoine, Montreal, 155 Galerie Apogee, SaintSauveur-des-Monts, 146 Galerie Apollo, Brussels, H3 Galerie Arditti, Paris, 145 Galerie Arnaud, Paris, 21, 144, 156 Galerie Arteck, Montreal, 53, i55 Galerie Calligrammes, Ottawa, 148-9 Galerie Camille Hebert, Montreal, 54, 129, 156 Galerie Continue, Montreal, 148 Galerie Creuse, Paris, 20, 143 Galerie de Montreal, 1467, 157-8 Galerie Denyse Delrue, Montreal, 20, 22, 129,

!43~4, J5 1 , 155 Galerie Dorothea Leonhart, Munich, 15, 23, J

45

2.10

Galerie du Pare, TroisRivieres, 148 Galerie L'Echourie, Montreal, 53 Galerie Frederic Polardi, Montreal, 149 Galerie Gilles Corbeil, Montreal, 30-1, 62, 147-9, 158-60 Galerie du Haut Pave, Paris, 143 Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, 21, 129, 143 Galerie Jeanne Newman, Montreal, 153 Galerie Lacerte & Guimont, Quebec City,

147, 149 Galerie L'Actuelle, Montreal, 53, 155 Galerie Les Deux B, Montreal, 147 Galerie Libre, Montreal, 144 Galerie Kleber, Paris, 144 Galerie Margot Fisher, Grand'Mere, 146 Galerie Michel Bigue, Saint-Sauveur, 149 Galerie Michel Champagne, Quebec City, 146 Galerie Saint-Germain, Paris, 21 Galerie Semia Huber, Zurich, 145 Galerie Sherbrooke, Montreal, 157 Galerie Smith, Brussels, 145-6 Galerie Soixante, Montreal, 145

Index Galerie Ursula Girardon, Paris, 129, 144 Galleria dell' Arte Contemporanea "Brera," Milan, 144 Galleria la Bussola, Turin, 145 Galleria Levi, Milan, 145 Galleria Nationale di Arte Moderna, Rome, 170 Gallery Dresdnere, Toronto, 32, 149 Gallery 101, Ottawa, 180 Gallery Parma, New York, 155 Gallery Pascal, Toronto, 106, 157, 179 Gallery Quan, Toronto, 174 Gauvreau, Claude, 17, 18 Gauvreau, Pierre, 17, 19 Gemini Printmaking Workshop, 5502.0 Gilhooly, David, 68n8 Glenbow Museum, 164 Godwin, Ted, 99 Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv, 157 Government of Canada Building, North York, 112, 116-20 Graphica Gallery, Edmonton, 62, 160 Great Lakes Forest Research Centre, Sault Ste Marie, 46-7, 127,

139, i53 Greenberg, Clement, 99 Greenwich Gallery, Toronto, 83, 150, 169. See also Isaacs Gallery

Greenwin Corporation, 57, 139 Group of Seven, 88 Guggenheim Museum, 58

Hague, The, Business Centre, 181 Hamilton Art Gallery, 48, 96, 152-4, 166, 172, 179, 182 Harbourfront Art Gallery, Toronto, 122, 163-5, X 68, 174, 182-3 Harris, Kaija, 130 Harris, Lawren, 67 Hart House, 24, 146, 169 Hay, Deborah, 69 Hayden, Michael, 27, 73, 90, 92 Hayter, Stanley William, 21 Hebert, Julien, 35ni Hedrick, Robert, 71 Here and Now Gallery, Toronto, 54, 155-6, 169

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, U K , 36, 145, 150 Intermedia, Vancouver, 69 International Centre of Contemporary Art, Montreal, 78, 166 International Civil Aviation Office (ICAO), Montreal, 27-8, 138 Irwin, Steve, 9, 89, 116 Isaacs Gallery, Toronto, 77-8, 83, 86, 91, 94, 151-2, 165, 169, 1724, 177

Index Jean Talon (Statistics Canada) Building, Ottawa, 10, 102-6, 131, 141 Jewish Museum, New York, 170 Jordan Gallery, Toronto, !43 Judd, Donald, 99

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 182 Kowalski, Pjotr, 23 Kubota, Nobuo, 90, 128 La-Chasse Galerie, Toronto, 29, 148 Langstadt, Robert, 41, 48 Lapierre, Louis, 23, 138 Lapointe, Lyne, 10, 130-1 Lazosky, Daniel E., 26, 138 Leduc, Fernand, 19-21, 52. Lefort, Agnes. See Galerie Agnes Lefort Lemieux, Jean-Paul, 17 Leroy, Hugh, 9 Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa, 68-72, 75, 129, 140 Lewis, Glenn, 68 Librairie Tranquille, Montreal, 18, 143 Libreria Einaudi, Rome,

2-3, *45 Linden, David, 38, 39 Lipchitz, Jacques, 36n7 London Public Library and Art Museum ( L P L A M ) , 58, 145, 156, 158

London Regional Art Gallery ( L R A G ) , 174, 178, 182 London 20/20 Gallery, 87, 169 Loranger Twentieth Century Art Gallery, Toronto, 153 Lord, Barry, 50 Loring, Frances, nn22, 34 Lugano, sixth international exhibition of drawings and engravings, 144 Lynch, Colleen, 130 Lytton Art Centre, Los Angeles, 157

McCarthy, Doris, 82 McClung, Nellie, 84, 90, 102 McDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, 183 Mclntosh Memorial Art Gallery, ( u w o ) London, 151, 182 McKay, Art, 99 McMaster University, 48; Art Gallery, 48, 153-4 McNutt, Dawn, 130 Malvina Miller Gallery, San Francisco, 58, 157 Manufacturers Life Insurance, 113, 124-5, I 4 2 Marcks, Gerhard, 4ini8 Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, 157 Marini, Marino, ^^nzz Market Gallery, Toronto, 176

zn

Meetingplace, The, Kitchener-Waterloo, 79, 168 Melbourne, First Australian Sculpture Triennial, 122, 183 Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 166 Mental Health Centre, Toronto, 113, 119-21, 142 Mercure, M., 138 Merton Gallery, Toronto, 48, 101, 153, 178 Mesbur, David K., 141 Monette, Leclerc & Saint Denis, 29, 138 Montreal Metro Art Program: Champ de Mars, 25, 29, 138; Place Bonaventure, 32, 138; Place Vendome, 30, 31, 138 Montreal Museum of Fine Art (MMFA), 17, 19, 144-6, 155-6, 1589, 160—i, 182; AAM, 17, 19, 36, 143, 14951; Gallery xn, 19, 2

S -, 144

Moore, Henry, 36nio Moore Gallery, Hamilton, 149, 153 Moos Gallery: Calgary, 159; Toronto, 61, 145, 157-60 Mount Allison University, 40, 139 Mount Saint-Vincent Art Gallery, Halifax, 166 Mousseau, Jean-Paul, 1819, 22

2.12.

Miihlstock, Louis, 35H5 Murray, Robert, 9 Musee d'art, Joliette, 148 Musee d'art contemporain (MAC), Montreal, 2-6, 29, 57, 146-8, J

53, !56-7, 159. 175 Musee d'art moderne, Paris, 143-4, 146, 170, 181 Musee d'art SaintLaurent, 77, 160, 165 Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts, Lausanne, 170 Musee des Beaux Arts, Montreal. See Montreal Museum of Fine Art Musee du Louvre, Paris, 22, 144

Musee du Quebec, Quebec City, 146-50, 156, 158, 163 Musee Pierre Boucher, Trois-Rivieres, 149 Musee Rodin, Paris, 153 Museo de arte moderna, Mexico, 144 Museu de arte moderna, Sao Paulo, 22, 144 Museum of Civilization, Hull, 181 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 172 Museum of Man (Museum of Nature), Ottawa, 180 National Arts Centre, 108 National Gallery of Canada (NGC), 7, 37, 44, 55. 58, 74, 87-8,

Index 100, 115, 124, 129, i44, i45, 155-7, 162, 169, 171-3, 182; tours organized by, 150-2, 155, 161-3 Nationalism: in women's art, 14, 81-2, 84, 869, 97-8, 104-6, 164, 174 National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 174 National Science Library (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information), Ottawa, 27, 73, 81, 89-90, 128, 131, 141 Neill Wycik Building, Toronto, 55-6, 131, 139 Neo-Dadaists, 83, 169 Neumann, Ernst, 35n4 Newman, Barnet, 99 Newport Harbour Art Museum, 68-9, 161 Nickle Art Museum, Calgary, 165 Nicol, Marion, 68 Noland, Kenneth, 99 Nord Gyllands Kunstmuseum, Copenhagen, 175 Norman McKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, 99, 151, 165, 169, 178 Northways Industrial, Sudbury, 122-3, 142 Nunn-de-Pencier, Veronica, 142

Odalesque Gallery, Victoria, 160 Ogilvy and Hogg McLean and McPhay-

den Associated, 102, 141 Oldenburg, Claes, 85 Olitski, Jules, 99 Ontario Arts Council, 101 Ontario College of Art (OCA), Toronto, 105, 113, 116, 182 Ontario Heritage Foundation, 60 Osaka World Fair, 26,

146, 157 Ott, Carlos, 128 Ottawa, City Hall, 181 Ottawa School of Art, 181 Owen's Art Gallery, Sackville, 114, 182 Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, 170 Palm Springs Desert Museum, 51, 158 Pauline McGibbon Cultural Centre, Toronto, 174, 183 Pellan, Alfred, 35 Performance art, 69, 70 Peterborough Art Gallery, 165-6 Peters and Dubois Associates, 116, 142 Philadelphia Museum of Art, 169 Picasso, Pablo, 88 Place des Arts, Montreal, 26, 41, 61-2, 127, 139-40, 158-9 Place du Portage, Hull, 26, 73, 138 Plasticiens, Les, 13, 22, 5i,58 Pop Art, 69, 84, 86

Index Powerhouse Gallery, Montreal, 174 Prague World Youth Festival, 18 Prent, Mark, 114, 12.1, 183 Printmaking, 21, 55, 58, 62, 144, 146, 148, 152., 157, 158, 160, 178 Private patronage: for art in public places, 7, 8, 39, 50, 57, "3, I2-2-~ 3, 131, 138-41, 182-3 Prix Borduas, 31 Prix Philippe Hebert, 30 Prix Repentigny, 53 Public Art: 3-7, 64-5, 70i, 80,89,97, 12.6, 133; colour in, 6, 14-15, 33, 50; controversies in, 912,, 47, 71, 90, 12.7-8, 131-2; definition of, 37, 98; films in, 96; lighting in, 27,46,72-3; public participation in, 112 Pye and Richards and Bemi & Associates, 141

Repentigny, Rodolphe, 20 Richard Feigen Gallery, New York, 58, 157 Richards, Idwal, 107 Riopelle, Jean-Paul, 19, 20, 22, 145

Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 157 Roberts Gallery, Toronto, !57 Robertson Galleries, Ottawa, 108, 180-1 Rochester University Memorial Art Gallery, 145, 152, 156 Rockland Plaza, Montreal, 39, 131, 139 Rodin, Auguste, 114 Rodman Hall Art Centre, St Catharines, 145-6, 163, 165 Rothman's Art Gallery, Stratford, 155, 171; "People in the Park," 45, 152Rothmans of Pall Mall, 122

Quebec: ministere des affaires culturelles, 24, 31, 138-9; ministere des travaux, 8 Queen's University, 178

Royal Bank Plaza, Toronto, 50, 59, 63, 140 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA), 43, 145, 148, 152, 156-7, 178, 181 Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 12

Rankin, Bill, 70 Rayner, Gordon, 83 Read, Herbert, 23, 34 Redinger, Walter, 9, 10, 131 Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, 174

Saarland Museum, Saarbriicken, 143 Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montreal, 162, 164, 178 Saint-Jean Baptiste Society, 30

213 Saint-Laurent Centre d'art, lie d'Orleans, 146 Saint-Vincent Hospital, Ottawa, 109-10, 127, 129 Salon de la jeune peinture, Montreal, 155 Salon des Surindependants, Paris, 143 Salon International de Paris Sud, 145 Sarnia Public Library and Art Gallery, 154 Saskatchewan Arts Board, 99 Scarborough Guild Inn: "Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture," 174 Sculpture, 19, 34, 36, 40, 44, 54, 95, 108, 1212, 143, 161, 174, 1823; definition of, 112; symposium on, 54, 182-3 Seaport Museum, New York, 84 Seattle Art Museum, 160i Segal, George, 116 Shadbolt, Jack, 99 Sherbrooke University Art Gallery, 147, 150, 156 Shore, Tilbe, Henschel and Irwin, 89, 116, 141 Silcox, David, 56 Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, 161, 164 Smith, Brydon, 100 Snow, Michael, 9, 83-4, 89, 94-5 Society of Canadian Sculptors, 36

214

Speed Museum, Louisville, 54, 85, 156, 169 Spoleto Festival des Deux Mondes, 22, 54, 145, 155 Staniszkis, Joanna, 130 Stanley, K.C., 9 Star system, 9, 12 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 145 Stella, Frank, 55, 99 Stevenson, Captain F.J., 41-2, 139 Stratford Festival Art Exhibition, 144, 146 Strzeminsky, W., 34 Students' Union Art Gallery, Edmonton, 183 Subway art, 6, 13, 15, 25, 30-2, 81, 91-3, 138, 140-1; problems in, 91-3. See also Montreal Metro, Toronto Transit Commission Sudbury District Chamber of Commerce, 1223> T42. Sullivan, Francoise, 18, 27 Superseal, 24-6, 32, 138 Surrealism, 13, 17, 34-5,

106-7, 3*. J 38 Symbolism, 17 Tamarind Printmaking Workshop, 55ni9 Tanaka, George, 108, 109 Tate Gallery, London, UK, 156 Tel Aviv Museum, 171 Terre des Hommes, 148, 157-8 Textil Museum, Krefeld, i75

Index Thorn, Ron, 9 Three Schools for Education through the Arts, Toronto, 100 Time (Canada): Art tour, 158 Tod, Joanne, 6 Toronto Dominion Centre, 130 Toronto Eaton Centre, 8, 94-5, 128, 141 Toronto General Hospital, 63, 140 Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), 50, 59-61, 81, 92-3, 102, 140-1; Glencairn Station, 60i, 140; Spadina Station, 81, 91-3, 141 Trudeau, Pierre Elliott, 86 Universities: as art patrons, 8 University of British Columbia Art Gallery, 67-8, 161-4, 178-9 University of Guelph Art Gallery, 161, 173 University of Montreal, 148, 150 University of Ottawa, 108; Art Gallery, 156 University of Southern Alberta, 164 University of Toronto, School of Architecture, 146, 158 University of Waterloo: Art Gallery, 169; School of Architecture, 129 University of Western Ontario (uwo), 121

Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), 73, 78, 87, 160i, 163-8, 170, 173-4, 178, 182 Vancouver Art School (VAS), 99 Venice: Biennale, 150; La Donna Nell'Arte Contemporanea, 144 VIA Rail (Canada) Inc, 63-4, 96, 140-1 Viau, Guy, 53 Vigneault, Gilles, 87ni2 Visual Arts: Ontario, 3, 4, 8, 178 Walker, Kathleen, 101, 105 Wallack Gallery, Ottawa, 106, 148, 159-60, 179 Warhol, Andy, 69 Waterworks Exhibition, Toronto, 6, 129 Wayne State University Art Gallery, 145 Webb, Zerafa, Menkes and Housden, 59, 70, 140 Westdale Art Gallery, Hamilton, 169 West End Gallery, Edmonton, 62, 159 Willistead Art Gallery, Windsor, 144 Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2-9, 99, 143, J 45» J48, 150-1, 162, 169, 178, 182-3 Winnipeg General Hospital, 41, 139 Wintario, 59 Women's art: 3, 7, 11-14, 33, 58, 63, 74, 80-1, 95, 112, 148, 174;

Inde? conference on, 160; humour in, 74, 88-9, 114; nature in, 23, 95, 180; needlecrafts in, 81, 86-8, 92-3, 97, 175 Workspace/Aspace, Toronto, 181 Woolf, Virginia, 23 Wright, Nina, 59-60, 100

215

34 Wyn Wood, Elizabeth, nn22, 34, 82

116, 169, 171, 173, 183 YYZ Gallery, Toronto, 130, 183

Yale University Art Gallery, 173 York University Art, 129; Art Gallery, 87,

Zadkine, Ossip, 36n8 Zeidler, Jane, 80, 141 Zelenak, Ed, 9, 10, 128, 131

Wyle, Florence, nn22,