A Smattering of Art

By this point in the trip we've experienced the best art the Canadians have to offer. We've been to the the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; The Rooms Museum in St. John's, Newfoundland; the Quebec Fine Arts Museum; The National Gallery in Ottawa; and the Art Gallery of Ontario.  We saw two specialized museums in Toronto:  The Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art as well as the Gardiner Museum of Ceramics.  Some have presented themselves in magnificent buildings which enhanced the whole experience.

The Aga Khan Museum, Toronto

"The Rooms", St. John's, Newfoundland

National Gallery in Ottawa

The Rooms in St. John's wins hands down for its presentation scheme.  They mixed both art and artifacts in their 'rooms' and floors.  It was a very effective presentation.

A whaling exhibition at 'The Rooms'

The Aga Khan was a recommendation by the neighbors at the terrible house we rented in Toronto.  I won't go into what a disaster the place was, but every experience has something good, and the good thing which came out of that rental was we met the next door neighbors.  Sheila and Eugene were lovely people who turned out to be artists and in Eugene's case, a marvelous musician - a banjo player!  He also plays the accordion. They both have been painters, and they are currently collaborating on mosaics which are large decorative pieces suitable for outdoor display.

They suggested the Aga Khan, and we went.  I know zippo about Islamic art, and this museum was both beautiful and instructive.  This was one of the many unique (to me) items in the museum.  This is a page of the 'Blue Koran' - the Koran written in gold leaf on dyed blue parchment in 1000 CE.  I learned quite a bit about Islamic art patterns here.  We also saw a wonderful exhibition about Near Eastern carpets in 17th century European paintings.  They showed the painting and the carpet portrayed - side by side.

All over Canada, we discovered the "Group of Seven" as well as Emily Carr, and Inuit art.  Those three groups alone made our museum time worthwhile.  First, the Group of Seven is just that:  Seven Canadian artists who were all friends, all painters, and who formed a loose association somewhat like the Impressionists did in the 1880's.  This group's time frame is post-impressionist and right at the beginning of modern art. They painted from the end of World War I forward with some of them painted for more than 40 years.  They focused their art on Canadian landscape painting.

We actually took a train tour into a remote area of Canada outside of Sault Ste. Marie.  In the 1920's Lauren Harris, one of the seven, actually rented a railroad car, had it delivered via train to the Agawa Canyon area and proceeded to paint.  His friends (others of the 'seven') were so enthralled with the paintings he produced, they followed him up and stayed in railroad cars for the next few summers, all painting and hanging out together. Their works are often grouped together in the museums, and each Canadian museum owns some of their paintings.  Here's my favorite Harris painting.  He actually went to the Arctic to paint icebergs, and this is what he saw.

Emily Carr is an artist who should have been part of the 'seven', but wasn't due to her location (Pacific Northwest) as well as her sex and her age.  She was older than the seven, and her paintings prior to meeting them were all about preservation of the art of the First People of the Pacific coast.  She painted the desolation of the native villages which had been ravaged by small pox in the 1860's, subsequently abandoned because sometimes the entire village died, and then looted in the 1880's by Europeans.  It is an old story.  In the early 1900s Carr was trying to call attention to the degradation of the Pacific coast native tribes.  In our opinion, her strongest work is her later work after she came in contact with the 'seven'.  She painted this in 1940.

I also fell in love with Inuit art.  Did you know a higher percentage of Inuits are artists than any other culture in the world?  They generally work in traditional materials - stone, ivory, or bone, but their contemporary works often have a whimsical touch.  

  

We also discovered two modern iconic Canadian artists:  Alexander Colville who painted post WWII up until 2012 was that rare artist:  famous in his own lifetime.  We were fortunate to see an entire exhibition of his work.  He bucked the trends of his time which were non-representational.  He painted uber realistically, but as with this painting, is about everything except what the picture actually is.  His wife was his model for the entire life of their 60+ year marriage.  She was less than comfortable with the nude paintings especially when displayed, but she was more uncomfortable with another woman being painted in the nude by her husband!

Christopher Pratt paints Newfoundland.  He's their painter emeritus.  At age 80, he's still criss-crossing Newfoundland in a Range Rover scribbling in notebooks about where he is, what he is seeing, and even what he had for lunch!  Then, he paints.  We saw an entire exhibition of his work, but I couldn't photograph it, so I snitched an image from Google. 

We actually saw this one.  It's called "Beyond Cities and Into the Real".  Pretty much outlines his entire painting philosophy as well as his fellow Newfoundlanders.

In Nova Scotia, I found a primitive artist who tickled me.  I like primitive art.  This is the type of art which comes from the souls of artists who are usually not formally trained.  The guy I saw in Nova Scotia is called Joe Norris.  Here's the piece that caught my interest.  It's a 1930's vanity repurposed as a piece of art.

The Gardiner Museum in Toronto was right in my sweet spot - ceramics (AKA pottery).  A Toronto couple went crazy and within a 10 year period put together a world class collection which they then gave to the city along with a museum to house it in and the money to keep it up.  I loved the Japanese section as well as the Contemporary section of this museum.   Here are two of my favorite pieces.

 

This piece is Japanese porcelain circa 1670, and it's called 'Banded Hedge'. 

 My favorite contemporary piece is as much about the "empty space as it is about the ceramics". That's a direct quote from the artist. (Can you see the children?)  This takes amazing wheel control as well as an aesthetic sense, and isn't that art at its best?

The unexpected art of the trip was religious.  Those Roman Catholics in Quebec built some really nice churches.  Some were so special they have been designated 'basilicas' by the Pope.  Here's the altar area of the Notre Dame Basilica of Upper Quebec City

I also have a soft spot for stained glass windows, especially those of the Nativity.  I mean, who doesn't like Christmas?  

Best outdoor art goes, hands down, to Quebec City.  They had the best statues and the best mural I've seen this trip.  Here's a history of Quebec City in a nutshell, well, actually, in a wall.

I especially like Champlain (guy in front and center) - founder of Quebec City, who left behind no picture of himself, so the City just made up a likeness - and that's officially Champlain.  Some of the most influential people in Quebec City were the Ursuline nuns in the upper right window.  They came to Quebec in the 1680's.  The two guys on the balcony are the two Quebecians who were instrumental in crafting the Confederation of Canada in 1867 - joining of all the provinces into one country.  This magnificent piece is painted in the tromp 'de oeil style - meaning it looks 3D on the side of a five story building in Lower Old Quebec.  

The Ursuline Convent/Church in Quebec City had one of my favorite exhibits - embroidery.  Apparently, the 'mother convent' in France sent over to Quebec City in the early 1700's a woman whose family were master embroiderers in Paris.  She became a nun, and drawing on the skills taught her by her family, she ran an embroidery workshop for the Quebec City Convent for over 40 years.  The exhibit was a display of the religious coverings for altars, priests, etc. she masterminded and then supervised the crafting of.  Naturally, they wouldn't let me photo any of it.

Those who really know me realize I could go on and on and on.  And, yes, I have a zillion pictures of the art I've seen across Canada. I decided to go with the smattering approach in the blog, so no one would be bored witless by lots and lots of pictures of pictures, and statues, and sculptures, and ceramics, and decorative arts, and, and, and....  I didn't even mention the 'lesser' museums we saw everywhere including the Sault Ste. Marie Art Museum which is 40 years old and proudly displaying the highlights of what they've bought over the last 40 years.  Now, that was interesting.  My favorite piece from that museum is by an unknown artist

Finally, I'll leave you with a piece of outdoor art, well, it's outdoors at least.  It's the BIG NICKEL in Sudbury, Ontario, the center of the nickel industry of North America, if not the world.  Not sure this is art, but it's sure distinctive, and I wanted to see it!