UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Decolonizing the Story of Art in Canada: A Storied Approach to
Art for an Intercultural, More-Than-Human World
by
Troy Patenaude
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
CALGARY, ALBERTA
AUGUST, 2014
© Troy Patenaude 2014
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Abstract
The master narrative dominating the field of Canadian art history has continually privileged Eurocentric, colonialist ways of knowing. Many art historians and critics have called for a new story, but nothing to date has been proposed. This dissertation marks the first attempt at re-envisioning the story of art in Canada. It enacts a broader and deeper context of cross-cultural and social-ecological relationships for our art encounters.
I discuss conventional cross-cultural approaches to art in Canada and then
develop a new approach that I call the storied approach. This approach acknowledges that our art and how we talk about it is, and occurs first within the context of, a story. The storied approach takes seriously that stories animate our lives. It recognizes the performative power of art, and not just its representational quality. It recognizes the phenomenological root of art and story not as the social world alone, but as our morethan-human world within which we circulate. And it draws on the most salient features of postcolonial criticism, while also acknowledging contributions from our colonial past (and present).
In this vein, I interweave story and other voices complementing that of the
conventional art historian’s/critic’s while, first, bringing the storied approach to bear on the art and criticism of Lucius O’Brien, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, and Paul-Émile Borduas. This is not because I consider these three to be the most important
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artists in Canada, but because these artists have already been privileged as central figures in the current story of Canadian art.
Second, I open up the discussion further by attending to the art experiences of
various members of an art audience. This allows the stories unfurling through our artworks to breathe in everyday life—the ultimate “story” of art in Canada—from the ground up, here. This larger, living story, we find, is and always has been an indigenously oriented one. European art practices and ideologies have been and are animated by, and nested within, this indigenously oriented story of here, not the other way around.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to all the artists and art lovers who inspired me, and agreed to participate with such grace and enthusiasm in this project. I would especially like to acknowledge Heather Shillinglaw, Aaron Paquette, Chris Flodberg, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Alex Janvier, Mark Lawes, Tanya Harnett, and Dawn Marie Marchand. I feel honoured that throughout various stages of this project our working relationship has deepened into a friendship. I look forward to the possibility of sharing in our important work in the future. Many others along the way had to put up with my incessant hounding for weeks before we were finally able to settle on mutuallyagreeable times for interviews, paperwork, and meetings. Although I cannot name all of these people here, I am forever indebted to your kindness, generosity, and openness in sharing/co-creating your beautiful art stories with me. I myself have been touched, moved, and inspired by them, and pray that I have done them justice here.
My sincere thanks goes out to my PhD supervisors, Frits Pannekoek and David
Mitchell. Your time, help, and encouragement throughout this entire doctoral process, and especially during my editing stages, was indispensable. Thank you for your calmness, guidance, and always managing to make things seem more achievable and doable than I myself sometimes believed them to be. I also thank the rest of my examining committee members for their well-placed questions, thoughtful feedback, and
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words of encouragement: Betty Bastien, Tamara Seiler, Aritha van Herk, and Gerald McMaster.
I am also deeply grateful for the financial support received at various times for
this project from the university’s Department of Communication and Culture, the family and friends of Carl O. Nickle, Alberta Natural Gas Co. Ltd., the Province of Alberta Advanced Education Endowment Fund, the Pepsi Bottling Group, and various personal sponsors. I also offer up gratitude to the various research helpers and contacts I had at various galleries, museums, and archives along the way, especially Jessica Stewart with the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives.
Although much of this project may at first seem to aspire to live without
conventional Eurocentric art history all together, this is not the case. I challenge many Canadian art historians throughout this dissertation, but not because I think their work is of no value. Rather, I do this because I ultimately want the core of their projects to succeed. That is, I recognize that embedded within both our stories is a profound love and passion for the arts and their crucial role in our societies. I deeply honour this relationship most and merely hope to enhance it so even more wonders and gifts may begin to be glimpsed through encounters with our art. I acknowledge that the story I begin to tell here is only possible because of your stories. In this vein, I wish to thank some of the important Canadian art historians upon whose shoulders I humbly stand, and whose stories have helped animate and deepen my own in various ways: Dennis Reid, J. Russell Harper, Tom Hill, Gerald McMaster, Marilyn J. McKay, John O’Brian,
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Peter White, Ruth B. Phillips, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Leslie Dawn, Terrence Heath, Roald Nasgaard, Virginia Berry, Anna Hudson, Anne Newlands, David Burnett, and Patricia Halkes.
The work and stories of many other scholars and researchers have been
indispensable to the summoning up of my own story here as well. I wish especially to thank: Jo-ann Archibald, David Abram, Bill Plotkin, Arthur W. Frank, Alan Paskow, Barbara Bolt, Leanne Simpson, Taiaike Alfred, Betty Bastien, Marie Battiste, James Youngblood Henderson, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Doreen Jensen, and Basil Johnston.
This dissertation was written within curvatures of time and space ever unfurling
into the storied landscapes now known as Vancouver Island, the B.C. Rockies, and the western prairies. I am fully aware that while within these animate locales I was walking within very old footsteps, and that nothing I could have thought or written in these places could have ever come from me alone. As such, I thank Mother Earth and the larger story always encompassing me within the particular rhythms of these places. I also humbly thank the Saanich and Cowichan peoples and ancestors, the Ktunaxa peoples and ancestors, and the Nakoda and Siksikaitsitapi and ancestors, for accepting me into the above places, and care-taking them for millennia so that they could help breathe life into our awarenesses here in the myriad ways that they continue to do.
Finally, I want to thank my family—mom, dad, Tyler, and Melaina—my
grandparents—Lillian, Leo, Chuck, Irene, Bob, and George—and all of our relatives and ancestors, from the bottom of my heart. In walking your paths with so much strength,
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love, hardship, and authenticity, you carry me in mine. I am forever grateful for the endless support, patience, and guidance you show and have shown me. I hope this work is truthful, kind, and good for our family. May I continue to walk in this more-thanhuman world as you have taught me: gently, with my heart in my feet. And Sarah, you were exactly the inspiration I needed to get this project finally finished. For this and so much more I am forever indebted to you. Thank you for stepping into this beautiful story with me after so long. I deeply cherish any time I get to walk, or dance in it with you.
Marsee pour la diresyoon itayha chimiyouitayhtamak, li shmaen chee
oushtawyawk pour lee vyeu chee awpachihayakook, li zhen chee kishnamawachik pour li tawn ki vyaen.
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To ALL OUR ARTISTS here on Mother Earth
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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….……………..ii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..iv
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………viii
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………….ix
List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………xi
P ………………………………………….……………………….………..…………..1
ROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION………..……………………………..………………………….9
The Discipline of Canadian Art History……………………………………….……..12
The Scope of this Dissertation……………………………………………………….23
Some Important Definitions…………………………………………………………..43
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………….……………55
Fixing the Hole in the Sky…………………………………………………………….55
Cross-Cultural Approaches to Art………………………….…………………………62
Cultural Inclusivity in Canadian Art History………………………….………………64
The Isolated Culture in Canadian Art History………………………….……………76
Postcolonial Criticism in Canadian Art History………………………….…………..88
CHAPTER THREE: THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT IN THIS PROJECT………………………..100
The Crystal Ball………………………………………….…………………………..100
The Storied Approach to Art………………………………………..……………….106
Some Further Clarification for the Storied Approach…………………..…………130
The Research Project………………………………………………………………..133
CHAPTER FOUR: BREATHING LIFE INTO ANOTHER STORY OF ART…………………………146
Transformation….………………..…………………………………………………..146
The Conventional Story of Art………………………….…………………………..156
Lucius O’Brien and the Roots Beneath Canadian Painting……………………..162
O’Brien’s Indigenously Oriented Story……………………………………………..220
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CHAPTER FIVE: THE UNFURLING RHYTHMS OF THE STORY OF ART..…..…..……………..240
The Story Creating the Creation of Adam Creating Stories……………..………240
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven from the Ground Up……………………250
Borduas: Beyond the Group and Landscape from the Ground Up….………….296
CHAPTER SIX: ALLOWING ART TO TAKE ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN…..…..………..…………334
Being Swallowed by a New Story.………………………………………….………334
The Indigenous Orientation of Experiencing Art…………………………………..343
Alberta Art Experience Stories I….…………………………………………………352
Alberta Art Experience Stories II….………………………………………………..366
EPILOGUE…………………..…………………………………………………….……………398
The Story of Art in Canada……………………………………….…………………398
A Brief Word on Aboriginal Art in Canada………………………………………….405
Directions for Future Research…………………………………..…………………417
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………423
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………..456
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………498
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List of Illustrations
FIGURE 1. Aaron Paquette, Transformation, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35.6 x 27.9 cm.
Private Collection…………………………………………………………………….150
FIGURE 2. Map of southern Ontario with key places mentioned in this dissertation. Troy
Patenaude…………………………………………………………………………….169
FIGURE 3. Marmaduke Matthews, Hermit Range, Rocky Mountains, c.1888. Watercolour
on paper. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (34060)………………………………..193
FIGURE 4. Lucius O’Brien, Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel, 1887.
Watercolour over graphite on wove paper, 35.8 x 51.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto (13483)………………………………………………………………………194
FIGURE 5. Lucius O’Brien, View from Pinnacle Rock, Eastern Townships, 1873.
Watercolour on paper, 33.0 x 45.7 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s
University, Kingston, ON. Gift of the Estate of Mrs. R.F. Segsworth, 1944
(00-266)……………………………………………………………………………….196
FIGURE 6. Lucius O’Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874. Watercolour on paper, 74.3 x 49.9
cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of the Government of Ontario, 1972
(72-19)…………………………………………………………………………………200
FIGURE 7. Unknown artist after Princess Louise, View from the Platform Looking Down
Upon the Town and Harbour, 1882. Wood engraving on paper, 19.3 x 12.8 cm.
From “Québec, Pictures from my Portfolio,” Good Words 23 (1882): 219.
Courtesy of Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University……………………………204
FIGURE 8. Lucius O’Brien, View from the King’s Bastion, Québec, 1881. Oil on canvas,
91.6 x 61.0 cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
(405305)……………………………………………………………………………….205
FIGURE 9. Lucius O’Brien, Québec from Point Levis, 1881. Oil on canvas, 56.1 x 112.0
cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014
(404834)……………………………………………………………………………….206
FIGURE 10. Lucius O’Brien, Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River, 1882. Oil on canvas,
83.9 x 121.7 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (4255)…………………..210
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FIGURE 11. William Armstrong, Kakabeka Falls and Portage, 1871. From Canadian
Illustrated News 4.15 (7 October 1871): 232-33. Courtesy Thunder Bay Historical
Museum Society (976.100.1F)……………………………………………………..214
FIGURE 12. Lucius O’Brien, Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity, 1880. Oil on canvas,
90.0 x 127.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (113)……………………228
FIGURE 13. William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795/c.1805. Planographic colour
print with watercolour, pen, and ink. 43.1 x 53.6 cm. Tate Gallery, London……242
FIGURE 14. Mildred Valley Thornton, Manitouwassis, 1929. Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 66.0
cm. Private collection………………………………………………………………..270
FIGURE 15. Mildred Valley Thornton, Mary George, “Old Mary”, c.1943. Oil on board,
50.8 x 35.6 cm. Private collection………………………………………………….270
FIGURE 16. Mildred Valley Thornton, The Touchwood Hills, c.1930. Oil on canvas, 76.1 x
91.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of J.M. Thornton, Vancouver,
1971 (16858)………………………………………………………………………….271
FIGURE 17. Mildred Valley Thornton, Across the Inlet, n.d. Oil on board, 24.8 x 32.4 cm.
Private collection……………………………………………………………………..272
FIGURE 18. Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1916-17. Oil on canvas, 120.7 x 137.2 cm.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (3295)……………………………………………..278
FIGURE 19. Paul-Émile Borduas, L’étoile noire, 1957. Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 129.5 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montreal. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Lortie
(1960.1238)…………………………………………………………………………..329
FIGURE 20. George Simon, Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph], 2006. Acrylic
on paper, 55.0 x 35.0 cm. Private Collection…………………..………………….339
FIGURE 21. Peter von Tiesenhausen, Ship, 1993. Woven willow, rocks, and trees. 33.5 x
6.1 x 4.9 m. Demmitt, Alberta……………………………………………………….355
FIGURE 22. Heather Shillinglaw, Medicine Pouches, 2009. Mixed media (acrylic, seed
beads, leather, drapery, gels, romance novels, sewing patterns) on canvas, 50.8
x 40.6 cm. Private Collection.……………………………………………………….359
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FIGURE 23. Chris Flodberg, Double Image Catharsis II, 2005. Oil on canvas, 137.2 x
106.7 cm. Private Collection…………….…………………………………………..363
FIGURE 24. Chris Flodberg, Late Summer Reflections, c.2004. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x
152.4 cm. Location unknown………………………………………………………..376
PROLOGUE
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PROLOGUE
Indigenous scholars Graham Smith and Margaret Kovach have argued for the usefulness of a prologue to research involving Indigenous issues. In Kovach’s words:
A prologue is a function of narrative writing that signifies a prelude. It
encompasses essential information for the reader to make sense of the story to follow...It is a precursory signal to the careful reader that woven throughout the varied forms of our writing—analytical, reflective, expository—there will be story, for our story is who we are.1
This prologue will introduce not only information by which the reader can make sense of the story to follow, but it will also introduce me, the storyteller. I am an integral part of this research process, which cannot be separated from who I am. The use of the pronoun “I” here (and throughout this dissertation), reflects this awareness, as well as— following another Indigenous scholar, Shawn Wilson—my intention to build a relationship with the reader.2 This will not only help to establish a relationship between the reader and the story to follow, but also help link the research and story to the everyday lives of people and communities around me. It will, I hope, cultivate an awareness of the link between freedom and responsibility, academia and communities, in response to recent calls for such awareness.3
My name is Troy Patenaude. I am of Métis and British-Canadian heritage. My
father is Métis and his ancestors come from the land and nations of the Anishinabeg and Wendat peoples in central/northern Ontario, where I was born, and where they were intermixed with European (mostly French and Scottish) lineages over the years. I
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can trace these roots in what is now called Canada back for over 330 years. Moreover, I continue to walk in the footsteps of my Métis ancestors, particularly those from the Penetanguishene Métis community. This was a close-knit and distinct community of voyageurs, fur traders, hunters, fishers, interpreters, backcountry guides, and lumbermen with “roots in the frontier of the Upper [Great] Lakes.”4 This community grew up around the “wilderness home” of my ancestors, one of the “Big Four” pioneer fur traders who helped establish what is now called Penetanguishene on Georgian Bay.5 Today, my own life work, like that of my ancestors, includes being a bilingual wilderness guide, as well as a nature-based educator, and youth worker out of my off-the-grid home in the main ranges of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Here, I also share with people ancestral skills—such as friction fire, flint knapping, cordage and basket making —as well as help facilitate cultural and intercultural sharing programs with various Indigenous Elders and community leaders. Many of the skills and life-ways my Métis ancestors required to live in their nature-based community were passed down from generation to generation, coming to me through my parents as we continued to grow into our own articulation of this old story.
My mother’s parents are the children of European immigrants who came from the
northern lands of Great Britain. Although this branch of my ancestry has only been in Canada for a few generations, I honour both my Métis and British-Canadian ancestors and have also lived in England (and other parts of Europe), for many years during my early days of graduate study. Like many Métis people over the generations in Canada,
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my ancestors were eventually “forced to choose between being either White or First Nation,” especially by the end of the nineteenth century.6 Out of necessity, therefore, we came to be largely raised within the traditions of our non-Aboriginal relatives. The lineages, stories, and ceremonies of my Métis and First Nations ancestors were not known or discussed at all as I was growing up, even though I was raised almost completely out in the bush.
On the one hand, I may be seen as one of those problematic types of people in
Canada who, according to Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred, can stand in the way of a full-scale decolonization and self-determination process because of my white skin and complex identity situation, which makes me a prime candidate to “co-operate with government efforts to eliminate indigenous nations as political forces.”7 But on the other hand, whether my “Aboriginal” status is strictly state defined from the top down (which is Alfred’s issue), or not, this heritage means much more to me than just the ability to “receive benefits and legal entitlement to the resources of indigenous nations.”8 Furthermore, to put it simply, I choose not to cut myself off from my ancestors. It makes me very sad to think about the fact that some of my ancestors were forced to have to do this at one time, and felt they needed to hide a part of who they were in order to have a better life. However “far back” in linear time that may have been is irrelevant to me because it is, regardless, a link in the chain that brought me here, makes me who I am, and is, therefore, a very real aspect of now. I choose not to perpetuate the cycle of forgetting a part of who I am.
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This mixed heritage, for me, has far more to do with: (1) my learning about who I
am in my fullness, and in relation to the continually living and diverse world around me; and (2) to healing the unresolved issues of my ancestors, who are all still alive, with much yet to contribute today, through me and the ways in which I live my life from the ground up. This dissertation is one of the contributions I have to share from this “place,” which is as much social-ecological as it is academic. Alfred, to be fair, is not necessarily faulting “Aboriginal” people like me, per se. His issue, rather, is with what he regards as an arrogant, top-down, colonial system and mentality in Canada that allows me to be, in the eyes of many uninformed Canadians, recognized as “Aboriginal.” In this regard, we are much more allies in a decolonization process. My story here, however, emphasizes less the role of the top-down political structure itself, and more that of the common ground beneath all our feet: the living, breathing, earth. Accounting for the overarching political structure is no doubt an important part of a decolonization process, as it is perhaps the clearest expression or manifestation of the differences between Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian cultures. Focusing all our attention here, however, can also conceal the equally-present, more universal connection and similarities between Indigenous and Western peoples, despite the differences. Such holism, as Alfred points out, is also the Original Instruction of the Tekani Teioha:te (Two Row Wampum),9 and importantly includes both social and ecological systems, themselves interdependent with each other.
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For almost twenty-five years now, since my family’s continuing westerly migration
into the Rocky Mountains (we have been in Alberta for over thirty years), I have lived out in the forests and mountains, completely off-the-grid, for at least six months each year. I have learned, by necessity, about the work and practicalities of living on the land in a respectful and reciprocal way. This is my home. I have also learned to share it in various ways with people from all cultures—Indigenous and non-Indigenous, through my life’s work. Almost every day of my life I get to experience how humans interact with the more-than-human world, and learn about the myriad ways in which this relationship matters in the lives of all peoples, wherever “home” is to them. I have come to the awareness that an element of this connection between peoples is rooted in all of our embodied, phenomenological, “animal” relationships with the earth, whatever the ideologies, and whatever the stories, that we subsequently use to make intellectual “sense” of it. In this way, the natural world is and always has been all peoples’ greatest teacher and healer. Indeed, some peoples have forgotten about this original relationship, emphasizing and living instead through ideologies (one kind of story), that seem ever separate and outside of it, even when trying not to be. However, as cultural ecologist and environmental philosopher, David Abram, has shown, the ever-shifting, pulsing, “metamorphic” depths of the earth, are always “opened to us, still, by our animal senses” and bodily participation in it.10 It is impossible for this not to be the case —we have bodies; we have to breathe in the shifting invisible air; we also have to give it back to the world; we have feet and have to move on the ground. It has even been
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demonstrated that our “global culture of the internet and the cosmopolitan culture of the book both depend, for their integrity, upon the place-based conviviality of a thriving oral culture [the face-to-face sharing of living stories that are not written down, and which give form to our instinctive reciprocity between our senses and the sensuous earth].”11
Contrary to what some seem to believe today, this human relationship with the
more-than-human world did not just suddenly (or not-so-suddenly) end for all Western and Westernized people, while it continued alive and well for everyone else. Because the living earth is always opened up to our animal senses, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, there have been people from the West, despite the strong ideological currents working against them, who have been able to glimpse and come back into awareness with this fundamental relationship in their lives in as much a way possible at the time. Rather than just a simple linear progression from primitive connection with the earth to increased disconnection from it through the progress of Western science and technology, I see the human-nature relationship as ebbing and flowing with more circularity and nuance, within individual lives, communities, and ages, even in the West. Of course, at some stages in this unfolding story (perhaps even more frequently than not), humans and the more-than-human world have seemed irreconcilable, completely separate, with a great, seemingly impassable, chasm in between. On closer look, however, there have also been occasions in Western lives, spirituality, philosophies, and arts where this has not been the case, where the chasm has not been so wide, nor so deep, and definitely not so impassable.12
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In Canada, Indigenous peoples (as they have everywhere), are and have largely
always been aware of this interdependent and participatory relationship. There is also another group of people here, however, who have been much less discussed in such a phenomenological way, even though they have persistently exemplified a shifting and storied relationship with the more-than-human world: our artists. The linkage between Canadian art—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—and the human relationship with the land has been well documented, and nature is generally considered to be the quintessential theme or reference point of art in Canada. My mother is an artist and I grew up in a home where aesthetic concerns, creativity, the social-ecological power of beauty, and a storied existence were not just intellectual pursuits, but a way of life. It amazes me, however, that when reading through the field of Canadian art historical literature the predominant impression left is one of Canadian artists (particularly Euro-Canadian ones), as largely disembodied intellects—hardly anything more than European brains with paint brushes. In such a story, their ideological inheritance almost always trumps their living, breathing interaction with the sensuous world around them through their bodies; their capability (not always actualized), of storying (with) the local earth; and of “tapping the primordial wellspring of culture, replenishing the practice of wonder that lies at the indigenous heart of all culture.”13 The story to follow is about precisely this. It proposes another story of art in Canada, one that is grounded in a cross-cultural systems paradigm instead of just a European-based one, in order to help empower
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Canadian artists’ stories, and awaken the imagination of our bodies within the animate life of the earth here.
In the Spring of 2010, I got my first opportunity to meet and talk with one of
Canada’s most important painters, Dene Suline/Saulteaux artist, Alex Janvier. I was nervous, intimidated, and fumbling over my words way more than I would have liked, but our conversation—at one point centring on this doctoral research—turned interestingly towards the topic of love. I mentioned off-handedly that maybe the story of my research, then, could be characterized as ultimately a love story about art in the everyday lives of Canadians. He immediately quipped a witticism that made me stop and think: “hmmm, it must be a short story,” he said with a chuckle.14 Janvier has been doing this a lot longer than I have, so, indeed, there is a truth to this, I know. But I would also like to start changing this story. I believe it is time. For without art and its stories, it becomes exceedingly more difficult to really know our own life story, nor can we ever really imagine ourselves as the integral contributors to this socio-ecologically diverse world around us that we are.
CHAPTER ONE
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CHAPTER ONE:
INTRODUCTION
In 1973, Canadian art historian Dennis Reid opened his important contribution to Canadian art history with the observation that:
of all the arts in Canada, painting is the one that most directly presents the Canadian experience. Painters in Canada have consistently reflected the moulding sensibility of the age: a history of their activities inevitably describes the essence of our cultural evolution.15
While I agree that visual artists in Canada have told and do collectively tell the story of “the Canadian experience” and “the essence of our cultural evolution,” I am not convinced that their story, as it has been generally encapsulated by many art historians over the decades, comes close to grasping this experience in its fullness. In a collaborative presentation by British-Canadian art historian Anna Hudson, and Iroquois artist and curator Jeff Thomas, Hudson expressed my sentiment with a powerful statement. After questioning the Canadian artworld for continuing to re-inscribe a colonial history, she realized that: “I was really looking for a way out [of this crisis]...this canon wasn’t speaking to me either. It didn’t seem to represent who I felt I was” (my emphasis).16 She proceeded to describe how she had to learn “to trust in the personal,” and allow herself “to look at historical works imaginatively.”17 The discipline of art history, she recognized, “takes that sense of imagination away.”18 Thomas, on the other hand, as an Indigenous person, was always raised within a richly storied life, and with an
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awareness for his responsibility “to tell [his] own story.” He was also always made aware of his ancestral history and how it evolved and evolves through present-day actions and behaviours. In their words, Thomas already “came from that way [of imagination and story].”19 Hudson, however, “had to learn it.” She did so, she says, by learning how to “unlearn the discipline a bit.”20
This dissertation attempts to re-envision another story of art in Canada, by
exploring Canadian art history through a lens more beholden to Indigenous ways of knowing than European ones. It explores some aspects of Canadian art and its history by unlearning the discipline a bit, then allowing the art that has emerged here to breathe in its fullness—with imagination, life, holistic depth, and dynamic synergy. It opens up the field of Canadian art history to voices beyond those of the conventional Western art historian and theorist in Canada. Not in an attempt to resolve contests, or re-finalize art in Canada within what is merely another bland oneness, but to welcome a proliferation of possibilities and “have some effect on whether and how long people listen to each other’s stories and how open they are to those stories.”21 It argues that the discipline of Canadian art history, particularly its branch of more evaluative art criticism, would greatly benefit from a work that emphasizes a more cross-cultural approach than is often allowed by the dominant story of visual art in Canada. It proposes that a “storied” approach is such an approach. Ultimately, by bringing a storied approach to art in Canada, this dissertation aspires toward another story of art. This other story would compliment our mainstream story so that we are no longer limited by a master narrative
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that continues to reinforce and perpetuate a colonial history, a story that for many people—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—no longer fits, or should fit.
As a result, one of the processes enacted by this story is a movement of
decolonization. I will return to this concept in my list of definitions below. For now, suffice it to say that this re-envisioned story of art will be able to account for our colonial history, so that we can be ever aware of it and how it is evolving, but it will not be dominated or inevitably determined by it. Nor will it be shaped top-down by its abstracted Eurocentric image. As Okanagan artist and educator Jeanette Armstrong reminds us, “lies need clarification, truth needs to be stated, and resistance to oppression needs to be stated, [but] without furthering division and participation in the same racist measures” (my emphasis).22 The mainstream story of art in Canada—often even in its postcolonial critical approaches, as we will see—fails to do the latter in Armstrong’s statement almost every time. Conversely, the re-envisioned story of art in Canada here will be more like, in the words of Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew, “a shared narrative of our collective reality (past and present).”23 It will be a story, in other words, that can balance multiple truths, or more to the point: performatively tell the truth that there are multiple truths.24
I base the storied approach to art in Canada on the important work of Stó:lō
storyteller and educator Jo-Ann Archibald, and socio-narratologist Arthur W. Frank. The disciplinary boundary lines of Canadian art history have, even when trying not to, consistently undermined the full power that Indigenous ways of knowing can and do contribute to our experience and understanding of art in Canada. A storied approach to
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art in Canada does not just point out some more instances in Canadian art history where Aboriginal artists have been excluded, misunderstood, or have adopted Western art practices. Rather, it empowers Aboriginal voices, ways of knowing, and arts in the (re)telling of a completely new kind of story altogether. One that is necessarily far less beholden to Eurocentric thought because it is firmly, and always already performatively, rooted in the emergent, phenomenological, and diverse social-ecological reality of here.
The Discipline of Canadian Art History Mainstream Canadian art history, in primarily using “the nation state” (itself a Eurocentric concept), as its point of departure, can too easily obscure ways Canadian art has developed across boundaries of places and times existing outside the dominant Eurocentric art historical paradigm. Doing so, it often fails to fully account for the potential of art in Canadian contexts, which are rich in cultural and ecological life and diversity, and which, at least in part, also exist outside Eurocentric knowledge structures. In a recent cross-cultural exploration of literary culture in North America and Britain, comparative studies historian, Tim Fulford, and literary eco-critic, Kevin Hutchings, introduced us to what they called “the Indian Atlantic.”25 They characterize this as the complex, enriching, and shifting cross-cultural relationship between Britain, Canada, and USA in the early nineteenth century, where Indigenous peoples played a mutual, crucial, and active (though unequal) role in shaping Canadian and transatlantic literary culture.26 Their work presents an important intervention in various cultural,
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literary, and social sciences fields by demonstrating what they consider to be the need to supersede current Eurocentric paradigms whose hardened disciplinary boundary lines, even though acknowledged as outdated, continue to thrive de facto through their institutionalization. In doing so, these disciplines, according to Fulford and Hutchings, ignore the full cross-cultural complexity of Canadian literary culture, and perpetuate the colonial and racist ideology positing that “a supposedly distinct national character was carved out of a common culture and intermingled identity by creating false oppositions.”27 I propose that a similar intervention is required in the field of Canadian art history. For while the discipline has increasingly attempted to address cross-cultural issues more directly, in both the museum and the literature, its current Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines are also unable to account for many cross-cultural and social-ecological complexities in the story of Canadian visual art.
A recent discussion about placing Aboriginal art in the National Gallery of Canada
(NGC), by art historian Anne Whitelaw, illustrates my point. Whitelaw analyzes various Aboriginal and Canadian art exhibitions alongside the dominant Western art categories and Canadian art historical narrative framing them. Each exhibition in its own way attempted to overcome through their displays the cultural hierarchy inherent in Western art categories. Display choices were often based on lessons learned from the failures of similar exhibitions before them. Whitelaw takes this historical groundwork and then applies it to the essay’s primary focus: the NGC’s attempt at displaying Aboriginal art in its new Canadian and Aboriginal art galleries opened in 2003. She concludes that
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“While the acknowledgement of the importance of Aboriginal material culture is admirable, the display of Canadian and Aboriginal art in these galleries is not a complete success.”28 She states that, despite the important attempts to do so, the NGC does not escape framing Aboriginal art in terms that are only resonant within Western conceptions of artistic value. The best case scenario Whitelaw presents is that the NGC’s displays are an “entry point” for further rethinking and necessary cross-cultural dialogue.29 This example characterizes the fate also shared by many other Canadian art historical projects that are part of a rising revisionist trend in the field. While “admirable” for their sensitivity to Aboriginal and ecological issues, and their reflexive attempts to overcome inherent problems with the discipline of art history itself, my claim is that they are just not enough. It would be helpful to explore this more with some examples of revisionist Canadian art history.
☈⊕♁ To be clear, I am not suggesting that the discipline of art history as we know it needs to be completely replaced or jettisoned in Canada altogether. On the contrary, it is an important part of the story, but it needs to be complemented, or deepened and broadened, by other voices on and with art in Canada; one with less fundamental attachment to colonial thought, and more openness toward other ways of knowing. Even when Canadian cultural and ecological diversity is addressed in recent revisionist works, it is often still only just an “entry point.” My hope is to begin the conversation
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where we are no longer just standing on the doorstep, but rather now completely through the doorway and fully inside of our (new) home, or story. As many cultural theorists have pointed out in their own ways, we cannot catch a full glimpse of the process fuelling the habits and prejudices structuring our thoughts by gazing “toward that origin from within the midst of the very civilization it engendered.”30 A short discussion of two important works in recent Canadian art history—one focusing on Aboriginal art and cultures, another on Euro-Canadian landscape art—will further illustrate this point.
Ruth B. Phillips, one of Canada’s most important art and cultural historians, in
her contribution to the recent volume on The Visual Arts in Canada (2010), discusses Aboriginal art in between 1880 and 1970. For her, this is the “most oppressive period in the history of colonization.”31 She begins with an introduction about the challenges in writing and “righting” Aboriginal art history amidst the dominant Eurocentric paradigm structuring the discipline of art history itself. While clearly very knowledgeable about Aboriginal art, and thankful for the newer revisionist models of art history allowing us to do better justice to it, she nevertheless admits that her “approach continues to reflect Euro-Canadian dichotomies [such as art/craft and traditional/modern].” She justifies this by saying that it accords “with the historical reality of colonial power relations, which forced Aboriginal peoples to work through imposed concepts of art.”32 Indeed, this oppressive historical reality happened, and it is, of course, crucial that the discipline of art history account for this and the ways in which art history itself was complicit and
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resistant. Phillips’s essay is a leading example of how to unpack all of this in an empowering and respectful disciplinary way. On one level, however, a de facto and rhetorical use of an admittedly oppressive methodological structure can still never do full justice to Aboriginal art, nor our understanding of it, no matter how attentive to the complex relationships of power embroiling it. Rather, it fundamentally continues to perpetuate that same oppressive structure. Phillips’s essay is certainly sensitive to cross-cultural issues and Canada’s cultural and ecological diversity, but it also strikes me as profoundly insensitive when viewed in this larger picture.
To further elaborate on one of these issues, art history’s disciplinary boundary
lines lock Phillips’s discussion and Aboriginal art into a linear understanding of history. Phillips’s objective focus on a (not so) distant past, contained by the dates 1880-1970, can work to make the “constraints imposed on Aboriginal peoples during this most oppressive period in the history of colonization” palatable today. Readers, softened by Phillips’s acknowledgement of “more inclusive and reflexive approaches to art history,”33 can effectively say, “oh okay, that was then, we don’t do that now.” The oppressive constraints of 1880-1970 (and the Aboriginal art constrained by them), are safely of the past, despite many Indigenous writers and scholars demonstrating for decades just how much this is not really the case.34 Through Phillips’s decision to use an admittedly Eurocentric approach today, her readers are, therefore, still viewing and learning about Aboriginal art through those same oppressive structures that established the EuroCanadian dichotomies she speaks of as primarily belonging to 1880-1970. The negative
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structures and dichotomies are being upheld today by virtue of their methodological ordering of the story of art we are currently telling.
To be sure, I am not saying this essay is “wrong,” only that this kind of important
and sophisticated art historical work can be greatly strengthened when complemented by a more cross-cultural approach that can include other voices and understandings in the structure of the discussion as well. Suffice it to say for now, this Phillips essay is an example of how the discipline of Canadian art history can, on one hand, employ many crucial aspects of postcolonial criticism. And on the other hand, it also continues to veil or curtail (even if unintentionally), Canadian cultural and ecological diversity in its fullness by sustaining the oppressive currency of the conventional paradigm, even while attempting to revise it.
☈⊕♁ Marilyn J. McKay’s recent Picturing the Land (2011), is not overtly concerned with overcoming the Eurocentric paradigm, but it presents another instance of art historical disciplinary boundary lines obscuring a full awareness of cultural and ecological reality in Canada. The book revisits ways that Canadian art historians have tended to understand the history of Canadian landscape art and its social production in between 1500 and 1950. She draws from postmodern theories of landscape representation to challenge the long-standing nationalistic approach to Canadian landscape art. Through their nationalistic agenda, Canadian art historians, argues McKay, have conventionally
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maintained that landscape art was the preeminent manifestation of “a particularly Canadian sensibility that included independence from European ‘masters.’”35 The problem with this argument, according to McKay, was that it de-emphasized the crucial “connections between Canadian landscape representation and ways of thinking about land that have long been part of western culture.”36 The book advances chronologically through centuries of Canadian landscape art (including maps), demonstrating how French and English Canadian representations of land did not spring from a unique experience with “Canadian” land, but from one of a stock of entrenched Western (European) concepts of territory. In keeping with Western cultural traditions, where not all Western artists thought about the land in the same way, McKay refers to Canadian representations as either “nomadic,” “Arcadian,” “Edenic,” “sedentary,” or “universal.” Sometimes these may overlap, sometimes oppose each other.
The choice to draw on postmodern theories of representation signals that at the
core of the issue for McKay is the notion of self in art, particularly the problem inherent in the modernist understanding of “self-expression” as a primary function of art. The conventional Canadian art historians who approach Canadian art nationally generally think of Canadian landscape art as distinctly “Canadian” because it is an artist’s subjective, self-expressive, representation of her own private experience with the objectified “Canadian” soil. The vast majority of Canadian art histories have discussed landscape art from this perspective. McKay—and the postmodern theorists she bases her argument on—places a greater emphasis on the social production of art. As art
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historian and cross-cultural art theorist Steven M. Leuthold remarks, such a shift moves the role of the self from self-expression to something more like self-representation. In representing yourself you are acknowledging that your subjectivity always operates within a more public sphere, which is the “who” you are representing to. In doing so, you are also claiming the authority to represent yourself within that sphere.37 Whereas the object for self-expression remains in the self, the object for self-representation is always outside the self, and is, therefore, always also part subject. This socio-political dimension in postmodern theories of representation is why theorists like W.J.T. Mitchell, and McKay after him, can talk about landscape as a “cultural medium,” or as personal yet also very public.38
The problem, for our purposes here, is that the shift from a modernist
understanding of self in art to a postmodern one still allows Canadian art history’s disciplinary boundary lines to endorse a form of pure individuality in art at all. This remains consistent with an entrenched Eurocentric paradigm that does not do justice to the full intercultural and cross-cultural reality of life in Canada. As Leuthold reminds us, whether “subjectivity arises from psychological sources” (modernism), or “agency arises from a politicized understanding of self” within society (postmodernism), the emphasis in art is still on the individual.39 While a focus on the self is one of the hallmarks of modernity, such an emphasis in Canadian art history—exemplified here in Picturing the Land—obscures full awareness of the cultural and ecological diversity of Canada because: (1) the myriad cultures producing art here for millennia, including throughout
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1500-1950, emphasize context, community, and its interdependent relationship with the land, not individuality; and (2) such an emphasis cannot help but privilege the ego and a form of transcendent consciousness that is “only assimilated through the knowing mind.”40 Within such a paradigm, artists’ phenomenological, experiencing bodies are continually undermined. This is often even the case when a commentator simultaneously acknowledges the body’s central importance to the artist’s process, such as in reference to the art of, say, Jackson Pollock’s expressionism, or earth art. One brief example of how this applies to Picturing the Land itself will be helpful.
When discussing the important place of Joseph Légaré in the story of Canadian
art, McKay begins with a denunciation of art historians J. Russell Harper’s and Dennis Reid’s praise of Légaré for making an original contribution to Canadian landscape painting because of his ability to paint “‘the Canadian landscape directly and frankly’… [making] ‘no attempt to press’ his work ‘into a European mould.’”41 She dislodges Légaré from, in her mind, such notions of Romantic self-expression, and proceeds to discuss his landscape art in a more self-representational way. Légaré’s artworks are described as conscious re-presentations of his own artistic agency. They are providing “a sense of the history, permanence, and morality of French Canadian settlement… [within] the social, economic, and political environment of French Canada,” and are a passionate support for the Catholic Church in order “to strengthen the French Canadian nation.”42 I am not suggesting that Légaré’s art was not a part of this socio-political context. On the contrary, I think McKay’s approach to this aspect is important and
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informative. Rather, I argue that McKay’s approach only tells a part of the story, denying him the possibility of an embodied, pre-conceptual experience with the land of his landscapes. In other words, perhaps McKay’s and Harper’s approaches are not just oppositional, but complimentary to each other. Perhaps they are both right in some important ways.
In McKay’s reading (indeed a seeming tendency inherent in postmodernist
theories of representation), Légaré’s landscapes are only assimilated through his individual knowing mind (a clerico-nationalist version of the European “sedentary” concept of territory in this case). This is further reinforced by the fact that McKay’s readers as well only get access to Légaré’s art through recourse to the transcendent, Eurocentric consciousness called the “sedentary” concept of territory. Both Légaré's and McKay’s readers are denied the possibility of a sensuous, shifting, breathing, embodied existence, which can provide everyday, moment-to-moment resistance or rupture to what individual knowing minds think they know about territory. Such an embodied life is reciprocally participating in what phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls “the flesh of the world.”43 This also necessarily shapes consciousness, but through the body, not the self-representing or self-represented mind alone.
A living and articulate landscape—”a community,” in Abram’s words, “of
expressive presences that are also attentive, and listening, to the meanings that move between them”44—is always available (though not always paid attention to), in an embodied life. As such, Légaré’s encounter with Chaudière Falls, for example, is
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simultaneously an intellectually “imagined” tourist destination by individuals, as McKay suggests, and a pre-conceptual and reciprocal participation with a waterfall that charges the air with a calm excitement. In this kind of encounter the falls are not so much imagined by Légaré—the individual knowing mind—but are imagining collectively with him (and by extension, his socio-political context). I recognize here that there is a kind of mind inherent in the waterfall as well. Or rather, there is an all-encompassing mind of sorts unfurling through both Légaré and the waterfall separately and together. This mind, from the point of view of one of its constituent parts, manifests here and now in an ongoing emergence of the real. This is the full story that Légaré and the waterfall, in this example, are always being told by. They each then tell their own integral part of the larger story, based on their particular carnal immersion within it.
Such a waterfall also wants to get to know Légaré (and many others sharing in its
“flesh”), as it spills and splashes playfully with the rocks, then rises in a soft mist to play with the wind and fill Légaré’s nostrils and lungs with its own body. The mist maybe even goes unnoticed at first, perhaps for many encounters, but then one day (even if only for one day), Légaré maybe steps into a deeper level of awareness, a more sensuous one, as he feels the pores of his skin, his own body, open up to the water’s coolness and meet it fully. Interestingly then, the fluid limits of his own mind begin to take on a slightly different shape themselves over time; perhaps remembering that the shape of the cascading conversation between the rocks, the shifting wind, the feeding fish, and eroding shoreline going on around him is also, in part, shaping him. And then,
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perhaps, he glimpses that the chatter of his particular human speech and socio-political consciousness is actually only part of a much larger conversation.
The disciplinary boundaries of Canadian art history, reflecting the dominant
boundaries of the larger Western worldview, inherently deny this larger conversation, this larger story unfolding all around us in a more-than-human world. But as artists here have attested to in various ways since the beginning, this larger story is central to the “Canadian experience” in some way. It should not, therefore, be so easily eradicated from our stories of art in Canada. While I am not advocating for a full return to Harper’s or Reid’s equally Eurocentric readings, I stop short of assuming that their nationalistic agendas automatically discount every word they said about the possibility of a deeper connection with the earth here, in this place now called Canada. Like Phillips’s essay above, McKay’s important and sophisticated work can be enriched by a more crosscultural approach—another kind of story about art in Canada—that may help us come to terms with other possibilities in the human-nature relationship through art, without denying the participation of Eurocentric ones either.
The Scope of this Dissertation This research project is about re-envisioning another story of visual art in Canada. It wonders what a story of art in Canada would look like if Euro-Canadian and Indigenous art and ways of knowing could meet, speak, and integrate in an empowering story for all involved. Guided by this wonder, I allow myself to open up to a place where more than
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just the human mind is at play. Something a little more mysterious and animate has caught my attention: the awareness that everything we think we know about Canadian art history is all a story.
Throughout this work so far, I have been referring to Canadian art history (and
this dissertation), as a story. This has not just been a rhetorical device. I argue that the most efficient way to neutralize the domination of the Eurocentric paradigm pervading current Canadian art history and criticism is to bring Indigenous ways of knowing into this conversation in a significant and respectful way. Recognizing art in its crucial role as a story inherently achieves this. As in Hudson’s realization above, this is not simply an inauthentic move for non-Aboriginal Canadians into something they are not, in yet another colonizing way. It is, rather, a deepening into the social-ecological reality of here, where, I would suggest, one can awaken to the awareness that the mainstream story being told about ourselves does not fit anyone any more. In this light, the real inauthenticity occurring is the continual denying of the creative, embodied, and living indigenous soul of every human being, wherever one’s ancestors lived.
The integral link between stories and Indigenous knowledge is a central theme in
Indigenous education and scholarship. One of the earliest Aboriginal scholars and storytellers to point this out for a non-Aboriginal audience was writer, storyteller, and educator Basil Johnston in writing about his own Anishinabe stories, dances, songs, and heritage in 1976: “it is in story...that fundamental understandings, insights, and attitudes toward life and human conduct, character, and quality in their diverse forms are
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embodied and passed on.”45 Many Aboriginal visual artists have also referred to their artworks as stories, or as concerned mainly with sharing and communicating knowledge —both members of older generations, such as Joane Cardinal-Schubert, and of younger generations, such as Aaron Paquette.46 Sakaw Cree artist and storyteller, Dale Auger, for example, introduces his paintings in Medicine Paint (2009) by remembering and invoking the very old tradition in what we now call Canada of sharing important knowledge cross-culturally through arts:
The people of one nation would share with those of another their understanding of the worlds they lived in, the Land they walked on, the Beings they shared the Land with...The songs and dances the nations would share were deeper forms of communication; they were the ‘encyclopedias’ holding the knowledge of how a people came to ‘walk’ in the many worlds they inhabited both physically and spiritually. The gatherings enabled all these elements to exist in one place at one time...This collection of paintings is my way of sharing knowledge with many nations, multiple generations and diverse communities throughout the world.47
Similarly, my storied approach to art in Canada recognizes visual artworks as stories. This does not mean that there is necessarily a narrative (temporal) structure, per se, evident in every visual artwork. As Frank demonstrates, also drawing from medical historian Anne Harrington, there is a distinction between story and narrative. Stories are “‘living, local, and specific,’” and refer “‘to immediate, concrete events, people, scientific findings, and more.’ Narratives are the resources from which people construct the stories they tell and the intelligibility of stories they hear.”48
With respect to narratologist Mieke Bal’s classic work Narratology: Introduction to
the Theory of Narrative (1985), my use of the terms “story” and “narrative” entail a
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transposition of her definitions. Bal prefers the phrase “narrative text” to “narrative” alone, and she refers to “story” as a component of any “narrative text,” which also includes the components of “narration” and “fabula.” In this vein, she states that the story “does not consist of material different from that of either the text or the fabula, but that this material is looked at from a certain, specific angle,” ultimately the angle of narration.49 Whereas one can regard the narrative text, in Bal’s terminology, “as the product of the use of a medium, and the fabula primarily as the product of imagination, the story could be regarded as the result of an ordering.”50 In my usage throughout this project, however, I refer to “narrative” more as the product of ordering, and “story” more as the product of a medium, within which elements such as narration, fabula, narrative, and more are components. When I speak of “the master narrative of art in Canada,” or that of art in Alberta, for example, I acknowledge that this can be a story—the mainstream story of art in Canada, say—but retain the word “narrative” here to highlight the fact that the ordering of its narrative elements is almost always the same, as well as is the angle upon which its narrative material is looked at, that being predominantly a Eurocentric one. Furthermore, the word “story,” in my experience, is much more commonly used within Indigenous studies and discussions about arts and culture. Therefore, I have used the word “story” to refer to the “product of a medium”—the category of narrative elements requiring the broader signifier than that signified by the term “narrative”—in order to facilitate my cross-cultural approach to art in Canada.
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Returning to the discussion about the different mediums through which stories
can be told, then, Bal also advocates for the consideration of visual art as stories. In her words, “there is no reason to limit narratological analysis to [literary] texts only.”51 Bal reminds us that art historical interpretation has often relied heavily on the stories (especially written ones), that art is supposedly illustrating (or, I add, in order to “illustrate” or “explain” art). This practice can problematically subordinate visual to literary narrative.52 I agree, and touch on this issue at various points below as well. But I am also particularly animated by Bal’s insight that an exploration of visual images as stories in and of themselves can also “do justice to an aspect of images and their effect that neither iconography nor other art historical practices can quite articulate.”53 Her work further demonstrates that art criticism can occur “without endorsing the hierarchical subordination of visuality to language that has pestered the study of art.”54
To elaborate on this a bit further, in her recent Canadian Paintings, Prints and
Drawings, art educator Anne Newlands includes a reproduction of and write-up about important Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak’s The Enchanted Owl stone cut on paper from 1960. After a short and poetic description of the artwork, Newlands quotes Ashevak saying that she “may start off at one end of a form not even knowing what the entirety of the form is going to be; just drawing as I am thinking, thinking as I am drawing....I try to make things which satisfy my eye, which satisfy my sense of form and colour.” Newlands replies with the suggestion that this means Ashevak’s intent “to make something beautiful, that is all,” precludes her art from being able to “tell a story.”55
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According to my understanding of “story,” this could not be further from the truth. Ashevak’s methods and artworks are fundamentally “living, local, and specific,” the very fertile ground from which story emerges, breathes, and instigates, whether through its holistic beauty, its form, its colour, or something else. Whereas some conventional literary narrative elements in Western understandings may not be present, Ashevak’s work, nevertheless, tells a story. Newlands, I suggest, is privileging Western literary narrative and structure. But doing so obscures Ashevak’s story, limits it, and stifles it so that it is less free to breathe, or shape-shift, or enable a viewer to be according to her or his particular relationship with it in the world. As her comment suggests, Newlands herself cannot hear a story. Ashevak’s work, then, gets largely finalized, for instance, by the Eurocentric disciplinary concept of “beauty,” itself something very different in a cross-cultural context for Ashevak than it might be for Newlands.
Pictures are stories because they enliven, assemble, entertain, even deceive and
divide people, but primarily animate then instigate other stories, including art historical ones. To borrow some of Frank’s words, pictures are stories because they are “material semiotic companions.” Stories are performative, work with objects, and take on the form of objects, “which are known as materialized stories.” Visual art, in this way, is a materialized story. Like any story, it is made up of signs. It is also material not only because it does things in the world, “including inciting love affairs and wars,” but also in its capacity as a material form, including paintings, sculptures, bracelets, talking sticks, drums, machines, bodies, urinals, and buildings.
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The capacity of stories to shape-shift into other forms is also a characteristic of
visual art. Countless paintings throughout the centuries, for example, have told and retold the story of, say, the murder of Abel by Cain. Each story embodies its own twist and colour on the story as it has shape-shifted and taken on a life of its own through various artists’ lives, bodies, and ages. The vicious circularity within Titian’s Cain and Abel (1542-44), for example, emphasized by its unique perspective as a ceiling painting, underscores the importance of the biblical commandments in every age since the original fratricide. William Blake’s The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve (c. 1805-09), however, challenges conventional interpretations of the story by embodying it in a rare, non-biblical vision that includes Adam and Eve’s discovery of the body, and Cain’s reaction. This works to emphasize Cain’s complexity as a human being, opening the same old story up to far more than the biblical commandments, and the behaviour of a jealous, cold-blooded killer. In another articulation of the same story, Jewish art photographer Adi Nes’s staged performance photograph, Cain and Abel (2003), contributes even more layers to the story. His more homoerotic depiction of male violence further confounds and animates the biblical/Torah story by making it unclear which fighter is Cain, and which Abel, and who is actually the stronger of the two.
Visual art has also long-been humans’ companion. Humans and visual art shape
each other, take care of each other, and enable each other to be. In this vein, the kind of art history, or criticism, I advocate for is one less concerned with—or that unlearns the primary need for—finalizing explanations and origins, and instead recognizes that art/
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stories are not mere products of human thinking or societies, but also act and animate. It is important, in other words, that art has been utilized in propagandist ways throughout history by, say, the church or politicians. But it is more telling for our purposes here to recognize not that it has been used to act and animate, but that it has the capacity to do this in the first place. As such, this dissertation pays attention to how stories animate even the lives and work of art historians, who are already participants in the story, never somehow outside of it with special objective access to the entirety of its process. This research project is, in short, a story about how some Canadian art stories can do what they can do.56 In other words, the re-envisioned story of art in Canada will be a story that allows, even empowers, art in Canada—all of it—to do what it can do.
This will become clearer as the story unfolds, but for now it is worth emphasizing
that, in each of the descriptions about the interconnected stories of this project, the accent is on process, relationships, capacities, and performativity, which need to matter as much as definitions, essential properties, chronological dates, or diffuse concepts or categories. The former are the elements now required to balance out the Eurocentricity of the mainstream story, and make it more cross-cultural and of here. It should also be mentioned briefly that relating visual art to stories is not to say that the people, events, and occurrences that Canadian art history speaks of never existed, are not “real,” or never happened. These, rather, are the instances, among many others, that now animate our lives by having been rendered narratable. Because of this inherent quality to animate, stories are incredibly powerful. They amplify aspects of the world around us,
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making them very “real” (if we are ready and paying attention), and so are to be taken seriously for the ways they can make the world both “real-ly” good, and “real-ly” bad. The full import of how these stories—artworks—do what they can do in Canadian contexts can be significantly obscured and debilitated when the many stories are easily overshadowed from the top down by a circumscribed ONE TRUTH. The dominant Eurocentric master narrative of Canadian art can too-often imply this, simultaneously concealing the fact that it too is a story.
My site of departure for this research is the field of Canadian art history. To get a
clearer picture of where we might be heading on this journey, Chapter Two will take stock of where we are through a literature review that specifically attends to the field’s cross-cultural currents, challenges, and statements. In order to begin building an awareness for my storied approach to the field, the review will not be organized by a chronological linear structure, but rather one that more reflects the circular or spiral form inherent in many of the indigenous stories from this land. Chickasaw scholar and lawyer, James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, succinctly describes this kind of process in stories and dialogue as “iterative rather than linear. The stories are told in a circular or spiral theme, with the thematic repetition or spiral adding a little.”57 The chapter will be organized into sections that will begin moving in a seemingly chronological fashion, only to return to an earlier date again in each new section, adding a layer of information each time. This will also be the overall organizational structure of the dissertation itself. Each of the five subsequent chapters will open with a short personal story about art doing
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what it can do in my own life story before getting deeper into the chapter itself. Each chapter will rely on and embody aspects from the chapters before it, but then also add another layer of information. This dissertation itself, then, will breathe: emerge from and pulsate along the curvatures of a spiral, always coming back around to a story that, in turn, animates and instigates. As some of the stories included will be from my own life, they will also help build and maintain the relationship between myself (storyteller), and the reader (listener), as discussed in the prologue.
In Chapter Three, I will elaborate on the methodology of this research project,
specifically my approach to stories and how I relate this to Canadian art. In order to bring my storied approach to bear on our current understanding of visual art in Canada, I begin with two key texts: Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork (2008), and Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe (2010), which itself draws frequently from Archibald. Archibald brings an important Indigenous perspective to the “work” of stories in culture and education. They inform a process she calls storywork. Her work is important here to help guide the discussion of my approach to art in Canada in ways that are not dependent on a Eurocentric paradigm. Frank’s work builds on Archibald’s (and others’), for our purposes here, by bringing a more intercultural perspective to stories and their work, for stories, of course, are part and parcel of every culture. While Frank draws frequently on Archibald’s work, he develops a framework for understanding the work of stories by drawing from both Indigenous and Western knowledge. I will introduce his more intercultural principles for understanding stories—a process he calls dialogical narrative
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analysis—which aim to counter the more conventional Eurocentric and mechanistic approaches to stories that can be found in other forms of narrative analysis.
Drawing from both storywork and dialogical narrative analysis, then, I proceed to
discuss the storied approach to art in Canada through four fundamental characteristics: (1) the need to take stories/art seriously in everyday lives; (2) the phenomenological import and materiality of stories; (3) the performativity of stories and their ability to act in lives, and with/in objects and places; and (4) their capacity to account for the most salient features of postcolonial criticism in the Canadian context. These characteristics will guide the process that I then apply to visual art in Canada in the remaining chapters. Like the unique timing in Métis fiddle music, each characteristic, in their own time and place, sometimes grabs our attention and quickens the discussion, sometimes it remains in the background and slows things down. They each move in and out of the discussion at different paces, with their own pulse, and with different moods and accents, yet their allegiance is to the aliveness of the story, not necessarily its order and structure per se. There are rules; it is just a different set of rules than we are used to privileging in the mainstream West. In short, my methodology is a kind of dialogical narrative analysis of both artworks and the stories about them that comprise our mainstream story of art in Canada. Such an analysis draws from Archibald for its Indigenous component, which helps link stories more directly with here, and then empowering them. It draws from Frank for its practice of criticism that is more concerned with questioning, encouraging thought to move, and welcoming a
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proliferation of possibilities, rather than with rules, codes, explanations, finalizations, or methods per se.
A central thread running through my storied approach to art all together is the
emphasis I place on the importance of the body within our more-than-human world as we live with and through art and story. As Frank states, “Stories always work with something: with storytellers, with antecedent stories, with places, and with material objects.”58 Reawakening our awareness for the integral connection our knowledge and stories have to embodied experiences in the more-than-human world significantly impacts the way we encounter and story our collective reality through art, artists, audiences, and our social-ecological contexts. This inherent element to my storied approach will unfold through each of the above characteristics of the art process with particular help from Abram’s work, especially his Becoming Animal (2010). Without a more complete understanding of the contingent relationship between our animal bodies and the animate earth, it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to recognize the performative power of stories to move and animate us. As such, it is also difficult, if not impossible, to begin to recognize the voluminous depths of our interrelationship with place (a consistent core of stories here for millennia), as human beings with indigenous souls in a more-than-human world. With the phrase “indigenous souls,” I am referring to the inherent part of any human self that is always fundamentally interwoven—physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually—with the more-than-human world, whether one is conscious of this complex, integral interrelationship or not. Without the above aspects
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in tact, it is no wonder that our story of art in Canada could only ever be abstracted, colonialist, and never really fitting with who we are here at all. This issue is, indeed, a characteristic of the discipline of Western art history more generally, and not just an issue with art criticism in Canada alone. I am just concerning myself here with its manifestation in Canada.
Chapters Four, Five, and Six will then explore and begin to re-story key aspects
of the current story of art in Canada. This will unfold, first, through three main sections that explore the story of art in Canada as it has been shaped through conventional approaches to the art of Lucius O’Brien, Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (with a focus on Thomson in particular), and Paul-Émile Borduas. Each of these sections will unfold like turns of the above-mentioned spiral. Each will be integrally related to the previous section, yet also adding new layers of insight each time. The rhythm animating each turn of the spiral is the same. First, there will be an unlearning of certain aspects of the discipline of art history that, through the conventional stories about these artists, have shaped the mainstream story of art in Canada in some way. Second, the relearning, or re-envisioning of these artists’ work in all of its imaginative and dynamic aliveness through and for human beings with indigenous souls here.
Following on from the organizational pattern mentioned above, there will be a
disproportionate amount of energy spent on each section, but, as in Métis fiddle music again, for good reason. The first section on Lucius O’Brien will comprise the entire Chapter Four, not because I privilege O’Brien’s place in the story of art in Canada, but
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because it is here that I begin to move along the first spiralling curvature of my storied approach to art. I will demonstrate the performativity of O’Brien’s art, which emerges out of the fundamental reciprocity between his animal body and the animate earth, rather than from a top-down imperialist ideology imported from Europe alone, as is relayed in the mainstream story of art in Canada. While exploring this initial turn of the spiral, I aim to reintroduce Canadian art historians/critics to the animate earth, with all of its interwoven and inter-participating entities commingling and surging around us—the larger story of which we are all a part.
The animate earth is necessarily the story always already animating us from the
ground up in everything we think, do, and say (including our art), as whole human beings, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. As with any story, the earth too can be cherished, and crack our hearts open; it can be mysterious and full of wonder; or it can be resisted and forgotten. Nevertheless, it is always present, animating, instigating, and waiting to have life breathed into it within each of our own life stories. As we shall see, art historians have seldom been able to see and account for this in their writing not because it is not there, but because of the discipline’s Eurocentric bias against it. This needs to be unlearned, in order to see the story of O’Brien’s art (as with others’ too), in its fullness here. Reweaving the art of O’Brien back into this larger, performative, and emergent story will introduce the fundamental threads of my storied approach, so that we can begin opening up our awareness to the ways the story may
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continue to unfurl in the work of other artists as well. This embodies the initial step in reenvisioning the story of art in Canada.
I subsequently expand on this in Chapter Five by taking a storied approach to the
art of Tom Thomson (on behalf of the Group of Seven), and then Paul-Émile Borduas. Each of these sections will demonstrate how the larger story that has unfurled through O’Brien’s art is also performatively unfurling from the ground up in theirs as well. Their stories, of course, are uniquely theirs, but not because of different levels of abstract attachments to Europe, internationalism, and European art practices and ideologies alone. Rather, they are unique articulations of the same story because they emerge according to their respective artist’s carnal immersions within the more-than-human world here. I demonstrate, then, how criticism in the discipline of Canadian art history has neither fully accounted for the art of Thomson and the Group, or Borduas. It has also tended to reinforce aspects now needing to be unlearned, in order for their stories to be able to do what they can do in their imaginative fullness here.
One of this project’s rhythms, as has been alluded to throughout, is played out
through the dynamic between the unlearning and relearning movements within it. In this vein, the choice to focus on exploring a storied approach relative to the art of O’Brien, Thomson, and Borduas in particular is significant. I chose these artists not because I consider them to be the most important in Canadian history, but because they have been made conventionally central to the story of art in Canada already—arguably, perhaps, the three most central figures in Canadian art history as a whole (especially if
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we consider Emily Carr alongside the Group). As such, my points about unlearning certain aspects of the discipline with regard to their art (and the conventional story encapsulating it), will be especially poignant, and go a long way towards clearing a space within which art in Canada more generally can be re-storied with other artists too. O’Brien was the first president of the RCA, and a central figure in the Canadian artworld around the time of confederation. His art, as a result, is conventionally associated with, and storied as, an imperialist and colonialist ideology and art practice that precludes cross-cultural sharing and multiculturalism. This occurs, conventionally, in the name of a top-down, Eurocentric, national collective myth justifying “the settlers’ existence as a new nation and [inspiring] pride in the settlers’ as citizens of that nation.”59 As we shall see, this is only part of the story. The goal of Chapter Four is not to demonstrate how the latter story is untrue, but rather, to enrich it by allowing new connections to come to light through a storied approach to O’Brien’s art.
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven have played a pivotal and controversial
role in the story of art in Canada and so any project concerned with re-envisioning that story—especially one so taken by the felt encounter between sensate bodies and the animate earth—almost necessarily need account for them. Their art is conventionally storied along two related and often opposing (though not always), story lines. One, a traditionalist story, celebrates the Group’s landscape art for its role in nation building through its offering a counter-tradition to the dominant European landscape styles of the time. It acknowledges the Group’s art as much more accurately capturing the spirit and
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feeling of here than anything that had come before it. The other story line, a postcolonial critical one, denounces the Group’s landscape art because its association of nationhood with the landscape conceals the extent to which their art is still fundamentally Eurocentric and colonialist, and therefore, not really of here at all. This story frequently links the Group’s technique of depopulating their landscapes with a romantic and imperialistic ideology. Animated by such an ideology, Thomson’s and the Group’s art effectively separates humans from the natural world, and thereby, erases and denies Aboriginal presence and worldviews from the land here.
From a storied approach, as we shall see, both of these story lines are
incomplete because of each their own inherent Eurocentricity. The first story line leads one to deny or downplay that the Group’s art could indeed contribute to cultural genocide and a national story that does not fit here. The second leads one to deny or downplay that the Group’s art could indeed be “born from the land,” and participate at all in a story that can and does speak to cross-cultural sharing here in some way.60 My storied approach to the art of Thomson and the Group will demonstrate that, once again, both these mainstream story lines are only part of the story. While neither are untrue, both can be enriched by each other. They will also be enriched by more crosscultural and storied awareness that can enable us to unlearn some of their limiting characteristics, then relearn ways to allow the Group’s art to just do what it can do in its imaginative fullness here.
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Borduas is integral to the mainstream story of art in Canada for his important
contribution to, and embracing of, modernism in Canadian art as it was emerging internationally. Although not the first artist in Canada to paint abstractly, his contributions to abstraction in Canada helped spearhead the style more than ever before. Art historians David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff began their entire survey of contemporary Canadian art with Borduas and his circle.61 More recently, art historian Roald Nasgaard, in order to help navigate the “inexhaustible number of expressionist, geometric, imagistic, minimalist, conceptual, perceptual and quasi-sculptural and quasiarchitectural” art that can fall under the umbrella of “abstraction,” chose to use Borduas as his “lodestar...for finding [his] way within the sprawling territory.”62 Within these and other studies, Borduas is conventionally storied as exemplifying the modernist shift in Canada from objectively representing the external landscape, to expressionist representations of the internal landscape, which emphasize the art object itself. He can do so, according to the mainstream story, because he embraces (unlike the Group of Seven), his direct affiliation with European art practices and ideologies, namely Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.
Bringing a storied approach to his art, however, will reveal that this, too, is only
part of the story. It will demonstrate that there is also a deeper and larger story enfolding and animating even Borduas’s art from the ground up. Exploring ways in which Borduas’s art performatively emerges within the more-than-human world here (as opposed to primarily within the abstracted Euro-international artworld), will go a long
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way to helping us re-envision a new, more cross-cultural story of art in Canada that can begin to account not only for landscape art, but abstraction and modernism as well.
My primary source material for the above two chapters is twofold. First, the art
historical literature by art historians themselves. In other contexts, this source is a secondary one, but here it is necessarily "primary" because it is the evidence of the story that Euro-Canadians have constructed; it is and embodies the story as we are taught and have come to know. Second, I will be drawing from my own experiences and encounters with some key artworks within that story. As the spiral continues to turn through the sections of these chapters, the flows, nodes, and articulations of a new story of art in Canada will start to emerge and assemble. It is one where we begin to see that the larger story being echoed through each of our artists, according to their particular carnal immersions in the world here (as we saw earlier with Légaré), is actually not a European or Eurocentric one, as is continually reinforced by the mainstream story of art in Canada. Rather, it is an ever-unfurling indigenously oriented one, for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists alike. It performatively occurs like this because everyone is in some way participant in the larger story of being a human being with an indigenous soul in a more-than-human world, whether consciously aware of it or not, here.
European elements in art created here are, of course, now present and integral,
for they are part of our social-ecological reality. I am not suggesting that these are bad or inferior to Indigenous ways of knowing. But from a storied approach, as we shall see,
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the stories artists have continually shared here have done less to reinforce and sustain a continued, dominating, and top-down motivation from Europe. They have done much more, rather, to erode it like the inherent creativity of the raging rivers sinking into the sandstone of Saskatchewan’s Big Muddy Badlands. Art historians/critics beholden to the Eurocentric boundary lines inherent in their criticism are more the ones who reinforce the dominance of Europe in Canadian art. This, therefore, has largely undermined and weakened the cross-cultural power and resurgent possibility of our stories within lives here, even if only unintentionally. As a result, significant disconnects have existed, often frustratingly and bewilderingly, between their story of art in Canada and the way Canadian art has unfurled within the life experience stories of other viewers in the public sphere.63
In this light, the final key element engaged here to help re-story art in Canada
consists precisely of opening up the conversation to those voices of other art viewers in the public sphere. Chapter Six attempts to do this by accounting for and empowering the role of actual encounters with art in the art storying process. My primary source material for this chapter consists mainly of interview recordings from interviews conducted with ordinary Canadians about some of their art stories—ways in which art has lived on in their everyday lives. I will discuss the decolonizing importance of engaging the audience in this way, and situate these viewer art stories within the indigenously oriented story of art that will be building from previous chapters. This chapter will also be integral to this project because it inherently resists the art historical
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temptation and tendency to finalize art and art experience in a conventional way. It also directly acknowledges that no one person or group of people, no matter how educated, ever have the whole story on their own.
I call my final chapter not a conclusion, but an epilogue. This is to return to our
awareness, once again, that although an ending of sorts is upon us, and new knowledge and insight gained, my story is not meant to conclude or finalize. It is hoped that it will make new connections, instigate them, amplify, and keep the power of our important art-stories alive in each our own living, breathing worlds here. This epilogue will summarize some of the project’s key points with broader reference to other artists and movements, including Aboriginal art, not mentioned in Chapters Four and Five. It will also demonstrate and gesture toward ways in which the re-envisioned story of art in Canada emerging here might also unfurl in art beyond that of O’Brien, Thomson and the Group, and Borduas. It will also more succinctly outline what this re-envisioned story of art in Canada is, as well as consider the project’s outcomes relative to some possibilities for future directions and impacts to which they might point.
Some Other Important Definitions
Canada: For the purposes of this project, “Canada” does not refer solely to the
imaginary political construct of “the nation,” but rather the geophysical land and morethan-human world that the imaginary nationalistic construct floats above in the minds of some people here. It is predominantly a term used to indicate that I am speaking about
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the phenomenological world including not just print, media, and human knowing minds, but also pre-conceptual trees, grasslands, tundra, wind, and shorelines that interact with sensuous bodies as well.
Indigenous / Aboriginal: I use the term “Indigenous” to refer to the peoples of the
world whose political situation is fuelled by the lingering and oppressive effects of the colonial conquest. It is also a term that necessarily encompasses the state of being native to a place—including traditions, knowledges, objects, and holistic ways of life that are integrally interwoven with a particular region, regions, or ecosystems. When referring to Europeans’ and Euro-Canadians’ indigeneity, I use the term “indigenous,” with a minuscule “i,” to differentiate it from “Indigenous” peoples. Being indigenous to a place is a necessity and manifestation of being a human being in a more-than-human world. Furthermore, I understand this relationship to be dynamic, not linear. It happens in its own time and way for everyone, is a slow process, and can involve much hardship, challenge, and darkness along the way. As the more-than-human world is continually changing, so too is the journey of being indigenous to its places. It is ongoing and more a matter of continual balance in relationships, than an absolute end result.
Although not without its own issues, for the purposes of this project I use the term
“Aboriginal” when referring to issues and matters of Indigenous peoples within a specific Canadian context, such as Aboriginal art, and it can sometimes be used interchangeably with “Indigenous,” “Native,” “Native American,” or “Indian” depending on the context. When I speak of “Indigenous ways of knowing,” I am referring to the
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complex and holistic knowledge systems linked to Indigenous worldviews, being native to a place, and its particular ecosystems. They are sometimes referred to also as “ trad it i o n al k n o w l e d ge, ” “ t r a di tion a l e co lo g i cal k n ow l e dge , ” or “ In d i g e nou s epistemology.” The use of either term in its plural form acknowledges both the shared commonalities between the way of knowing of one particular Aboriginal group (i.e.: Micmac, Cree, or Haida) with another, as well as the diversity of the myriad tribal knowledges throughout Canada, each dependent on a particular matrix of local cultural, ecological, spiritual, and social contexts.
Western / Eurocentric: The term “Western,” or the “West,” is used to describe the
particular epistemological, ontological, sociological, and ideological way of thinking and being that can be traced back to Europe for its origin, but has since spread throughout the world through European colonialism. It is differentiated from other major epistemological and ontological traditions, but is also understood as being rich in diversity and influences, and not monolithic or static. In its structure and ideology the West is very much associated with Eurocentrism in non-European contexts, and a colonial mentality that has influenced, subjugated, and imposed upon other epistemological and ontological structures. Other cultural paradigms have similarly subjugated the traditions of other peoples, but the term “Eurocentric” is concerned with the privileging of specifically European or European-based epistemological and ontological structures, which is the focus of this project. The subjugated traditions, however, such as Indigenous ways of knowing, are not in a completely binary
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relationship to the Western worldview either. There are important similarities and parallels, but these are sometimes forgotten or devalued within the Western worldview for various complex reasons in various contexts.
Art / Aesthetics: The term “art” is a difficult term to utilize in a project emphasizing
cross-cultural issues (especially those concerning Indigenous ways of knowing), because of its association with distinctly Western categories and understandings. These Western understandings are usually object- or artist-oriented; are frequently universalizing through their Eurocentricity; or are often highly specialized and dependent on a complex Western philosophical infrastructure. This project retains the use of the word “art” for discussing both Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian art, but broadens our understanding of it by acknowledging ties between art, ethics, knowledge, spirituality, and the animate physicality of the sensuous world. Thinking of “art” as story is congruent with this broader and deeper understanding. Broadening our understanding of “art” also works within cross-cultural contexts because, as Leuthold points out, “the problem of finding art in indigenous aesthetics arises not from the absence of ‘art’ in indigenous cultures, but from the narrowness of contemporary Western definitions of art. If one impoverishes the idea of art, of course it will be difficult to find art outside of one’s own culture.”64 What is important to realize here is that broadening our understanding of “art” to include understandings also more in line with Indigenous cultures, however, is not simply a tokenist act to account for Indigenous knowledge within an overarching Western paradigm. It is more an awakening to core
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values and functions of art originally present in all Western cultures too. For example, ideas and practices concerning spirit and soul, ritual, ceremony, morality, and an animate nature were all important characteristics of most Western aesthetic theories for centuries, at least up to the mid-to-late nineteenth century. They only recently became relegated subconcepts of the more mechanistic, rationalistic, and compartmentalized Western concept, “art.”65
“Aesthetics,” and “Indigenous aesthetics,” like “art,” can also seem to be
predominantly Western terms imposed on Aboriginal cultural expression. While no doubt politically charged in the context of neocolonialism, I also follow Leuthold here in using the term “aesthetics” in discussion of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art, for similar reasons as those given regarding “art.” In Leuthold’s words, “aesthetic behaviour is a set of social practices in the same way that political, economic, or judicial systems are sets of social practices…‘the aesthetic’ is an important concept to apply cross-culturally because it refers to real personal and social behaviours that occur in every culture.”66 In this light, my use of the term broadens the conventional Western understanding of “aesthetics,” in order to account for its integral relationship with embodied experience in the world, and not only with a narrower focus centred on “art” objects and institutions. This broader understanding is what Leuthold calls a “systems view” of aesthetic expression. Aesthetic expression in such a view is performative, can account for postmodernism’s attention to political agency, as well as for various knowledge systems
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that may all occur in a specific place.67 Indigenous aesthetic expression, more specifically, refers to aesthetic practices that manifest through being native to a place.68
Art history / Art criticism: I understand art history to be the practice of using
various methods to study art objects (i.e.: visual art and architecture, including crafts, furniture, ceramics, jewellery, and decorative objects), in order to understand the context, form, and social significance of them. I understand the discipline as we know and practice it today as having ancient, renaissance, and eighteenth-century precedents and influences, but as predominantly a nineteenth-century European phenomenon. I follow art historian E.H. Gombrich in observing that there are three distinct, though often overlapping or sometimes cross-influential, branches comprising the discipline.69 First, one branch emphasizes historical and biographical method. This branch has roots in the work of Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) and Vasari (1511-1574), for example, and largely makes up the discipline’s backbone, now associated with the academic art historian. Second, there is a more critical and subjective branch that is more concerned with discussing art objects using scientific analysis and descriptive detail to establish artistic value, or explore or promote styles or movements in art. This branch has precedents that can be traced back to ancient Greece, but its roots are largely associated today with the eighteenth-century art criticism of Jonathan Richardson (1667-1745) and Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). Finally, there is a branch that is more theoretical in nature and concerned with aesthetics, or explorations into the nature of art, taste, and beauty. This is the realm largely associated with the art philosopher or
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connoisseur, which also has ancient Greek and Medieval precedents, but is especially rooted in eighteenth- and nineteenth century works such as those by philosophers Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762), Edmund Burke (1729-1797), and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
Within the discipline of art history as a whole, academic art historians have
generally neglected the realm of the art philosopher in their contributions to art history, although this practice has become less common when discussing recent artworks produced within the last 100 years. Burke’s theories on the picturesque may be one important exception to the convention, for they are frequently referred to by academic art historians and art critics alike in reference to both old and new landscape paintings. It is much more common, however, for academic art historians to engage, even if only unintentionally, in the realm of art criticism. Historical and biographical approaches to art, for example, are frequently juxtaposed or supported with close descriptive analyses of form, line, colour, composition, design elements (iconography), and direct or indirect value judgements about art objects, styles, or movements. It is for this reason that I maintain the use of the term “art historian” in this dissertation when more primarily referring to, and taking issue with, the art historian as art critic below, and not necessarily the discipline of art history as a whole.
For our purposes here, it is my belief that in Canadian art history, in particular, the
contributions of academic art historians necessarily overlap with, engage, and at times are often driven by, a form of art criticism that necessarily promotes value judgements
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on visual art in Canada. This might occur directly (more common in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries), or indirectly (more common from the mid-twentieth century to the present day). Even when the story an art historian in Canada tells about a work or artist seems purely historical and biographical on the surface, and therefore just pure, objective “art history” as in its European precedents, I suggest that it never really is here. The reason for this is that the beginning of art history in Canada, unlike in Europe, as we shall see in the next chapter, has always been about the promotion and encouragement of European artistic practices, styles, and understandings, and the suppression of the Indigenous ones already present here. This is at the core of Canadian art history even today, whether acknowledged or not, because the discipline of art history itself is displaced out of its original context here.
This is not to say, once again, that the discipline of art history needs to be
jettisoned from Canada. On the contrary, I believe that art history in all its branches is important and fruitful. The passion and love for art shared by art historians is crucial, greatly respected by me, and worthy of protecting. But the way we understand art history and practice it here, the stories we choose to promote and encourage through it, need to be broadened and deepened, and are long overdue for a change. This proposed change should allow the discipline (and its stories) to breathe, and empower and display more of an allegiance with all the peoples and places of here, from the ground up, as opposed to those primarily from Europe from the top down. The new
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practice, moreover, can also acknowledge the important contributions of Europe in a more balanced way.
Decolonize / Decolonization: The term “decolonization” has been one associated
with the process of examining Indigenous cultures through the lens of non-Western perspectives. This process was commenced to correct erroneous understandings derived from, and to counter the inherent biases that embroil, the more conventional examinations of these cultures from Western perspectives. In the context of this dissertation, I broaden and adjust the above definition slightly, in order to facilitate my concern for a cross-cultural approach to art (aspiring to account for both Indigenous and Western influences and histories), rather than for Indigenous cultures specifically. Broadening the above definition is also another way in which I put myself, as a person of Métis heritage, into this dissertation. It reflects my particular interest in acknowledging and learning from the cultural entanglements within Canada and its artworld, instead of the processes more specifically concerned with untangling them.
When I use the term “decolonization” or “decolonize” herein, then, I am referring
to a process also concerned with correcting misunderstandings or countering biases within Canadian art history as a result of the discipline’s Eurocentricity. Furthermore, I understand this to involve approaching art in Canada in a way not beholden to Western perspectives alone. However, I do not associate this process with a complete renunciation of Western perspectives in favour of non-Western ones. Nor is it my intention that such a process eradicate Western perspectives from any discussion on art
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in Canada, or diminish their contribution to the Canadian artworld. In other words, to decolonize, as I understand it here, is not an attempt to step backward in order to arrive at some place or time in the future where it is as though European settlers never came to Canada at all. I do not think this is possible, nor fruitful.
Rather, I refer here to decolonization as more the necessary process through
which Eurocentric ideologies and practices that continue to sustain the unethical and destructive impacts of colonization are tempered, resisted, and eroded. The way I propose to embark on this process within the field of Canadian art history is by investing our discussions of artists, artworks, and their effects in Canada with more Indigenous voices, stories, and ways of knowing, rather than simply relying on de facto European ones to understand art here. In this vein, I believe that for the decolonization process to be successful in Canada it is not just our understanding of Indigenous knowledges and cultures that need to be decolonized, but all of our ways of knowing, practicing, and relating to each other. In short, it is a process that ultimately needs to involve EuroCanadians and all non-Indigenous peoples here if we are to step into a new, more culturally respectful, and resilient way of life together.
For example, when I propose an “unlearning” of some Eurocentric way of
understanding an artwork in Canada, the movement implied is one of decolonization. I am not suggesting in these instances, however, that Europe has nothing of value to offer to the discussion of art in Canada, nor that everything connected to it is necessarily suspect, or misguided. Nor am I suggesting that everything Indigenous is
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necessarily always best, good, and more truthful. It may at times seem like I am saying exactly these things. I propose that this is only the case because since the place of privilege within Canadian art history has for so long been given to European ways of knowing, in order for a balance to be struck it is more these European knowledges now needing to do most of the giving, as in sacrificing.
There is another reason why it may seem like I consistently emphasize the
importance and value of Indigenous ways of knowing over European ones. I do believe that Indigenous ways of knowing have a special value in the web of knowledge here, but that does not mean that European ones have none. The privileged value it may seem I ascribe to Indigenous ways of knowing, rather, may also be an outcome of the project’s methodological necessities. While there are many art histories in Canada working from within Eurocentric understandings of art, I have necessarily needed to put more emphasis in mine on ways these can be balanced out and complimented. It is not my intention, however, that this project be one aspiring to some sort of final word, replacing all other Canadian art histories, which generally do stay more within the conventional, European boundary lines of the discipline. I remain aware throughout that there are many other stories of art in Canada—many of which have animated parts of this one—that operationalize more conventional approaches to art. These are not “bad,” or “wrong.” I only suggest that they now need to be complimented by other, more culturally respectful approaches within a country as social-ecologically diverse as
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Canada. In this vein, I hope this project can one day stand shoulder to shoulder with these other, important works—reflecting our diversity together—not above them.
Decolonization in this project, then, is more a movement of rebalancing, so that
others’ voices and truths may now also be heard and honoured. It is a process that more fully cultivates the gifts of our social-ecological diversity, and empowers our cultural entanglements than is conventionally done in our art histories. In short, the decolonizing movements enacted here with respect to the Canadian artworld are not to eradicate European ideologies or practices from it, but to rebalance and enhance the pools of knowledge we all have to draw from in it. I believe that only in so doing will we be able to increase our social-ecological resilience, and further enrich and empower all our lives here.
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CHAPTER TWO:
LITERATURE REVIEW
Fixing the Hole in the Sky I have been interested in art my whole life. Both my parents are creative people: my mom a folk art painter and crafter, my dad an architectural technologist and builder. Like many Canadians, however, I grew up in my school art classes learning mostly to appreciate European art, holding it up as “the standard” in art. I have loved (and still love) a wide variety of art at different times in my life, especially the art of Gustave Klimt, Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne, William Blake, and the Pre-Raphaelites. The first time I was ever really “grabbed” by a Canadian artwork was about a decade ago when Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s, Red Man Watching White Man Trying to Fix Hole in Sky (1990), totally bewitched me with something I’d never seen before. I felt it in the very core of my body: my heart sped up a bit; there was a pressure in my stomach that suddenly slipped into my awareness; and that spot in between my heart and my stomach—right at the base of the rib cage and chest—felt like it was beginning to enlarge as it radiated a warmth throughout me. Before I even “knew” anything about this painting at all, I was spellbound, it made me laugh, it made me sad, and then it made me wonder.
“Stupid white men trying to fix the hole in the sky like that—they don’t have a
freakin’ clue!” flashed across my awareness.
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“Wow! what a beautiful hill in the background; all those colours, and
personalities, all totally bringing it to life,” flashed through at some point as well—the thoughts and feelings were all happening like a blur.
I remember my attention also resting at some point on the thought: “I love how
the red man is so much a part of that hill, and am very sad that the white men don’t even seem to notice it, they don’t even seem to be aware of where the hell they are, or how to get anywhere!”
Shortly after this initial encounter I could start to feel myself separate from the
painting a bit as well, as my intellect started to call for explanations. “Wait a minute,” I rationalized, “I have white skin like those guys trying to fix the hole in the sky. And as much as I try to stand for otherwise, I know lots of people in my life who don’t see the mountains out where I live at all like the hills in this painting, or how I might see them. This saddens me too because as a wilderness guide I should be able to inspire this way of seeing—not exactly the same, of course, but something like it—in those around me, but do I? Maybe I’m not really as much a part of the earth around me as I like to think.” And just like so, this painting and its storied landscape have become a part of my life— moving in and out of my consciousness at different times, places, and events; taking on a life of its own through mine. The painting is not so much “giving me the answers,” per se, but more acting in my journey that began way before I saw it; like a marker, not a maker.
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One of my favourite places to go in the world is a high subalpine meadow right
on the Continental Divide up the river from my house in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. As I write this, I can smell its sweet-scented subalpine fir after the rain, hear the thundering echo of the rockfall on the cliff band above me building through the air, and I am warmed by the profusion of colour before me in the meadows of wildflowers swaying in the breeze, as I bend down to taste the leaves of my favourite-tasting lily. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think I have been to this place more than anyone else in the world—walking in it, watching in it, resting in it, listening in it, gathering in it, living in it now for over twenty years. My dad and I are the very ones who made a good portion of the trail now leading in to it. The trail has since been written up in a few Rocky Mountain guide books, but it is so far off the main highways running through the Rocky Mountains (a good hour to hour-and-a-half drive on a sometimes very rough gravel road), that it is still seldom visited. Tourists in the mountains, it seems, don’t generally like leaving the highways and the crowds of the national parks. I go to these meadows often—guiding people as part of my job, or alone, whichever—and frequently know when new animals have passed through, new humans have passed through, if the berries are late or early, and when the spruce buds are best for tea. But over these years something else has been going on. Something that only started to come into my awareness because of all this time I have been spending and returning there: this place started to introduce itself to me on its own terms.
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It all started one day when I climbed down through a boulder field a slightly
different way than I usually go. Just as I came out through the trees above it and peered down into the boulders to scout out my through-route, one of the large boulders—a good two metres high—at the base of the talus scree slope across the field, jumped out at me differently than it had ever done before. I have been passing it from the other direction now for well over a decade, but it somehow stood out more from all the other boulders near it on this day. It wasn’t even close to being the largest boulder, nor the smallest, but the only way I know how to say it is that it was powerful. It had an energy that I was just drawn to this particular day (probably because I was only now ready to notice it in my life for whatever reason). I kept on working my way down the mountain, but for many trips back since, I made a point of glancing over toward it each time I passed. One day, I turned my head toward it and it was gone! Or more accurately, it was no longer just a boulder, but it had changed into a huge toad! It was still very much like a boulder, but it was definitely a stone toad as well, and everyone I have pointed this out to since also sees it. It is so obvious now, though, that I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.
Time passed, I got to know this toad and its home a little better, and I would point
it out to people every now and then as we passed by. Mostly, people laugh, like it’s a funny coincidence in the middle of this boulder field. Many take pictures, though, and are genuinely amazed for a while by the presence of this stone toad. One day amidst all this unfolding between myself and the place I noticed that above this boulder, despite
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the cool, lush meadows and subalpine lakes, there were next to no toads. Below it, however, I noticed the creeks and forests are full of them. Above it, when it rains higher up in the meadows, the thunder is also louder than it is anywhere else in the area (and I know this because I also frequently visit many other places nearby as well). The lightning is also particularly close and strong right here. Some of the most awesome lightning storms I have ever experienced were right in these very meadows. It literally brings down the mountains. Some of the visitors I’ve guided here have even decided to turn back early because they were so scared of the unique lightening in these skies, and the way in which it can completely rend everything in its presence. Then I noticed one day that the stone toad had a large crack down its back, just like the lightening white stripes down the backs of the Boreal Toads in the valley below it. Then I started to recognize everything around me in a much more holistic way than I’d ever experienced before—like a veil was being lifted from my eyes and mind.
I was glimpsing, or rather, deepening into, more and more, the larger story
unfolding all around me. It is a story of this place itself: where I can now easily imagine a young overconfident toad, long ago, wandering away one day to where his parents told him not to go (up toward the meadows). He got away with it for a while, but eventually he was struck by lightning and turned to stone. He now stands like a guardian for the toads, warning them not to go past up into the meadows, which is where the lightning and thunder come to play in this part of the world. In their playing, they are not always paying attention to what’s around them. And that’s how the Boreal
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Toad got the lightning stripe down its back! And this is just the beginning. The storied earth here continues to unfold with me even today.
What impresses me most now is just how much I am aware that none of this is
just “my imagination”—as in, not my individual knowing mind working alone somehow outside this landscape in a transcendent consciousness and imposing something on to the land. It has nothing to do with a special kind of “knowing,” for I don’t control where the toads go here, I don’t control where the lightning strikes hard and often. This story, rather, unfolded around me as I really got to know this place, and paid attention to it. I was nothing more than listening and ready to hear—free for a while of all the jumbled thoughts and intellectual distractions going on in my head—this place literally taught me. And now I am aware that it also stories me. I didn’t learn what I learned (and am still learning), through a tiny, compartmentalized picture. It’s always huge in its complex fullness.
The short story I just recounted of how the Boreal Toad got its stripe is in every
way something that I and this place imagined together. It couldn’t have been otherwise. And now all who come here with me learn how to respect this place for who, in part, it really is; for a story it tells, which is still dynamic, alive, animating, and unfolding. It also gestures me towards an even larger story, one where I am now also aware that no language, culture, or stories ever really die. They may be forgotten, but if we learn to pay attention again, their building blocks are all right there in front of us, waiting to have life breathed back into them. In the meantime, these people I guide to this place, get at
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least to remember the place in a more personal and meaningful way, which can be incorporated in to their everyday life stories. We can walk here, and be here, in this storied landscape safely, intimately, and responsibly. Maybe it can even animate them in remembering their own places again, wherever they call home.
A few years later, I was leading a cross-cultural sharing and youth leadership
program down in Guyana, South America. I took a group of Aboriginal youth from Canada down to the jungles and savannah of the Rupununi where we lived, worked, and shared with Indigenous youth and their families for two months. In one of the villages, one of the Elders shared an abridged version of his creation story with us around the fire (the full version takes days to tell). It was a story about First Woman coming down to earth through a hole in the sky. She was pregnant and had many twolegged babies. The two-leggeds grew up, learned many things from the many other beings around them, and went to many new lands. But then First Woman and her children started to forget where they were, and they missed their original home. First Woman sent her children out all over the world to try and find it again by looking for that original hole in the sky. But even after many encounters with other beings who tried to help them in some way, they were unsuccessful. To this day, the story says, twoleggeds are still wandering, searching for their home.
Hmmm, so what if the sky has been speaking to us all along? What if our home
has been calling to us, showing us where we’re at in the world, and we haven’t been paying attention? Now there are holes opening up in the sky all around everywhere,
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yelling at this generation to pay attention! To open up to where you are really at in this world. Maybe these holes aren’t about us trying to “fix” them; maybe they’re trying to help “fix” us, guide us back home within our storied landscape. Maybe we’re just so focused on, and impressed by, ourselves and all we “think” we’ve learned on our search, that we’re more interested in just patching over the hole. And maybe we’re about to cut ourselves off from our home forever.
Cross-Cultural Approaches to Art The most comprehensive investigation of a cross-cultural approach to art is Leuthold’s pioneering Cross-Cultural Issues in Art (2011). The structure of this literature review follows what Leuthold describes as the main frameworks through which art has been approached cross-culturally. He argues that “cross-cultural issues are fundamental for understanding art and aesthetics,” but the discussion has been too-limited to Western theorists and understandings.70 These conventional Western approaches to art, according to Leuthold, have generally taken three forms when discussing art of more than one culture in a common framework. Neither, according to him, are truly adequate, and so he proposes a fourth, which is the one explored in his book. Even though Canadian art historians have not been overtly concerned with considering Canadian art cross-culturally until recently, it has been almost impossible for them to avoid cultural issues altogether because of the sheer diversity of cultures that have always been here. Art historical works, as a result, have employed versions of all three of Leuthold’s
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conventional frameworks, and some even dip into something like his fourth, even if unintentionally. Structuring this literature review according to these cross-cultural methodologies, then, will allow me to review relevant literature contributing to the mainstream story of art today, while emphasizing aspects of Canadian art history from a cross-cultural perspective. Before getting into the review itself, I will briefly introduce Leuthold’s four frameworks.
The first is called the “inclusivity approach.”71 This approach is used by art
historians when they oscillate back and forth between considerations and examples of artworks from various cultures. At best, this approach, as Whitelaw says, is “admirable,” but it severely limits the possibility of understanding deeper cultural and aesthetic principles of organization and process. A second approach identified by Leuthold is the “isolated culture approach.” This approach looks in depth at a single culture on its own. While these studies can be very rich within a particular cultural framework, they can also downplay intercultural and cross-cultural processes and understandings of art in their historical development. A third approach is called the “postcolonial critical approach.” This framework is important for its ability to link complex issues of power with the art process in various, often cross-cultural, contexts. It is frequently limited temporally, however, to issues with modern art alone, and can often exclude many other important aspects of the art process by emphasizing primarily political contexts and rhetorical agendas.
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Postcolonial criticism, although an interesting and powerful voice in the artworld
today, needs to be applied carefully and mindfully when speaking about places in the world such as Canada because Canada is a non-postcolonial place.72 I return to some of the cross-cultural complexities inherent in postcolonialism, and the postmodernism it draws from, for Canada throughout this dissertation. The last approach, privileged by Leuthold himself, is the “thematic approach.” This approach takes as its site of departure one (or all) of eleven themes identified by Leuthold as central to considering art cross-culturally. The eleven themes are: culture and hybridity; primitivism and otherness; colonialism; nationalism; art and religion; symbolism and interpretation; style and ethnicity; sense of place; social order; gender; and the self. This approach proposes a comparative framework that can integrate artwork from various cultures more efficiently than the other approaches, while allowing each to speak on their own terms. I will reserve discussion of the problems I see with this approach for my purposes here until the next chapter.
Cultural Inclusivity in Canadian Art History Canadian art historians in recent decades have generally maintained that prior to the 1970s the story of art in Canada excluded Aboriginal art and cultures. While this is accurate to some degree, it is not the case that the art historical literature completely omitted any word on Aboriginal art and cultures altogether. There was never an absolute silence or exclusion, although Aboriginal voices themselves were, indeed, silenced. I
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think it significant, however, that, on the contrary, Aboriginal art and cultures had to be continually mentioned, even if only in passing. As such, the majority of books about art in Canada did include “something” about Aboriginal cultures and art, even if only to argue that they did not count, or were not up to the standard of non-Aboriginal art. This “presence” (though unequal and contradictory), is significant because it signals that there is something much more nuanced and complex going on than just outright “exclusion.” When viewed from a cross-cultural perspective, I suggest that this is actually a form of “inclusivity” because Euro-Canadian art historians seemed to struggle just as much with Aboriginal art’s exclusion, as with its inclusion. The fact that these art historians consistently felt that Aboriginal art needed to be mentioned, even if only in a short, dismissive way, in order to continually write it out of (art) history again and again, demonstrates that Aboriginal cultures were never completely outside the full story in lived experience. Canadian art historians had to continually revisit—sometimes discuss at length—the topic in their writings, each time trying to find new words and ways to rewrite Aboriginal cultures out of the story. Yet, as its appearance in the next book on art in Canada would demonstrate, nothing worked indefinitely, for the next writer almost inevitably had also to take up the subject, again and again. What seems clear to me is that on some deeper level, Aboriginal art and cultures were always involved, relevant, or a part of the story (though unequally and incomprehensibly) for most early art historians. This is why they had to continually argue, and re-argue, otherwise. Thus, in effect, there are actually two versions of the inclusivity approach in Canada: an early one, based on
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negation; and a later one (post-1970), which is more positive on the surface, but no less colonialist at its core. I will review the key texts of this early section in a little more depth, for they help establish the foundation of our current story of art in Canada.
Fragmented and scattered publications in the middle decades of the nineteenth
century, although not concerned with a sense of historicity in art, began showing hints of an artistic life in Canada that was often intercultural and which would influence the more formal story of art to come. Popular works such as Henry James Warre’s Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory (1848), and Paul Kane’s Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America (1859), swung between Aboriginal and EuroCanadian cultures in the context of their cross-cultural journeys across the land soon to be called “Canada.” Kane’s one-man exhibition in 1848, exhibiting the art based on his journey (of 1846-47), was so popular that it marked a new phase in the story of art in Canada, eventually leading to the formation of the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) in 1872.73 After confederation in 1867, and the formation of the RCA in 1880, a sense of historicity in the Canadian artworld slowly took shape through avenues with a nationalistic urge to unite Canadians. As art historian Laurier Lacroix points out, at this early stage “many of the first art historians were the artist-members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.”74
Some of the earliest art historical writings in Canada, as such, are the
contributions by portraitists, J.W.L. Forster and Robert Harris; sculptor, Hamilton MacCarthy; and landscapists, Robert F. Gagen and William A. Sherwood, to the fourth
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volume of Canada: An Encyclopaedia of the Country (1898). Together these essays comprise the bulk of the section on “Canadian Art, Music and Sculpture,” and are the first attempt at piecing together a story of art in Canada (though focused mainly on Ontario), as we know it today. They touch on Aboriginal art; early French Canadian art by “those whose careers are now closed by death;”75 contemporary English and French Canadian art; the rise of Ontario art societies and the RCA; regional differences; landscape art and nationalism; and sculpture. Forster’s essay, “Art and Artists in Ontario,” opens the entire section with a paragraph on Aboriginal art that, while dismissive of Aboriginal art, also draws impetus from Forster’s awareness that many Canadians seem to consider “the graphic picture-writing on birch-bark [by Indian chiefs]...the dawn of Canadian art.”76 These essays, when viewed in the context of the encyclopedia series as a whole, also complement numerous essays in volume one on various Aboriginal cultures and issues by early Canadian historians. All of these essays together were dismissive and colonialist, but they also mark the beginning of a version of cultural inclusivity in the story of art in Canada; one where Aboriginal “presence” in the story was never so easily, nor completely, excluded.
It would be helpful to briefly sidestep my main purpose in this chapter, in order to
elaborate a bit on why I believe this phenomenon in early Canadian art historical literature might be a kind of “cultural inclusivity approach” through negation. My argument will be clarified by referencing Anishinabe writer and critic Gerald Vizenor’s well-known concept of survivance. Survivance refers to “The counteractions of
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postindian warriors….[to the] simulations of dominance and absence of the other” inherent in manifest manners (behaviours sanctioned by the ideology of manifest destiny).77 “Postindian warriors” are “the simulations,” or “new indications of a narrative recreation…that overcome the manifest manners of dominance.”78 They bear the projections of their time, and continue to resist the literatures and scriptures of the civilization that inscribes dominance, surveillance, and other terminal simulations onto their realities and communities. The forms of resistance themselves, the simulations of survivance, “are heard and read stories [often involving humour and ‘Trickster hermeneutics’] that mediate and undermine the literature of dominance [and its simulations of the unreal].”79 Importantly, the simulations of survivance arise performatively from within postindian realities and communities. In Vizenor’s words, “they arise from the silence of heard stories, or the imagination of oral literature in translation, not [from] the absence of the real in simulated realities.” The critical distinction for Vizenor here is that “postindian warriors create a new tribal presence in stories,” thus undermining “the absence of the real in the ruins of tribal representations” that are read and sustained as authentic through manifest manners.80
While Vizenor’s notion of survivance equates the persistent absenting of
Indigenous peoples in literatures of dominance with an actual absence of Indigenous presence, there is an important distinction to be made between Vizenor’s “literatures of dominance” and what I suggest is being indicated by early Canadian art historical writing. Indeed, the latter is a literature of dominance, but I am not suggesting that the
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works of art historical writing themselves point toward Aboriginal presence. Rather, I am suggesting that the story they collectively tell through their simulations of domination and absence, also contains what Vizenor might call “the shimmer of tribal presence” because of the persistent and recurring presence of Aboriginal art.81 Whatever the interpretation or translation imposed by the art historian might project or endorse, in other words, there is always the possibility inherent in the presence of the art for elements of survivance to do their undermining and countering.
Vizenor states that the postindian sources of natural reason and tribal
consciousness are wonder, doubt, and comedy, as opposed to the nostalgia, melancholy, and tragedy more often embedded within literatures of dominance. To use Forster’s quotation above as an example, on one hand, it endorses a simulation of nostalgia or dominance. It does refer to Aboriginal art as a phenomenon of the past, and there could be an implied suspicion or condescension inherent in the way he mentions some Canadians giving Aboriginal art such a valued place in the story of art in Canada as its “dawn.” But on the other hand, Forster’s statement could also inspire a wonder in the idea of “graphic picture-writing on birch-bark,” and a doubt, or even comic reaction in the idea of such art being so integrally linked to Canadian art in the first place. The presence of Aboriginal art itself in the Canadian artworld, in short, also always provided a possible opening, however small, for the “shimmers of imagination…wonder, chance, coincidence,” and therefore, for a kind of presence and “[a simulation of] survivance without the dominance of closure.”82
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To return to the main purpose of this chapter, the written contributions to art
history by some Canadian artists in the late-nineteenth century, was also developed by others through exhibitions. The most visionary of these, directly concerned with a growing sense of artistic life and historicity in Canada, were those of the various branches of the Woman’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC), founded in 1892 by Mary Dignam. Unlike their male-dominated counterparts—epitomized by the RCA exhibitions —which stayed ever focused on (even when trying to argue for, or feign independence from) the current academic and international painting of Europe, the WAAC branches consistently incorporated into their exhibitions local and historical flare. In any of these popular exhibitions, one might find a variety of Aboriginal beadwork, leatherwork, basketry, and quillwork; local ceramics, textiles, and furniture; casts of famous Old Master sculptures—such as the Venus de Milo or Donatello’s Boy—Old Master European paintings—such as an oil painting of Venice by J.M.W. Turner and De Hoog’s Dutch Interior—and older and younger generation Canadian painting—such as works by Lucius O’Brien and Laura Muntz.83
Newton MacTavish’s, The Fine Arts in Canada (1925), was the first attempt at a
full survey of art in Canada, organizing and elaborating in one voice on many of the topics covered in the 1898 encyclopedia essays. MacTavish’s first chapter was entirely on Aboriginal art. Though dismissive and colonialist in tenor, he engages it through a seeming commonplace awareness of the time (despite it being only four years after the first nationalistic Group of Seven exhibition), that, “In searching for the beginnings of art
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in the vast territory that now encompasses the Dominion of Canada one turns with first thoughts to the aboriginals.”84 Far from being simply exclusionary, MacTavish’s early chapter is the most substantive art historical consideration of Aboriginal art to date (and would be for decades). It stories Aboriginal art as a precursor (read inferior), to the superior post-1880 modern Canadian art, which progressed from Aboriginal art through the art of Paul Kane (also deemed inferior because of his reliance on Aboriginal art and cultures). This storyline is also reflected in the landmark 1927 exhibition, Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern, a project of ethnologist Marius Barbeau. This exhibition was the first attempt in Canada to bring together Aboriginal art and other Canadian art on the national level afforded by the NGC. More organized and focused than the exhibitions scattered around the country in the mixed venues of the WAAC, this exhibition confirmed MacTavish’s kind of “inclusivity.” The Aboriginal art in the exhibition even (unintentionally) overshadowed the art of other Canadian painters, including the Group of Seven, in the reviews.85 This issue was addressed unofficially by Albert Robson a few years later.
In 1932, Robson’s Canadian Landscape Painters built on MacTavish’s and
Barbeau’s story by focusing nationalistically on landscape painting alone. Because, as Robson believes, Indians “did not touch, even lightly, the art of landscape painting,” he manages to avoid talking about Aboriginal art and peoples more completely than any art historian up to this point in storying Canadian art. But even he cannot exclude Aboriginal art completely. At the very end of his book he feels he has to justify his silence on the
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topic up to that point and attempts to explain away Aboriginal art’s undeniable richness, and undeniable similarities, to his idea of real “Canadian” art.86 Robson’s emphasis throughout his work on “native-Canadian” themes (meaning nature and landscape themes, not “Aboriginal art”), for the formation of a “Canadian school” that was not beholden to “European formulae,”87 allows the door to Aboriginal art to remain ever slightly ajar. A sentence in his foreword helps illustrate this. He paradoxically links Aboriginal art to real “Canadian” art when calling for modern landscape artists to draw more from “motives indigenous to our own soil,” for then “Tourists in search of something ‘Canadian’ to take home would not be driven to the necessity of limiting their purchase to a pair of fur-trimmed moccasins.”88 On the one hand, he is dismissive of Aboriginal art, but on the other hand, he reveals that a deeper part of him could not really separate Aboriginal art from the kind of home-grown Canadian art he advocates in his praise of modern Canadian landscape art. Even though filtered through a colonialist mindset, Robson unconsciously admits that Aboriginal art—in this case fur-trimmed moccasins—is deeply connected with the land of “Canada” in the present, in exactly the same way he wishes more Canadian landscape art was.
Graham McInnes’s, A Short History of Canadian Art (1939), builds on
MacTavish’s story. He does so by including discussions of decorative arts, architecture, and sculpture within the story of art in Canada for the first time. His introduction includes the first overt cross-cultural consideration of art in Canada by discussing the possibility of Aboriginal art and life “actually influencing or being directly influenced by Canadian
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art.”89 He attempts to conclude that there is no influence either way, but he does so uneasily, leaving the doorway to Aboriginal art open even a bit wider. That is, shortly after his initial conclusion, he admits that we do “have one instance [of cross-cultural influence],” being the Eastern Algonquian double s-curve motif that Barbeau had recently connected to cross-cultural contact with early French settlers. Similarly, a little further on, McInnes writes that “the art of the West Coast Indians is the only one to have influenced, even remotely, the main stream of Canadian art” (my emphasis).90 McInnes’s story also later refines MacTavish’s more uneasy placement of Aboriginal art within the story of art in Canada. Though Aboriginal art is still at the beginning of a linear historical progression ending with its replacement by European art, McInnes firmly acknowledges, for the first time in Canadian art history, that there is, nevertheless, some kind of connection: “the gradual development from Indian and French-Canadian work to the contemporary landscape school, [making it] quite clear the organic unity of Canadian art.”91
With McInnes’s last thought, the beginning of the story of art in Canada as we
know it today is set, and a shift in how it will continue to unfold cross-culturally is intimated. No longer is Aboriginal art a part of the story only as a negation, but it is now unquestionably a part of the story, even if only at a distant beginning in the past, and only accessible through non-Aboriginal voices. This early version of “inclusivity” branches out into a more “isolated culture” outlook here, with the dominant isolated culture being a universalized one simply called “Canadian.” The Canadian isolated
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culture story is inclusive (though still unequally), of Aboriginal art, as well as French, British, and many others’, in a unified linear progression to the present day. Sculptor Elizabeth Wyn Wood’s 1947 foreword to Canadian Women Artists, evidences such a shift:
One-half of our population is of British origin, one-third is French-speaking and French-feeling to this day. And we have large minority groups all of which have brought their gifts to our land...Time and friendly adjustment have undoubtedly made some changes in the old habits but only in such a way as the piece of a mosaic is cut to fit the pattern of the whole. The dynamic Canadian slogan is ‘Unity in Diversity.’92
Indeed, Wyn Wood’s words evidence a shift in Euro-Canadians’ understanding of themselves, but the inclusion of Aboriginal cultures and voices in the idea of “Canadian” is still largely controlled by non-Aboriginal worldviews, structures, and voices.
The inclusivity approach does not end here, of course, but subsequently morphs
into the more “positive” version that we know today. This version was influenced by the alternative isolated culture stories (i.e.: Aboriginal art as part of an isolated culture, and other non-British cultures as well), and developed throughout the twentieth century. The more positive kind of “inclusivity” was also influenced by the postcolonial critical approach that later opened the door to Aboriginal art and cultures even wider still. The earliest example of this newer version of inclusivity came significantly, once again, through important contributions to Canadian art history by women—another characteristic of the story of art in Canada that goes largely neglected and unnoticed. Dorothy Farr and Natalie Luckyj’s, From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada
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(1975), set out to celebrate key aesthetic contributions by women artists to “Canadian” art history. They included in their list Potawatomi artist, Daphne Odjig—easily swinging to her in between write-ups on Dorothy Knowles, Esther Warkov, Hertha Muysson, and Christiane Pflug. Later examples of this version of cultural inclusivity in the Canadian art historical literature include: Ian Thom’s Art BC: Masterworks from British Columbia (2000); Anne Newlands’s Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000 (2000); the NGC’s Art of this Land, and new “Galleries of Canadian and Aboriginal Art” (2003); and Newlands’s Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings (2007).
In the meantime, R. H. Hubbard’s, An Anthology of Canadian Art (1960),
embodies the shift from the early version of inclusivity to the “Canadian” isolated culture approach in the literature. Prior to 1960, the role of Aboriginal art in the story of art in Canada is always at the beginning of the story, which has since supposedly advanced beyond it. Hubbard’s Anthology continues this trend, but it also approaches art in Canada from what was at the time the most cross-cultural perspective so far. Hubbard’s point of departure is that an understanding of art in Canada is embedded in a comparison of “the arts of the French, English, and Spanish colonies” in North America. While Aboriginal art is situated at the beginning of this story again, such a comparative framework allows for, nevertheless, a definitive acknowledgment (even if only with certain qualifications), that “West Coast Indian art...appeared as a minor influence on Canadian painting...in the twentieth [century].”93 Furthermore, Hubbard’s work structurally hints at a new direction in the story of art in Canada: the final two plates on
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the last two pages of the book—following numerous other illustrations of Euro-Canadian visual art—are illustrations of a Haida mask and contemporaneous Inuit carving. Hubbard does not address these specifically in his text, for in his text Aboriginal art is at the beginning of the story. But now these illustrations stand out in comparison to his own text, as well as to all previous Canadian art historical texts. Pictorially, perhaps subconsciously, Aboriginal art is now also at the “end” here, or right in the middle of the story, even if only symbolically, or unintentionally. Taking this a little further, Hubbard’s book may also begin to hint at elements of what I call the storied approach to art. For example, by beginning and ending his largely Eurocentric story of art in Canada with Aboriginal art, he unconsciously illustrates what Canadian art historians have always seemed to be aware of in their bones, but could never explicitly say: that the conventional story of art in Canada is actually contained within the story of Aboriginal art, and not the other way around. But now I am getting ahead of myself.
The Isolated Culture in Canadian Art History The nationalistic urge colouring the story of art in Canada since the end of the nineteenth century began to soften in the 1930s when Canadian art historians opened up to more international modernist influences. They became less concerned with what “Canadian” art is (object or subject matter), or the level of technical mastery appropriate to it, and more with artists’ psychological responses to the world. The locus of the story of art in Canada shifted more completely into the individual consciousness of the artist.
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This increased the importance of the artist’s life, culture, and society for understanding her art and art history. These are aspects best approached cross-culturally through an “isolated culture approach.”
Donald Buchanan’s prolific work, beginning with his monograph James Wilson
Morrice: A Biography (1936), helped usher in this new formalist and sociological trend in Canadian art history, where the story of art in Canada became more driven by a collection of artist biographies and responses to the world, local and global. It also points to a bisection within the “Canadian” isolated culture story: early modern formalist works with a nationalist reference, and those whose reference was internationalist. Examples of the former include Fred Housser’s, A Canadian Art Movement: The Story of the Group of Seven (1926); Barbeau’s, Cornelius Krieghoff: Pioneer Painter of North America (1934); and William Colgate’s, Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development (1943). Examples of the latter rising trend include Buchanan’s own “World of Art” (1938); Canadian Painters: From Paul Kane to the Group of Seven (1945); and The Growth of Canadian Painting (1950); as well as R. H. Hubbard’s, “Growth in Canadian Art” (1957). Buchanan (1950) would later view these nationalist and internationalist tendencies as two parallel “paths of development,” together comprising the early maturation of Canadian art. For him, these developments were then (in the 1950s), demonstrating that Canadian art was becoming fully “Canadian” because only then was it finally demonstrating the existence of a sustained tradition (beginning with Kane and
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Krieghoff), in the individual consciousnesses of Canadian artists, and also relative to the rest of the world.
The landmark 1945 exhibition, The Development of Painting in Canada, sits
squarely within this progression of the isolated culture approach to art. It solidified the conventional story of art in Canada by reaching to the depths of “Canadian” culture, society, and history through three centuries of almost 200 works, by 150 artists, in order to, as stated in The Globe and Mail, “break down regional loyalties, and to create an impression of a vital national art, which need not fear comparison with any in the world.”94 Ken Lefolii, Elizabeth Kilbourn, and Frank Newfeld’s, Great Canadian Painting: A Century of Art (1966), reflects this story by switching, for the first time in Canadian art history, to a thematic structure. This enabled them to break through previous Canadian art historical barriers that had primarily emphasized landscape painting. The crowning achievement of this approach to art came at no less significant a time than the 1967 centenary celebrations of Confederation: J. Russell Harper’s magisterial Painting in Canada: A History (1966). This was the first full survey of “Canadian” art that attempted comprehensive coverage spanning the entire country.
It will be helpful to elaborate a little further on how this developing “Canadian”
story was framed by an isolated culture approach to art. As I see it, this is because although “Canadian” culture is almost everywhere acknowledged for its multiculturalism, its diversity, complexity, and nuanced socio-political components—such as is demonstrated, for example, by art and cultural historians Beverly Rasporich and Tamara
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Seiler95—all of its art in the literature is still largely viewed through, and influenced by dominant Anglo-Canadian understandings of art and art practice alone. While Aboriginal and other non-European cultures seemed included and not isolated, on one hand, they were still subsumed within a Eurocentric understanding of art, on the other. In other words, the “Canadian” story, although complex and multicultural in itself, was still primarily coloured and framed by the one dominant Anglo culture at home. And it was “isolated” insofar as its positioning internationally, and its frequent misunderstanding or neglect of other cultures, was concerned. Inevitably, the resulting conventional story of art became challenged by those other non-Anglo cultures. Their own kinds of “isolated culture” stories often sprouted to add, emphasize, and rebalance key facets of their art and culture that were neglected, maltreated, or misunderstood by the dominant (Anglo) Canadian one throughout the twentieth century.
For example, the pioneering work of Gérard Morisset in Québec, especially after
his return from France, presented a complementary isolated culture to the dominant “Canadian” one being carved out in recent decades. Morisset’s Rapport de l’inventaire des oeuvres d’art (1940), pointed out that, “The history books do not contain anything more than mere mentions of our [Québec’s] artists…[so] we develop here the need for a new direction: the valorization of our artistic past in the story of the nation.”96 His later, Québec et son évolution (1952), plumbed the depths of Québec culture and history, which was unique and rich on its own, with roots in the expressed need to “effectively resist the enemy, whether English or Iroquois.”97 During these same decades, Aboriginal
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artists and writers also began to voice the rich depths of their traditions. The revolutionary BC periodical, Native Voice, was begun in 1947 and used the slogan: “Official Organ of the Native Brotherhood in British Columbia.” It also regularly included news, updates, stories, and articles—some relating to Aboriginal art and artists, such as Nuu-chah-nulth artist George Clutesi, and Kwakwākā’wakw carver Mungo Martin—from other Native associations and organizations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Québec, and elsewhere. Close on its heels, in 1949-50, Mungo Martin and Ellen Neel were commissioned by the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) to restore totem poles at the museum. Soon after that, in 1957, the MOA further commissioned Haida artist Bill Reid, and Kwakwākā’wakw artist Douglas Cranmer to create more totem poles and a memorial.
These events signalled a momentum that continued to gather through the 1960s,
and further demonstrated the rich depths of Aboriginal cultures through various alternative isolated culture projects. For example, Norval Morrisseau’s exhibition in Toronto (1962), as well as his Legends of My People: The Great Ojibwa (1965), edited by Selwyn Dewdney, helped establish a new kind of awareness of Woodland traditions and history. Also, Bill Reid continued his Haida village restoration project with Cranmer, finishing two houses and seven poles in 1962. He then helped illustrate Christie Harris’s Raven’s Cry (1966), further increasing awareness of West Coast traditions and history.
The momentum from these other “isolated culture” projects—also including Bill
Holm’s important Northwest Coast Indian Art (1965), and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s
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Arts of the Raven (1967)—all came together in the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67. The pavilion was curated and controlled by Aboriginal people as a separate pavilion during the centenary celebration of Confederation in 1967. It was painted by Aboriginal artists—including Morrisseau, Clutesi, Gerald Tailfeathers, Alex Janiver, Carl Ray, Tom Hill, and Noel Wuttunee. This event helped stimulate a new kind of awareness of Aboriginal identity in Canada, and the pavilion turned out to be one of the most popular draws for the entire Expo. This newfound solidarity between Aboriginal artists and peoples across Canada helped stimulate a more concerted “Aboriginal” isolated culture story, separate from the dominant “Canadian” one. Shortly after, Aboriginal cultural depth and richness was reinforced and asserted in Seneca artist, curator, and art historian Tom Hill’s landmark exhibition, Canadian Indian Art 74 (1974). This exhibition brought “contemporary” and “traditional” Aboriginal art together in one place, challenging the “Canadian” isolated culture story that suggested Aboriginal art and cultures were only something from a distant past, unconnected to a living, changing present. In doing so, as Lee-Ann Martin has pointed out, this exhibition also became a model for large group Aboriginal art exhibitions and art historical discourse over the next twenty years.98
Euro-Canadian art historians continued to write within the universalizing
“Canadian” isolated culture tradition, although, from around 1970, it also became increasingly influenced by the other isolated culture stories that had been developing alongside it. Some art historians responded by delving even deeper into aspects of the
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“Canadian” story itself. One branch of this included the close examination of the lives and works of specific artists in regard to their role within a particular aspect or period of the “Canadian” story. For example, J. Russell Harper’s Paul Kane’s Frontier (1971), revisited Kane’s place in Canadian art history; and William Withrow’s Contemporary Canadian Painting (1972), examined the period 1945 to 1970 through the socio-political lives of twenty-four artists in particular. Other works scrutinized specific periods in Canadian art history more generally—such as Charles C. Hill’s Canadian Painting in the Thirties (1975)—or specific regions—such as Nancy E. Dillow, Terry Fenton, and Wayne Morgan’s Saskatchewan: Art and Artists (1971). Other works examined specific media in the “Canadian” story, such as Ralph Greenhill and Andrew Birrell’s Canadian Photography (1979). Yet another branch explored specific genres in Canadian art history with more depth than ever before. For example, Michael Bell’s Painters in a New Land (1973), revisited the early topographical and folk paintings and drawings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Harper’s A People’s Art (1974), focused on nonacademic primitive, naïve, and provincial folk art in Canada; and Dennis Reid’s Our Own Country Canada (1979), examined the academic landscape tradition in Canada during the decades surrounding confederation and the establishment of the RCA.
Other art historians after 1970, however, also continued to reinforce the isolated
culture stories that developed alongside the dominant “Canadian” one by delving deeper into aspects of those other cultures’ art. François-Marc Gagnon continued the tradition begun by Morisset in Québec with his Premiers peintres de la Nouvelle-France
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(1976), with Nicole Cloutier; and his examination of one of the seminal contemporary figures in Québec art, Paul-Émile Borduas 1905-1960: biographie critique et analyse de l’oeuvre (1978). Roald Nasgaard’s The Mystic North (1983), uniquely revisited symbolist landscape painting in the “Canadian” story, but through a comparative cross-cultural investigation of the “isolated cultures” also embedded in contemporaneous symbolist work from Sweden, Finland, Norway, USA, and other parts of Northern Europe. Olive P. Dickason’s Indian Arts in Canada (1971), surveyed Aboriginal art across Canada, and was followed up by Hilary Stewart’s Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (1973). These works were also complemented by Daphne Odjig’s written and illustrated Nanabush book series (1971), further deepening and broadening the “Aboriginal” isolated culture story of art.
The various projects taking an isolated culture approach in Canadian art history
through the 1960s and 1970s stimulated a new awareness for the socio-political and intercultural complexities of art in Canada. This led some Euro-Canadian art historians in the 1980s to avoid the complexity altogether. These began justifying once again why they were not including Aboriginal art in their survey-like studies—conservatively maintaining the strict separation between the “Canadian” and “Aboriginal” isolated culture stories. Unlike earlier in the century, when such isolationist justification was based on negations, David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff’s Contemporary Canadian Art (1983), and Joan Murray’s The Best Contemporary Canadian Art (1987), for example, rationalize their exclusion on the seemingly more positive grounds that Aboriginal art
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could only be respectfully treated through separate studies, presumably as opposed to their own “Canadian” ones.99 The place these authors are coming from is one of intended respect, not superiority, even though, on one level, it also neglects the real cultural diversity of Canada (the place), and its art, in favour of an exclusive focus on Western (Euro-Canadian) art.
Other art historians explored, or even embraced, some of the socio-political and
intercultural complexities rising to the surface in Canadian art history at the time. Robert Bringhurst, Geoffrey James, Russell Keziere, and Doris Shadbolt’s Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada (1983), with essays by Terrence Heath, Diana Nemiroff, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, and others, explored these complexities through various thematically-driven essays. They proposed to “toss the art of four decades into the air and allow it to settle into fresh configurations…organic in structure, full of overlaps and intersections.”100 Barry Lord’s The History of Painting in Canada (1974), did not just explore, but it passionately expounded on some of these complexities by calling for a keener awareness for the socio-political import inherent in much Canadian art. By briefly discussing in his conclusion how the contemporary art of Cree artist Allen Sapp is related to his argument, Lord also hints at a future direction in Canadian art history. Here, the universalizing tendency of the “Canadian” isolated culture story on the multicultural reality of Canada starts again to include Aboriginal art, although now with more socio-political awareness. This is, significantly, the first time Aboriginal art overtly appears at the “end” of the story of art in Canada within the text itself, as earlier hinted
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at by the placement of Hubbard’s illustrations. The full expression of this shift in Canadian art history develops into the “postcolonial critical” approach, especially after 1990, which is the topic of the final section of this chapter. In the meantime, Aboriginal art and cultures can now be acknowledged as more active participators in the “Canadian” isolated culture story. This participation, to be sure, is still primarily approached through Western history and aesthetic understandings, for “contemporary” Aboriginal art alone is usually emphasized; it is largely considered more “Western” than “Aboriginal”; and is often regarded separately from “traditional” Aboriginal art altogether. Nevertheless, a coming together of “(Euro-)Canadian” and “Aboriginal” isolated culture stories through contemporary Aboriginal art has begun.
The clearest indication of this socio-political shift within art historical literature
may be characterized by the changes occurring between the first and second editions of Reid’s A Concise History of Canadian Painting: 1973 and 1988, respectively. When the two isolated culture stories—”Canadian” and “Aboriginal”—were at their height around 1966 to 1973, they also necessarily operated alongside each other in their most isolationist forms. As such, the only major survey texts of Canadian art history that do not include anything about Aboriginal art at all—a true complete silence for the first time to date (except indirectly through a couple of mere mentions of Zacharie Vincent, for example)—are those, in fact, that are widely considered to be the magisterial expressions of the “Canadian” story itself: Harper’s Painting in Canada, and Reid’s Concise History. In the second edition of his Concise History, however, Reid added a
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chapter on the period 1965 to 1980, wherein Aboriginal art figures in the text of the story (at its present-day “end”), in the most prominent way to date. Contemporary Aboriginal art is largely (and Eurocentrically) discussed as yet another manifestation of the diverse socio-political awareness simultaneously arising in non-Aboriginal art and contexts within the “Canadian” isolated culture story.
Since 1970, following in Lord’s footsteps, and especially since Reid’s second
edition in 1988, many art historical contributions to the “Canadian” isolated culture story begin to follow suit and incorporate Aboriginal art at the end of their stories. It is noteworthy to point out that, again, one of the first texts to do this in a more comprehensive way was another about women in Canadian art history: Maria Tippett’s By a Lady (1992). Here, for the first time in more than just a few sentences or paragraphs of one chapter, Aboriginal artists—from Pitseolak Ashoona and Jessie Oonark, to Daphne Odjig, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, and Jane Ash Poitras—are fully a part of the “Canadian” story, alongside and helping to stimulate the “revolution” characterized by the art of such artists as Marion Nicoll, Mary Pratt, Gathie Falk, Joyce Wieland, Wanda Koop, and Susan Feindel. Many subsequent survey-like works within the “Canadian” isolated culture story—national or regional—similarly include Aboriginal art near the end of their stories, particularly for its socio-political import (i.e.: Joan Murray’s Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century, 1999; Mary-Beth Laviolette’s An Alberta Art Chronicle, 2005; and Patricia Ainslie and Laviolette’s Alberta Art and Artists, 2007).
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Like the inclusivity framework discussed earlier, the isolated culture frameworks
did not end here and they still form the bulk of present-day Canadian art history. Collections of artist biographies, artworks, or in-depth artist monographs, are still popular within each isolated culture story. For example, “Canadian” masterpieces are discussed by David Burnett (1990), and Joan Murray (1994). Artist monographs continue to proliferate, such as those on Lucius O’Brien (Reid, 1990); Norval Morrisseau (Elizabeth McLuhan and Tom Hill, 1984); Alex Colville (Mark Cheetham, 1994); Bill Reid (Doris Shadbolt, 1998); Brian Jungen (Daina Augaitis, 2005); and Dale Auger (MaryBeth Laviolette, 2009). In-depth examinations of specific genres and themes within each isolated culture story are also prevalent. To name only a few: Canadian Impressionism is explored by Joan Murray (1973), and Carol Lowrey (1995); “Canadian” art, postmodernism, and politics by Mark Cheetham and Linda Hutcheon (1991); “Canadian” mystical painting by Ann Davis (1992); landscape painting by Michael Tooby (1991), Petra Halkes (2006), and Marilyn McKay (2011); Indian rock art by Grace Rajnovich (1994); “Canadian” abstract painting by Roald Nasgaard (2007); and Aboriginal art and spirituality by John Friesen and Virginia Lyons Friesen (2006). Investigations taking a specific region of Canada as the focus are also increasingly popular in an isolated culture framework, such as, using Alberta as an example, works on art and Waterton National Park (Brent Laycock and Fred Stenson, 2006), or art and the Bow River Valley (Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, 2007). Finally, studies that centre on gender can also contribute to the depth and richness of various isolated
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culture stories in Canadian art history. Traditional art and Native women are explored by Lillian Ackerman (1996); women and art on the prairies by Virginia Berry (2005); and early “Canadian” women master artists by A.K. Prakash (2008).
Postcolonial Criticism in Canadian Art History A new kind of socio-political awareness entered into Canadian art historical literature around the time of Lord’s History of Painting. Various branches of art historical stories using an isolated culture approach were influenced by this new kind of awareness, as we have seen, especially since artists themselves were equally engaging the conversation through a variety of new methods, techniques, and mediums. In the literature, this awareness gradually developed a more consistently cross-cultural interest through postcolonial criticism. This approach is particularly sensitive to the relationship between art and cross-cultural (im)balances of power in socio-political contexts, and really came into its own around 1990. It is still developing, with many of its contributions located in sometimes scattered articles, chapter essays, and exhibition catalogues. This section outlines only some of its key threads for the purposes of this research project.
With the two main isolated culture stories—”Aboriginal” and “(Euro-)Canadian”—
emerging side by side through the 1960s and 1970s, one of the central themes that became increasingly important to address was the power relationship between the two. This involved a postmodern turn in the “Canadian” story that was also attentive to power
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relations in socio-political contexts, including multiculturalism, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, pluralism, imperialism, history, and subjectivity. The first study relating to postmodernism in the “Canadian” story of art was Cheetham’s Remembering Postmodernism (1991), including an afterword by Linda Hutcheon.
In the art historical literature, the related postcolonial critical framework, more
specifically, became associated with various revisionist projects. It also sometimes coupled with an anthropological or cultural studies dimension that began challenging Eurocentric “Canadian” assumptions about Aboriginal art, and the story of art in Canada in relation to it. The anthropological work of Michael Ames (1981), and Karen Duffek (1983), helped bring early awareness to the socio-political extent of the cross-cultural relationship between Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian isolated culture stories through art —particularly concerning the complicit roles of Euro-Canadian museum anthropologists, institutions, the art market, and tourists. This kind of work has continued with various important contributions by Ruth B. Phillips and Janet C. Berlo (1998); Phillips (1999); Berlo (1999); and Phillips and Mark Salber Phillips (2005). Charlotte Townsend-Gault (1988; 1993; 1998), has also built on this tradition by further blurring or challenging the disciplinary boundary lines between anthropology and “Canadian” art history.
The most important series of events for specifically addressing issues of power in
a cross-cultural context in Canada, however, was generated primarily from within Aboriginal artists’ circles and communities themselves. Beginning in large part with the White Paper-Red Paper exchange in 1969-1970, Aboriginal leaders in Canada
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successfully invalidated and stopped a government initiative for the first time. Among other outcomes, this helped Aboriginal peoples and organizations achieve a recognized lobbying power in the country, as well as more respectful acknowledgement through the approval of the special “Indian Rights Process” in 1977.101 Aboriginal leaders would now have direct input on Aboriginal policy creation. In the artworld, reverberations also spread throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1985, the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry (SCANA), co-chaired
by David General and Doreen Jensen, was officially established to “address the ongoing exclusion of Indian art from the majority of mainstream art institutions.”102 A few years later, the Glenbow Museum organized their highly controversial exhibition, The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples, in conjunction with the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary. Subsequent protests, spearheaded by the Lubicon Cree Nation’s objection to the museum’s erasure of complex contemporary Aboriginal realities—i.e.: residential school impacts, poverty, and racism—in the exhibition, were supported and engaged by many Aboriginal artists, communities, and organizations across the country. Power relations between the Indigenous and Euro-Canadian stories of art in Canada were starting to be thrown into socio-political relief. In 1989, for example, the Canadian of Museum of Civilization staged In the Shadow of the Sun: Perspectives on Contemporary Native Art. The same year, SCANA collaborated with the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) for the exhibition, Beyond History, curated by Tom Hill and Karen Duffek. Both exhibitions explored the new socio-political import inherent in
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contemporary Aboriginal art. A couple of years later, in 1990, the Canadian Armed Forces and Québec Provincial Police used physical force against the Mohawk people of Kanehsatake who were defending their land near Oka, Québec. Once again, many Aboriginal artists and communities across Canada were further roused into mutual support, political action, and solidarity.
These activities of the 1980s and early 1990s spurred and were spurred by an
increase in contributions to the Canadian art historical literature by Aboriginal artists, commentators, and art historians. Loretta Todd (1990), for example, injected the conversation with thoughts about cultural appropriation from an Aboriginal perspective. Alfred Young Man published the first text directly addressing the politics of Native art (1991). In 1992, Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin’s Indigena: Perspectives of Indigenous Peoples on Five Hundred Years inaugurated a seminal contribution to Canadian art history’s understanding of cross-cultural power relations, and the importance of Aboriginal voices in revising the story of art in Canada. In the very midst of international celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, this exhibition, another SCANA collaboration (this time with the Canadian Museum of Civilization), specifically engaged complex contemporary Aboriginal realities related to the legacy of colonialism itself. The catalogue featured important essays by various Aboriginal artists, commentators, and art historians, including McMaster and Martin, Gloria Cranmer Webster, Alootook Ipellie, Todd, and Young Man. A few months later, this was followed by an equally important contribution to
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the conversation through Diana Nemiroff’s, Robert Houle’s, and Townsend-Gault’s collaboration for Land, Spirit, Power, the first major international exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal art at the NGC. This exhibition, inspired by Alex Janvier, was equally concerned with the colonial legacy and the importance of Aboriginal voices in addressing it. The work of this exhibition, and Houle’s catalogue essay in particular, especially emphasized interdependent relationships between people, the land, and spirituality within this important political agency.
These two important exhibitions increased awareness for the unequal, colonialist
power relations still very much operating between Indigenous and Euro-Canadian stories of art in Canada. It is significant that shortly after these exhibitions, Métis artist Edward Poitras was chosen to represent Canada at the 1995 Venice Biennale for the Visual Arts. He would be the first Aboriginal artist to do so. Throughout the rest of the 1990s and the 2000s, Canadian art historians—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal— continued to engage more deeply in various postcolonial revisionist projects, further challenging the dominant “Canadian” story by bringing more cross-cultural awareness to key aesthetic themes. Alongside the work of Phillips, Berlo, and Townsend-Gault mentioned above, one of the central issues addressed through postcolonial critical frameworks has been the relationship between people and place, and the identities shaped by that relationship. Grant Arnold, Monika Kin Gagnon, and Jensen (1996) variously engaged the topic from different standpoints that highlighted the sharing and contestation over place; the cultural migration through it; and the metamorphosis that
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occurs when in connection with it, respectively. Allen Sapp (1996), and Gerald McMaster (1998), engaged the topic through stories about the role of the reservation in the lives of First Nations artists and in the story of art in Canada.
Revisionist art histories also increasingly re-examined the relationships of power
and cultural construction involved in landscape painting. Some focused specifically on the representation of Aboriginal peoples in it, or their conspicuous erasure from it, such as Jonathan Bordo (1992), and Scott Watson (1994). Others discussed, more generally, some of the postcolonial implications of its role in nation building, Canadian identity formation, and regionalism, including Lynda Jessup (2002); John O’Brian and Peter White (2007); and George Melnyk (2007). Many Canadian art historians have also brought a postcolonial critical framework to bear on the work of specific artists and commentators, and their canonical works that have been seminal to our understanding of the story of art in Canada so far. Jessup (1996), discusses problems related to concealing or neglecting key postcolonial implications of the Group of Seven’s art in nationalistic contexts. Dot Tuer (2001), brings the art of Anishinabe artist, Rebecca Belmore, to bear on Northrop Frye’s influential notions on Canadian art, landscape, and identity. Todd (1995), similarly does this with the art of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Marcia Crosby (1991), and Gerta Moray (2001), have both revisited the art of Emily Carr with other perspectives on her relationship to Aboriginal peoples and cultures. Alternatively, Aboriginal art and artists have also been explored in more depth—textually and visually—for their postcolonial import on society. For example, Jessica Bradley and
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Jolene Rickard discussed the important work of Rebecca Belmore (2005) in this way. David Liss similarly discussed Kent Monkman (2008). And Joan Cardinal-Schubert’s posthumous exhibition project, Narrative Quest (2011), considered Aboriginal art in Alberta as an integral participator in this important socio-political and storied “quest.” Many of the above developments also characterize the complex relations between culture, art, identity, and place in Canadian art, and postcolonial critical frameworks in Canadian art history.
One of the most sophisticated postcolonial revisionist works in recent decades is
Leslie Dawn’s magisterial National Visions, National Blindness (2006). It is a comprehensive re-examination of the socio-political forces and balances of power embroiling the Canadian artworld in the 1920s, a seminal decade in the construction of the story of “Canadian” culture. McMaster (2005), has similarly addressed ways in which contemporary Aboriginal art has helped influence and shape “Canadian” identity in general. Martin (2005), explores the role of Aboriginal art more specifically in various areas of contemporary Canadian culture—curatorial, critical, institutional, and in communities. Regional issues in the Canadian artworld have also been revisited through a postcolonial lens, such as—to use Alberta as an example again—Frances Kaye’s Hiding the Audience (2003). This is an important analysis of how Aboriginal art and Indigenous knowledge and activism have helped influence the shifting institutional policies and viewing practices concerning art on the prairies. Various ways in which Aboriginal art can help effect the above kinds of socio-political change in Canada more
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specifically has been a focus for Allan J. Ryan (1992; 1999), and Troy Patenaude (2012).
Recent Canadian art historical works also address contemporary Aboriginal art
and ways of knowing within postmodernist approaches to art more generally— sometimes positively, as another manifestation of the postmodern, such as Robert J. Belton (2001); sometimes suspiciously, as another form of Eurocentric co-optation of Indigenous voices, such as Crosby (1991), and Joseph Traugott (1992). The power relations inherent in the (re)presentation of Aboriginal art in Canadian galleries and museums have, similarly, been of rising concern in recent decades. Watson (1993); Jessup and Shannon Bagg (2002); and Anne Whitelaw (2000; 2006), have all contributed important thoughts to the conversation. Some art historians and commentators have also addressed, with postcolonial critical awareness, the power relations operating in education, the ways in which art concepts and categories are taught cross-culturally, and the importance of the arts for more-empowering crosscultural education models and practices (Larry Maenpaa and Clarice Kloezeman, 2006; and Emily Auger, 2000).
The most recent and most comprehensive book to date on visual arts in Canada
is Anne Whitelaw’s, Brian Foss’s, and Sandra Paikowsky’s The Visual Arts in Canada (2010). In a remarkable array of chapter essays—some focusing on individual artists or periods, some on particular genres or mediums, and some on institutional or art historical issues—Aboriginal art, in keeping with the current convention, makes its most
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concerted contribution to the story of art in Canada, finally, at the very end of the book. The two chapters on Aboriginal art themselves—one by Phillips, the other by Martin— are largely written in a postcolonial critical framework, or with significant postcolonial critical awareness. The book as a whole comprises an organizational structure that variously takes both “inclusivity” and “isolated culture” approaches to art, depending on the chapter.
This eclectic use of methodologies, form, and content is unique and refreshing,
but it also points toward the ongoing search and necessity for other ways to explore art in Canada. On one hand, a certain amount of cultural depth is achieved by having the chapters on Aboriginal art separate. These complement the other chapters, which are all generally more involved with exploring the “(Euro-)Canadian” story. On the other hand, when Aboriginal art is included in other chapters it is usually “included” more simply by swinging back and forth between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal examples. Both an inclusivity and isolated culture approach (with postcolonial critical overtones), are uniquely utilized in this one book, perhaps, to offset the problematic weaknesses of each in an overarching attempt to view the full cross-cultural story of art in Canada. But merely including both (at times all three), approaches does nothing to actually overcome each approach’s weaknesses. Collectively, the book’s chapters, from a cross-cultural perspective on art history, rather, may seem ultimately confused or disoriented. It feels more like a continual attempt to work around the weaknesses of their conventional approaches to art, sometimes even combat them, but while nevertheless remaining
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futilely complicit in that which sustains them. The ongoing search for better ways to explore art in Canada is explicitly, even if unintentionally, addressed and kept open by the book’s final chapter on writing Canadian art history itself, by Laurier Lacroix. The chapter ends with Lacroix invoking historian Ramsay Cook’s “vibrant plea for the development of a cultural history of Canada in which art history would play an active role.” Lacroix acknowledges that Cook’s “project is still very much with us.”103 This dissertation hopes to contribute to just such a project by offering another story of art in Canada; an active one that can empower Canadian art and its history more fully in the everyday lives of all people here. How I will do this is the topic of the next chapter.
In summary, I have used Leuthold’s framework for discussing art cross-culturally
to review the Canadian art historical literature and begin outlining the dominant, conventional story of art in Canada. This is significant because I argue that even though it seems that Aboriginal art has been excluded from this story, and many art historians have been operating under the colonialist assumption that it was, it never really was. Instead, the literature has always taken the form of one of Leuthold’s cross-cultural frameworks, which are the “inclusivity” approach, the “isolated culture” approach,” and the “postcolonial critical” approach. Each has included Aboriginal art in the story of art in Canada in one way or another, even if only negatively. The problem is that, each time, the story has continued to be dominated by Western theorists and understandings. Moreover, these approaches did not unfold linearly in the literature. Rather, they often overlap and coexist and borrow from each other, unfolding more like a spiral: circularly
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and deeply, with each turn unfurling a bit more information and new perspectives, sometimes quite laterally and experientially.
Once the Canadian artworld started to develop a sense of its own historicity in
the mid-nineteenth century, the story largely took on the form of an inclusivity approach based in negation. Aboriginal art was being excluded in the writing, but because art historians kept needing to argue the point over and over with each new essay or book, it was also continually included. The lived experience of being in a diverse socialecological context was often at odds with what was being told abstractly in the writing. Art historians continued to adapt their story. Or rather, the larger earthly story sensuously provoking them from the ground up continued to shape, animate their story according to art historians’ particular carnal immersions within it.
It became increasingly the norm to include Aboriginal art from a more positive
standpoint in between roughly 1940 and 1960. At this time, an isolated culture approach in the literature blossomed under the aegis of the “Canadian” culture. This included British-Canadian, French-Canadian, Aboriginal, and other minority art. But the “Canadian” isolated culture approach was still largely rooted in an Anglo-Canadian set of terms and understandings, which, I argue, devalues or weakens the contributions of the other cultures subsumed within the “Canadian” culture story. Between roughly 1960 and 2000 the social-ecological diversity of Canada, deepened by the increased knowledge of cultures, continued to demonstrate, however, just how much none of these cultures, on one level, were ever completely “isolated” at all. Issues of power and
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politics and ways these cultures related with each other blossomed within literature taking a “postcolonial critical” approach to the story of art. This literature is still dominated by Western theorists and understandings nevertheless. I now turn towards an exploration of how we might be able to move past this even further. On one hand, postcolonial critical approaches to art in Canada are increasingly sensitive to nonEuropean cultures, and therefore, another important turn along the spiral. On the other hand, I explore how they may be less the result of an intellectual progression towards post-colonialism, and more a deepening into, or an awakening to, stories’ embodied and dynamic aliveness in the more-than-human world already enfolding them.
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CHAPTER THREE:
THE MOVEMENT OF THOUGHT IN THIS PROJECT
The Crystal Ball Many years ago, I fell in love. I had just arrived in what would be my new home for the next almost five years—York, England. I moved there to do my MA studies with respected scholars John Barrell and Michael Phillips on “Blake and the Age of Revolutions.” My first order of business was to try and make my house feel more like “my place,” a home. For me, this entailed going out and getting some art for the walls. I reluctantly had to leave two of my really good friends—two very dear art prints: one of a Paul Cézanne painting; the other of a painting by Coast Salish artist, Susan Point— back in Canada. But I didn’t want to just de facto import my Canadian comforts and “home” into England either. I wanted to head out with an open mind, and be “grabbed” by something new as much as possible.
I left my new house and decided to use this excursion to learn a little bit about my
new surroundings as well. I figured I was going to have my best chance of finding some new art in York, but I didn’t actually live in York. I lived near the main University of York campus, in Heslington, which was about a twenty-minute walk from the city. My courses were all going to be located, however, not on campus, but in York, at a place called King’s Manor. It was originally built to house the abbots of the nearby Abbey in the fifteenth century, but was now also the home of the university’s Centre for Eighteenth
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Century Studies. I knew I would be doing the walk between Heslington and King’s Manor a lot, so I used this occasion to familiarize myself with the route.
I crossed the road from my house into the main university campus, and chose to
walk through one of the campus buildings, in order to get around the big lake full of swans, geese, and fountains in the middle of the grounds. I entered a long corridor, and spread out along its back wall were a bunch of trade booths—some representing various student clubs, some advertising upcoming events, and some selling things, including (unbeknownst to me until then), art prints. The corridor eventually exited into a large hall with more booths, and as I turned the corner into the hall, there she was: a woman who would become a part of my life even up to this very day. She was immensely beautiful to me. First, it was in the way she looked. She was a PreRaphaelite stunner and wore a red velvet dress that warmed the room like a gentle fire. I couldn’t help but feel that she exuded the best of love and adventure at the same time. Second, she enchanted me with a sense of mystery, a kind of darkness that drew me into her world with a deeper and more complete kind of beauty that, for me, was rare. I didn’t just “see” her, but could “feel” her within my soul somehow. I have since wondered awkwardly at times if maybe I had known her in some past life or something.
The “love” story I speak of here is the one I fell into—long before even getting
halfway to York—with John William Waterhouse’s painting, The Crystal Ball (1902). It is a story that continues to unfold like a spiral in my life today—in and out of my consciousness, but each return of the spiral broadens and deepens an aspect of who I
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am, what my world is, and how I feel it right now. I might not say that this painting “changed me,” if by that we mean a direct and instantaneous cause and effect relationship that suddenly made me into something completely different than I was just a second ago. Rather, it is much more like an interwoven subworld that is, on one hand, outside of me, but also, on the other hand, an entity now inhabiting my life as a possible event that I dwell with, and care about, just like any other person or close friend I might encounter. My heart beats faster when I think about the painting; my shoulders relax; the ends of my lips curl up; my eyes brighten and widen; my thoughts slow down; and my chest and spirits lift with a rejuvenating passion and excitement, for I just love being with it—in thought, emotion, spirit, and body.
The kind of broadening and deepening I speak of takes time. Over the years, I
have become aware of how, in some inexplicable, even largely incomprehensible, way, this woman’s search is my search, her vitality is integrally linked to my own vitality because it stimulates—helps me remember—a profound concern of my own life. I believe in the core of my being that the world needs some things to remain mysterious, magical, sacred, wild, enchanting, and dark. There is a profound beauty in this to me, or in a world with such mystery in it. These are also the true ground of imagination for me, which is what I’ve learned beauty is for. Altogether, these qualities in my life are all crucial, for they are all natural aspects of “aliveness.” The unknown woman in Waterhouse’s painting drew me into her world over those next few days in York (it continues today), and in so doing, also started to draw me deeper into my own “at-
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stake” dimension of the world around me. This was not immediately “known” by decoding and solving some internal puzzle of the painting on the spot. Rather, it unfolded over time as the painting just became a part of me; very much through my body first, and then radiating out into different levels of my consciousness as my life and knowledge unfolded too.
I was first struck by the woman’s dress. My embodied vision is absolutely
captivated by the long vertical space of red in between the woman’s hands and the golden serpentine medallions encircling the bottom of her dress; right in between the long pieces of fabric hanging from her sleeves. There is a powerful liminal moment inherent here for me. On one hand, there is an undeniable weight and downward pull towards the medallions below, which remind me of an eternal unity between the sun and the moon—continually drawn back together in the darkness that fills creation, toward a mysterious moment that swells with both peace and energy like in an eclipse. On the other hand, the folds in the dress and the woman’s tapering body compel me upwards, towards the woman’s highlighted neck and face. I can’t help but go downward first. But while my body starts to lose itself in the warmth, comfort, and safety I feel in the calming embrace of the circular medallions and dynamic folds in the lower part of the dress, I am also blocked and jolted out of this place by the cool, hard, flat, boxed-in geometry of the floor. This pushes me back upwards. At first I wish it didn’t, but my resistance was not uncompromising. I started to also feel somehow rescued by the woman’s long sleeve extensions, which softly guide me up along her arm to her shoulder, and then around
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her slightly curved neck to her face. There is a silent strength and calmness here too, but not without a trace of uncertainty. I notice that the woman seems lost in a calm, inquisitive focus, a deeper search for something that is a little unsettling, but I am also put at ease and assured by her relaxed posture and serenity. What is she searching for?
I, too, am suddenly drawn to the crystal ball resting gently in her palms and
commanding her attention. The ball intrigues me, but I don’t know what to make of it quite yet. Maybe the trace of uncertainty can be resolved elsewhere. The unsettling element of the moment is suddenly intensified as I notice the skull resting on her table. My breath shortens a bit, my chest tightens, and there is an uneasy tingling developing in the depths of my belly. Why does she have a skull!? Whose skull is it? How is death connected to this beautiful woman and her search? Why is she not more unsettled by having a skull on her table? There can surely be no answers here, and I just don’t want to think about death anymore. I happily shift my attention away from the skull and onto the large book beside it. What’s this? The book reminds me of a bible, or a spell book, maybe? But whatever kind of book it is, it’s blurry, partially barred from vision, and I can’t completely get at it or into it. There are no answers here either at the moment. I have no choice but to make my way back up to the crystal ball, with her. I focus more intently. I feel my awareness meet and intersect with hers. I notice that the crystal ball holds inside a reflection of the natural world outside the large arched window behind the woman. Is this the answer she’s looking for? Does it reside in nature? Is this the answer
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that I’m looking for? But wait, the reflection in the crystal ball is upside down? Whoa, my heart sinks a little, and I can feel my face getting a little pale, as I realize that sometimes the world around me also seems a little “upside down,” even when it also, in some way, isn’t. But this woman is obviously from a time way before mine, what could she possibly know about, or relay to, mine now.
No matter how much my rational mind might keep saying this, however, the
reality, if I am completely honest with myself, is that I just can’t get the image of the woman and her upside down more-than-human world in that crystal ball out of my head, out of my life. Even more importantly, I feel them in my soul and very core of my being to be relevant right now too—not simply as a new found insight, but more like a profound remembering. A remembering that is not simply in my head about some distant past. It is also a deeper awareness I am reawakening to about something larger that I am within, and which has been enfolding me all along. This is a kind of remembering—and a living, shifting, breathing place—to which death and fixed written knowledge (as though this is where certainty lies), are sometimes irrelevant.
I have since also discovered many other aspects to this painting that deepen my
relationship with it, like the layers of an onion. For example, I have learned that it was painted just after poet, folklorist, and anthropologist Andrew Lang published his influential The Making of Religion (1898). This interesting book, despite obvious outdatedness now, broke down commonly held beliefs about the relationship between the spirituality of Indigenous peoples, judeo-christianity, and contemporary interest in
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the occult, and it comprised an extensive chapter on crystal gazing. I also learned that my strong reaction to the skull in the painting was far from being the only such reaction over the years. It produced such intense discomfort for the painting’s new owner in the early 1950s that he was physically compelled to have the skull painted over and concealed behind the curtains, only to be discovered and restored to its original state in the mid-1990s. I have also learned that it was painted just after Waterhouse moved to the more spacious London suburb of St. John’s Wood. Hmmm, a crossing over into the mysteries of nature again. Is the crystal ball, in some way, “right”—an important guide for both myself and the woman, connected to place across time through a very real sense of mystery or magic? Wow, I feel my body warm as it opens up even more to the possibility inherent in other kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. I suddenly find the woman’s calmness and silent strength in this situation comforting, even inspiring. She no longer seems to be simply holding the crystal ball, but cherishing it. I can’t help but feel her wonder and pain as she brings it and everything in it closer to our living, beating hearts.
The Storied Approach to Art Steven Leuthold argues that neither of the three conventional cross-cultural approaches to art—inclusivity, isolated culture, and postcolonial critical—are fully adequate because of their reliance on, or inherent limitations due to the ideological perspective in Western art. I agree. He adds a fourth approach, the “thematic” approach, to remedy this. The
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thematic approach is organized around eleven key themes (mentioned in the previous chapter), that are, according to Leuthold, most relevant to a cross-cultural consideration of art.104 The advantage of the thematic approach is that artworks from various cultures can be discussed together, equally, on their own terms (contextual/differences), while still being able to account for power relations and broader cross-cultural forces (universal/similarities), by way of comparison. Let us consider the key features of this approach while discussing an inclusion in many books relating to the story of art in Canada, Fred Varley’s Dhârâna (1932).
This painting is frequently associated with a shift in Varley’s style, focus, and
subject matter coinciding with his move to Vancouver in 1926. It has been linked, as such, to his The Cloud, Red Mountain (1927), and Vera (1930), for its shared exploration of spiritual values and divine communion with the environment, as well as, in the case of Vera, its shared subject. Paintings from this phase in Varley’s career appear in literature comprising an inclusivity approach, an isolated culture approach, and a postmodern critical approach.105 Generally, discussion of the painting within these frameworks emphasizes European ways of knowing and voices. Its gesture towards spirituality is associated with the European fascination with Eastern philosophy and religion.106 Its style and composition are also generally associated with a Eurocentric and romanticized landscape methodology, like that espoused by the Group of Seven.107
While understandable on one level, it is also disrespectful or unethical on another
because the painting’s intercultural lifeworld within Canada is concealed or de-
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emphasized. This sustains the very imperialistic paradigm many commentators hope to triumph over when discussing art in Canada. Leuthold’s thematic approach aims to counter this. Rather than beginning with the painting itself, which can privilege, impose, and necessitate the use of conventional Western art understandings—such as concepts like “innovation,” “uniqueness,” “virtuosity,” “secularity,” or “spirituality”—the thematic approach might begin with a comparison organized around the theme of, say, hybridity, art and religion, or colonialism.
For example, an interesting and thought provoking comparison with Dhârâna
might be Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau’s Man Changing into Thunderbird (1977). Both paintings were executed at a time of stylistic transition for the artists. For Varley, this was instigated by his move away from the Group of Seven to Vancouver; for Morrisseau, by his coming to terms with many professional and personal demons played out on canvas through an ambivalence towards “the white man” and the supposed benefits of his culture. Each painting also drew from new senses of spirituality that captured the imagination of the artist from outside their own spiritual traditions. For Varley, it was Buddhism and Hinduism, perhaps through Theosophy; for Morrisseau, the religion of Eckankar. Each painting also make powerful statements about humans’ divine communion with the environment. These occur from within different cultural contexts, although each are integral to the social-ecological fabric of contemporary Canada. This comparison, moreover, appropriately and ethically opens up the discussion around Dhârâna to other voices within the intercultural context it is a part of.
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It also places Western and Indigenous art on an equal ground so that one is not privileged or devalued as is common, whether intentionally or not.
From this thematic approach, important cross-cultural considerations beyond
those made available by more conventional approaches can be included in a discussion of Dhârâna, and vice versa. Varley’s interest in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Theosophy can be compared to Morrisseau’s interest in Eckankar. Do both express the same kind of hybridity or cultural diffusion? Which form of cultural diffusion does each expression exemplify: incorporation, assimilation, or integration? Does Varley’s use of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Theosophy, and Morrisseau’s of Eckankar, cause harm to these spiritual traditions by their decontextualization or appropriation of them? What might this all mean to our intercultural understanding of spirituality in Canada? What is each artwork’s relationship to colonialism as revealed through the linkage between power and representation? What kind of power is Varley displaying by representing Vera in a Buddhist state within the coast mountains north of Vancouver? What kind of power is Morrisseau displaying by representing a man metamorphosing into a thunderbird in Northern Ontario with the help of Eckankar?
Both Varley and Morrisseau are given refreshingly equal and important voices
concerning the role of art in the emergence of Canadian culture and society here, which has always been intercultural. For the purposes of this project, however, the thematic approach, although not without its important contributions, is still not entirely adequate. It still tends to treat art like raw data. Each work is accorded the same thematic value
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from which is drawn answers about a culture, in order to explain the artwork, or vice versa. It is assumed, for instance, that Varley’s Dhârâna has just as much to say about, say, art and religion, as Morriseau’s Man Changing. This might be the case, but it also might not be. Who decides? Furthermore, Varley’s Dhârâna, from this angle, can largely only ever be a representation of European or Euro-Canadian settler culture and nothing more. Morriseau’s Man Changing into Thunderbird can largely only ever be a representation of Anishinabe culture. Of course, this is partly the case, but neither culture, nor artworks, are so static within our dynamic, living, breathing more-thanhuman world. The thematic approach could also imply that all Euro-Canadians might generally feel the same about spirituality and a communion with nature as, say, Varley, or that all Anishinabeg might feel the same about them as Morrisseau. Again, this is not necessarily the case.
Leuthold himself acknowledges at the end of his chapter on the theme of art and
religion that it has not provided any answers, only demonstrated the importance of thinking about the intercultural function of art. Instead, he asks: “How can art authentically express collective experience in the contemporary intercultural world?”108 His approach has difficulty with this question because his comparative framework overemphasizes the stability of the artwork and “collective experience” in a shifting and inter-relational world. Perhaps Varley and Morrisseau, for instance, are authentically expressing collective experience together: that of Anishinabeg and Euro-Canadians in a place in the world together at this time. The intercultural issue, or story, then, is not
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somehow in the artwork alone, but also in the fact that there is an artwork. As such, the relationships involved in the art encounter itself—between the story, the context of the encounter, and the listener or audience member—are crucial to its becoming a “collective experience.” The thematic approach can not entirely account for this. Again, its comparative framework does allow for many interesting and important cross-cultural possibilities for understanding art, but it also privileges a highly conceptual approach to encounters with art that almost completely neglects the role of the audience and the context of the art encounter in the process. This can devalue the ways in which art can instigate people in their everyday lives from the ground up. I propose yet another approach, which I call the storied approach.
A storied approach to art in Canada involves four main, interwoven elements that
open up the conventional Eurocentric art historical paradigm to other voices. First, it acknowledges the centrality of story—here as expressed through and around visual art —in the formation of all human lives. Second, it accounts for important phenomenological considerations in art and art history. Third, it emphasizes the performative power of art. And fourth, it enacts the salient objectives of postcolonial criticism. With all of these overlapping components intact, a more complete socialecological picture of living here will be re-energized within, and empowered because of, the story of art in this place. A fundamental premise of this research project is that: it is irresponsible, disrespectful, and unethical to maintain any social system—whether a society’s aesthetic system, or its interrelated political, economic, or spiritual systems—
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that continues to undermine—whether methodologically, theoretically, or ontologically— the vitality of its interwoven and diverse cultural and ecological life. The sustenance of this life has been a driving motif of artists in Canada for millennia. Animating and amplifying this concern in our story of art is one way to answer Cook’s and Lacroix’s pleas for art history to “play an active role” in the development of our cultural history.
☈⊕♁ In order to fully comprehend a storied approach, it is first necessary to explore more deeply what is meant by “story” and its centrality to all human lives—the first element of a storied approach to art. The two most inspiring books in helping me to better understand stories and their crucial work and power in peoples’ lives are Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (2008), and Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (2010). Archibald’s pioneering book is concerned with the nature of stories, and ways in which they were, can be, and are still today, traditionally used for sharing and learning in Indigenous cultures throughout Canada. Frank’s book is concerned with the nature of stories more generally, and with how scholars, in particular, can better attend to the important ways stories act —“breathe”—in the lives of all individuals and groups. He himself draws frequently from Archibald, and both Archibald and Frank attest to the methodological validity of stories in the world.109 Archibald calls her methodological process “storywork;” Frank calls his “socio-narratology.” In both, it is immediately established that stories are not simply
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data. Nor are they merely an entertaining fiction in human language, separate from “real” life, and comprising a linear and mechanical progression from, say, exposition, through rising action to a climax, and then through falling action to a resolution.
For Archibald, stories are “a reciprocal process between teachers and learners”
that are to be responsibly shared “with a compassionate mind and love for others.”110 They are also “to be taken seriously,” for they “have the power to make our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together,” whether they frighten, de-centre, inspire, or make smile.111 Stories do this through what Archibald (with the help of many Elders and storytellers), identifies as seven interwoven storywork principles that mutually engage skillful storytellers and attentive listeners: respect, reverence, responsibility, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy. And like a traditional basket maker’s design, even though stories may be attributed to a particular person, they always “reflect her relationships with family, community, nation, land, and nature.”112 It might seem to some as if stories are not “real,” but for Archibald (and many others), they are ever-rooted in the world around us, and therefore, have the power to be very real, and a part of our own life-experience stories if one is “grabbed,” ready, learns how to listen, and pays attention. This power is felt because stories take on a life of their own as they lodge themselves in the body, mind, heart, and spirit of a captivated listener.113 Learning how to listen does not involve a set of mechanical rules to follow either, suddenly turning one into a “listener,” when just a few minutes ago they were not. Rather, like stories themselves, listening is also a holistic and experiential process that develops over time,
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and involves the skill to quiet oneself—silence one’s mind and body—so that a “concomitant involvement of the auditory and visual senses, the emotions, the mind, and patience” can be actively drawn upon.114 With the help of Frank’s work, as we shall see, these characteristics of story are not simply characteristics of Indigenous stories and storytelling either, but of everyone’s stories.
Great storytellers can accelerate the storywork process by inspiring the above
kind of listening through profound knowledge and skillful sharing of the power of the story itself. The storywork process, however, is always actively reciprocal, and involves four equally important elements: storyteller, story, story listener, and holistic context of the story encounter. Without any one of these elements—the storyteller’s sharing in a responsible way, or the listener’s respectful attention and active openness (not always a conscious thing)—the story will be stifled, or perhaps empty of any real value or meaning as in the derogatory statement: “it’s just a story.” Stories—their content and meaning—are only separated out of this storywork process at great peril. As Archibald points out: “People keep the spirit of a story alive by telling it to others and by interacting through and with the story. People interrelating with each other through story bring a story to life as they relate story meaning to their lives in holistic ways.” This interaction importantly creates a synergistic “story power that [has] emotional, healing, and spiritual aspects.”115
Frank similarly hesitates to pin down “story” with a succinct definition because he
too acknowledges its reciprocal and open-ended involvement in a holistic process
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necessary to its meaning, and for it to perform its social function. While Archibald’s book focuses on story within the context of Indigenous knowledge—in particular Stó:lō and Coast Salish teachings—Frank incorporates Archibald’s insight into a broader consideration of story within human lives in general, Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, adding an important dimension to this cross-cultural project. For him, stories “make life social,” “inform...give form,” and:
animate human life; that is their work….Stories breathe life not only into individuals, but also into groups that assemble around telling and believing certain stories. After stories animate, they instigate.116
Acknowledging this “work” is more important than finding themes or rules about, or in, stories. Furthermore, although stories’ capacities encompass the familiar elements of literary narratology—such as plot, characters, point of view, etc.—Frank iterates that the most important aspect to understanding stories is not how these elements are united in “some underlying structure of narrative,” but in “what enables stories to have their effects….on watching them act, not on seeking their essence.”117 This is not to say that narratological elements and how they are combined do nothing to contribute to a story’s effect. On the contrary, narratological elements are an important part of a story’s power; they are just not the main arbiters of that power alone. In this vein, stories, contrary to conventional understanding, do not merely proceed from, or represent mimetically or metaphorically, lived experiences. Rather, they exist before experience altogether, or are inside of it. Drawing from Archibald, Frank reiterates that “The storyteller gives
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breath to the story, but the story is already there, waiting...The storyteller speaks, but the story teaches—a complex synergy.”118
Like Archibald’s seven storywork principles, Frank outlines thirteen “capacities of
stories” for making life social: trouble, character, point of view, suspense, interpretive openness, trickster-like unpredictability, inherent morality, resonance, symbiosis, shapeshifting, performativity, truth telling, and imagination. He hastens to add that not all stories have all of these capacities, and many exhibit other capacities than the ones he outlines. There is no threshold number marking qualification as a story, all that is important is that there is a sufficient number of capacities, which only depends on “how the capacities are used, as well as the tolerances of those who receive the story.”119 These capacities do not lead to a “definition” of story, but rather, for Frank, to a socionarratological understanding of stories as “material SEMIOTIC companions.”
Archibald and Frank have shaped my understanding of stories, and the above
look into their work and insight introduces my storied approach to visual art in Canada, as well as infuses all of its other elements discussed further below. The movement of thought in this project begins with the awareness that visual art acts, breathes, informs, forms, and animates human life in Canada with a power that can make our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together. Art can make life good, light, or happy. It can also make life dangerous, dark, or frightening, and everything in between. This holistic complexity is part of the power of story. The story of art in Canada is not only as we
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have been led to believe by conventional Eurocentric art histories, but is also the working through of this story power, in this place.
☈⊕♁ Another interwoven element of the storied approach to art is its important consideration for phenomenological life—lived experience, “the felt encounter between our sensate body and the animate earth.”120 In one of the most refreshing books concerning art history and aesthetics in recent years, art theorist Alan Paskow remarks that “art historians and aestheticians have given insufficient attention to the most interesting features of the [pre-conceptual, affective, and reflective] levels of awareness” when encountering a painting.121 He powerfully challenges art historians and theorists to appreciate “the true ground of symbolism”—the worldly referents, and co-being experiences in the places where we dwell in everyday life—and to take more seriously “the reality claims that...are made on us in viewing paintings.”122 For “if our heads do not properly understand our hearts, we risk responding to paintings with either removed pedantry or uninformed rhapsody.”123
This does not mean that art historical contributions through feats of sophisticated
thought, theoretical investigation, and interpretation are unimportant or irrelevant. Nor does it mean that we can ever be completely outside of interpretation altogether when encountering visual arts.124 On the contrary, engaging with a visual artwork and its history through thought, and historical and contextual investigation, does deepen the
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experience and appreciation of an artwork. Furthermore, some form of interpretation is always occurring, for it is, of course, a part of being human, and so equally pertinent to encounters with art. In Frank’s words, “Stories call for interpretation even as they resist it.”125
What phenomenological considerations of art, such as Paskow’s, challenge,
however, is that one can never really “see” art at all except through some overarching interpretation, which usually depends on decoding stories, standing over them, or speaking about them from an authoritative and privileged (often Eurocentric) position. However, stories are living, breathing companions in one’s embodied life, and so “interpretation” here is much more concerned with “seeing all the variations and possibilities inherent in the story,” and entering into dialogue with it.126 This is what Archibald also gets at when she questions where one is supposed to “draw the line between explication to lessen confusion and disrespecting the story and learners by telling them what to think.” Stó:lō Elder, Tillie Guiterrez, simply replied to her:
You are helping them [children and people who may not have any background knowledge about Indigenous teachings] seek out meaning and reason that lies within all things, to sense their own power and to develop the will to do what is right...The story does not give them all the answers. It shows them the way.127
Phenomenological aspects in art and art history, then, can help loosen our dependence on the Eurocentric penchant for privileging reason and transcendental consciousness over pre-conceptual, embodied, intuitive, and affective forms of awareness, learning, and knowledge.128
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Considering art encounters in such a way, one cannot help but be aware of the
material semiotic importance of stories in one’s life. When encountering a story, one is also encountering an aspect of the sensate more-than-human world—a larger, more mysterious, story unfolding all around us—with life breathed into it. This might be why so many artists and art theorists—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—have always been able to draw so many correlations between art, place, and spirituality. In Tewa educator Gregory Cajete’s words, art reflects “the ritualization of the life process.”129 Ultimately, an embodied awareness recognizes that the more-than-human world is always working on and with your sensate body, whether you are the artist, or the viewer, through the story of that place.130 In this vein, when I refer to stories “taking on a life of their own,” I am referring to their ability to stimulate new meanings, directions, thoughts, and actions in the world and within particular life experience stories. Moreover, these outcomes may not have been originally intended or known by the storyteller, nor are they necessarily a direct result of the story’s original telling. Stories “breathe,” animate, and can take on a life of their own because the more-than-human world around them, and through which they breathe and shape-shift, is animate, shifting, living.
Human languages, too, are part of this “flesh of the world.”131 Armstrong remarks
that “Through my language I understand I am being spoken to, I’m not the one speaking. The words are coming from many tongues and mouths of Okanagan people and the land around them.” Artists, then, are listeners to the stories already there waiting, and their work is “merely retelling the same stories in different patterns.”132
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When told by a skillful storyteller, as Archibald points out, the story becomes the teacher.133 In other words, place, or Leuthold’s “sense of place,” for example, is not simply a “theme” through which to talk about art, but is quite literally the animate, breathing, true ground of all symbolism and experience in the first place. As Métis poet and politician Louis Riel simply put in some of his final words before being hanged in 1885, “we are not birds, we have to walk on the ground, and that ground is enriched with many things.”134
☈⊕♁ The storied approach also emphasizes the performative power of art. Performativity is emphasized instead of the more conventional “representation.” Artworks, like stories, do not just represent an exterior world, but also perform it in to being as active shapers of and inside the world. Stories, as the name for Archibald’s Indigenous methodology suggests, “work.” In Frank’s words, “Stories do things; they act.”135 This element is directly interwoven with the phenomenological aspect of the storied approach, for “Stories always work with something: with storytellers, with antecedent stories, with places, and with material objects.”136 Furthermore, they do not stop their performativity when they are no longer being told. A characteristic of stories’ performativity is that it has, what Frank calls, resonance: after being performed, “stories are held deep in memory” and in bodies, whether a human body, a leaf, a grizzly bear, a painting, or a small green stone that has jumped up from the river bed and smoothened itself in the
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spring run-off before grabbing hold of the shore to meet the sun in mid-July.137 The resonance of a story is one way it takes on “a life of its own,” follows you around, and unfolds layers of meaning in your life, especially if you are paying attention. This is why storywork, according to Archibald, “takes time, patience, openness, and the will to keep talking with one another in order to learn how to engage in story listening...It is hard work.”138
In her exploration of the performativity of art, Australian artist and art theorist
Barbara Bolt launches a powerful attack on Eurocentric approaches to art and art history. Her point of departure is the problem that “In the visual arts, art theorists and historians continue to ground their discussions of art on the unquestioned assumption that art is representational.”139 Representation itself is not necessarily the issue, for Bolt, as much as the fact that it has become such an entrenched way of thinking. In Bolt’s words, “Representationalism is a system of thought that fixes the world as an object and resource for human subjects. As a mode of thought that prescribes all that is known, it orders the world and predetermines what can be thought.”140 After a comprehensive and sophisticated unpacking of phenomenologist Martin Heidegger’s art theory—comprising over half of her book—she skillfully demonstrates that art is not “representation as a mode of thought,” but “representation as bodies in process,” or rather, performativity.141 Most importantly, however, she does not stop there. Her close examination of Heidegger slowly reveals that even he has a significant “blind spot.”142
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According to Bolt, while Heidegger, as a phenomenologist, is always concerned
with the ways phenomena in the world unfold, are revealed, and unconcealed through intersubjective co-being experience in the world, he fails to address how lived experience mediates that mode of revealing to begin with. For Heidegger, the revealing of any concealed phenomenological truth is always dependent on light—both literally (we need light to “see”), and metaphorically (therefore, we need light to “know,” to be enlightened). As an Australian artist, however, Bolt notices that this is fundamentally Eurocentric, for it forces the rest of the world to be fixed “yet again in the light of the European sun.”143 Heidegger’s framing of the relationship between the ontological and the ontic “fails to take into account a different ontology,” for in Australia—with hardly the same animate interrelationship with rain and cloud as Europe—the sunlight, in many places and instances, actually does not “reveal” anything: it is a land abundant with intense, glaring, dazzling, and blinding Australian sunlight; fuzzy desert mirages; and recurring instances of midday sun when there is “too much” light to see.144 At these times, the sun is so bright that “Nothing is concealed, yet nothing is revealed,” both at the same time.145 It might be argued that this is too literal a critique of Heidegger’s point about light, but that is also the point. Heidegger’s point about light, in my belief, is in large part only possible figuratively or metaphorically because of its and his literal entwinement in the European light and world—the true ground of symbolism—in the first place.
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The lived experience of being in Australia necessitates another way of “seeing,”
“knowing,” and understanding bodies in process there, as different from in Europe. As such, it is now clear that phenomenological fact or truth is not only revealed by one universal kind of sunlight, but also by a kind of sun-light that “is no longer revealing, but insinuates itself in the ‘facts of matter.’” The same, of course, has been noticed in many places throughout the story of art in Canada, but it is usually quickly undermined once again by the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history. We have only to remember, for example, the oft-mentioned pinkish glow within the skies of James Wilson Morrice, or Paul Kane’s snowblindness, especially after sketching in the blinding sun reflecting off the snow in the Canadian Rockies.146
The conventional Eurocentric machinery of representation is thus overturned, for
it is not true to all lived experience that “light = form = knowledge = subject,” and “dark = matter = unknown = object.”147 Rather, both light and matter, known and unknown, are integral to signifying processes. The most obvious manifestation of this, for Bolt, is in the wealth of different stories, different strategies for “knowing,” inherent in Indigenous Australians’ way of tracing the body in movement—spatially and temporally—in relation to place, instead of statically representing place from the top down, like a sun, or on a map. Performativity occurs through matter, not light alone: “in the chiasmus between country [land], cultural knowledges and materially constituted bodies (both human and non-human).”148 Art, as one of these inter-participatory bodies of the animate world, is performed and simultaneously performs, just like Frank’s stories. The material practice
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of art involves a dynamic and holistic productivity, a performative act that can inherently eclipse its own representational form and “produce ontological effects.”149
These ontological effects are multi-faceted, and are themselves performative, as
stories work deeper into the life stories of individuals. This is also why a crucial aspect of the storywork process for Archibald is the responsibility involved in the “giving back”: the sharing of the story, or through story, with others when one is ready and it is appropriate to do so.150 This kind of care and respect for stories and listeners is imperative so that the power of the story is not weakened, or accidentally mis-used in more harmful ways than good. Some of the myriad ways stories act, and bring about, for Frank, include, to name only a few: reporting, inculcating, amusing, instructing, generating sympathy, guiding, directing attention, connecting, and arousing imagination. A well-placed story can even, as anthropologist, Keith Basso, records after his time with the Western Apache, “stalk,” and then:
All of a sudden it hits you!...like an arrow...Sometimes it just bounces off—it’s too soft and you don’t think about it anymore. But when it’s strong it goes in deep and starts working on your mind right away.151
This interrelational and holistic aspect of stories creates an animate and animating “synergy,” to use Archibald’s word, between all elements of the storywork process. This synergy brings the story “to life” at the more wild, mysterious, and creative level of community sharing and interaction; a being-in-the-world that Cajete calls: “that place that Indian people talk about.”152 In such a place, this synergy also empowers the
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conditions through which humans can rediscover a lost part of themselves, and rebalance the crucial relationship between our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits.153
☈⊕♁ The final key element in the storied approach to art in Canada is that it enacts the important objectives of postcolonial criticism. That is to say that the conventional, Eurocentric understandings concerning art and its history in Canada are not privileged here. Rather, Indigenous voices and ways of knowing—as evidenced by the degree to which they have been interwoven in the above discussions as well—are fundamentally critical to this approach. As poet, typographer, and cultural historian, Robert Bringhurst, has so eloquently put it:
There are scholars who hold that Canada is the name of a human
construct...Canadian writers and critics, on the other hand, have been saying for many years, with almost perfect unanimity, that Canadian literature [and I would add visual art] speaks from the land, that its allegiance is to place. If we believe any of that, doesn’t it follow that our literature, and our literary history [our art, and our art history], has to begin with the voices that spoke from this place first and have spoken from it longest and appear to know its deepest layers best?154
I reply here with a resounding “yes!” Throughout this section we have only begun to understand the power of a human being’s lived experience through her sensate body, and as interwoven with the animate earth. Stories do not only come from storytellers, we may remember, but also from the teller’s language and culture, as well as from the story itself, and—a lot of it—from what the teller shares with the animate world (human and non-human).155 A more cross-cultural approach to art in Canada that does not just
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“include,” but is verily shaped by Indigenous voices and ways of knowing deepens, broadens, and empowers our story of art in the social-ecological reality of here.
In this vein, the storied approach to art in Canada significantly takes Leuthold’s
thematic approach one step further. As we have seen, Leuthold’s answer to the need for a methodology that allows other, non-Western, voices into discussions about art is a thematically-organized comparative framework, in order to avoid “privileging any particular culture’s theories and traditions.”156 Another problem with this, then, is that it assumes “theories and traditions” are purely human sociological things, which are more like possessions of people alone, and which can apply the same anywhere. By this way of thinking, what unfolds in thinking about art inter-culturally is strictly a matter of intellectually privileging one or the other, or not. I disagree. The true ground of art and story, as per our point above, is the more-than-human world. This is not adequately acknowledged here. We may think of our theories and traditions as determinate phenomena, fixed in a book or in a dance, but we can never perceive them this way: “we are not pure, disembodied minds...We are in and of the world, materially embedded in the same rain-drenched field that the rocks and the ravens inhabit, and so can come to knowledge only laterally.”157 In short, I argue that there are instances where humans do experientially privilege certain theories and traditions, even if they might argue something different when limiting themselves to an abstracted, disembodied, intellectual compartment of reason.
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To illustrate this point, cultural and literary historian, Robert C. Holub, has
demonstrated in his investigation of the contrasting reception theories between Europe and the United States that:
Although theory presents itself as abstract and applicable without regard to temporal and geographical boundaries, its appropriation and understanding [are] evidently bound to context...[theories are] subject to nonuniversal criteria when it [is] a matter of acceptance and evaluation in unfamiliar surroundings.158
Similarly, Abram has persuasively demonstrated in his important “earthly cosmology” that:
we humans are corporally related, by direct and indirect webs of evolutionary affiliation, to every other organism that we encounter [including animals, plants, simpler organisms, the ocean, rocks, soils, and mountains gathering clouds above the high ridges]….the enfolding biosphere provides the inescapable template for our experience of any other realm we may discover or devise.159
A culture’s theories and traditions are more than entities humans can privilege or not, from one day to the next. They are always reciprocally participating with the animate world, which includes and shapes human minds. In short, certain theories and traditions —indigenous voices and ways of knowing in our case—are inherently and sensuously privileged because they are the ones that go with this place. I am not saying that Indigenous ways of knowing are automatically ecologically sound, nor that they are all that is required here. I only suggest that even where they may not be ecologically sound, they are still rooted in alliances with the animate earth, and therefore, ever pointing towards how to be in balance with any given place here, whether starting from a point of strength or weakness. Moreover, other (non-indigenous) knowledges may and
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do contribute much to life in a place here; I only emphasize that indigenous knowledges are vital to its sustenance and aliveness. And notice the use of “indigenous” (small “i”), in the above statements. As humans sink deeper into a place, wherever they or their ancestors may have come from, they are also learning to become indigenous to it.
To elaborate on what I mean by “privilege” in the previous paragraph as well, I do
not mean to suggest a new hierarchy is needed, where one tradition is on top of the other, and with all the entitlements, simply reversing the one now dominating Canadian art history. I mean it more in the sense of “liberty.” A tradition in balance and harmony with its more-than-human context is the one through which liberty speaks the loudest, for, as Youngblood Henderson has pointed out, it is not based on competition, scarcity, distrust, and glory (war and conquest).160 The most salient point here is that this kind of liberty is not just humans’ doing alone; it is not simply a matter of intellectually “privileging,” bestowing “liberty” on, say, Indigenous ways of knowing. Rather, Indigenous traditions inherently already have this privilege because they are the ones generally consisting of deeper alliances and interrelationships with the beings, rhythms, and spirits of the places here. Privilege, in this sense, is not just an outcome of separate human minds, from the top down, but, in large part, also of certain traditions’ complex interrelationship with the animate earth in specific places, from the ground up. The storied approach to art in Canada simply acknowledges and empowers this alreadyoccurring “privileging” going on all around us. It allows the full depth of theories and traditions to breathe. As Chickasaw scholar James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson
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might say, it shifts our story of art from the “artificial context,” back to the “natural context.”161 All other thoughts and traditions that enter into a place from elsewhere (i.e.: European thoughts and traditions entering the place we now call Canada), are still valid, important, and influential; they are contributors to various forms of hybridity;162 are challenging, and active, but they are so now within the “natural context” of here, not the “artificial context” of somewhere else.
The storied approach to art in Canada recognizes the primary importance of
Indigenous ways of knowing and traditions for fully understanding the story of art—all art—in Canada. This decolonizes our understanding of art and art history in Canada as in the vision of postcolonial criticism, but, unlike much postcolonial criticism, does so without being beholden to European concepts and traditions. I will return throughout this dissertation to specific ways in which postcolonial criticism in Canadian art history, although important and often helpful, is also incomplete. In the meantime, suffice it to say that this decolonization inherent in the storied approach to art returns us full circle to the beginning of this section. It is largely able to do this because of its emphasis on the power of story in our lives. It has been well-documented by many Indigenous Elders, scholars, artists, and community leaders in Canada that story—storywork—has longbeen and is inherently a central Indigenous methodology for sharing; understanding each other, ourselves, and the things we do (including art); animating life; and making it social in this place we now call Canada.163 In the often-quoted words of Aboriginal writer and scholar Thomas King’s “native narrative”: “The truth about stories is that that’s all
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we are.”164 Stories are, as Archibald points out, an integral practice of Indigenous communities—always holistic and encompassing interrelated physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions—for attaining “a mutual balance and harmony among animals, people, elements of nature, and the Spirit World.”165 At the heart of the storied approach to visual art in Canada, then, lies a significant pulse, or consistent push, towards decolonizing Canadian art history through story. As a fundamental tradition of this land for millennia, this is, indeed, a pulse that continues to course beneath the surface of every art encounter today, and which is integral to the continued life-sustaining circulation of both the blood through our veins, and the water through our rivers.
Some Further Clarification of the Storied Approach Before moving to a discussion of the research project proper, it might be helpful to complement the above section with some further qualification and clarification for the storied approach. First, it should be stated that when I use the phrase “the story of art in Canada,” my meaning is not the same as has become conventional in the discipline of art history. The most famous contribution to art history for introducing us to the concept of thinking about art like a story is E.H. Gombrich’s magisterial The Story of Art (1950). Now in its sixteenth edition, The Story of Art presents art history as a linear progression of aesthetic advancements in building-construction, picture-making, and statue-making, based on artists’ sociological contexts (which could also include viewer’s shifting
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tastes). Each advancement marks the end of an old tradition, and the beginning of a new. For Gombrich, the story of art is “the story of a continuous weaving and changing of traditions in which each work refers to the past and points to the future.”166 Indigenous art, “primitive” art, and non-Western art is at the beginning of this story of progression and then it is quickly surpassed by Western art, which is at the progression’s height.
In Canada, Donald Buchanan prefigured Gombrich by twelve years with his “The
Story of Canadian Art” (1938). He similarly placed Aboriginal art in a distant pre-history (by not mentioning it at all), and began the official Canadian story of art with the work of Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff, which improved on the earlier Aboriginal art. Everything to follow was an advancement on what came before. Both Gombrich’s and Buchanan’s stories, indeed, comprise conventional narrative elements, such as: intriguing characters (Giotto, Rembrandt van Rijn, William Hogarth, James Wilson Morrice, and Emily Carr); suspense (the life and death of Caravaggio, Van Gogh, and Tom Thomson); and unpredictable turns of events (the Impressionist revolt against critics and the academy, and the revolt of David Milne, Jack Humphrey, and Pegi Nicol against the sterile tendencies to imitate the superficial patterns of The Group of Seven). These are good stories. Buchanan’s work, in particular, helped shape the conventional story of art in Canada to this day (although now predating Kane and Krieghoff).167
When I speak of “the story of art in Canada,” however, I am far less interested in
emphasizing an underlying narrative structure, and, like Frank, much more concerned
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with what enables it to have its effects. As such, the story I begin to share in the next chapter, does not imply or say: this is the story—it is all here, analyzed, explicit, and largely complete in at least its most important parts up to the present day. Rather, it is more an opening up of further variations and possibilities inherent in the stories of visual artworks in Canada, in order “not to connect these images...[but] to let them connect”168—allow them to b r e A T h e. In other words, it allows them to take on lives of their own, even if outside the Eurocentric art historical superstructure, and sink back into the natural context comprising the shifting, rich, and diverse social-ecological reality of here.
Another point of clarification for the storied approach is that my emphasis on
story when considering art in Canada is not to suggest that the term “art” need be replaced and discarded altogether. I briefly discussed this in Chapter One, but to elaborate a bit further, the storied approach simply acknowledges the concept of “art” for what it really is: another story, with its own unique “web of evolutionary affiliations,” largely interwoven in and of another social-ecological place (Europe). It is, indeed, important in many peoples’ lives here, and therefore, is still perfectly valid in Canada. But the crux of the matter is that the storied approach, unlike in conventional Eurocentric Canadian art histories, also directly acknowledges that these Westernized stories are only a part of the story of art in Canada, and of the larger story unfolding all around us. They can never hope to grasp the entire picture alone here. In fact, as I have
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been suggesting, they require great help along the way from Indigenous ways of knowing—the actual stories rooted in the soil beneath all of our feet.
The Research Project So, how does all of the above help us in discovering, breathing life into, another story of art in Canada? I have consciously refrained from directly referring to the storied approach to art in Canada as a methodology. Instead, following Frank, my practice of criticism is referred to in the title of this chapter as a “movement of thought.”169 In Frank’s words, when story is the concern, unfortunately, “Too many methods seem to prevent thought from moving. Analytic or interpretive thought that is moving is more likely to allow and recognize movement in the thought being interpreted. Thought moves in dialogue.”170 In other words, the power and life of a story is respected if it can stay moving. As we have seen, reciprocity, sharing, synergy, and other principles implying dialogical movement are also crucial for Archibald’s understanding of story. Frank, therefore, proposes a new, or revised, version of narrative analysis when looking at story. He calls this method dialogical narrative analysis. My storied approach to art borrows from this practice and could be characterized as my own kind of storyworking process, or dialogical narrative analysis, with both artworks, and some of the art historical stories they have animated in the lives of various Canadian art historians and viewers.
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The premise of such a method is that, following influential narrative analyst,
Catherine Riessman, “there is not, nor should there be, any method of narrative analysis, if method is understood as a prescribed set of steps that the analysis should follow. A method, in the prescription model, serves as the guarantee of its final production.” Instead, method for the dialogical narrative analyst “has precedents, guidelines, and especially exemplars, but it is not prescriptive.” It is understood more as an interactive practice that helps “to form in new ways”—a “heuristic guide rather than procedural guidelines”—that encourages thought and bodies to move.171
Another fundamental belief underwriting this research project is that the
conventional story of art in Canada could do a better job at encouraging movement around art, rather than simply talking about it. As performative stories that help make the earth habitable, artworks, then, are approached here dialogically. This is to help articulate, amplify, or empower them in the world today, even in ways unlike those we are conventionally used to. In the context of Canada, this empowerment necessarily involves an aspect of intercultural and cross-cultural healing between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. This does not mean an idealized vision of everyone ever and always getting along in complete happiness. Rather, it encourages and sustains difference (crucial for dialogue and movement to occur172), and cultural diversity, while also recognizing the inextricable link between cultures sharing a place, and between cultural and ecological systems.173
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Frank’s revision of conventional narrative analysis is characterized by his
emphasis on the power of dialogue (what Archibald might refer to as reciprocity or sharing), in a story’s ability to do what it can do in human lives.174 Entering into dialogue with a story begins with posing questions as a way of approaching movements of thought. These questions are not necessarily questions about the teller, the teller’s life, or the story’s content or formal characteristics (as is conventional in the discipline of Canadian art history), but those that inform the central issue for story: “what is at stake for whom.”175 Different questions will be more useful with different stories, but some that Frank delineates include: what does the story make narratable? Who is holding their own in the story, or being obstructed in doing so because of the story? What is the effect of being caught up in the story? What in the story forces fear or animates desire? And how does the story help individuals or groups remember who they are? These kinds of questions start opening up movements of thoughts to the mind, body, emotions, and spirit—all of which, as Archibald and Frank both demonstrate, are required for any kind of interpretation (or “education”) to occur.176 As we shall see, many of these questions have informed the critical practice of my storied approach to the art of O’Brien, Thomson, and Borduas, as well as to the viewer of art stories, in subsequent chapters.
As alluded to earlier, stories and interpretation have a necessary relationship, but
it is also one fraught with tension throughout. This is natural, for stories are inherently open, dynamic, shifting, and breathing entities, whereas interpretation tends toward a requirement of clarification, even pinning something down to facilitate completion. The
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storyworking process in this project complements hermeneutic philosophy about interpretation by recognizing that the interpreter is also:
caught up in his or her own stories [i.e. the conventional story of art in Canada], which may overlap with the narrative habitus [the embedding of stories in bodies] of the storyteller or may require a substantial shift in horizons [the current limits of one’s awareness or worldview based on the prejudices inherent in what is
already known and believed], in order for the other’s story to be recognizable.177
In this vein, it is less important that the interpretation “fits the story” (for it is never a finite thing), and more important that one puts oneself in the story. This is what Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson implies when saying that “to know a story you must ‘write it on your heart.’”178 Similarly, Secwepemc storyteller Robert Matthew states that “If you’re ready, you’ll get it. If not, then it will be just a story.”179 Getting it is not just an outcome of significant intellectual effort in decoding or explaining, but of being ready. “Being ready,” as I understand it, is being a fully embodied, whole human being (of heart, mind, body, and spirit), who is aware of one’s place within various “elements of life, [and a] connection to land and community.”180 Moreover, this is not just a performance by the analyst, but a component of analyses—a crucial part of the analysis itself. It is from this holistic context that one is “grabbed” by a story, and can begin opening up to ways in which it can now also become “embedded in [one’s] body, in [one’s] emotional being, in [one’s] consciousness, and in [one’s] spirit.”181
By way of preparatory guidelines, not prescriptions, Frank outlines key
characteristics in dialogical interpretive practice. First, “Dialogue refuses what monologue aspires to...FINALIZATION.”182 In order to do so, research subjects are
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actually research participants, where this is not just a politically correct euphemism, but their participation is taken seriously. This means that they are not simply data for investigators, but they do things. As far as the investigator goes, then, the emphasis is on what he and the participants are “doing together…whether the participants are physical presences or textual presences.”183 A few other characteristics of the participant-investigator relationship are that participants are acknowledged as “experts, at least in their own lives, and the dialogical interviewer is there to learn from the participant.” Participants also “make [and co-create] their lives [as] meaningful, and research is one occasion for enacting meaning.”184 This is all summarized by Frank in three main principles for dialogical interpretive practice: (1) non-finalizability; (2) speaking with not about (no one ever has “the whole story”); and (3) claiming no privilege of interpretive authority. Even when an Indigenous Elder tells a story, there is no claim to interpretive authority. The story is allowed to breathe, and hit, and grab, and animate, just as it does and in its own time. A truth may be acknowledged or singled out as occasions permit and call for, but any life a story takes within a person’s life is honoured.
Together, these principles inform various acts of dialogical interpretive practice—
ways to enter into dialogue with a story—which are primarily a matter, not of commenting on the story, but of retelling it in a varied way to (co-)create new connections. These acts, depending on the story, might include: translating the story into images, or in order to tell it from another’s point of view; attending to omissions and
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silences one may have expected, or to differences between the storyteller and the analyst; and, crucially, slowing down (being patient, listening, and waiting), and appreciating (what Archibald might refer to as “reverence” for), the story and storyteller.185 The way these acts inform dialogical narrative analysis itself is dependent on the form one’s analysis takes based on a position of dialogue with the story. Some possible positions discussed by Frank include: projects beginning with an analytic interest, or that build a typology of narrative forms; those that document an effect, or assemble groups; and those concerned with institutional imposition on, or emplotment of, peoples’ lives, or with how stories effect action.186
The remaining three chapters breathe life into another story of art in Canada,
then, through two interwoven analytical forms already mentioned above. First, there is an unlearning. I do this by beginning with an analytic interest in central events of the mainstream story of art in Canada, as told by some of its key art historians. I enter into dialogue with, question, and pay attention to some of their stories, which have been central to the story of art in Canada as we know it. The particular stories I will be most concerned with here are: (1) that Lucius O’Brien’s art is a direct result of British imperialism in action in Canada; (2) that Tom Thomson’s and the Group of Seven’s art is also Eurocentric and imperialistic, although complexly concealed behind a veneer of Canadian nationalism associated with unpopulated wilderness landscapes; (3) that Paul-Émile Borduas’s art, and the turn toward abstraction and modernism in Canada, represents a counter-tradition to the dominance of landscape art by more overtly
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embracing European and Euro-American ideologies, practices, and aesthetic styles; and (4) that ordinary viewer art experience stories are not as relevant to the story of art in Canada as those of the more artistically educated art historian, critic, artist, or curator. These are central stories that animate, shape, and make our story of art in Canada work today. They are also stories that have been finalized by art historians/critics who have generally seemed to speak about the respective art, not with it, and therefore, have implied a claim to interpretive authority. Although all sharing in a part of the truth, of course, these stories, however, are not the whole story, as we shall see.
While approaching these stories through the above questions (the starting point
of my dialogical narrative analysis), I am largely concerned with the extent to which the story of art in Canada as we know it might reinforce European colonization, even in its postcolonial critical variations, at the dire expense of knowledges already interwoven with the natural context and rhythms of aliveness here. Artists in Canada, for example, are holding their own in our mainstream story, but only largely because of top-down European aesthetic ideologies and practices. Also, the animate earth is continually obstructed, and therefore, by default, so too is the performativity and life of its ever unfurling and emergent story within those of all interwoven entities here. Moreover, being caught up in such a story emphasizes European aesthetic practices, animating an indispensable desire for them (even in Aboriginal artists), and therefore, privileging an individual or group pedigree that is predominantly shaped by, if not directly rooted in, them and Europe. It might be worth repeating here that the problem is not with Europe,
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European aesthetic practices and understandings, or European contribution to the story per se. These, of course, are important and crucial to the story of Canada as we know it, which is well-documented in much literature elsewhere. My concern is more with the fact these have become such an entrenched way of thinking at the expense of the diversity, fullness, and richness of the context always already encompassing them here in this place we now call Canada.
The dissertation at each of the above points of awareness shifts into another
interwoven analytical form that embodies a relearning. With guidance from the new directions and connections that will arise from the above questions, I am then better equipped to step outside the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history, or walk along its edges, in order to glimpse how the stories of, in this project, O’Brien, Thomson, Borduas, and some ordinary art viewers, might assemble and effect action in other ways than those within which we have been institutionally and Eurocentrically entrenched and inculcated. I enter into dialogue with some artworks and art experience stories in order to attend more carefully to ways they might enhance and empower the cross-cultural and art historical dialogue we are used to hearing. This will proliferate more possibilities for our mainstream story of art, and open up key artists’ stories again to let them breathe.
O’Brien, Thomson and the Group of Seven, and Borduas have already provided
such a richness for the conventional story of art that it makes them great partners in dialogue. Some new connections and awarenesses provoked in my relearning with
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them are that O’Brien’s landscapes make narratable and emphasize an earth narrative by frequently obstructing the social one depicted. His art, therefore, engages viewers in moments that performatively rupture the transplantation of Victorian British imperialism in Canada. Moreover, the unpopulated landscapes of Thomson and the Group are just as much, if not more, a performative obstruction of European ways of relating to the animate earth (as conventionally depicted in European landscape art), than an imperialistic erasure of Aboriginal presence from the land in Canada. Similarly, Borduas’s abstractions are not animated by a desire for European Surrealism or EuroAmerican Abstract Expressionism, but by the larger story always already unfolding around him as a whole human being here (especially around his home at Mont-SaintHilaire, Québec). This, then, is what subsequently makes aspects of these European aesthetic movements relevant to him and his art, not the other way around.
Furthermore, I discuss how the story being told by these artists, each in their own
ways, is less a Eurocentric one—as being largely shaped by and rooted in European teachers, sketching trips, ideologies, and aesthetic movements, practices, and styles— and more an indigenously oriented one that is always already emerging and rhythmically unfurling and influencing from the ground up here, according to their carnal immersions within it. Such a story helps all individuals and groups remember who they are: human beings in a more-than-human world. This has not resonated very strongly in the mainstream story of art in Canada, not because it is not true or present, but because art historians working within the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history
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have been primarily trained only to encounter art as a uniquely human construct, in a predominantly human world, where the animate earth is largely relegated to being not much more than an inert backdrop for human actions, or a product of human ideology alone. These conventional stories by Canadian art historians’ are true, but they are also theirs, and so there is more to the story.
As an important part of the relearning process, then, I will also do more than just
draw from my own thoughts. As an art historian myself, this could still be privileging the voice of a supposed “expert” in some way, no matter how different an angle outside the norm my voice may come from. The dialogical narrative analysis of the interviews I conducted concerning the stories of ordinary viewers of art aim to counter-balance this. I will speak more about these interviews in Chapter Five, but for now suffice it to say that including these other voices in the re-storying process is crucial. This way, the story is opened up to being more than one of or for art historians alone. This project acknowledges the story’s ability to empower Canadians to do what they do, and to fit— speak to—their diverse lives here. I believe that this is fundamentally what the real story of art in Canada is.
There is another important decolonizing corollary to including everyday viewer art
stories in this way. It shifts the emphasis on our understanding of art, and the way in which it lives on in our lives, from primarily a literary-based approach and kind of learning and understanding, to one that also honours the “oral roots of all verbalization.”187 In the words of literary and cultural historian, Walter Ong, “Writing
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separates the knower from the known and thus sets up conditions for…personal disengagement or distancing.”188 This could be part of the reason why art historians like Hudson have felt like the discipline of art history has taken away the sense of imagination, and that she needed to learn “to trust in the personal” again. It could also be why so many of my interview participants were so confused about why I wanted to hear their stories about art at all in the first place. Almost all of them opened with or mentioned some kind of a qualifier to emphasize that they did not really know much about art, or that their answers were going to be nothing much compared to what an art historian’s, or someone else’s who knew about such things would be. This may be an outcome of the predominantly literary-based way of learning about and interacting with art in our lives, whether through books in school or through written blurbs on the gallery walls. Perhaps writing has engendered a kind of distrust or devaluation of peoples’ personal and situational encounters with art.
A crucial aspect to allowing art in Canada to breathe more, then, is to help keep it
as “close to the human lifeworld” as possible.189 This is best done by attending more seriously to the way in which art’s connection to culture and society—its story—is in great part interwoven with our oral contexts, not just our written or literary ones. As Ong has demonstrated, it is “the spoken word [that] forms human beings into close-knit groups…Writing and print isolate.”190 Whereas sound is an event in time, sensuously internal to all things in the present moment, and uninterruptedly continuous, writing and print separate, divide, and reduce experience to units that can falsely seem exterior,
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under our control, and fully explainable.191 In Ong’s words, oral utterance has “great power.” It “comes from inside living organisms, is ‘dynamic.’” Conversely, when words are treated as labels, “assimilated to things, ‘out there’ on a flat surface…they are not actions, but are in a radical sense dead.”192 Taking my storied approach to art, and art experience stories as told to me by various Canadians, helps keep art in Canada alive by tending more closely to its everyday situational and operational frames of reference. Doing so also carries significant decolonizing weight, for Aboriginal voices, well-familiar with an oral or residually oral paradigm of learning and knowing, are not only included, but empowered.
The storied approach to art taken by this research project, then, aims to validate
the truth within conventional art historical stories, while also demonstrating that they are only part of the story of art in Canada. It does so by allowing the conventional story to move within my own interpretive thought so that we can better recognize just how much it is actually moving with many other entities and stories in the more-than-human world here to begin with. These have been largely concealed, sometimes indirectly finalized, from the top down. Of course, my own interpretive thought is, therefore, participant in the process by also recognizing that I do not know the whole story alone either. Returning for a moment to Frank’s three principles of dialogical interpretive practice, one might ask, given the third principle (claiming no privilege of interpretive authority): how can we justify interpretation at all? Dialogical narrative analysis answers this question by acknowledging that the storyworker’s work is important because it hears
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multiple stories and can connect them. By doing so, it can also articulate what participants know only tacitly, thereby offering, amplifying, or empowering new perspectives on stories and lives, as well as “the possibility, this is what else you are connected to.”193 Lastly, dialogical narrative analysis “can help people, both individually and collectively, to reassemble stories that are remembered only in fragments, when the loss of the whole story is experienced as an individual or community loss.”194
Archibald encapsulates this final point when discussing how her story-research
process with various Elders was a way of reawakening stories and storytelling abilities that had been “put to sleep in people’s memories.”195 In a similar way, when I view the conventional Eurocentric story of art in Canada against the backdrop of the incredibly rich cultural and ecological life and diversity of this place, I cannot help but see that in its current version it is more an incomplete collection of fragments. Or rather, it is one predominant fragment alone—a Eurocentric one—organizing other supposedly more minor ones. These perceived minor ones, moreover, seem to the larger fragment to occur only circumstantially around it, while it has largely forgotten the larger story within which they are all always already participant. A re-envisioned story of art in Canada hopes to help reawaken stories and storytelling abilities that have been lulled to sleep in this way.
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CHAPTER FOUR:
BREATHING LIFE INTO ANOTHER STORY OF ART
Transformation The sun withdrew its last bit of residual and dissolving light behind the mountain. The oncoming night began to come out of hiding. The few specks of light left dangling on the leaves of the nearby wolf willow had long gone, as the earth rolled between my body and the warmth of the sun. Sitting cross-legged and still, I looked down at the yarrow beside my knee, scanned past it to the horsetail and indian paintbrush just beyond, and then twisted my head around to the blanket of kinnikinnik starting to fruit behind me. Just a little while ago we all stood in radiant relation to the fire of the sun; but now all our attentions seem wholly taken by the life of each other. There is a new kind of intimacy here that fully includes me, for the shadow of the earth has seeped into all our bodies, cooled them off, adjusted our breaths to its breathing, and carried us all out of ourselves into earth’s own awareness.
The fathomless darkness continues to engulf us, and I notice that its
immeasurable distances are suddenly lit by thousands of glimmering stars, each composing with me “the local neighborhood of the infinite.”196 I cannot help but lie back upon the cool earth, and allow my gaze to become its gaze. Its shadow starts to fall now across my awareness too and I feel myself getting very sleepy. But then I remember why I’m here. I hear the Elder’s voice in my head: “If you can make it, try to stay awake
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for the morning star. It can show you some powerful things. It’s easy to be scared at those times, but try not to be. You’re being taken care of. And it’s good not to miss any information.”
I keep my eyes open. I’m not expecting anything, but, just in case, I don’t want to
miss it this time. I’ve already been out here on the shore of this river—alone, without food, water, or supplies of any kind—for four days now. I’ll be heading back in to camp tomorrow, and each night up to now I couldn’t help falling asleep and missing the morning star. My stomach stopped rumbling with hunger sometime two days ago...I think...I can’t really remember one day from the next anymore, I’m on a completely different schedule; a non-schedule, one organized by something beyond my intellect alone. I’m also not angry anymore for taking this commitment on, like I was yesterday, nor am I so bored anymore. Inexplicably, everything is just...happening, and doing exactly what it does. That’s it, and it seems to me that’s all everyone needs.
Time just whizzed by. It’s really dark now. I can’t believe how bright the moon
actually is. I can feel myself start to shiver as the cold now settles deeper into my skin and bounces along my bones. For just a minute I startle myself into thinking I need to panic. I shift my awareness and let go of the tension in my muscles, allowing myself to just settle back into the cool air, on the cool earth I feel supporting me. I probably dozed off for a bit, but if so, it wasn’t long. I perk up to the sound of a pack of coyotes off to my right—probably the same pack that ran through the camp the night before I headed out here. It sounds like they’re having a party over there! Yipping and yapping. Eventually
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they quiet down and it’s just me again. I have no idea what time it is. It doesn’t matter at all, but my mind, so trained to care about that, can’t stop wondering anyway. Some more time goes by and I feel my awareness perk up again. But it’s nothing definitive grabbing my attention this time, just a nagging, invisible presence on my left. I glance over and there’s nothing there but a swaying stand of spruce and fir trees. I force myself to turn back toward the river in front of me, but I can’t help it anymore. There is something so strong pulling, beckoning to my awareness on my left that I literally can’t control my head from turning back that way again. And suddenly, my body tightens, my mind expands, and I’m flung into the midst of a bright flash that awakens and fires every cell in my body. I’m staring in between the two nearest trees, right into the chest of a grizzly bear. It’s standing on its hind legs, with both arms out on either side of its huge body. In a split second, my heart quickens, I feel a rush of adrenaline surge through my veins, and a deafening pounding in my chest. I’m still sitting, so all I can do without thinking about it is turn away and fling my body back over to the right in reaction. I roll onto my stomach and when I look back up...it’s gone. All the commotion probably lasted only a matter of seconds, but a lifetime in my awareness and in my bones. It’s nothing but darkness again, and just then I hear a despairing voice from somewhere in the distance calling out:
“I just wanted to love you.”
This sends chills up my spine. I turn back over, sit back where I was before, and
reflect on what the hell just happened! I look around me to settle down and take my
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bearings again. The river is still there, slowly bringing me back into this place. I glance refreshingly up to the mountain ridge behind it, and then suddenly notice, just above one of its peaks: the morning star radiating back at me with a smile. I am astounded. It takes my breath away. And now the real utterance can begin...
The story I just told was an episode from a while ago in my own life-experience
story. This was truly a gift that keeps unfolding in my life, and it eventually guided me a couple years ago to another treasure that has been forever written on my heart: Aaron Paquette’s mesmerizing painting, Transformation (Fig. 1). The experience above helped make me aware of the importance in my life of learning how to really love others, and let others love me, however they can and do. To work more at refraining from passing judgement so quickly, and thereby sometimes missing out on other truths inherent in the larger story ever unfurling around us. As this lesson continues to work through me, my growth and changing and learning with these awarenesses is now also interwoven with, inspired and animated by, Paquette’s painting. It perfectly embodies what I imagine my own transformation towards a more loving relationship with all beings in creation to be. When I’m paying attention, it is, indeed, a sacred, material semiotic companion of mine on my journey, a synergistic part of my own life experience story.
I was immediately “grabbed” by the painting when first encountering it on the
website of Edmonton’s Bearclaw Art Gallery, who, at the time, were trying to sell it. In
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FIG. 1. Aaron Paquette, Transformation, 2009. Acrylic on canvas, 35.6 x 27.9 cm. Private collection.
comparison to the price of many paintings these days, it was not that expensive at all. But, being a student, it was still well out of my price range, otherwise I would have purchased it on the spot. I lived in Edmonton for six years during my undergraduate studies, so had friends there, and was regularly travelling up for work related to this project, as well as for visits with some Métis artist friends of mine—Paquette and Heather Shillinglaw (both living in Edmonton)—at various exhibition openings, art shows, and conferences. On every trip to Edmonton, I always made a point of setting a few minutes aside to go visit Transformation at the Bearclaw. It sat there on the wall with
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its price tag for months, the better part of a year even. I still couldn’t afford it, and secretly loved that it wasn’t selling because then I could see it in person whenever I liked.
I was first drawn to the painting in its entirety. No one element particularly stood
out to me and pulled me in. Its whole feeling, energy, and presence was just intuitively recognized as already a part of, or in tune, with mine—like a soul-sister who I had never “met” before, but, yet, somehow remembered from a long time ago. It was like a forgotten piece of who I really am. When I look closer, my attention is called, compelled, and pulled, first, by the cluster of flowers on the bottom left. But not passively. The flowers, each diversely differentiated with their own gifts relative to the others around them, enliven my embodied awareness. I cannot help but continually move and shift from flower to flower—dwarf dogwood to echinacea to forget-me-not—intermingling with the wild contingency of each our existences, “the uncertainty and risk of the present moment.”197 The thick, black form-lines particularizing this animate encounter with the flowers eventually swerve and push my awareness up and to the right, where our sharing in dynamic unity with each other begins to precipitate a metamorphosis.
Our journey together now takes flight in the form of an elegant soaring eagle. The
commingling of myself, the flowers, and the eagle does not dissolve the distance and difference between us in some sort of bland, homogenous unity, but is articulated in shifting nodes and flows as we all move together: the curling, pinnate, and fern-like yarrow leaves are wholly themselves, and also feel like the feathery swirls of eagle
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down shifting in the wind, as well as the upper wing covert feathers over the eagle’s wrists. The array of wild flowers are each individuals, and also now the out-stretching, trailing edge wing and tail feathers. They are also now the capacity of aliveness that the land also imparts to my own body, as I come to recognize the astonishing malleability of my own animal senses. Like the eagle’s and the flowers’ in the painting, my own body and sensory awareness is itself a kind of place. A place through which other entities and senses pass, sometimes settling and sedimenting, as we flow together in ever-shifting ways.198
In this vein, the golden, egg-shaped, living heart of the eagle, is also my heart,
and the heart of the universe—infusing through its mysterious tendrils, and infused with everything, holding everything together in some way. Like when the sun greets the day and the inner flames of all the world’s creatures. I can feel it intimately. As I look at it, I feel it warm my heart as I continue to learn about what love is, and is for, in the giving and receiving of it in my own life. Being with this painting opens my body up to the awareness that I, too, am no less connected with the celestial bodies in the sky as with the deep roots of all life in the earth—hmmm, like that Elder said years ago, I am being taken care of. For I also notice that these fundamental elements—earth and sky— interweave in the painting’s background to underwrite the transformative love moving through Paquette’s painting, right before my eyes, and through my own body. Maybe I do have the ability in me to enact this love in my own life? Maybe I can really love others from this place, and let them love me—both as I really am, and as they really
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are? I relax more deeply into the painting itself, and just as I think I am understanding it, hah! I am suddenly struck yet again. My breath is completely taken away: within this sacred mystery unfolding all around us, the heart of the eagle, the heart of the universe in the painting—my own living, beating heart in this world around me—is also a morning star.
Early in the spring of 2011, on one of my visits to Edmonton, I stopped in at the
gallery to be with the painting again and...it was gone! I looked all around the gallery wondering if it had just been moved to another wall to try and generate some more interest for selling it, but it was nowhere to be found. I immediately approached the gallery attendant and asked where it went.
“Oh, it sold about a month ago to a guy from northern Alberta,” she said.
A palpable and heavy sadness drooped over me and slumped my body, like I had
lost a good friend. But I was also partly happy that it was now in someone’s life, unfolding with them however it was meant to be doing there. I quickly contacted Paquette to ask who the buyer was and see if he had their contact information. He did know who the buyer was, did have his contact information, and put me in touch with him so I could ask about the purchase. Ever since embarking on this research journey, I’ve been interested in and collecting various art stories from people who have been touched, moved, or inspired by art in their own everyday lives in some way—the other fragments of our collective art story that art historians largely neglect or undermine. I couldn’t wait to hear what this other art story behind my beloved Transformation was.
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The buyer was glad to chat with me, and we spoke on the phone for quite a while. His story was also a good one, full of love and caring. It is now also a part of the painting’s story as it continues to breathe and unfurl through each of us according to each our own carnal immersions in the larger story of this place.
The buyer was a school teacher working for the Northern Lights School Division
(NLSD) around Lac La Biche, Alberta. He had been hired as part of a committee of educators to write recommendations for improving the education system within their division (which encompassed fourteen, largely Aboriginal, communities), as well as to write an ever expanding and changing reference book for educators throughout it. The book will be entitled The FNMI Educator’s Handbook, and the project entailed a collaborative Aboriginal—non-Aboriginal working relationship between the schools in the division and their communities. The committee put a lot of thought into the cover image for the handbook and after scouring through many ideas and many artists’ work, the buyer was guided towards Paquette, and it was Transformation that finally grabbed him.
The painting seemed to capture and fire his imagination. It was difficult for him to
put the encounter into words, but he repeated in different articulations on more than one occasion in our chat that it seemed to embody what he thought transformation was, which was also what he thought education was about. Furthermore, it was significant that it could do this for him without even knowing what the title of the painting was. It was also significant that the painting felt to him to have a very “spiritual element to it.” Also, the painting beat with the heart of transformation for him in a way that he thought
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could help “keep people mindful of the whole process [of improving the Alberta education system],” and the need “to do things better and more effectively” for our youth. The buyer expressed the hope to me that the handbook’s cover would leave “a lasting impression so it keeps [the book’s work and message] conscious in people’s minds.” “That’s why,” he said “I wanted to have a very powerful piece on the cover.”
Upon the completion of the handbook, it will be brought back to the communities
within the school division to celebrate their new collaborative direction together. Moreover, far from being just something for the educators themselves, the handbook will be accompanied by gifts of mugs and t-shirts with reproductions of Transformation on them to handout as well. Many prints of the painting will also be produced and given to various schools within the division, to Alberta Education, and to each of the NLSD offices. The original painting was donated to the NLSD and will be hung in their main office in Lac La Biche. “Everything I’ve been doing is for the kids,” the buyer humbly and quietly said to me.199 And thus, the story of Transformation has again taken on a life of its own—enacting, animating, metamorphosing, and speaking to, in the words of Git'ksan artist and art historian Doreen Jensen, “our human capacity for transforming the world.”200 The painting’s buyer and I had very different stories encompassing the work. Yet, there was something the same. Not because of something we were doing with it or to it or about it, but because of what it was doing with and to us. Helping us to love and be together in the world deeper. And thus, we start to open up to where the whole story of art in Canada really begins...
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The Conventional Story of Art Before breathing life into another story of art in Canada, it will be helpful to recap exactly what the conventional story is. As all stories do, it has shifted, metamorphosed, deepened, and even—especially within its Eurocentric paradigm—for better or worse, been augmented, elaborated, clarified, analyzed, and complexified. Throughout all of this, however, the core of the story has been maintained. In its simplest version, it goes something like this:
A long time ago, there were people in Canada who did some artistic
things. But then, some other people came from Europe, and gradually replaced
and improved the original artistic activities with many artistic developments that
advanced art in Canada (including for those earlier peoples), to the present
heights of artistic skill and merit.
This is what some may refer to as the master narrative of Canadian art. It is what
guided nineteenth-century artistic nationalists, and twentieth-century aesthetic formalists. It is also what guides twenty-first-century postcolonial critics, even as their stories also try to find ruptures within it. For even then, the dominant master narrative is the dominant master narrative. In other words, even after much postcolonial criticism (not all) has done its job, it can often still remain exceedingly difficult to imagine ourselves beyond the master narrative at all. It is often portrayed by postcolonial critics
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as so dominant and pervasive that this characteristic both fuels postcolonial criticism, and significantly weakens it, for the master narrative is sustained by the very discussion of its own dominance and pervasiveness. Postcolonial criticism inherently remains reliant on it, even while holding it in contempt. Although very important, nevertheless, its flashes and breaths of fresh air are ever-vulnerable to the same stifling weight it is trying to lift. In a more elaborate form, the conventional story of art in Canada goes something like this:
A long time ago, Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now called Canada,
living on the land, and creating functional items that reflected this. These items
often contained much aesthetic beauty as well, but they might not really be called
“art” as we understand it today. Then, in the late seventeenth century, early
French explorers, missionaries, and settlers from Europe started to populate
some of this same land. These incomers brought with them the first real
techniques, knowledge, and styles of “art,” which often took the form of amateur,
or naïve, religious and votive painting, carving, and sculpture. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, more and more Europeans had now arrived, and England
started to take control of the balance of power in the new land from France. This
brought in a new group of military settlers, explorers, and artists who, although
not professionals themselves, were often trained by professional artists so they
could accurately paint and map the new territory for British reconnaissance and
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economic expansion. This resulted in the production of topographical landscape
painting, which hinted at the artistic progress that was to come. From this point,
until around the middle of the nineteenth century, the art in this place continued
to progress by becoming more and more professional, as evidenced in better
handling, better style and execution, and better technique through popular trends
in French-Canadian portraiture and grand church art; some portraiture and
professional landscape art by English-speaking artists; and the odd landscape
painting by a French-speaking artist. All these trends mirrored similar trends in
Europe at the time. Most of the artists were immigrant Europeans, although the
amount of art produced by native-born Canadians was now starting to increase.
artworld would start to change everything, lifting art in Canada to new
developmental heights. To begin with, we now see the arrival of the first two
significant artists in Canada: Cornelius Krieghoff and Paul Kane. These artists
brought the standards for technical skill, and aesthetic conception up a level
through their depictions of native-Canadian life, including humorous genre
scenes, Aboriginal culture, and various depictions of ways these unfolded in the
landscape. Their art raised the popularity of Canadian art, establishing the
conditions that enabled the first Canadian artists societies and schools.
Increasing numbers of artists from Europe (primarily Britain), a new general
interest in artistic life in Canada, and a burgeoning nationalistic spirit surrounding
By the middle of the nineteenth century a new wave in the Canadian
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Confederation in 1867 eventually led key artists of the day to band together, and
replicate the establishment of England’s Royal Academy of Arts in this country.
Canada was a part of the British Empire and this new institution, founded in
1880, would be similarly encouraged by the British monarchy, and have the title:
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
academicians raised the standards of artistic skill, execution, and conception yet
again. Almost always correlative with political ambitions for capitalist expansion
and national unity, these artists most frequently painted landscape art—the genre
most associated with capitalism and nationalism—in the tradition of its European
Romanticist roots. By the end of the century, Canadian artists flocked to Europe
to learn all the latest techniques and styles, and keep art in the young Canada
progressing with the art of the rest of the world. Before long, the importation of
the modern European trend for anti-academicism—exemplified predominantly in
Impressionism—shook the Canadian artworld yet again.
formation of the Group of Seven in 1920. The Group comprised the most
important and pivotal figures in the establishment of the first official “national
school” of art. They advocated for a non-academic style that could, once and for
all, free Canadian art from its perceived dependence on European techniques
and exemplars, and be distinctly “Canadian.” The only logical exemplar for such
The Academy became the official leader in Canadian art, and
This modernist movement rose to its heights in Canada through the
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an endeavour in their minds was not European art and tradition, but the
Canadian landscape itself. Modern European techniques and styles were still
deemed best to express this land, however, because they were much more open
to the shifting, colourful world around, and less beholden to the entrenched
European landscape formulas that could never hope to fully encapsulate
“Canada.”
reactionist trends that opposed the privileging of landscape art in this way. These
other artists countered the influence of the Group by emphasizing the importance
of figure painting, art containing more overt social commentary, and, eventually,
abstraction by the 1950s. They drew heavily again on European and Euro-
American techniques and styles for their foundation and exemplars, and
Canadian art, as a result, shifted to a more overtly internationalist outlook.
Nationalist issues started to become less important than more universal social-
political and aesthetic issues. Ever since the middle of the twentieth century,
artists continued in this vein, variously alternating between landscape art, other
representationalist styles, and various forms of abstraction or conceptually-driven
art. Postmodernism, the latest wave of European thought and practice to inform
the Canadian artworld, from around the 1970s onward, further reinforced this
new pluralism and diversity in artistic styles, subject matter, and mediums. Artists
adapted photography, video and technology, pop culture, material objects, and
The Group of Seven influenced generations of artists to come, as well as
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earth and natural phenomena to the purposes of art. Postmodernism also
opened up the Canadian artworld to a new awareness of cultural diversity in
Canada. Artists continued to be greatly influenced by European styles and
techniques, and they increasingly drew from them to comment on their own
cultural heritage within and against the Canadian nationalist tradition.
Contemporary Aboriginal art began to flourish as part of this most recent of
movements, which remains strong to this day.
The above is obviously a bland retelling of the conventional story. I could have
spiced it up with various internal storylines, and exciting subplots full of interesting characters, suspense, trickster-like unpredictability, trouble, and imagination at numerous points. Many Canadian art historians, of course, do include some of these story capacities in their stories. In general, however, this is the story that Canadian art collectively tells and reinforces in the vast majority of Canadian art histories, augmenting through the decades with each new artistic development. It is a story, indeed, that reports truth. It is real and important and powerful, as stories are. It is also dangerous; especially if it is held up as THE TRUTH. This mainstream story, indeed, has worked. It has, for example, helped perform and summon up Aboriginal isolated culture and postcolonial critical stories, as well as nationalistic fervour and many interested viewers at various times. Yet, in my view, there are other ways some of our powerful visual art connects and interweaves into another kind of story of art in Canada.
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Lucius O’Brien and the Roots Beneath Canadian Painting The story that the art of Lucius O’Brien (1832-1899), generally tells in current Canadian art history is predominantly one of Victorian nationalism. The aesthetic referent for this story is generally the frequently-mentioned orderliness and precise detailing permeating O’Brien’s work. Reid has been the main purveyor of this story. His catalogue for the first ever retrospective of O’Brien’s work was subtitled “Visions of Victorian Canada.”201 He begins with an introduction about how “Not long ago the term Victorian was pejorative,” but is not any longer, as Canadians have come to realize their indebtedness to the major developments of Victoria’s reign in England.202 Reid remarks that, “in spite of many factors that today seem so evidently to have militated against a successful transplant [of the British system to Canada]”—of which first on his list is “the persistent and pervasive aboriginal nations”—the fact remains that:
most English-speaking Canadians [in the nineteenth century], whether native- born or not, considered themselves British as well as Canadian, both culturally and in terms of political allegiance.203
Even when other commentators are less reverent with regard to the Victorian impacts on Canada, such as art historian Leslie Dawn, O’Brien is still directly associated with its nationalist/imperialist project, for better or worse.204 For Reid, the work of O’Brien was one of the most influential products embodying these “formative values of his time and place.”205 The subsequent chapters of his catalogue then mine data from many of O’Brien’s artworks and biographical details illustrating their, and the artist’s, fundamental cultural and political allegiance to Victorian England.
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The most common details art historians (both before and after Reid), have
emphasized while discussing O’Brien in this way have been threefold. First, the Victorianism of many in his immediate circle—including his immigrant parents, the Marquis of Lorne, the Princess Louise, and many British artists—which is associated with his appointment as first president of the RCA in 1880.206 Second, his centrality to the nationalist and imperialist project embodied by the publication of Picturesque Canada in 1882.207 And finally, his aesthetic association with various nineteenth-century European art movements, styles, and ideologies, such as the picturesque, romanticism, and some of their by-products, including the Barbizon School, the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and Luminism.208 The narrative skeleton underwriting the conventional story of O’Brien’s art is that because O’Brien’s life included the above Victorian elements, his depiction of Canadian scenes was largely Victorian.
This story unfolds in articulations like this: O’Brien painted Canadian scenes in
elegant proportions, with attention to form, and near geometric perfection, so what explains this is his connection to immigrant artist-engineers, such as William Armstrong, or William G. R. Hind.209 Similarly, O’Brien put so much detail and wonder into his paintings of Canadian scenes that what must explain this is that he read Ruskin, or saw Pre-Raphaelite works in London.210 Another articulation might be that O’Brien’s paintings of places in Canada are evocative and lyrical, with sunlight flooding in, and exaggerated cliff scales, so this must be because he knew of the Euro-American Hudson River School and Albert Bierstadt.211 O’Brien also painted leisure boats on the
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water in some of these Canadian places, and this is because he was most interested in offering a European romantic view of nature.212 Moreover, his paintings of Canadian scenes are peaceful and orderly, and this is because of his “gentlemanly comportment,” respectable Victorian “birth, breeding and education,” or “personal loyalty to the Crown.”213 To mention one more, O’Brien painted landscapes of Canadian places and Aboriginal peoples, so what must explain this is his Victorian imperialism shaped by centuries-old European concepts of territory.214
These are all good stories, and certainly convey a truth. I am not suggesting that
they should have no place in our story of O’Brien’s art, or art in Canada more generally. They are, after all, some of the crucial stories summoning up my own story now. The issue with emphasizing only these kinds of stories in Canadian art history, rather, is that they all assume the “Canadian scenes” themselves have absolutely no agency in the performance of O’Brien’s art. They assume that O’Brien’s sensuous encounter with the more-than-human world around him was largely in a passive state, generally producing representations of passive objects outside of himself because of something or someone from Europe. Such assumptions flatten, what Abram calls, “the wild contingency” of O’Brien’s own existence, and by extension, his art’s. Yes, O’Brien was interested in geometry, architecture, and engineering, and admired the imported techniques of Armstrong and Hind, but the form and proportion of his La Roche Percé (1882), for example, was also in part precisely that of Percé Rock’s on the tip of Québec’s Gaspé Peninsula, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and not just a reflection of the influence of
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Armstrong or Hind. Yes, O’Brien’s parents were respectable loyalists, he was friends with the Marquis of Lorne, and probably read Ruskin, but the order and detail of his Under the Cliffs, Port Stanley (1873), was also precisely that of the cliffs and main beach at Port Stanley, on the north shore of Lake Erie, and not just a reflection of the influence of his immigrant parents or Ruskin.
As an artist travelling around Canada on sketching and painting trips, yes, he
was part of the imperialistic picturesque movement of Georgian and Victorian England, but this also gave him countless opportunities to rupture its abstracted ideologies imported from another place. This occurred not because of some unique “genius” he alone possessed as an artist, but because travelling to sketch and paint allowed artists in particular to enter into a pre-conceptual, felt rapport with other more-than-human entities. This manifested conditions within which the imported ideology inscribing them as entirely inanimate objects could also be challenged. O’Brien had even more inclination towards such rapport than most artists around him at the time—who were largely immigrants—because this was his home, which physically encompassed and participated in his life in vastly different ways than it would have even in that of his own parents. This is a point that has been underestimated or undervalued in most conventional stories of art in Canada.
As Abram has remarked, “We may conceive of earthly reality as though we were
not ourselves of it, but we can never really perceive it as such.”215 The story of O’Brien’s art is the story of an embodied experiencer performing, and being performed by, the
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solidarity between the human animal and the animate earth as it particularly occurred in his native place—especially around the Lake Simcoe basin where he was born and raised. On one level, the imported conceptions and stories of his parents, friends, and most of the Canadian artworld around him at the time were active participants in his life. But on a deeper level, O’Brien’s artworks also embody and enact a complex set of interrelationships between palpable and local phenomena within a more-than-human world. His is an art process that occurred from the ground up, subsequently enveloping Victorianism and incorporating—working—it. A more monolithic Victorianism alone did not just incorporate O’Brien’s disembodied mind and art from the top down.
I do not wish to bring a storied approach to O’Brien’s art in order to offer another
explanation of it. Instead, it hope to amplify some key formal elements—what I might call his personal visual story capacities—that emerge from his sensate reciprocity with the animate earth around him. These elements, in turn, will gesture towards us, beckoning our attention to the need for approaching his art with much more crosscultural awareness. The form O’Brien’s stories take, as many art historians have already acknowledged, is indeed a highly ordered and detailed one. Approaching this like a dynamic story, and not just like an imitative Victorian representation, however, reveals that this order is primarily a holistic, place-based order (enveloping and adapting some Victorian ideas and techniques), and not purely a Victorian ideological one, whatever its sources in O’Brien’s life. It will be helpful now to explore some of the story being told, performed, through the ground beneath O’Brien’s feet.
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☈⊕♁ O’Brien was born and raised through his formative years in a relatively remote log house called “The Woods” on the northwest shore of Lake Simcoe (Kempenfelt Bay), in Upper Canada (Fig. 2). The house played a central role in establishing the settlement of Shanty Bay, and was fondly remembered by at least one visitor as “a perfect gem...set in the wildest of natural surroundings.”216 This was almost all O’Brien would know until the age of twelve or thirteen.217 It was built just in time for his birth in the summer of 1832, and, like most good stories, it was built with a lot of help from many characters: people, but also trees, rocks, meadows, beavers, bears, and the lake itself.
Lake Simcoe was and is the heartbeat of life in the area. It roots the inseparable
curvatures of time and space between the Oro and Oak Ridges Moraines—the Lake Simcoe basin. This, in turn, is enveloped by the temporal-spatial rhythms of Lake Ontario and Lake Huron pulsating around and through it. Every place has its particular curvatures and rhythms—its story. These rhythms and its story are of the place, but they are not its alone. They are ever intertwined along pulsating and dynamic edges shared with other ever-shifting beings, entities, and systems all unfolding within the larger story always encompassing it. In Abram’s eloquent words, a place’s rhythms are “its unique ways of sprouting and unfurling and giving birth to itself again and again—as the world itself turns and returns, and as indeed the best stories are told over and over again.”218 One of the main rhythms resonating through—or ordering—the story of the Lake Simcoe area is that of its rising, lowering, flowing, and life-shaping water. This has
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resonated through the colossal pressing and melting of glacial ice over probing granitic bedrock, limestone, and shale. It has echoed in the swirling between the cooling and heating of wind and water and seasons over the spellbinding blanket of sediment. It has summoned up the dancing between the birch tree, the sawfly, and the trout. And returned again in the singing between the voices of the loon and the fishermen keeping time with their paddles. These rhythms are still storying the Lake Simcoe area today, for Simcoe and its watershed supports Ontario’s “highest angling effort of any inland lake.”219 This is, of course, the exact same story in O’Brien’s life too, when the area was “preeminently the angler’s paradise. In no other country on the surface of the earth is there a chain, so extensive and closely connected of lake and river and streamlet, as that which stretches from the estuary of the St. Lawrence westward.”220 It is also participant in the massive emergence unfurling between Lakes Simcoe, Huron, Ontario, and the Great Lakes basin, which resonates in the story of the world with almost 25% of its fresh water, and the alluring banks of the St. Lawrence River itself.
This rhythm is so particular to this place that it could only have sprouted bald
eagles, and not eagle rays; it could only have sprouted lake whitefish and not twospined blackfish. It could only have sprouted Wendats, and not Haidas. And it could only have animated and instigated English immigrants and their native-born children in exactly the way it did. In other words, the migration and unfurling life experience stories of the above peoples in this place, I believe, is not due to social and historical forces alone. These forces are necessarily shaped in large part by the natural forces they are
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FIG. 2. Map of southern Ontario with key places mentioned in this dissertation. Troy Patenaude.
already nested within. Nobody can exist here for long, as in any place, without being encompassed and exceeded by its particular place-based awareness, and according to the dispositions of his carnal immersion within it.
When the O’Briens decided to move to Lake Simcoe they were already part of a
much larger story unfolding around them. To merely say they moved because of British political or military strategy—to help manage the fluctuations in African American immigration from the States; support the incredibly important through-route between York (Lake Ontario) and Penetanguishene (Lake Huron); and strengthen the influence of the British Crown—is, while conveying a truth, also short-sighted, at best, and
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arrogant, at worst. The very integrity of the O’Briens’ thoughts, words, and actions depends on the particular ways their sensate bodies could only have performed in reciprocity with the animate earth always enveloping and exceeding them.
The following paragraphs illustrate a few articulations of this place-based story.
The immigrant communities of African American slaves around Lake Simcoe and the Penetanguishene Road significantly increased in the 1810s and 20s, stimulating the related increase of British half-pay officers in the area to help manage it. O’Brien’s father was one of these officers, but these communities did not arise here merely because he, or other British loyalists, decided it, but also because the land in part called it forth. Here, they were naturally, almost directly in between Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, whose formations and influences, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with the newcomer British loyalists. Not surprisingly, then, it is here too where fluctuating fears and threats of American invasion after the War of 1812 were, naturally, most extreme. The O’Briens’ arrival is simply another articulation of the same story the region spoke 10,000 to 11,000 years earlier when “immigrant” communities of caribou and mastodon greatly increased here, stimulating the related increase of Palaeo-Indians to “manage” it, because of “extreme fluctuations in lake levels,” which were threatening from its close interrelationship with the very same Huron and Ontario lake basins.221
Similarly, waterways, land formations, and watersheds uniquely connected Lake
Simcoe to Lakes Huron and Ontario. This important Lake Huron-Simcoe-Ontario relationship quickly unfurled into an important economic and political through-route for
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the British. O’Brien’s father travelled it very frequently, and his work often overlapped with its larger unfurling story. For example, he was contributing to the region at a time when military bases, settlements, trading posts, fisheries, and road and transportation improvements were increasing along this through-route. Yet, this is also another articulation of the place-based story echoed here through the Wendats—a name that has been associated with the traditional meaning for “people dwelling in the vicinity of bays and inlets of a large body of water.”222 During the Hypsithermal Interval (4,000-8,000 B.P.) and beyond, the Wendats also maintained continued use of this same through-route, which in turn overlapped important Palaeo-Indian trails between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron.223 This same route stimulated seventy Wendat village sites, a wide network of trails, the Mnjikaning Fish Weirs, many other fishing sites, and gathering places from which to share and trade with other nations, just like it did for the British newcomers thousands of years later.224
Finally, the motivation to strengthen the influence of the British Crown by moving
to Lake Simcoe was neither merely a human decision. This is not say to that the land is a sentient decision maker on its own, but that human decisions are fundamentally shaped and summoned up by the particular relationship between land, waterways, and carnal immersions encompassed by them. In this vein, I suggest that there is no one complete decision maker, neither human, nor non-human, at all, but, like Abram, more an ever-unfurling co-emergence of the real.
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For example, the story of the British Crown’s interest in the area also echoed
earlier through Samuel de Champlain’s wintering here in 1615-16. Champlain moved in to help scatter the Iroquois and bolster trade alliances around the important eastern Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River with the Wendats, in the name of the French Crown.225 The story unfurled again within a different articulation through the Iroquois (c. 1550-1650), who strengthened and imposed their claim over this crucial area and its resources by scattering the Wendats.226 Then it unfurled again through the O’Briens, and other British settlers, who in the performance of the same place-based story, displaced the Anishinabeg and Métis around Lake Simcoe and the PenetanguisheneSimcoe corridor.227 Cultural and socio-political forces, of course, are characters in these larger stories, but they can never fully extinguish the sensate participation between our animal bodies and the animate, creative matter that always encompasses and exceeds them. This particular, largely waterborne, rhythm of the place returned again in the dreaming of The Woods, where O’Brien learned how to fish, and paint, and was, in turn, infused by this same sensuous connection to its land and water.228
The tangible life and pulse of the water and Lake Simcoe itself made its presence
felt in the lives of O’Brien’s parents, Mary and Edward, from the minute they entered the Lake Simcoe basin during their move. In her journals, Mary complained that their journey took a lot longer than they expected, for they had “to stop ever and anon to make a bridge over some hole or puddle which the thaw had brought to light.”229 When they finally did arrive at their lodgings on the south side of Kempenfelt Bay (where they
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were going to live while their house was being built on the north side), the water changed their plans again. The quickest way to get to the north side of the lake in winter was to cross over the solid ice on foot or in a sleigh. The O’Briens arrived in early April, however, and the lake had already started to thaw. They decided to rush their move and hurry across the ice “to get housed by the night, for the weather was too fair to be trusted with the care of the ice.”230 Their instincts were sound, for as they were still unpacking on the shore, the oxen that were being brought in behind them fell through the ice into the lake. This set off a dramatic scene of shouting and running, including the breaking through of a horse during the attempt to rescue the oxen. After all was settled again, the location the O’Briens chose to build The Woods was equally embedded in the unfolding story of the place and its water.
After scouting out the land from a vista above, Edward eventually chose to build
just up from the lake amidst a “strip of cedar swamp of varying width in which cedars of enormous growth, a few scattered pine, and both spruce and balsam were to be found.”231 The particular pulse and rhythms of a place, however, also have a knack of entering into bodies. What starts to become clear early on in the journal entries is that Edward did not simply choose this place, but it also chose him. “The site,” said Mary a few days after arriving, “pleases us more and more each day.”232 It was actively doing something to them, changing them day by day, even if they could only intellectually comprehend or explain it from their side of the relationship as “pleasing” them. The surrounding cedars were not inert, determinate objects to their sensate bodies, but
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equally, dynamically, and enigmatically influencing the space around themselves too. The cedars even “named” the O’Briens before the O’Briens would eventually name them and their place “Shanty Bay.” The original name Edward and Mary “gave” their house was “Cedargrove Hall.” This was the name that sprouted in mutual interchange between the O’Briens’ animal bodies and the pulsating influence of the cedars. The much more distant and impersonal name, “The Woods,” was the one given it later by Mary’s family in England through correspondence.233 Her family had never been there, and so to them that is all the place could be, an abstract bunch of “woods.” This is what similarly happens in our art histories when encountering art here through predominantly Eurocentric understandings alone, but now I am getting ahead of myself. The O’Briens had clearly begun to render themselves vulnerable to the place in a way that allowed each to enter into the other—allowing the place, the cedar swamp, to start speaking through the O’Briens as integral parts of a larger enveloping story.
In another articulation of this enveloping story, the O’Briens became taken up
within the ecological order of a nearby meadow in the cedar swamp. They walked often to this meadow and eventually started using it for hay. They discovered it could have a particularly accommodating moisture balance.234 By July, surface water in the meadow was absent, but there was enough water retained in the earth for the grasses to keep from drying out completely, which would have precluded their use for hay. At the same time, there was not so much water retained that the grasses were completely inhibited from drying at all. They were able to dry out just the right amount for the O’Briens to
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happily skip the crucial drying stage of the haymaking process.235 While the O’Briens may not have conceptually known why this was the case, they perceived it as such, which sensuously embedded them in the holistic order of the place in a deeper way.
This order not only encompassed the cedar swamp, the meadow, its grasses, the
O’Briens, and their haymakers, but it was a particular meadow “which,” as Mary recognized, “the beavers were so good as to clear for us in times of yore.”236 The beavers’ maintenance and regulation of the place’s water—its quality, flow, storage, temperature, recharge, and release timing—helped raise the meadow’s groundwater tables (improving the vigour and drought-tolerance of its grasses). The beavers’ woodcutting also opened up the forest cover just enough to allow the sun in for drying.237 The holistic order and ecological intelligence of the place subsequently performed the O’Briens’ actions in it. Mary’s journal entries reveal that encounters with the meadow—“one of the prettiest clearings in the country”—were uplifting and pleasing, even inspiring her on one occasion to recall childhood enjoyment of flowers and shrubberies in Somerset.238 Her buoyant and enriched state of being in the meadow, one that could physically lighten her step, was buoyed by the unfurling rhythm of elevated groundwater levels and beavers, who were lubricating, building—literally helping to animate and lift—everything up.
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☈⊕♁ In the midst of all this place-based emergence around Lake Simcoe, young Lucius was born. While Mary mentions O’Brien taking to art like “a born artist” as early as a year and a half old, the first two mentions of O’Brien’s involvement in any activity other than baby-related concerns are: a boat trip across the lake with Mary and Willy (O’Brien’s older brother), and spending family time one “evening…[loitering] out on the lake.”239 Edward, a former navy midshipman and sailor in the merchant marine, is known to have loved the water and sailing, but this would only have helped reinforce the place-based rhythms of the water already enveloping and resonating through young O’Brien in his native place. The enigmatic, ever-shifting cosmos of Lake Simcoe ultimately holds the key to the abstract, provisional, mathematically precise kind of order hidden behind O’Brien’s perceivable surroundings, and in his art. It is an earthly cosmos of not only the lake itself, but ground, wind, rain, bears, immigrants, and the hundreds of other nativeborn peoples around him everyday—primarily Chippewas, but also Mississaugas, Potawatomis, and Odawas at various times—all participant in the order of the lake.
Two days after O’Brien was born, Mary was full of adoration: “Baby is getting
quite pretty, dark complexioned with black hair, like a young bear.”240 Far from being merely a flippant statement, this illustrates the extent to which O’Brien was intricately interwoven within the place-based awareness and story of the Lake Simcoe basin, even through the shifting perceptions and developing connections of his immigrant parents. Bears frequented the Lake Simcoe basin. They came in search of a good berry patch in
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the summer (the O’Briens had a nearby wild strawberry patch they would harvest241); maybe some beech or ash nuts in the autumn; or maybe some fish. Within a few days of Mary’s statement, the O’Briens saw a bear walking through the forest around The Woods. The encounter unfolded not with fear and sentimentalism, but with practicality, and even a level of respect. Edward shot the bear so they could respectfully use it. Mary butchered it, stretched the skin to dry, and gifted the meat to a neighbour. Once the leatherworking process was completed by the following spring, Mary apparently used the hide to make O’Brien a pair of moccasins to encourage him to walk: “he no sooner felt them under his feet than he set off and ran two or three times the whole length of the house.”242
Cobblers in Upper Canada at this time were changing their imported, less
effective shoe designs to incorporate moccasin styles and techniques. As Mary learned first-hand, these were more practical to make, as well as to wear and use in the particular terrain and climate of their place.243 The process worked so well that the O’Briens did it again. A few years later, after the birth of O’Brien’s younger brother Henry, Mary made plans to make a pair of boots out of another bear’s hide for O’Brien’s younger sister, as well as either sleeves or leggings for O’Brien and his two brothers. “A magnificent animal the bear is,” she said, “Even when dead there was a spirit about him.”244 Many intellectuals today sadly jump on every nature or indigenous culture oriented reference and action as smacking of romanticism, in the sense of a false or fanciful nostalgia. Not all instances of this are misguided, of course, but as O’Brien
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learned from experience, place-based awareness is not just romantic, it is practical, honest, and authentic.
As early as O’Brien could walk he was getting to know the lake. He and Willy
would early-on beg their parents for excursions on the water, whether to go see the construction of new wharfs, or just to learn how to paddle. While Edward and Mary were working on or near their own landing at the lake, they would let O’Brien and Willy (two and three years old, respectively), paddle around in the boat on their own by tying it to the wharf for safety.245 Soon after, O’Brien was helping to paddle his mother along the shoreline to visit neighbours.246 Some of the neighbours they might have seen around the lake and The Woods during these excursions included members of the African American community who had escaped into Canada along the Underground Railway. There were also many British immigrants nearby, some of which Edward and Mary became good friends with. Many of these African American and British immigrants were spread out along the shore around The Woods, contributing to the settlements of Shanty Bay, Hawkestone, and Kempenfelt. The shores and lands on the south side of Kempenfelt Bay (and Lake Simcoe as a whole), were generally more heavily populated, and the O’Briens also visited there on occasion.
The O’Briens also had regular visits with many Anishinabe people and families
from around the lake. There were three Chippewa bands (around 600 people altogether by some accounts), moving throughout the area around O’Brien’s home at Lake Simcoe. One was in the care of Chief William Yellowhead; another in that of Chief
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Joseph Snake; and the third in that of Chief John Assance.247 Around the time of O’Brien’s birth, the bands formed an alliance to help mitigate the disturbing impacts of increasing European immigration north of Lake Ontario on the stability of Anishinabe families and communities.248 Sir John Colborne—Lieutenant-Governor and friend of Edward’s—created the Coldwater-Narrows reserve to experiment with building a selfsustaining farming community for the Chippewas. The reserve was a long and narrow stretch of land that ran from Lake Simcoe (just up the shore from and behind The Woods), to Matchedash Bay in Lake Huron on a long-established portage route.249 A key component of the reserve was the support and guidance it received from the highlyrespected Kahkewaquonaby (Reverend Peter Jones), a converted Methodist preacher raised by his Mississauga mother, and dedicated champion of his Anishinabe people. He controversially assisted in the Anishinabeg conversion to Methodism, and their assimilative education into European farming techniques and knowledge, in order to improve the health and well-being of his people.250
The Assance band settled in the reserve closer to Lake Huron, and tended
towards the catholicism of the converted Odawa preacher—and rival of Jones— Assiginack (Jean-Baptiste Blackbird), who moved there in 1832.251 The Yellowhead and Snake bands settled in the narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, and embraced Jones’s Methodism. The Yellowhead band continued to hunt and fish throughout the northern parts of Lake Simcoe; the connected Lake Couchiching; in the narrows between the lakes (the long-used Wendat fishing weirs); and north of the
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reserve on the east side of Matchedash Bay. The Snake band continued to hunt and fish throughout Lake Simcoe itself, and especially along its southern shores and islands.252 In 1836, the policies and agenda of the new Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, dismantled the “successful” experiment of Coldwater-Narrows in an “illegal surrender” of land forcing the Chippewas to separate and move deeper into these traditional territories.253 Yellowhead’s band purchased land on the other side of the narrows (Rama). Snake’s went to Snake Island, and then on to Georgina Island, in Lake Simcoe. And Assance’s went further into Lake Huron to Beausoleil Island, and then on to Christian Island, in Georgian Bay.
Amidst all of this movement around Lake Simcoe, many Chippewa hunters,
gatherers, guides, and families often stopped at The Woods for various reasons. Sometimes they visited to trade fish and game for flour, or to warm up by the fire inside after cold winter hunting trips.254 After 1835, the area along the north shore of Lake Simcoe had its first direct mail service from Barrie (the western tip of Kempenfelt Bay), and the postman was a Chippewa. He regularly visited the O’Briens to chat, share a pipe and smoke, and dry his moccasins by their fire.255 The O’Briens and various Chippewa Christian converts would likely have met during religious ceremonies conducted by visiting missionaries.256 Intercultural sharing naturally abounded in the ongoing emergence of Lake Simcoe life, as it always had: the O’Briens’ and their friends grew “Indian corn”; they started picking up on some traditional language words; and
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Mary apparently learned first hand about some traditional medicines and leatherworking techniques.257
There was a long-established gathering place, where Aboriginal peoples from
near and far would come to Lake Simcoe to camp, meet, trade, and share, just up the Holland River from the southern tip of Lake Simcoe. This place became the commons from which the government’s annual distribution of presents to the Indigenous peoples of the area occurred. It became the landing and embarkation point for the steamboat on Lake Simcoe, which started up—with Edward as a shareholder in its joint stock company—just after O’Brien’s birth. The steamboat became the most efficient mode of transporting passengers and freight around Lake Simcoe.258 The O’Briens, on any given trip between York (Toronto) or Thornhill (where some of the extended family resided), and Shanty Bay would have passed through this well-known gathering place. Mary described one such trip—where she visited with some of the inhabitants—in her journal. The long entry included accounts of: some of its collection of wigwams, canoes, and blanket tents; its Anishinabe, Iroquois, British, French, and Métis traders and inhabitants speaking, what to Mary seemed, “indifferently in Indian, French, or English in the most ludicrous confusion”; some traditional singing, dancing, and pipe smoking; and visits with Aboriginal women walking around with babies in cradleboards, like “little living mummies,” and at a tent making birch bark baskets and sewing gowns with them.259
Returning to the O’Briens’ excursions on the lake, they clearly would have
passed by many Chippewa village sites, fishermen, hunters, traders—maybe even
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friends or acquaintances—on the water, all performing necessary aspects of a life contingent on this place. Some clearly helped directly to open the O’Briens up even more to the place-based order they were immersed in around Lake Simcoe, whether they were fully aware of it or not. On one such occasion, a Chippewa man shared so much knowledge with Edward and Mary about crossing the ice of Kempenfelt Bay one particularly warm day in April that they retraced their journey by two miles to stay safe.260 On another, Edward and Mary canoed with an Ojibway man across Lake Couchiching from the Simcoe narrows to the home of an Elder, who shared with them “a very good report of the land in general.”261 On another occasion, the O’Briens had to paddle across the particularly calm water late one night, and not being able to see that well by moonlight alone, they had to put another practical technique they learned from the place and its unfurling story to good use: they “kept the oars to time by singing.”262
The O’Briens’ lake excursions were not simply characterized by disengaged
encounters with determinate objects outside themselves. They were reciprocal participations with the other beings around the lake in, what Abram calls, “the ongoing emergence of the real.”263 Direct evidence of this in O’Brien’s life is also hinted at in Mary’s journals. One such instance occurred while paddling back to The Woods one day with Mary and his siblings. Passing by a “low flowery point,” Mary recorded, “the children were in ecstasies” with the place and all its flowers: they were compelled to stop and take it all in.264 This episode in Mary’s journals is telling, for it also starts to hint at some of the incredible differences between Mary—an immigrant born and rooted in
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another place (even though this one was now working through her too, according to the dispositions of her embodied immersion in it)—and her own children—born and rooted here in Lake Simcoe.
When they alighted on the shore, O’Brien and his siblings, “in ecstasies,” were
always fully immersed within the terrain. Their carnal awareness of these ambiguous and enigmatic flowers’ sustained the flowers’ living power to influence other beings around them, just as they were influencing, ordering, performing the children into ecstasies. Mary, however, while touched by “the rose-scented air...most grateful to [her] senses,” could also not help but contradict her own carnal awareness by immediately separating herself from the Lake Simcoe cosmos, in order to “get a specimen” of one of the lilies to give to her brother, a medical doctor and zoologist in England. It might be argued that this episode is more likely indicative of a response by children compared to that of an adult. On one level it is, but that is also partly the point. As environmental educator Richard Louv has demonstrated, there is a growing body of research concerning the innately important ability of children to naturally sink into the mystery, life, and reciprocal participation of the animate earth. Without this vital link intact, children and the adults they grow into become increasingly prone to what Louv has termed “nature-deficit disorder.”265 Although Mary O’Brien almost certainly would not have suffered from such a disorder to the same extent children and adults of today might, the difference between her “response” to the flowers near Lake Simcoe and her children’s is much more complex than can be characterized by recourse to mere
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difference in age alone. Her children’s “response” to the flowers is more indicative than not of the reciprocally participatory relationship between animal bodies and the animate earth I am outlining.
The Lake Simcoe cosmos also shifted through O’Brien like it did through the
seasons. The northwest shore of the lake was susceptible to higher levels of precipitation than elsewhere in the basin because of lake effect moisture carried over on the wind from Lake Huron.266 During heavy rains, the family liked gathering “very cosily by...a very tolerable winter fire,” but O’Brien also enjoyed being out in the snow.267 He returned “bright and gay” after long sleigh rides around the frozen lake, and enjoyed “scampering...about the ice [when] in beautiful order for walking.”268 The “order” of the ice/lake was clearly not always in sync with Mary’s thoughts of orderliness, but whether she intellectually knew it or not, it had the most profound ordering effect over the lives of her entire family, especially her children—as it did over all beings who constituted the place.
One of the persistently recurring themes throughout the whole of Mary’s journals
after their move to Lake Simcoe was, without a doubt, the incredible amount of time the O’Briens had to spend waiting for the steamer at the lake; waiting for supplies that were held up because the steamer was late in its waterborne journey; waiting for the lake ice to thaw; waiting for the ice to be safe enough to walk on; waiting for the steamer to bring them helpers, family, or their children back from visits elsewhere; being slowed up in the sleigh crossing the lake because of the higher accumulations of snow over the ice;
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thankfully glimpsing the light of the steamer rounding the corner into Kempenfelt Bay; getting alerted or beckoned into action at the sound of the steamer’s bell in the distance; covering up the kids from the strong and cold north wind blowing out on the open lake; being so tired from having to walk overland somewhere that they had to borrow a boat to return home safely over the lake; waiting for the steamboat again, which got stuck on a shoal in the lake for days, completely upsetting their human plans; setting plans aside again because of having to rescue oxen or mares that fell through the ice; and again because the ever-shifting, frozen lake was melting sooner than expected; and then waiting, again, for the steamboat to take Edward away on business, or bring him home after a business trip in Toronto.
The lake, in other words, in all of its capriciousness, power, and life, had
completely ordered the O’Briens’ entire embodied existences. It was directly participant in when and how they could get a lot of their food; when they could get supplies to repair their house; how they could physically move around; how they got mail and most of their communications; when they could spend time together as a family or with friends; and how they came to relate to the more-than-human world around them. The solidarity between O’Brien’s animal body and the animate earth around The Woods continued to deepen and unfold in new articulations throughout his life. Even after the O’Briens moved to Toronto in the mid-1840s, they continued to spend their summers at The Woods. O’Brien would also eventually move back to Lake Simcoe in the late 1850s for about another decade of his life. He also journeyed through the region on early
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sketching trips throughout the 1850s and 60s, which provided him with sketches that would summon up paintings even decades later. It is also not just coincidence that the first evidence we have of him doing professional art at all includes drawings of a bear and a cedar swamp in 1849, even while living in Toronto; nor that the dominant element ordering his artistic production throughout his entire life was, indeed, water.269 A profound place-based awareness sprouted through him, even if he was not necessarily intellectually aware of it, and even if at that same time it could be influenced or stifled by an abstracted intellect rooted elsewhere. A description of how stories have worked on and through Archibald can help elucidate how the sensuous terrain was working on or through O’Brien’s body:
The stories that I really remembered were ones that I did not set out to consciously try to remember...It was as though these stories became embedded in my body, in my emotional being, in my consciousness, and in my spirit.270
Such awareness unfurled through O’Brien when he was a child every spring with “the occurrence of a strong breeze which [had] broken up and almost carried away the ice...of which [he had] for some days been watching and speculating upon with some anxiety.” This physically compelled him into new ways of being, where “instead of biting [his] bread into cutters, [he was] turning [his] teaspoons into oars.”271 It also continued later in life with the emergence of the unique, ecological, formal system of his paintings.
After many years of keeping her journal, Mary suddenly stopped writing in 1838.
This was not before, however, finally arriving at the doorway to a profound awareness.
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She noticed one day just how much the lake and its rhythms had enigmatically enveloped and performed her family within its story:
The long expected steamboat has at length arrived and been received with a degree of excitement which is almost ludicrous, but towards the end of winter [when the lake has thawed] everything in the way of carriage and travelling becomes dependent...so that in reality all your comfort, if not your existence, comes to be connected with it (my emphasis).272
Indeed, she is correct, of course. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. We do not have any more of her journals in which to read about how this same story may have continued to unfurl while the O’Briens were there. But we do have Lucius’s art, and the story it tells picks up from where the lake’s, in all its wild contingency and emergence, left off.
☈⊕♁ O’Brien recommitted himself to art in 1873 with renewed vigour and a profound sense that he still had a story to tell. He exhibited one oil and nine watercolours in the OSA exhibition that year. They were all widely appreciated, according to fellow-artist Robert F. Gagen, and by the end of the decade, as Reid has pointed out, “O’Brien was regarded as the best of the painters.”273 As alluded to above, two qualities in general tended to characterize O’Brien’s art for reviewers, and set it apart from other works in their critiques. First, was its order and precision. The kind of sentiment expressed by The Canadian Monthly in 1877, for example, was common: “coolness and clearness and realism, in a great sense, are the artist’s peculiar excellence.”274 The other quality
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oft-referred to was a little more difficult to describe or explain for viewers. One called it the “harmonious, and...evident handiwork of a man keenly alive to the beauties of nature.” This reinforced for many that “No other painter [seemed] to understand Nature like Mr. O’Brien.”275 Another reviewer described it as “thought and feeling...which grows on the mind the longer [his paintings] are studied.” Another could only find words to say that O’Brien’s work was “replete with the true poetry of art.”276
The latter comment was made by an immigrant reviewer in The Canadian
Monthly after seeing the important OSA exhibition in 1873. An elaboration of his meaning is provided in a revealing passage about his impressions of the exhibition as a whole. According to the reviewer, for such a young and developing artworld as Canada’s, the exhibition “surprised” him. But although there were works of high merit and charm, he remarked that “a refined and cultivated taste is not to be looked for among the native products of our Canadian clearings.” The exhibition was dominated by landscape paintings, which this reviewer did not mind so much, but the main issue was that the paintings:
had plenty of accuracy of detail, very valuable as artistic study; but wanted the breadth of effect which is needed to make a picture. Photography will give the detail of the landscape under any light and shade, and from any point of view; but the art of the true artist is required...just as the poet makes ‘a thing of beauty’ out of what seems homely and prosaic to the common eye.277
O’Brien’s art clearly possessed a capacity beyond mere perception or representation for this viewer (and many others since). As with all the best stories, something “grabbed” him, captured his imagination, through O’Brien’s stories. He could not fully explain it in
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words other than through recourse to the nebulous word “art,” and the feeling that the full “breadth” of O’Brien’s picture also included something beyond mere precision in detail. From a storied approach, this mystifying characteristic encompassing O’Brien’s art is not explained by the ecological order, but a retelling of it—its story—that was now performatively unfurling through his practice of painting, and creating new connections.
There are two unique, often overlapping, elements, or visual story capacities,
characterizing this formal system. First, O’Brien frequently suppresses or deemphasizes human drama, or what art historian Greg M. Thomas has called “social narratives.” Doing so accentuates, instead, his paintings’ “earth narratives,” and the contingency of the social narratives on them. In Thomas’s words, “Earth narratives refer to the actions of animals, trees, weather, and the earth itself; they...remain perpetually open-ended; and they occur slowly and invisibly, on a scale of time that exceeds our powers of perception.”278 To this list I would also add that they occur in the round— circularly, spirally, and with curvature—which, as we shall see, is particular and crucial to O’Brien’s stories. An earth narrative, to one extent or another, is implied, of course, in all landscape paintings, but the vast majority of nineteenth-century landscapes, as Thomas has also observed, still relied primarily on its social narrative to create meaning. This might be through the presence of a harvester and wagon (or the absence of a ploughman from a plough), to give purpose to the field; or a human encounter in the distance on a country road to give meaning to the forest; or a fishing boat to give meaning to the water or storm.279
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This hierarchical, or socially-driven social-ecological relationship, is not so clear
in O’Brien’s paintings, and sometimes seems outright challenged. When the characters of O’Brien’s social narratives (humans, boats, or structures), are in his paintings’ foreground to mid-ground, they are a focal point that, on one hand, may seem to emphasize the social narrative in the story. But on the other hand, the social narrative is usually disrupted, held, slowed, or acted upon in some way by the earth narrative, which is frequently more than just a backdrop or stage. When the social narratives are in the mid-ground to background of his paintings, they are similarly held, or acted upon in some way, but in broader terms. Their purposeful movement is usually diffused either by being caught in a proliferation of competing social narratives that only underscore the voluminous earth narrative enveloping and performing them all; or by being tucked away into the foliage, or dark recesses within a heavy rainstorm. They are so blended into their surroundings, that the earth narrative unfolds as both stage and main character. The specific aspect of the earth narrative that usually initiates the balanced ordering in O’Brien’s paintings is more often than not water—whether in the form of a lake, river, waterfall, glacier, rolling mist, ocean, or rain.
The other element in O’Brien’s paintings through which they help perform a
rooted social-ecological story is the unique way they invite the viewer’s own participation. Just as the social narratives in the paintings are held or slowed by its earth narratives, the work a viewer might expect to do with the paintings is often compromised, held, or slowed as well. In other words, the earth narratives that infuse
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and perform O’Brien’s characters, also infuse and act on the participatory viewer. To say this yet another way, the story of the painting invites the viewer into a relationship that can, in turn, shape his or her visual and life experience story. Of course, as discussed in the last chapter, stories do not give answers, they merely show the way. O’Brien’s stories will shift and work on different viewers in different ways and at different times, but, as Archibald reminds us, there is also a “core” to stories.280 The performative core of O’Brien’s stories, I argue, is primarily a place-based ecological one, not a displaced Victorian one. What critics and commentators have done with it since—for example, acknowledge it briefly, or most often, undermine it—does not erase this “core”, or imply inattentiveness on the part of viewers, it just demonstrates that O’Brien’s stories are doing exactly what stories do. They work, and allow us humans, in this case art historians and critics, to be according to the dispositions of our carnal immersion within them.
The formal element through which O’Brien’s stories can act on viewers consists
of the subtle re-working of a decades-old landscape convention. Generally, eighteenthand nineteenth-century landscapes physically led a viewer’s omnipotent gaze safely along a path, road, or strategically-placed mountain ridge, treeline, waterway, or shoreline. This formal structure linearly ushered viewers through, out of, or over the landscape, and often towards a town, airy clearing, the sunlight, or some other source of ideals or exit (even if only implied). Contemporary examples of this established tradition, to name only a few, include: Marmaduke Matthews’s Hermit Range, Rocky
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Mountains (c.1888); Otto Jacobi’s Landscape (1883); Albert Bierstadt’s The Sacramento Valley, Sunset (c.1878); Thomas Mower Martin’s Ontario Landscape (c.1890); Forshaw Day’s Mount Cheops, in the Selkirks, B.C. (1888); and Daniel Fowler’s Figures in the Wood, Amherst Island (1882). In O’Brien’s landscapes, while there may be a small “opening” of some kind (often there is not even this), the viewer’s gaze is seldom guided out, through, or over, but rather in deeper, around within, or downward. Moreover, where the gaze may be tempted to do the former, it is also often challenged, or invited to resist this temptation, even within the same painting.
Comparing Matthews’s painting of the Hermit Range (Fig. 3), with O’Brien’s
Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel (Fig. 4), is telling. Just like the characters in O’Brien’s social narrative, the viewer’s conventional interpretive journey is halted, held, or slowed by its earth narrative. The smoke rising from deep down within the painting hints at the presence of people, but they are stopped, at camp, and totally immersed within an all-encompassing earth narrative. We cannot even see them. Within my own body, I also feel compelled downward and inward, swallowed, in O’Brien’s Hermit Range, as opposed to the sensate feeling of being pulled up, through, or out of it by Matthews. One often has no choice but to stay a while, linger in O’Brien’s storied landscape, be encompassed and exceeded by its terrain, and caught up in its placebased circularity. This may be why viewers have tended to feel a different kind of order or harmony in O’Brien’s paintings compared to those of many contemporaries. For with O’Brien, viewers are often uniquely in and part of something larger than themselves in a
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FIG. 3. Marmaduke Matthews, Hermit Range, Rocky Mountains, c.1888. Watercolour on paper. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
vastly different way than was the convention—they are more frequently invited to look and be with other entities, not merely at, over, or outside of them.
Encountering an O’Brien painting, the viewer’s attention is also often beckoned to
shift around with the swarm of detail (aesthetic and ecological)—from human, to human, to boat, to rock, to water ripple, to raindrops, to patch of sunlight, to tree, to other tree— just like the living experience of being participant in the myriad multi-sensory stimuli of the more-than-human world. This is particularly experienced by the body as harmonious and balanced rather than hierarchical and imperious. Sometimes particular objects in O’Brien’s paintings—like good stories, or like a deer at the edge of the forest—
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dynamically grab our attention, hold it, and seem prominent in our life for a while, but then slip back again into the wider community of which it is part. This experience can sometimes be so jarring or unexpected for the viewer that the free-flowing “gaze” is physically thrown right back into the viewer’s body. Or rather, more accurately, the fact of one’s material body can return to the viewer’s awareness because in the sensuous more-than-human world there is no real gaze outside of a body at all. In one sense, O’Brien’s re-working of this landscape convention is characteristic of late romanticism, where human weakness, baseness, or realism drained landscapes of any lingering
FIG. 4. Lucius O’Brien, Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel, 1887. Watercolour over graphite on wove paper, 35.8 x 51.5 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
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idealism. But O’Brien’s formal system does this in a way that is particularly rooted in the place-based awareness of his native home. It will be helpful to look at a few examples of how this all unfolds in O’Brien’s painting.
One of the paintings O’Brien probably exhibited in 1873 was View from Pinnacle
Rock, Eastern Townships (Fig. 5)281. It depicts a scene from atop a crag on Mount Pinnacle, overlooking two bird hunters on the edge of the cliff above Baldwin Pond, and with the Eastern Townships and Appalachian Mountains in the distance. The viewer’s gaze is pulled along the rock ledge at left of centre, and directed out over the landscape towards the Eastern Townships and Appalachian river valley in the distance. This seems at first glance to echo the traditional landscape convention, but there are also hints of it being challenged here by the storywork of a formal system that just gets stronger and rhythmically builds or unfolds in O’Brien’s art through subsequent years.
In Pinnacle Rock, the viewer’s imperious gaze can also be disrupted. I feel
continually invited to stop mid-flight, and move downward towards the two hunters on the edge of the cliff. Such an abrupt movement is further reinforced through the hunters, who have also been spontaneously halted, or distracted away from their own main activity: the social narrative of bird hunting. One of the hunters has even got down on his hands and knees to peer safely over the cliff, further guiding the viewer’s gaze downward and inward—into the enigmatic midst of the painting’s earth narrative. This is encompassing and exceeding not only the hunters, but now the viewer too. The standing hunter, moreover, does not gaze imperiously out over the landscape from his
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FIG. 5. Lucius O’Brien, View from Pinnacle Rock, Eastern Townships, 1873. Watercolour on paper, 33.0 x 45.7 cm. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston. Gift of the Estate of Mrs. R.F. Segsworth, 1944.
perch either. He is locked in this moment of being enthralled by another aspect of the earth narrative: the bird flying below him, even further into the depths of the painting. To take it one step further, the bird is neither just an object of the hunter’s sight, but quite clearly an active agent in the hunter’s world who has captured him here. All human participants have been invited to stop their activities, the social narratives playing out through them—hunting, or one’s transcendent gazing—emphasizing the earth narrative encompassing and now animating them. In O’Brien’s painting, then, sensate human
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bodies are everywhere acted upon, or made to experience the animate earth, which is here allowed to breathe.
One of the ways it does so in Pinnacle Rock is through the steeply eroded cliff
whose story unfurls in the very body of the first hunter. He has to physically take on the rock’s strong, stabilizing qualities—become the rock—in order to keep from falling over the edge. The earth narrative, however, is not hierarchically dominant over the social narrative either. The rock does not force the hunters to do anything, or control their stability in life, any more than the hunters are in control of the nearby birds flying freely over the pond. Having said this, while social and earth narratives are interdependent, and part and parcel to each other, the social narrative is ultimately encompassed and storied by the earth narrative every time, and not the other way around. Some contemporary examples of paintings emphasizing the social narrative of hunting include: John A. Fraser’s well-known A Shot in the Dawn, Lake Scugog (1873), and Edward Walsh’s Old Fort with the Migration of Wild Pigeons in Spring (1804). The characters in these stories show no sign of stopping, and even appear dominant over, or oblivious to, the earth narrative around them. Even when O’Brien’s hunter is more in the middle of hunting—as in Toronto, from the Marsh (1873), or his popular Lords of the Forest (1874)—the hunter is always mindful of, or acted on by the animate and enveloping earth narrative in significant ways.
In From the Marsh, the hunter’s success is directly contingent on his place-based
awareness and storied participation with the marsh itself, as he hides in camouflage
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behind the tall weeds and cattails. The social narrative is entirely interwoven with and dependent on the earth narrative. Without the latter, neither the hunting, nor O’Brien’s painting could occur in precisely the way that it does. Furthermore, although the main subject of the painting is apparently Toronto, the city is so obscured by its distance, and everything going on between it and the viewer (the city’s larger story enfolding it), that it is displaced from the centrality given it by the painting’s title. The earth narrative unfolding in the marsh and lake distract the viewer’s gaze from easily arriving at the city at all, just as they act upon the hunter and sailboat within them. The social-ecological relationship embodied by hunter-in-marsh and sailboat-in-lake is kept in balance, however (rather than simply reversing the conventional hierarchy), because the hunter and sailboat are still, nevertheless, integral parts of the earth narratives encompassing them—just as they are of the painting itself.
In Lords (Fig. 6), the hunter is not right in the middle of his shot either, but rather
walking slowly, silently, as in a tracking mode. He astutely scans the trees and forest for sign, and demonstrates an experience of the voluminous depths of the earth narrative that is always open to a mindful and skillful hunter’s embodied awareness. The viewer’s gaze mirrors this action, for while there is a small opening in the canopy of the forest in the top right corner of the painting, the gaze is not guided there, but grabbed, captivated, like the hunter’s invigorated senses, into the midst of the dynamic forest. The eye may work up to the light peering through the opening, as it is conventionally used to doing, but the leaves and branches of the foregrounded tree up the right edge
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of the painting jut out in front of the opening, partially obscuring it and throwing the viewer’s attention back in to the forest to scan its incredible detail.
First, for me, the large tree in the centre mid-ground gestures towards the viewer.
Then the other trees, ordered to the left behind it, suddenly draw my attention back deeper into the forest. It is so deep and thick back there, however, that I feel called back to the centre, partly by the sunlight on the central tree and ground below it, and partly because the branches and foliage of all the trees along the top of the painting feel like they are pushing me back down and forward. No matter where my gaze goes, incredible detail appears, and then melts back into the larger story of which they are a part, ever guiding my gaze back down and to the centre of the painting.
Suddenly I notice the decomposing tree stump on the ground, narrating the
earthly story of the wind and deadfall in a recently passed storm. And as my eye moves along its broken trunk lying on the ground, it is met by another earthly narrative: the splash of recent autumn colouring in the foliage to the left. Then the spindly and sparse tree trunks below that wind my attention back down even further, and back into the centre along the earth. Like a mindful hunter, the viewer’s gaze is always held, invited to participate, within the enveloping earth narrative. Its success depends on being able to keep from moving linearly out or through, and instead circulating around the curvatures of time and space rooted within this place. The viewer and hunter are ever interwoven in the painting through its surging more-than-human world: the cycles of the seasons, the
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cycles of forest succession, the cycles of returning sunlight and wind, and all the cycles of social narrative that are ever participant in them.
R e t u r n i n g t o Pinnacle
Rock, the earth narrative there too pulls the viewer’s gaze out of its conventional linear flight, and cycles it around an ecologically-ordered path swirling between the actions and gazes of the two hunters. Rather than fly over or through the landscape, the viewer is FIG. 6. Lucius O’Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874. Watercolour on paper, 74.3 x 49.9 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Gift of the Government of Ontario, 1972.
continually invited to remain always within it. She is invited to
participate in the place-based and storied curvature moving through the kneeling hunter’s body; down into the enigmatic depths of the painting along the steep cliff face beckoning the hunter; back up along the tips of the trees and the bird hovering just above; and then along the pointed outcrop of Pinnacle Rock to be corralled again by the
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hard-edged shoreline running perpendicular to the viewer’s gaze, and funnelling it back down into the painting again along the wind-swept trees on the right of the cliff.
This is the place-based story that has been rhythmically unfurling here for
millennia. The perfect habitat for myriad birds has emerged through the dialogical reciprocity particular to this place: between the stability of the captivating rock amidst the erosive flushes of rain and water that have shorn its steep face before rejoining Baldwin Pond, and the intermingling wind that has swept the trees atop it. This particular story, in turn, also animates and instigates hunters: peregrine falcons and humans. To this day it is one of the foremost places in the region for birdwatchers, especially falconers, and hunters, even if now only armed with a camera. O’Brien’s painting is more, or at least just as much, an articulation of this place-based story unfurling from the ground up, as it is an imposed containment, or attempt to capture the essence of this land and place. The place and its ever-unfurling story, in other words, does just as much of the “capturing,” not just the other way around alone.
Although contemporary critics may not have been able to intellectually
comprehend the full depth of O’Brien’s stories in this way, many could not help, of course, feeling it. When a reviewer of the 1877 OSA exhibition encountered O’Brien’s The Whirlpool at the Chats, some of the expected European landscape technicalities were missing: “We could stand a little more colour in the distance.” But there was something “surprising,” nevertheless, embodied in its ecological realism: “The backwater of the pool is the best part of the picture.”282 Just like the fishermen in the
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painting, disrupted from their fishing in order to safely navigate around the swirling current line of the whirlpool, the reviewer was “grabbed” by and within its circulating backwater. This enigmatic earth narrative is what made all the difference to the fishermen’s and the viewer’s contingent social narratives.
In the 1880s, O’Brien was appointed president of the RCA, befriended the
Marquis of Lorne and Princess Louise, and committed himself to the Picturesque Canada project. These are life experiences that have daubed his art with Victorian ideologies in our mainstream story of art. Even then, however, the ecological order unfurling through O’Brien’s stories continually enveloped, challenged, and sometimes ruptured the seemingly fluid transmission of Victorian ideology that many commentators suggest. The two O’Brien paintings standing guard at the entrance of this decade are his Québec from Point Levis (1881), and View from the King’s Bastion, Québec (1881). While these paintings seem to emphasize the dominance of a social narrative against a largely inert or debased earth narrative, they were, quite significantly, also paintings that were commissioned by Lorne himself. The latter especially, which emphasizes social narrative perhaps the most out of any of O’Brien’s paintings, was directly modelled after an earlier drawing by Princess Louise of the exact same view over the St. Lawrence. As Reid himself admits, these views are very likely not O’Brien’s own, but ones he “was asked to take.”283 What is striking in these paintings, then, are the subtle differences between the original views and the ones performed by O’Brien after being infused as well with his story; a bit of his place-based “true poetry of art.”
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In the princess’s original drawing of 1879 (Fig. 7), the ramparts of the citadel are
almost pushed entirely out of the picture on the left. It seems they are only showing enough to emphasize the royal standard towering in the corner. The engraver of the drawing later emphasized the standard even further by making it the only item in the picture stretching outside and over the border containing everything else. With such a composition, the viewer, like a completely disembodied eye, is left to float in mid-air, hovering above everything in the picture except the royal standard. His gaze is conventionally guided linearly, easily, and imperiously over, through, and out of the landscape along the line comprising the rampart wall, the pointed finger of the guard at its tip, and the ships lined down the middle of the St. Lawrence River.
O’Brien ruptures this linearity and imperious gaze, even while partly including it
(Fig. 8). He adds another hard-edged rampart wall with a canon running perpendicular to the viewer’s gaze, like a barrier, along the bottom of the painting. This gives the viewer an actual ground to stand on, and therefore a body in the world as well. O’Brien also partially obscures Louise’s completely unimpeded view down the river by jutting the rampart walls on the left further into the picture plane, and scattering all the boats in the river so their social narrative is rendered as unpredictable, ambiguous, and capricious as the water they are wholly contingent on. O’Brien presumably had to paint this hierarchical view, but he subtly infused it with as much of an earth narrative as he could by over-exaggerating the original social narrative to the point of it being, or feeling like, an awkward and jarring intrusion instead of a smooth imperialistic order. O’Brien’s own
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unsolicited view of the citadel and its ramparts from a 1879—Ramparts, Québec—in fact, does de-emphasize the social narrative considerably. It draws viewers’ awarenesses more directly to the shifting, animate, and storied rock and creeping vegetation. These dominate the painting and clearly encompass—physically hold up—the comparably insignificant ramparts.
The increased emphasis on rampart walls and canons in King’s Bastion seems to emphasize, on one hand, the Victorian, colonial social FIG. 7. Unknown artist after Princess Louise, View from the Platform Looking Down Upon the Town and Harbour, 1882. Wood engraving on paper, 19.3 x 12.8 cm. From “Québec, Pictures from my Portfolio,” Good Words 23 (1882): 219. Courtesy of Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University.
narrative, but on the other, only awkwardly so by increasing as well its restrictive feeling. They throw the viewer ’s gaze back into his materializing body, and then forcefully halt it not
only from the easy flight over and through the landscape as in Louise’s view, but from being able to move freely anywhere.284 This embodied feeling in the painting is echoed by a reviewer in The Globe through his repetitive use of descriptors like: “boldly,” “sharply,” “forcibly,” “striking,” and non-idealizing.285 He is talking, on one hand, about the technical detail and realism in the painting, of course, but on the other, he is also disclosing a significant experiential truth unfurling from the story. Even if not exactly
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conceived at the time of writing, this inherent awkwardness and discomfort w a s c e r t a i n l y perceived, felt, a n d therefore, working him, from underneath, and more slowly, in a way that also ran counter to the presumed glorious “order” of the British Crown.
In Québec from Point Levis, O’Brien utilizes similar tactics, whether consciously or not. Reid remarks that the technical and aesthetic inspiration for this view was probably Bierstadt’s The Citadel, Québec, from the St. Lawrence FIG. 8. Lucius O’Brien, View from the King’s Bastion, Québec, 1881. Oil on canvas, 91.6 x 61.0 cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.
(c.1880). While this may be true, it is also true that the ways in which O’Brien shifts Bierstadt’s view, and makes it his own
story, significantly de-emphasizes the social narrative emphasized by Bierstadt, and foregrounds its earth narrative. Bierstadt’s Citadel is a close-up of the citadel sitting high atop Cap Diamant in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. There are a few boats floating gently on the still river in between the Cape and the viewer, but the viewer’s gaze is compositionally guided past them, through the intimate landscape over the
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water, and up the Cape to the Citadel. The gazing line is primarily established by the sail of a boat in the centre mid-ground and its elongated reflection in the water. Together, these gesture towards the viewer, and usher one directly up to the citadel, mirroring the angle of the pole upon which flies the royal standard.
O’Brien’s Point Levis (Fig. 9), includes the same view of the Cape and citadel,
but pushes it way back into the background so that the entire Cap Diamant itself is visible, and thereby completely dwarfs the citadel, as well as the city, Lower Town, and harbour around its base. As a result, the strength in the painting emanates from the Cape and its earth narrative, not from the citadel, boats, or city. Some of the city is present in Bierstadt’s view as well, but it is largely obscured by the shadows engulfing it amidst the dark, receding mass of the Cape behind it. This serves even more to emphasize the brighter citadel atop it all, and reinforce the linear pull of the viewer over,
FIG. 9. Lucius O’Brien, Québec from Point Levis, 1881. Oil on canvas, 56.1 x 112.0 cm. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.
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through, and up the landscape towards it. By O’Brien pushing the citadel and city so far into the background, the social narrative emphasized by Bierstadt is de-emphasized. O’Brien’s citadel, city, and social narrative are opened up to and breathing again within the earth narrative encompassing and exceeding them. The viewer’s gaze towards the citadel, furthermore, is distracted from its linear path. This is initiated by the sailboat at the wharf in the centre-left foreground, which grabs the viewer’s awareness and guides it upward along its mast. This is similar to Bierstadt’s view, but O’Brien’s is not a conventional upward pull towards the citadel. His mast pokes up above the Cape, drawing the gaze right past the city and citadel, only to get interwoven in the circle of swirling clouds in the sky above it all. Caught in the dynamic earth narrative embodied by the clouds, the viewer is easily pulled back down again by the dark patch of smoke and rays of sunlight on the right. The earth narrative playing out between the water, Cape, wind, clouds, and sunlight encompasses the citadel, city, and bustling social activity that is everywhere ordered by it, not the other way around.
This story is further echoed in a lengthy rave review the painting received after a
private viewing (including King’s Bastion), with selected guests in 1881. Throughout the review, the reviewer’s awareness is everywhere taken up not by the city, or citadel, or any of its social narratives at all, but rather its earth narrative. He describes the season —“a warm autumn afternoon”; the river—its circulating smoothness, its faint stirrings, its delicate rippling, and its dwelling within the shadows—everywhere exceeding the “scattered” vessels within its larger story; the Cape—its colouring, deeply interwoven
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with the “purple haze that seems to float in every shadow on these bright warm days of early autumn.” It goes on at length like this, eventually working around to the sky, clouds, and stone, even recognizing that an ecological order pervades the painting in a non-hierarchical and balanced way:
the most striking part of the whole scene...is a bright blaze of light that completely envelops every object that lies in its path...but at the same time there is nothing in it that would strike one as exaggerated, harsh, or unpleasing.286
The review, in short, is a long description of the earth narrative unfurling through O’Brien’s story, only mentioning the city, or any hint of a social narrative at all, in a small portion of two separate sentences. Reid reproduces the review almost in full, acknowledging that the viewer was clearly moved by the painting’s “compelling physical presence...that apparently was all the more attractive to the critic because it supported a truthful impression of the place at a particular, special moment” (my emphasis).287 But then he completely dismisses the reviewer’s experiential and embodied story, replacing it almost entirely with his own intellectually-driven one as an art critic working squarely within the disciplinary boundary lines rooted in another place:
there is as well underlying the delight in so carefully cataloguing each of the component elements a hint of…[something] different from the sense of pervasive natural order…[and instead] a glorious trophy, humming with efficient industry, a great, glowing, plum pudding of a prize truly fit for a sovereign.288
This is not at all what the reviewer comes even close to mentioning in his review. This is not at all how O’Brien’s story moved through and infused this viewer who hardly
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mentioned anything about the city at all. This is Reid, rather, projecting a Victorian imperialism onto the reviewer’s words (and thereby the painting), from the top down.
The 1880s for O’Brien were in large part occupied by the Picturesque Canada
project, and his related involvement in William Cornelius Van Horne’s venture to “sell” Canada after the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. O’Brien travelled and sketched all around the country, from coast to coast, visiting and being enveloped by many animate places, terrains, and ecosystems. Some kept him returning even more than once. It is well-known that both projects embodied many Victorian nationalistic and imperialistic threads or motivations. These are certainly part of the story of O’Brien’s art, of course, for there was a side to him inculcated to think that, for example, when riding the CPR train through Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies “the grandeur of the pass and the forces of nature overcome and controlled by the hand of man, are fully realised.”289 But what art historians and critics have tended to undermined is the embodied awareness that O’Brien also had. This kind of reciprocal participation in the world necessarily kept his mind open to the possibility that the CPR constructions and appropriations were also in some deeper and more enigmatic way, “designed by nature,” and not so emphatically the actions of humans against inert and determinate matter alone.290
One of O’Brien’s drawings for Picturesque Canada also later summoned up one
of his best-known oil paintings called Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River (Fig. 10). For Reid, Kakabeka Falls is unrivalled in nineteenth-century Canadian art; a
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“sublime...image of power, of promise,...drawn from the imperial repertoire,” and demonstrating O’Brien’s “fever” for country that, ever since Armstrong’s pioneering work in the region, was “a symbol of the northwest’s limitless, untapped resources.”291 While I certainly agree that the painting has an incredible power, maybe even one unrivalled in nineteenth-century Canadian art, I do not agree that it is wholly an “imperial” power exuding promise for “limitless, untapped resources.” This fails to account for O’Brien’s own sensate experience with the falls itself. The power in Kakabeka Falls is also the unfurling power of Kakabeka Falls—and the earth narrative being storied through it and its place.
FIG. 10. Lucius O’Brien, Kakabeka Falls, Kamanistiquia River, 1882. Oil on canvas, 83.9 x 121.7 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
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The social narrative in the painting, once again, is considerably de-emphasized.
The only two figures in the painting are fishermen, again, distracted from the act of fishing, and so far away from the viewer that they blend in almost completely with the rocks on the river’s edge at the base of the falls. Together, their animal bodies also start to take on the form of the river gorge itself. They are becoming constituent parts of the place the longer they are encompassed by it, just like the reviewer above who experienced a feeling growing up within him the longer he spent with O’Brien’s paintings. The leftmost figure is standing with his fishing rod in hand—the curvature of his spine echoing the curvatures of the eroded rock wall, the skeleton of the gorge, behind him. The rightmost figure is sitting on a boulder—the downward pull of his weight echoing the downward pull of the water crashing down over the Precambrian bedrock knickpoint. The diagonal angle formed between the figures’ offset heads and body positions even mirrors the angle of the gorge wall on the left, as well as the leftmost chute of Kakabeka Falls. The falls and its place are clearly acting on and working the social narrative enveloped and exceeded by it. Furthermore, the viewer’s gaze is similarly “held” within this place, not only by the waterfall, but by the entire earth narrative of which it is part.
Almost every detail of the painting gestures to the viewer’s embodied gaze. The
details pull the gaze inward and downward towards the incredible compression building at the bottom of the falls. The angled walls of the gorge funnel me inward and downward towards it. The shield-shaped rock shelf at the knickpoint of the falls, and in
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the middle of the two chutes, points down into the heart of the churning water. The curved angles of the rock layers in the foregrounded cliff up the righthand side of the painting all gesture inward and downward. And the hard rock terrace marking the main erosion line about a third of the way up the right side of the gorge similarly guides my gaze into the churning waterfall. The latter is even consciously emphasized by O’Brien, for its appearance in the original sketch for Picturesque Canada is somewhat counteracted by the more commanding and harsh vertical bands of light and shade along the gorge wall. The engraver of the drawing (c.1881) for the final publication, chose to focus almost completely on the lighting alone, weakening the pull effect the gorge wall had towards the waterfall by rendering the last strip of shade so dark that the lateral erosion lines gesturing into the waterfall were almost not even visible anymore. O’Brien rectified this in his final oil painting by de-emphasizing the lighting gradations on the gorge wall, and re-emphasizing its lateral erosion lines. This is a telling adjustment, for it de-emphasized the singular, more hierarchical command the waterfall alone had over the entire scene in the engraved print, and re-balanced it out over all constituent parts—water, bedrock, gorge, vegetation, clouds, trees—of the earth narrative. An ecological order was restored to the place.
While the viewer’s gaze is continually guided inwards and downwards towards
the base of the waterfall, it is also rhythmically pulled back out at the same time by the various, bright, and contrasting greens and reds in the vegetation hanging on to the gorge walls. This vegetation is nourished by the incredible swirls of mist and moisture
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rising from the bottom of the churning waterfall, and which guide my gaze up the steep bank on the left. At the top of the painting, the gaze is pulled back down again by the arc of the tree tops, mirrored by the arc of the clouds in the sky, both gesturing towards the knickpoint, only to tumble the gaze again over the edge and down into the heart of the waterfall via its righthand chute. This starts the pulsating rhythm of the painting, and the place, all over again. The life cycle of the water is echoed by my embodied engagement with the painting. By holding the viewer within the painting in such a holistic, dynamic, and circular way, O’Brien is performing through his art practice the balanced and ordered power of the place and its story.
The full extent of how this challenges Victorian ideologies about the place’s
promise for limitless and untapped resources is thrown into relief by comparing O’Brien’s Kakabeka Falls with some of those Reid associates it with by Armstrong. In Armstrong’s Kakabeka Falls and Portage (Fig. 11), Armstrong’s waterfall and earth narrative do not “hold” the viewer’s gaze, but are instead “conquered” by it. One’s embodied gaze is ushered up, through, and out of the landscape alongside the Red River Expedition, which portages around it. The social narrative is emphasized as well in his Kakabeka Falls, 1856, Kaministikwia River, Ontario (1911), where, although the canoeists at the base of the falls seem “held”, there is still a “way out,” up, over, and through the landscape. The transcendent point of view looking down on to the falls that the viewer has, as well as the presence of the people and trail at the top of the falls, and the uninhibited view over the land past the falls towards the distant horizon line, all
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FIG. 11. William Armstrong, Kakabeka Falls and Portage, 1871. From Canadian Illustrated News 4.15 (1871): 232-33. Courtesy Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society.
emphasize the imperialistic promise Reid speaks of. None of this is present in O’Brien’s Kakabeka Falls. There is no hint of the portage route at all, and the viewer’s gaze and painting’s social narrative are not only “held,” but performed, or animated by the enveloping earth narrative. This invites the viewer not past the falls to some ideological promise elsewhere, but to linger here for a while, get to know it, and let its place-based awareness, moods, and animate life encompass him too.
To return again to the Rocky Mountains, O’Brien also acknowledged that while
there was grandeur everywhere in the Rockies, the varying passes, seasons, peaks, and meadows—with each their own “garb...of air and water, sunshine and shadow, lights and colour, dazzling snow and brilliant flowers, hot baths and anthracite coal in
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boundless profusion”—had their particular personalities, moods, and stories that acted on and worked the social narratives unfolding within them.292 While standing amidst the Selkirk mountains in 1886, as opposed to just seeing them in photographs or other paintings, O’Brien admitted to being physically “held,” and distracted from his own social narrative of employment under Van Horne: “We have been unable to tear ourselves away from these lovely mountains of the Selkirk range. All we have done in the way of moving is to shift our camp three miles west.”293 Being within the terrain in person, for O’Brien, was “grander by far than [he] had any anticipation of.”294 The voluminous depth, capriciousness, and animate life of the earth narrative encompassing and exceeding his animal body, was no longer flattened and halted by the flat surface of a photograph, from which he had to work for Picturesque Canada, having never been to the Rockies yet at that time. “At one moment,” said O’Brien:
the mountains seem quite close, masses of rich, strong, colour; then they will appear far away, of the faintest pearly grey. At one time every line and form is sharp and distinct; at another, the mountains melt and mix themselves up in the clouds so that earth and sky are almost velvet.295
This is a similar push-pull, dynamic, and pulsating rhythm O’Brien storied through Kakabeka Falls, or which the falls storied through him. As a result, his stories of The Glacier of the Selkirks (1886), and Cloud-Capped Towers (1886), as Reid has pointed out, reveal a unique kind of “truth,” with an “apparent disregard for…[photographic] naturalism.” This set his work apart from other contemporaries sent out by the CPR, such as John A. Fraser, whose naturalism stayed much more within the conventional,
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static sense of a photograph-like record.296 But contrary to Reid’s conclusion, O’Brien’s work did not simply embody a truthfulness based on intellectual, geological, and botanical understanding, or technical control of “sweeps of atmosphere, all of which were derived ultimately from the...genius of Turner [and Ruskin]”—they were animated by the living earth with which he was participant; from his actually being there.
This subtly challenged, even if only subconsciously, many of the abstracted
Victorian techniques and concepts—whether from Turner, Ruskin, or Van Horne—that are also complicit in his Rocky Mountain stories. For example, O’Brien’s place-based, embodied relationship with the Rockies and other mountain ranges performed through him a new manner and handling of paint, which set his Rocky Mountain work apart from that of even the widely-reputed American landscape painter, Thomas Moran. Moran was a notable contributor to Picturesque Canada, the self-styled successor to Turner, and friend of Ruskin’s.297 Reid himself remarks on this new style and handling particular to O’Brien’s work. He observes that it “does not reveal a sympathy for the camera image.” In regard to O’Brien’s Mountain Lake (1886), it has a “visual ‘weight’”; its “trees are related to one another in a...complex but harmonious way”; and its lines are “orthogonal” and “concealed.” Regarding the narrative element of Through the Rocky Mountains, a Pass on the Canadian Highway (1887), Reid states that although “add[ing] interest...in the standard romantic practice,” it is considerably de-emphasized by the “light refracting through the sediment-filled glacial stream”; the “tumble of sunlight across the spill of broken rock”; the “varieties of rock” that are “delightfully complex”;
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and his “dwarf[ing] the train.”298 Reid’s descriptions reflect the kind of embodied experience I have been discussing, but then he seems to undermine it. Even after admitting the above, it is still O’Brien’s “developing Canadian nationalism” and “[firm rootedness] in the romantic-picturesque tradition” that predominantly “explain” the story of O’Brien’s work.299 I suggest that it was more a reciprocal participation with the placebased awareness of the animate terrain that acted on these abstract Victorian concepts and styles also particular to O’Brien’s carnal immersion here, and less the other way around.
On one hand, O’Brien certainly intended Through the Rocky Mountains to
illustrate the Canadian Highway at an exhibition in London, indeed demonstrating threads of connection to, perhaps even an affirmation of, Victorian values. On the other hand, it is also telling that it was this particular place along the “highway” that O’Brien chose to paint the train. The train is moving east to west, back towards the viewer, up the Kicking Horse Pass. At the time, this main-line railway climb was the steepest in North America. For Reid, even while acknowledging that the social narrative and train in the painting had been dwarfed amid its earth narrative, this still only works to “make the achievement of the engines seem all the more remarkable.”300 This is one story. Another, from a storied approach, reveals that such an appeal to a Victorian brand of Canadian nationalism is not necessarily so straightforward. Through the Rocky Mountains is one of the few paintings where O’Brien does depict a more safe, easy, and linear line over, through, and out of the landscape for the viewer’s disembodied gaze. A
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viewer’s gaze can easily follow the path of the Kicking Horse River and valley itself, through the painting and out. The gaze, however, is distracted from this flight not by an element of the earth narrative, but the social narrative embodied by the train.
Similar to O’Brien’s awkward addition of the perpendicular rampart wall in King’s
Bastion, the train works against the viewer’s gaze, blocks it. It sends one back towards himself along the rail line, almost giving the viewer a chance to reset and try flowing down with the river again, only to get stopped and pushed backwards by the train every time. The sensate awkwardness of this particular kind of circularity is heightened by the fact that the train and railway are working at cross-purposes to the earth narrative. They move against the trajectory of the viewer’s gaze, which, in this case, wants to flow more easily down and along the curvature of space in the centre with the earth narrative. Other painters, of course, painted trains in the mountains coming back towards the viewer like this—such as in Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith’s Rocky Mountain Scene (1898), or Mower Martin’s Train in the Mountains (n.d.)—but in these, the railway lines follow the curvature of the valley floors making the path that the viewer’s gaze follows through and out of the landscape unquestionably the same as that of the social narrative.
I would suggest that O’Brien’s animal body sensed that, while his mind could
appreciate the achievement of the railway, it was an achievement rooted in ideologies abstracted from elsewhere, and not so in tune with the place-based awareness that actually enveloped it. His painting reflects this embodied awareness. He also hinted at the stirrings of this awkward and unsafe feeling arising from underneath in a letter to a
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friend back in Toronto. While it seemed to O’Brien that “every possible precaution [was] taken,” and “that the risks [were] controlled and the line [was] practically safe” (my emphasis), he could not shake “the stirring of the nerves” set off by the fact that “The grade of the railway [was] extraordinarily steep, making the bare possibility of a runaway train or carriage frightful to contemplate.”301 Indeed, O’Brien’s long-practiced embodied awareness was in tune with a place once again. In subsequent years frequent train accidents along this same section of the “Canadian highway” finally led to the construction in 1909 of the Spiral Tunnels. The Tunnels, still in operation to this day, are more of a “success” in the larger story already unfolding around them because they are a social narrative working spirally, circularly; unfurling with the place-based awareness of the terrain itself, and then through human brains and hands to help construct them, and not the other way around.
The stories being shared through the life and work of O’Brien do invite (and have
been inviting), a movement beyond the dominant master narrative of art in Canada. They have also been crucially complicit in it. Such openness to multiple understandings is precisely a capacity that gives them back their life as breathing, shifting, stories working on or through human lives in different ways. There were certainly reviewers in O’Brien’s lifetime who did not single O’Brien out for any special treatment. The Canadian Monthly in 1876 instead lumped him in with the rest of the OSA exhibitors that year who largely only demonstrated a “woful [sic] lack of ideas” in Canadian art.302 The capacity to not be finalized; to work in someone’s life one way, but then to shift and work
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in another’s some other way, even in a completely unpredictable one—as with the engraver of his original Kakabeka Falls sketch—also demonstrates the performative power of O’Brien’s stories. O’Brien’s invitation to move beyond the dominant master narrative, even while being complicit in it, is also indicative of the important capacity, in Frank’s words, “to balance multiple truths.”303 This is made possible precisely because O’Brien’s artworks already exist in part outside of, or prior to, the dominant narrative that Canadian art historians have largely sustained. By being rooted and so performatively emergent from here in this way, they are also fundamentally participant in a much larger story than the disciplinary boundary lines rooted elsewhere are equipped to grasp alone.
O’Brien’s Indigenously Oriented Story What the above dialogue with O’Brien’s art begins to remind us is that all human beings have an indigenous soul. As Tsleil-Waututh Chief Leonard George has pointed out, “We are all indigenous somewhere.”304 By this I am not referring to an incorporeal aspect of ourselves, separate from the body, that is linked and floats up to be with a transcendent God when we die. Rather, I refer to something more like that described by ecopsychologist and fellow wilderness guide, Bill Plotkin: an “intrapsychic terrain we know the least...that holds our individual mysteries,” continually and integrally pushes and pulls in/on our bodies, and whose “essential element and primary setting” is the animate earth.305 It is continually compelling us on a “great...drive to wholeness,” where
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“although the journey is a spiritual one [in that it is intricately interwoven with the mysterious depths of everything in existence], it is not a transcendental movement upward toward the light…[but] a journey downward into the dark.”306 This is the embodied core of human nature that is not concerned with saving the world, but “to fully belong to it.”307 Our souls and the animate earth are not just dependent on each other, but “long for each other” because, in the end, they are “of the same substance.”308 Of course, the story unfurling through the terrain is performed differently according to the particular carnal immersions of peoples (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) within it. But just as all good stories persist and take on a life of their own from person to person—like the story of Lake Simcoe through its articulations of caribou, Wendats, Samuel de Champlain, Anishinabeg, then the British—there is also, as Archibald reminds us, “‘something the same.’”309
This indigenous dimension of all people has also been appealed to by cross-
cultural psychologist Jürgen W. Kremer in his afterword to Bastien’s important Blackfoot Ways of Knowing (2004). Inspired by Bastien, one of Kremer’s impassioned invitations to non-Aboriginal peoples is to recover their “indigenous roots,...ancestral alliances and nurturing conversations with [their] relations.”310 This is also what respected Cree Elder and healer Rose Auger appears to have told Dianne Meili about in 1989. Auger remarked that when Europeans first came to this part of the world, “They lost the most important part of themselves, their spirit connection.” To help regenerate this connection, a main thrust of Auger’s life work was (as it is still for many other Elders), to
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help these people “‘relate to what’s around us—be it a tree, a blade of grass, or clear spring water’...stressing each person must understand he or she is no more important than the Creator’s other miracles.”311
O’Brien, in this way, is partly outside of any abstracted Eurocentric ideology
being transplanted from elsewhere because he is participant in the ongoing emergence of the real here. His indigenous soul, his spirit connection, also necessarily perceives and participates in the world from the ground up here. Abram, echoing many Aboriginal scholars and commentators from over the years, demonstrates that this capacity is “basic to the very constitution of the human creature, [and] necessary to our ongoing vitality as a species.”312 No body, wherever it or its ancestors may have come from, is ever completely severed from the breathing earth: it may be “Temporarily forgotten, paved over yet never eradicated.”313 This is even true when in the heart of a city, as illustrated, for example, by the “transponsive narratives” of Napi stories for many urban Siksikaitsitapi living in Calgary and Lethbridge.314 Cities take on the energy, feel, and storied life of their more-than-human places as well, according to the dispositions of our carnal immersions in them, and in order to help enrich and perform our embodied lives there too. We will see something more along these lines again when exploring some of Borduas’s art in the next chapter.
From a storied approach, O’Brien’s art is always already part and parcel of what
Alfred calls “an indigenously oriented dialogue aimed at moving beyond [past and present] conflicts [stemming from colonization].”315 It gestures towards something much
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more fundamentally in line with the Indigenous ways of knowing of here, than with styles or ideologies imported de facto from Europe. As human beings encompassed by the more-than-human world, “men and women,” in Basso’s words, are always in the midst of learning “to...think and act ‘with’ [landscapes] as well as about and upon them, and to weave them...into the very foundations of social life.”316 Note that I am not suggesting that O’Brien’s art is the same as Aboriginal art. Rather, it is always already gesturing towards it, is always already oriented in its direction, because it too is necessarily immersed within the same performative relationship unfurling from the ground up. From within such interrelatedness, the terrain is never experienced as wholly inert or mute, and can instead become storied: where a new world can be danced into existence on the back of a turtle; where “whispered prayers [can be] offered on the breath to capricious powers in the enfolding field”; where the surging world of peregrine falcons, rock, wind, and water around Mt. Pinnacle can be painted into a new kind of dialogue with displaced settlers; and where Episkenew’s “shared narrative of our collective reality” can sprout.317
The cross-cultural issue within the mainstream story of art in Canada, as I see it,
then, is not whether or not, and how, Aboriginal art and voices should fit into it. Rather, it is that the mainstream story can often make it seem like it is Aboriginal art that needs to do the fitting at all, and not the other way around. It makes far more sense to participatory and embodied selves, however, that the animate earth exceeding us—and the ancestral voices, stories, and knowledge it has been performing here for millennia—
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takes up, shapes, and animates European styles, ideas, and practices that are always already within it. This ground up, indigenous orientation is at the core of the story of art in Canada, but it is frequently overlooked, undermined, denied, reversed, or resisted.
In one instance demonstrating this, cultural historian George Melnyk has recently
noticed a kind of indigenously oriented shift in the progress of art on the prairies. He calls this the “MÉTISIZATION of art.” This is a very tantalizing and exciting phrase, especially to my own sensibilities and related interests, but, by my understanding, it compresses and simplifies the realities and histories of the Métis people, on one hand, and of the complex social-ecological relations interwoven into cross-cultural sharing in Canada for centuries, on the other. The process is characterized by Melnyk as one where “the settler audience naturalizes itself by incorporating the indigenous worldview into regional identity rather than relying simply on the agrarian myth.”318 While I can concede that “something” like a métisization is occurring today, from a storied approach, I suggest that it is also more than just a matter of “incorporating” the indigenous worldview into a more mainstream one. This implies that it is primarily, if not always, still the fitting of Indigenous ways of knowing into an all-encompassing, more-complete Eurocentric story. I would suggest that Melnyk’s “métisization,” rather, is more the deepening into one’s place—the deepening of abstracted European stories into the ever-unfurling indigenous ones of here. When this occurs, abstracted parts begin to fall away in their dispensability. They are like a candle in sunshine. An indigenous worldview is not “incorporated” as much as it is allowed to continue emerging, breathing, unfurling,
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as it always has, through interwoven bones and flesh and veins and imaginations from the ground up, especially if one is paying attention. And more and more people are beginning to pay attention. For again, the animate earth is never not speaking to any human. It is humans who stop listening.
This indigenously oriented story picked up on by Melnyk and others, then, is
neither just a recent “post-continentalist” phase of the twenty-first century, as he seems to suggest. It has been going on, unfolding, in flux ever since there were Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people together in this place, whether the artists themselves knew it or not (as we are now beginning to see with O’Brien’s art). It is this already unfurling indigenously oriented story that animates and creates the conditions within which Melnyk’s linear progression towards his “métisization” is possible in the first place. It is already waiting here to have life breathed into it by our artist-storytellers (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal), according to each their own carnal immersions in it.
O’Brien’s art works within such a shared cross-cultural, and indigenously
oriented, narrative in some important ways. It is what enables O’Brien to experience and bring forth through his performative art practice (even if only temporarily or subconsciously), that there is something a little off, or not quite in tune with the experience of the St. Lawrence River as depicted by Princess Louise, for example, or with Armstrong’s depiction of Kakabeka Falls, or with Van Horne’s new train track through Kicking Horse Pass. In a sense, he is storyworking these stories through the performance of his. O’Brien is not merely commenting on these artworks, architectural
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constructions, or the terrain enveloping them, but he is also, in Frank’s words, performatively “retelling [them] in a varied form to create new connections.”319 These “new connections” are ones that involve European techniques and ideas—part of O’Brien’s particular carnal immersion in places here—but are also beyond and encompass them because his new connections are unfurling from within a completely different sensuous and earthly imagination here. They require a more dialogical or polyphonic awareness to keep their story power alive. Such an awareness is characterized by Frank, after Bakhtin, as “blending multiple voices into a harmony in which they never entirely merge but retain some distinctiveness.”320
As we shall see, Indigenous ways of knowing, then, can significantly deepen our
understanding of O’Brien’s art (as it can with all non-Aboriginal art in Canada). They help allow it to breathe, here, so that his art need not be only and ever beholden to abstracted and displaced European practices and ideologies alone. They can help it, rather, to be also fully capable of speaking from within the larger story of here, our shared narrative, and not just from outside or above it. This is why Anishinabe writer and publisher Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, can remark that Aboriginal voices and stories “are not at the margins, but at the centre.” Because Aboriginal voices and stories “are of the land and from the land,” she continues, they are “the land from which all other [stories] in this place now known as Canada spring forth.”321 In short, any Eurocentric thought, action, or story is nested within the larger indigenously oriented story that is and always has been unfurling from the ground up here. To elaborate further on how
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this might help re-envision our mainstream story of O’Brien’s art, I will take a storied approach for the remainder of this chapter to what is probably his most famous painting of all: Sunrise on the Saguenay (Fig. 12).
☈⊕♁ Sunrise was O’Brien’s diploma painting upon his election to the RCA, the same year he was nominated to be its first president. When criticism on O’Brien’s art attempts to encapsulate his entire life, actions, values, ideas, and work with one painting, this is usually the painting chosen. The first major discussion around it was Reid’s in “Our Own Country Canada” (1979). This set the template for most Sunrise discussions to follow. Between it, Lefolii’s text in Great Canadian Painting (1966), and Harper’s short discussion of O’Brien in Painting in Canada (1967), Sunrise also helped set the template for the story of O’Brien’s art in Canada more generally. For Harper, Sunrise combined “dramatic light effects with romantic grandiose cliffs,” echoing the German style of Bierstadt, and the “glow of divine approval shining on the British Empire.”322 Lefolii echoes the same top-down story by emphasizing O’Brien’s engineering and architectural background. In this vein, Sunrise was “as if [O’Brien] were compiling a document…[for] those interested in the economic development...of Cape Trinity” because “under the misty oils...is a surveyor’s plan of the bay and the bluffs” done by an “engineer’s mind guiding a painter’s hand and eye.”323 Again, a similar story persists in Reid’s account. Here, Sunrise “perfectly established” O’Brien’s own philosophy in life,
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FIG. 12. Lucius O’Brien, Sunrise on the Saguenay, Cape Trinity, 1880. Oil on canvas, 90.0 x 127.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
which was characterized by an “aggressive optimism...from the universally-held ideals: Progress, Improvement and Expansion.” It also helped establish the role of landscape artists in the fulfillment of Canada’s future, which promised “greatness, strength, wealth and...even empire.”324
Such a story, so frequently summoned up by Sunrise, continues to this day and
has clearly been a good one for the main storytellers of art in Canada. There is also more to the story for lives in Canada. O’Brien was not only immersed in Eurocentric engineering or art practices and education, but was also a human being in a more-thanhuman world. For example, while his “engineer’s mind” may indeed encounter Cape
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Trinity in part with “a surveyor’s plan,” O’Brien was not just a disembodied mind. To his embodied indigenous soul, Cape Trinity was always already gesturing towards and provoking what Tewa scholar and educator Gregory Cajete recognizes as an integral component to indigenous art creation: a “sensitivity to the metaphor of spatial orientation and alignment of self to the environment with the material used.”325 This animates a performative art practice that cannot be understood with recourse to European ideologies alone, for it is also nested in a louder, living nest of stories unfurling through here.
One such story is called “Coyote’s Eyes.” It is retold by Archibald and concerns
the trickster figure Coyote, who, after a bunch of mischief, has to learn to stagger about the world for a while with mismatched eyes: one small mouse eye, and one large buffalo eye. The story reminds Archibald of the necessity to learn when and how to choose to “‘switch back and forth between the eyes of not only Mouse and Buffalo, but...all the other animals.’” It gestures towards the idea that aliveness in Canada is dependent on being able to see through different eyes—sometimes through, say, a Judeo-Christian or Eurocentric eye, sometimes an earth-based, indigenous eye. All perspectives in a place need to be acknowledged equally for balance and harmony to exist. Doing so can prevent awkward or dangerous cases of having to stagger uncomfortably, even blindly, through societies (or art histories).326 O’Brien’s viewers, not coincidentally, are performatively invited to make a similar choice. They can choose, in Pinnacle Rock for example, to resist the halted action of its social narrative, and attempt to continue
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gazing Eurocentrically through and over Baldwin Pond towards the Eastern Townships and beyond. Or they can stay for a while, feel on all fours, pay attention, and begin opening up to the capricious earth and its enigmatic depths here. Although it is an openended choice, the great drive to wholeness experientially gesturing towards viewers is necessarily the larger indigenously oriented one of the buffalo eye performatively enacted through and animating Pinnacle’s captivated hunters themselves.
Canadian art historians have often implied that they feel involved in such a
choice when encountering O’Brien’s art, even if it could not be articulated as such. Albert H. Robson, for example, picked up early on the fact that there is something particular and crucial that being native-born does seem to bring to O’Brien’s work. He then chooses, however, to undermine this by associating O’Brien’s art primarily with dominant British standards, which explains, for him, O’Brien’s penchant for “too much detail.”327 Similarly, O’Brien has been recognized as a key link in Canada’s major contribution to art history because of his “idea that self is necessarily located in its relationship to place.” But then, in many subsequent breaths, this recognition has been undermined by assertions relating O’Brien’s work back to European ideas and practices. The impression left by such recourse to influences like European art movements, Bierstadt, Lorne, and Ruskin is that O’Brien’s artwork might have very little affinity with place here at all.328 In another example, Reid notices that there may be more than the conventional British ideologies of romanticism and imperialism to the link between O’Brien and Bierstadt. But he immediately chooses to undermine that insight
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by emphasizing the conventional link nevertheless: “[Sunrise] perhaps still appears reserved in comparison to Bierstadt’s huge western pictures of the sixties and seventies, but it is a response to them nonetheless,” which “gives the proper imperial ring to the image.”329
It is not that the above ideas are incompatible. Both a relationship to place, and
European ideas are participants in O’Brien’s art. Moreover, a relationship to place is, of course, part and parcel of life in Europe and of many Victorian ideologies. What I am suggesting is that the emphasis is still usually on the European ideas and practices, as though they are the primary source for O’Brien’s interest in the relationship to place to begin with, or an absolute, unchanging filter through which he experiences it. It is this Eurocentricity that I take issue with, not the European ideas or their complicity in Canadian art. I am merely trying to rebalance the sites of power, and remind us that there are also other eyes, perspectives through which to look.
Burnett comes closest to allowing another story from O’Brien’s Sunrise to
breathe, but then chooses silence by leaving his own question unanswered. While he acknowledges that the painting “does seem to have been influenced by the epic landscapes of Albert Bierstadt,” why, then, he wonders, did O’Brien “not indulge in the epic visions of the American West,” upon which Bierstadt’s whole reputation was based, when he himself was in the Rockies and Canadian West just a few years later?330 From a storied approach, this may be because Sunrise and O’Brien’s other artworks are not just the way they are because of Bierstadt, romanticism, or Victorian imperialism. His
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artworks are also storied articulations unfurling in reciprocal participation with places here through O’Brien’s particular carnal immersion in them. Many art historians have seemed to glimpse another side to O’Brien’s stories than that which they themselves continually tell and re-tell, but they have seldom followed this through, merely looking through one eye only.
Acknowledging both eyes within the storywork of Sunrise itself is telling. Art
historian Ellen L. Ramsay has argued that O’Brien’s painting “must be seen...as an indelibly romantic interpretation of the sights and activities of the Saguenay region.” For her, this is because O’Brien specifically chose to paint the scene “at its most resplendent before the rising mist of the morning sun,” and completely omitted any hint of the burgeoning tourism industry, the dredging operations along the river, the logging, and the forest fires that were all occurring in the region at the time of his sketching trip there.331 McKay mounts a similar argument, but subsumes Sunrise into a larger Eurocentric discourse as an ideological product of the “nomadic concept of territory” that stems back to 800 BCE and Homer.332 But in 1882, O’Brien himself re-designed Sunrise for inclusion in Picturesque Canada, and also chose to de-emphasize many of the romantic elements Ramsay argues were so important to him. He omitted the birds floating tranquilly above the water behind the most foregrounded boat; he omitted the mist and cloud enshrouding the top of the Cape; he omitted the recreational boaters paddling out into the bay; he replaced the log on the beach in the immediate foreground with more rocks; he increased the size of the shrub in the bottom right corner, extending
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it upward in front of the entire strip of river; he increased the curvature of the clouds in the sky; and he increased the size and detail in the hills on the other side of the river, bringing the background forward in the picture plane. All these changes compress the vertical and linear distance through the painting, and increase the visual circularity within it. This facilitates the “holding” of viewers in the encompassing earth narrative more effectively than in the original oil.
Ramsay suggests that some of these changes—the omission of the birds, mist,
and recreational paddlers—were necessary to accommodate the wood engraving medium.333 There are many other engravings throughout Picturesque Canada, however, with misty or cloudy parts reproduced from paintings with great skill.334 Furthermore, the small, light-coloured birds against the darker background of the water in the original painting would have been possible to reproduce in the wood engraving, for they would merely have required cutting away from what would have been the raised section of water in the woodblock. Finally, to say the boat with the recreational paddlers could not have been reproduced in the wood engraving medium is similarly suspicious, for there are already many other boats in the same engraving, one of which was even of similar colour, size, and tone to the one omitted.
Ramsay also implies that the changes amplify O’Brien’s “mental re-mapping of
the land” in a “romantic yearning [for harmony]...spawned under conditions of [regional] change.”335 But as we have seen, O’Brien was far from influenced by abstracted European ideologies alone, whether through parents, friends, art teachers, or other
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artists. His embodied indigenous soul also lives outside of any ideological romantic yearning. Ramsay has also noticed that O’Brien does uniquely structure Sunrise circularly, with “[artifices that serve] to locate the eye centrally within the composition and within the picture plane.” Again, this is merely indicative, for her, of a romantic yearning inherent in O’Brien’s romantic mind. While the painting’s internal circularity “offers a reflection on art and landscape,” Ramsay primarily ascribes this to a balancing “between...the picturesque and the sublime for pictorial effect.”336 But O’Brien also had a body in the world, with an indigenous soul interwoven within the ongoing emergence of the real here. His art also exists in part outside Eurocentric artistic concepts and practices like the romantic, picturesque, or sublime in the first place.
From a storied approach, the increased circularity inherent in Sunrise is also
resonant with what Cajete refers to regarding Indigenous stories as:
a kind of ‘natural democracy,’ in that rather than presenting humans as gifted and favored species of the world, the special traits of plants and animals are regularly depicted again and again with mention of human dependence upon them.337
To human beings with indigenous and embodied souls here, this is not romantic. This is practical common sense, even obvious. This is part of the Anishinabe way of “maintenance and promotion of good relations…[and] balance,” or the Siksikaitsitapi way of fully “living the knowledge of the alliances.”338 O’Brien’s changes between his painting and engraving, in other words, performatively amplify, or deepen its embeddedness within, the unfolding indigenously oriented story animating it here. The
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larger more-than-human story encompassing Sunrise from the ground up emerges through O’Brien’s carnal immersion in the world and art practice here. Such an emergence necessarily incorporates the presence and influence of Eurocentric ideologies and practices in this place, but it does so primarily by challenging and rupturing the de facto transmission of abstracted mental re-mappings and romantic yearnings. These ideologies and practices are never completely the same as they were and would have occurred in a strictly European context. Viewers, including art historians, have a choice and are, in turn, animated according to their own carnal immersions with/in the story. Yet this capacity for engendering diverse art experiences too, as Archibald’s storywork helps remind us, is characteristic of Sunrise’s indigenously oriented story unfurling through the living diversity of social-ecological life here.
The indigenous orientation of O’Brien’s performative art practice also begins to
unfold in more conscious manifestations within his own life. The process is like a series of small decolonizing movements ever-unfurling from the ground up here. This diverse place, in other words, begins to speak in O’Brien’s life through his tellings of it, thereby gesturing towards ontological effects and ways beyond present social-ecological conflicts in the world. In May of 1879, around the time that O’Brien was probably asked by Lorne to serve as president of the RCA, O’Brien published an article in the Canadian Monthly called “Art Education—A Plea for the Artizan.” As the title suggests, it is very tempting to associate this article directly with Victorian and, more specifically, Ruskinian ideas and practices. The article immediately follows the period in O’Brien’s art and
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career that Reid directly connects with Ruskin. As Reid points out, “It is very likely that O’Brien read Ruskin...Almost everyone did.” Reid also suggests that O’Brien’s sketchbooks of the time “reveal a knowledge of Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing (1857).”339 Ruskin advocated a “back to nature” approach, as well as many shifts in art education and practice that would have important effects on British society, and in turn, on Canada too. But it is precisely because of the parallels between O’Brien’s and Ruskin’s thought, and the strong influence that Ruskin had on the Canadian artworld at the time, that it is so telling that O’Brien did not explicitly refer, even once, to Ruskin or his ideas in his article. Rather, the theoretical ground from which O’Brien draws for inspiration is that of Indigenous ways of knowing:
The child of the red Indian is better educated for his future life than our children are for theirs. Every sense and faculty that he requires to use is trained and cultivated to the utmost keenness...having learned to see things and to do things, he is for his place perfectly educated. Can we not in some degree follow his example?340
Although tinged with colonialist stereotypes in sections, the point is that O’Brien was clearly aware of a disconnect between the Eurocentric educational system in Canada, and students’ abilities to belong and contribute to their world responsibly and efficiently in/from their places here.
From a storied approach, Ruskin, although important, indirectly participant, and
helpful, may not have felt as immediately relevant to O’Brien because Ruskin’s ideas here are also encompassed by the unfolding indigenously oriented story of here. Ruskin, for O’Brien, may have seemed like a candle in sunshine. O’Brien primarily wrote
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the article to take issue with what he saw as the ignorant stance of the mainstream educational system with regard to art. He felt that art and its potential performative power as a tool for teaching and education was being negligently undervalued. In O’Brien’s words, “Drawing is the foundation of practical education, as reading and writing are of literary education, and it is the only universal language. To draw anything we must study it with a purpose and thus come to know the thing itself—reading only tells us something about it.” Too many students graduating from the mainstream system, O’Brien continues, are too much like disembodied brains and “think they can use their heads rather than their hands.”341 Conversely, O’Brien felt that the approach to education taken by the Indigenous peoples around him embodied an inherent strength more like the one he was advocating for.
His concern, not surprisingly, echoes Archibald’s when discussing her communal
storywork principles of responsibility and reciprocity. She quotes Armstrong in illustration of her point:
One of the central instructions to my people is to practise [sic] quietness, to listen, and to speak only if you know the full meaning of what you say. It is said that you cannot call your words back once they are uttered, and so you are responsible for all which results from your words. It is said that, for those reasons, it is best to prepare very seriously and carefully to make public contributions.342
Through his own performative practice of art rooted here, O’Brien has similarly come to the awareness that merely being inculcated about things in the world through books is far less effective than coming to know something’s “full meaning,” or “the thing itself.” It
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seems to me that for O’Brien the full meaning and value of art in society was being undermined because of the correlative devaluing of embodied experience here. “Practical education” is an embodied one of the “hands,” not just the “heads.” It occurs in the world of experience—with Canadian cultural diversity in cities, camps, and settlements, and in the lakelands, prairies, tundras, mountains, coastlines, and forests always encompassing and animating them. For O’Brien, only by paying attention to and experiencing the latter—inherently an indigenously oriented artistic and storied practice —can students learn to belong here, then share it fully, responsibly, respectfully, and reciprocally in the world.
In his article, he does not take Indigenous knowledge out of its context, never
claims it as his own, nor encourages a rush for outsiders to access, exploit, and control it. Rather, he engages in what Mi’kmaq scholar and educator Marie Battiste, with Youngblood Henderson, have referred to as “the responsibility of challenging [Eurocentric] frameworks…[on] the path to a shared and sustainable future for all peoples.”343 He gestures toward a doorway through which, not just Ruskin, but “Indigenous peoples [can] participate in educational decision making” in Canada.344 The re-envisioned educational system he advocates for, in short, is a storied, indigenously oriented one that “seeks to include [a student’s] vitality or spirt,” as opposed to just “new data and methods.” It is “sensitive to both [Indigenous and Eurocentric] ways of knowing.” It is also holistic, and “requires a personal relationship between the knower and the knowledge,” bringing “us all into a living dialogical relationship with the world
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that our knowledge gives us.”345 Moreover, in Cajete’s words, “what is required [for education and life] is a cultivated and practiced openness to the lessons that the world has to teach,” not just those that books have to teach, or that other people command you to know. It seems like O’Brien would agree. And this is what Cajete refers to as “the educational legacy of Indigenous people.”346
In hindsight, we are now aware that following the date of O’Brien’s article, of
course, the implementation of the kind of storied, indigenously oriented system he advocated for was exactly what did not happen. In fact, the opposite occurred. As is well known, Aboriginal children, rather than being an “example” to everyone else here, were taken from their families, forced into residential schools, and forced to learn in a Eurocentric educational system. This continues through cognitive imperialism even today.347 Just as this was and is a choice, so too is a similar choice inherent within O’Brien’s art because it is also more than Victorian ideologies alone. Through O’Brien’s performative art practice, Sunrise, like Indigenous art and stories, also carries part of “the mysteries of our ecologies and their diversity.”348 It can also invite viewers to practice quietness, “to listen,” and “learn the full meaning” of what you say and do with the Saguenay, instead of just mine, log, exploit, and take from it.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
THE UNFURLING RHYTHMS OF THE STORY OF ART
The Story Creating the Creation of Adam Creating Stories One of the most important artists in my life has without a doubt been the British poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake. For the past almost twenty years, Blake and his art have been a close friend, a companion, and a wellspring of imagination, inspiration, and empowerment. His art was some of the first to “grab” me. I was drawn to it initially because of its multi-media and interdisciplinary elements. These seemed visionary, revolutionary, and healing to me. Since then, his art has also become like the voice of an Elder, in the deepest sense of the word, for western civilization. Like most people, my first encounter with Blake’s work was with the decontextualized poetry of his Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789, 1794). That is to say, with the text alone, without knowing anything about his particular way of printing the Songs, or that Blake also sang them. I was especially stalked by his poems “The Human Abstract” (1794), “The Fly” (1794), “London” (1794), and then also by his later “Auguries of Innocence” from the Pickering Manuscript (c.1800-1807). Neither did I find out until much later that he actually painted a lot more works of art than he wrote, even though to most people he was largely a poet. I was especially mesmerized by his colour print The Ancient of Days (1794), and his paintings The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
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(c.1803-05), Jacob’s Dream (c.1805), The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garment (1800), and Malevolence (1799).
When I moved to England over a decade ago, I went specifically to do an MA in
Blake Studies—Blake and the Age of Revolutions was the program. I love how one person put it a few years later: “wow, so you have a Masters in revolution!” At the time I was moving, I was still unconvinced that Blake meant that much to me, even as I was stepping on the plane to go. I just felt guided in a deeper, more inexplicable, soulcentred kind of way. As my life experience story unfolded over the years with Blake and his art, one of the directions his stories continually guided me was towards cultivating the courage to recognize and share the gift I carry with the world. Blake, for me, is the epitome of this journey, where his stories ultimately help envision and inspire a world wherein I can do this; wherein I too can become the creative and expressive person— the artist—I am in my own life and community. For me, the key to learning how to share my gift with the world, has been to deepen in and fully belong to it. Blake’s art, not coincidentally, helped breathe life into a personal kind of creation story for me, especially as it resonated in me through another of my dearly-honoured Blake companions: Elohim Creating Adam (Fig. 13).
I have always been captivated by the way Blake seemed to portray in it a
moment in Western human history, a beloved creation story with so much darkness and ambiguity. On one level, the artwork is a literal translation of the biblical passages in Genesis where God created Adam in his own image “from the dust of the
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ground” (Genesis 2:7). On another level, Blake’s version of the story reveals something a little more unsettling, which gestures towards a sensation that maybe this creation story as we know it is not as abundant with goodness and light as we might think. God hardly seems like an unlimited and all-powerful God here. Rather, he seems quite oblivious to, even uncertain of, his actions. I am immediately drawn to God’s face. It is brighter and more central than anything around it, but then I feel my body tighten, and my breath slightly quicken with uncomfortable anticipation. For in his furrowed brow, and open mouth and eyes—seemingly aghast with worry and terror—I do not feel secure, he
FIG. 13. William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795/c.1805. Planographic colour print with watercolour, pen, and ink. 43.1 x 53.6 cm. Tate Gallery, London.
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seems to be feeling as helpless as I, and his mind seems so preoccupied with something else that I do not feel him present here at all. I immediately wonder why, for shouldn’t I feel secure and loved in the presence of God?
I scan the rest of the painting for something else to converse with. I notice
Adam’s legs, wound with a giant worm, and my attention is pulled down the coil toward Adam’s feet. I am momentarily excited by how they seem to emerge from and interweave with the earth. Brilliant, I love it! But then, here too, I suddenly feel overtaken with discomfort. The ground from which Adam is created seems more like a murky morass of green goo. It is not the good dry ground with “yielding seed” and fruit trees that God supposedly just finished creating in the story we are taught (Genesis 1:11-12). My awareness enters into my own feet planted on the ground, and it feels comforting, but Adam seems just as much pinned down in agony, as materializing out of the earth. Within this very act of creation is also an immanent death and destruction. And it feels like something other than just a natural death, which comes to us all and is within everything anyway. This is a forcefully imposed one. Now I notice that the worm around Adam’s legs and this transcendent God he mirrors seem more to bind him in a stasis, like a crucifixion. They’re not really creating him, or helping him to emerge fully into the world at all. No wonder there is no security or sustainable love present here. Within such imposed stasis there is nothing that either God or Adam can do now but reflect each other’s slow death. And the clouds descend to extinguish the inconsequential sun; the diverse coherence of the earth disintegrates into a bland oneness.
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My awareness is shocked back into my own body, which feels both heavy and
bound like Adam’s, yet at the same time capable of flight and possibility like God’s. There are no two separate entities, a spiritual and a material, at all! But, yes, this is what I feel coerced, inculcated, pinned down into believing. How silly this all must look from the outside, for this must be exactly what we look like, and what our world looks like— our agony, our fear, our homogenous and placeless void—whenever our main hope and salvation rests in elements ever conceived as outside or above us, or from a purely human provenance. I can’t help but feel that one’s life is significantly restricted when all one primarily aspires or attends to is a separate and transcendent life elsewhere, or to written words ruptured from the animate diversity that originally provoked them. I believe that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to get clear on what the gift is that you carry for the world (let alone come to share it responsibly and respectfully), when one is also bound to such an abstraction from the world.
And just like that I feel my spirits start to lift. My chest warms, and I feel my
muscles pulsating with movement once again. I realize now how Blake, like a Trickster, has mischievously held up a mirror to my own wholeness. I feel like I may better attend now to any inharmonious imbalance therein, perhaps even recognize precisely how much this story in front of me is partly me, but not my own. I am suddenly inspired by the possibility inherent in such a metamorphosis, or descent, like this one initiated by Blake to begin with. It is like an invitation to step into a new story, or rather, reawaken to the larger one I am always already participant in, if paying attention. For I step outside
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and the world is not a morass of homogenous green goo encompassing me. If I am paying attention, I am not pinned down within a lonely human and material individuality, but also feel the tree touching me as I touch it. I feel something beyond myself, yet part of me at the same time, invigorating my nerves and imagination every time I inhale, and feel the world breathing me every time I exhale.
Blake’s art has guided me toward many deep questions (and is still doing so
today). I began to acknowledge and appreciate his work for this reason, but there also came a point where I never could completely grasp a truth I was hearing in it. Namely, I always found it a bit inaccurate according to my own experience that the place where healthy, living spirituality, earth, and human creativity usually meet and balance out in Blake’s work seemed to be “Englands green & pleasant Land.”349 Yes, this was the land that some of my ancestors were from, and I was glad to have met it, but what resonated most with me while I was there was that they also left it behind. Right down into my very bones and veins I was fully aware while in England that I did not belong there. That was not my place. The gift I carry for the world was not going to easily emerge from there. So where was it then? What was it? The search continued. I came back to Canada and, without any plans at all, felt myself quickly deepening even further into Blake’s story as it began to breathe and shape-shift within my life here. As so often happens with many Métis and other Aboriginal people in Canada who were not fully raised in a traditional way, I was especially struck this particular summer of my return by how all this came unexpectedly to fruition one day during a ceremony...and with a good story.
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An Elder and another good friend of ours—a real brother of mine—were visiting
for a family purification lodge ceremony and we capped the day off by sitting around the fire together well into the evening. It was a beautiful day. We were even visited by a herd of elk and a gentle rain in between rounds of the lodge ceremony. It felt nothing short of an incredible gift—what a welcome home. As we were gathered around the fire at night, my family and I were further surprised by getting an eagle feather passed on to us in honour of our relationship and the work we were setting out to do through the wilderness centre. The eagle feather came with a story. While sitting back in my home like that, in ceremony with my family and Elders, and hearing the story that came to us with the eagle feather, everything Blake had been summoning up for me became real, or deepened into my own life here, maybe for the first time. I still carry that eagle feather to this day, and it has made its way around numerous circles with its story since. I pass the story on to others whenever I get the chance and if it gets beckoned to for help in any way. I’ve since heard a couple different versions of the story, but this is the version that was passed on to me with that feather.
A long time ago, before the two-legged people came, all the animals heard
that the two-leggeds were about to arrive. The animals wanted to give them a
special gift to welcome them, so they gathered together in a large circle to talk
about it. They wanted to make sure it would be put to good use, and not get
wasted. The circle was formed and all animals were present. Creator asked if
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anyone had anything to say. Everyone leaned in to listen carefully and salmon
swam up into the circle to speak:
of the great ocean, and can even carry it way up to the very ends of the great
rivers. I can get it above the powerful waterfalls, and can carry it so far away that
no two-legged will ever be able to follow me and find this gift before they’re ready
for it.”
leggeds were stronger and more resourceful than everyone may have thought:
“they will be able to build machines one day that will be able to get them to the
bottom of the oceans, even deeper than you can swim, salmon, and they’ll be
able to follow you even to the ends of the rivers, and maybe find this gift before
they’re ready.” The salmon swam back out of the circle, and the grizzly bear
stepped out in to it.
bear. “I’ll take it high up in to the mountain passes, and carry it with me into the
deepest and darkest of dens. No two-legged will ever be able to walk as far as I
can, nor dare to enter into my dens when I am there. The gift will be protected
until they are ready for it.”
“these two-leggeds will also be able to build machines one day that will be able to
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for them. I’ll take it under the waters
Creator thought about it for a second, but then told salmon that these two-
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said grizzly
Creator nodded that this was also a good idea, but again, had to say that:
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cut through the thickest of forests, and enable them to walk as high up into the
mountain passes as you can go, grizzly bear. They will also be able to follow you
in to the deepest and darkest dens with some of these machines, and they might
be able to find this gift before they are ready.” Grizzly bear went back out to the
circle, and all the animals could then hear the great buffalo trampling up into the
middle.
take it way out into the plains, further than any two-legged can even see, and
carry it with me in our great herds that can rumble the earth and everything in our
way. No two-legged will ever be able to walk as far out as I can, nor keep up with
us on our journey. The gift will be protected until they are ready for it.”
had to say: “these two-leggeds are so resourceful that they will also be able to
build machines one day that will be able to make them roads way out in to the
prairies, even further away than you can go, buffalo. They’ll even be able to build
tall buildings and big cities in the middle of these far away places that will enable
them to live even where your herds can. They might be able to find this gift
before they are ready for it.” The buffalo trampled back out into the circle, and
bald eagle swooped down right into its centre.
eagle. “I’ll take it way up into the sky, and higher even than the tallest mountain in
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said buffalo. “I’ll
Again, Creator agreed that buffalo was also a powerful relative, but then
“Give me this gift to carry and protect for the two-leggeds,” said bald
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the land. No two-legged will ever be able to follow me into the sky, nor be able to
find me in the highest of its peaks. The gift will be protected until they are ready
for it.”
will also be able to build machines one day that will enable them to fly, even
higher than you can go, eagle. They will be able to get way up into the sky, and
up into the highest peaks in the land. They might be able to find this gift before
they are ready for it.” The eagle flew back out of the circle. And now all the
animals were really stumped. If these powerful brothers and sisters could not
help, how could they possibly hope to protect this gift for the two-leggeds so it
would not be wasted?
cheeep, cheeeeeep, cheeeep.” Everyone looked around, but nobody could tell
where the sound was coming from. “Cheeeep, cheeep, cheeeeeep, cheeep,”
they all heard it again. Suddenly, everyone saw Creator look down towards the
ground and from out of the earth they saw grandmother mole scurry up onto
Creator’s foot. She ran up Creator’s leg, hopped up onto a shoulder, and
whispered into Creator’s ear: “Cheep, cheeep, cheeeeeeep, cheeeep.” Everyone
leaned in a little closer. “Cheeeep, cheeep, cheeeep, cheeeeep.” At that moment,
they saw Creator start to beam with a huge smile, and look out happily towards
the circle of animals.
Creator really liked this idea, but then had to point out: “these two-leggeds
Just then, everyone in the circle heard a small chirping sound: “Cheep,
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“I think grandmother mole has just found our answer,” said Creator. The
animals were anxious with anticipation. Creator continued: “We’re going to bury
this gift, we’re going to bury this gift deep within their own hearts, so that only
when they truly have the courage to look within themselves, will they be ready to
find this gift and share it with the world.”
Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven from the Ground Up In early versions of the mainstream story of art in Canada, all art seemed to be welcomingly progressing towards the work of Tom Thomson (1877-1917), and the Group of Seven (1920-1933).350 Although not without their critics, the Group were often considered and heralded as the height of artistic achievement and possibility within the country: Canada’s first national school or movement of art. Their “wildercentric” aesthetic and nationalistic aims were embraced as praiseworthy or positive.351 This has been the story about the Group’s art by commentators such as MacTavish, Fred Housser, and William Colgate.352 It has continued to this day in updated formulations through commentators such as Charles Hill, David Silcox, Ross King, and Ian Dejardin.353 These stories are largely fuelled by a recognition that the Group’s aims were not only possible, or achieved in some way, but should be celebrated—that “The Group of Seven effectively taught Canadians how to ‘see’ their country; [that] their vision of Canada is rooted deep [and proudly] in the Canadian psyche to this day.”354
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More recent versions have involved a more mixed assessment of their work,
ranging anywhere from the more traditional reverence, to a great deal of harsh criticism, depending on the analyst. The Group’s aims have been increasingly denounced in these stories as destructive or negative. This narrative extends the critical tradition of early commentators such as Hector Charlesworth, Samuel Morgan-Powell, John Lyman, and the critics of the 1927 Exposition d’art canadien in Paris. Today, it often comprises postcolonial critical stories such as those by Jonathan Bordo, Scott Watson, Lynda Jessup, Leslie Dawn, and John O’Brian and Peter White.355 In these, the Group’s aims were either not achieved because based on a false, exclusionary idea of nationalism that is “not the ultimate signifier of Canadianness,” but “the well-worn mascot of an ‘official culture’ that still locates itself...in a centralizing, nationalist identity characteristic of Ontario regionalism.”356 Or, if the Group’s aims were achieved in some way, their achievement is far from worth celebrating because ultimately and insidiously damaging to “Canadians” and Canadian identity for their inherent racism, romanticism, privileging of Anglo-Celtic ancestry, and insensitivity to cross-cultural issues, especially with regard to Canada’s Aboriginal peoples.357
While both story lines have unfolded together from the beginning, and have often
acknowledged the presence of the other without necessarily drawing a strict dichotomy or opposition between them, each frequently downplays the importance of the other.358 In this way, they each take their turns augmenting the body of criticism surrounding the Group by primarily finding faults or points of emphasis in other critics’ stories first, and
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then demonstrating how this can be proven with recourse to the art after the fact. This top-down body of criticism has amounted to what has been referred to as the “ideological edifice that has been erected in [the Group’s] name.”359 Art historian Joyce Zemans suggests (like Donald Buchanan had glimpsed before her), that as artists, the Group themselves may not have approved of such an ideological edifice, and that it is an act of decontextualization to tie their art so stringently to it today.360 White responded to Zemans by arguing that because the Group’s work, in meaning and representation, “is so integral to how Canada is understood” today, “to evade it would, in itself, be misleading,” and “its own act of decontextualization.”361
Thus we find ourselves embroiled by an impasse that manifests itself in the ever-
decontextualized story of art as regards Thomson and the Group. Perhaps more than any other artist in Canada, these artists have been subsumed by what art philosopher Denis Dutton, and narratologist Brian Boyd, have referred to as the deadening hermetic discourse pervading the humanities for at least four decades now.362 The Group’s stories, it seems to me, have largely become stifled, not able to breathe, or are discredited and devalued for just doing some of the things their art can do as stories: shape-shift, perform, animate, and make life social, for better or worse. And even if worse, this still ultimately shows us, in turn, where we are at with things, in order to help us make them better, if we are paying attention.
In this vein, one of the most important things we can unlearn regarding the art of
Thomson and the Group is that the explanations provided by art historians (often even
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members of the Group themselves), are not The Truth, but rather manifestations of how the story has synergistically storyworked, or unfurled within the life experience stories of certain viewers, according to the proclivities of their particular carnal immersion in it. Celebratory traditionalist approaches to the Group—an aesthetic catalyst for the Canadian isolated culture approach to art in Canada—in other words, are indeed part of the truth. Contrary to what many postcolonial critical revisionists argue, the Group’s art does do important social-ecological work within the country through the lives of some of its viewers. This is partly why time and again so many revisionists have been bewildered by the fact that their own explanations and methodologies have consistently failed at, in White’s words, “sticking publicly.”363 And it is also true that revisionist, postcolonial critical approaches to the Group are also part of the truth. Contrary to what many traditionalists like to acknowledge, the Group’s art does also instigate racist, genocidal, and social-ecologically exploitative work through the lives of some other viewers. This is why traditionalist explanations and methodologies are similarly incomplete on their own.
The Group’s art can do all of this work because, as we saw with O’Brien’s art, it is
partly within a Eurocentric story, and partly outside of it and complicit in an indigenously oriented one. Furthermore, from a storied approach, the former is always already nested within the larger latter one, and not the other way around, as is generally assumed by both traditionalist and postcolonial critical approaches to the Group. Current stories about the Group’s art—both celebratory and revisionist—are stifled on
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their own because they share too many structural features with the power structures they wish to oppose: English or European aesthetic styles and models, on one hand; abstracted, Eurocentric assumptions about art and its creation, on the other, respectively. I will explore these two points in the following section, but for now I suggest that to begin understanding the Group’s stories in their fullness, both story lines are necessary. And this understanding, moreover, can only deepen when it is also complemented by Indigenous ways of knowing, which can help allow it “to be” from the ground up here. In the final section on Thomson and the Group I will sink deeper into my argument while storyworking with one of the most popular paintings in Canadian art history—Tom Thomson’s The West Wind (1916-17).
☈⊕♁ One of the most recent attempts at accounting for the Group’s art has been art historians John O’Brian’s and Peter White’s Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art (2007). Its postcolonial critical acuity and penetration, based on its collection of foundational texts within the revisionist vein of Canadian art history, is impressive. For reasons mentioned above, however, it still does not do enough to contribute to a retelling of the story of art in Canada in a more crossculturally empowering way. This is borne out through two main issues, both of which are common throughout the discipline of Canadian art history.
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First, the collection almost everywhere undermines the pre-conceptual,
sensuous, and dynamic interrelationship between animal bodies and the animate earth, especially in regard to non-Aboriginal people/artists. Indigenous ways of knowing do acknowledge and account for the dynamic interrelationship between animal bodies and the animate earth, and the collection does include some Aboriginal voices who speak from this place of awareness. But the inclusion of Aboriginal voices in the collection, compared to non-Aboriginal voices, is disproportionately minimal. Without essays by Aboriginal commentators such as Edward Poitras, Robert Houle, Rebecca Belmore, and Loretta Todd, any sense of the possibility for a profound, sensuous embeddedness in the more-than-human places of here through art would be almost absent amidst the ideological edifice emphasized by the majority of all other contributors. What makes this even more curious is that the “myth of the wilderness” directly linked to the Group’s art, and predicated on a fundamental separation between humans and the natural world, is one of the primary targets of the volume. As a result, many of its contributions, while being positioned to challenge or denounce the myth and its human-nature separation, can unintentionally reinforce it, as we shall see.
Second, the collection is based on the assumption that the Eurocentric “myth of
the wilderness” is, or perhaps should be, the most salient story to take away from the art of Thomson and the Group. It is implied that humans who have felt or feel moved by the Group’s art are likely being manipulated into a suspicious way of thinking about Canada, Canadians, or Canadianism. As such, it is also implied that these people, then,
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would benefit from a more balanced education about the Group’s art and philosophy, in order to guard against its possible racist, romantic, or exclusionary ideas of nationalism and identity. While there is certainly a truth to the art’s complicity in social-ecological devastation and the above “isms,” it is, nevertheless, a mistake, and equally devastating, to suggest that “the myth of the wilderness” is the overarching story echoing from the Group’s art. This wrongly imposes the Eurocentric art historian’s thought and encounter with the Group’s art onto every viewer, devaluing the myriad other ways the Group’s stories may take on a life of their own within the synergistic relationship formed between storyteller, story, listener, and the context of the story encounter. I will elaborate on these complex and related issues by weaving them into the remainder of this discussion together.
The main thrust behind Beyond Wilderness was to, if not completely “dislodge,”
then at least mount a significant and coerced charge to help further weaken the lingering romantic and nationalistic way of dealing with the landscape that has come to be directly associated in Canada with Thomson and the Group through traditionalist approaches to their art. O’Brian and White (as many others before them), refer to this as the “fiction” or “myth of the wilderness.” The myth is denounced because it wrongly assumes that the land is a separate realm outside of human existence, and therefore primarily viewed as “‘empty’ land...declared to be there for the taking—and then...mythologized” as the universalizing root of nationhood in Canada, despite Canada’s incredible social-ecological diversity.364 White draws from Dawn to point out
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that Thomson and the Group are a product of the tradition of European romantic idealism, which understands landscape through this myth. In art historical terms, this tradition structures landscape art to be:
a ‘natural’ representation of nature mediated by the individual sensibility of the artist...essentially an intransitive form subdivided into a more or less fixed set of categories, including the picturesque, the beautiful, the sublime, each of which carries a set of iconic meanings or associations that vary along a sliding scale of emotional intensity to spiritual significance.365
This tradition and myth is, no doubt, part of the story of the Group’s art, for, as
mentioned above, part of their project was indeed fuelled by this intellectual and Eurocentric framework. Like O’Brien, however, they are also human beings with animal bodies, and always within sensuous, dynamic, and living interrelationship with the land, whatever malleable intellectual frameworks they may also carry. Because of this they are also always encompassed, exceeded, and animated by the ever-unfurling placebased story of the earth wherever they travelled and sketched. To be sure, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with theories and intellectual things. On the contrary, they are an integral part of life and being human. I am only taking issue with what seems to me is a disproportionate amount of emphasis on the intellect alone within art practice and encounters, at the expense of more embodied, emotional, and spiritual ways of relating, and without full recognition for even the earth-based or embodied ground of theory and thought in the first place. Whether Thomson and the Group were aware of this on an intellectual level or not, the ever-present contingency between animal bodies and the animate earth always also had agency within the their art as well.
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The Eurocentric “myth of the wilderness,” in other words, was indeed a story
animating the Group, as so many commentators in O’Brian and White’s collection speak to. But this does not mean, as so many of those same commentators seem to suggest, that members of the Group did not also have indigenous souls that were directly experiencing the animate earth, the “power of the wilderness,” through the embodied practice of art. It does not mean that they could not begin, even if it was only a small and fleeting glimpse, to hear some of the land’s teachings (all human beings’ original classroom). Nor does it mean they could not feel themselves getting woven into the animate earth’s unfurling rhythms, and performatively giving breath to its larger story, mind, and imagination. Furthermore, it does not mean they could not feel the earth’s downward pull, which is so integral to all humans’ sense of belonging and life in a place within the more-than-human world. And it does not mean that from this emergent sense of belonging they could not begin to grasp a deeper sense of “home,” a sense of community, even, perhaps, the tiny inkling of a sense of nationhood from the ground up.
The art of Thomson and the Group was in some very important ways, indeed,
“born from the land.”366 This is not romantic, but practical and inevitable for human beings in a more-than-human world. When revisionist art historians tie the Group’s art so completely to “the myth of the wilderness” alone, they are denying the Group their participatory immersion in this ongoing emergence in the real—a necessary part of their own vitality in a place. They are, paradoxically, not weakening the hold of the Eurocentric “myth” at all, but rather subtly sustaining it, over and over again, in an
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abstracted ideological edifice that can only ever reinforce the notion that the humannature, body-soul, mind-body separateness that “the myth” ascribes to is possible in the first place.
In the preface to their sixth chapter, “What is Canadian in Canadian
Landscape?,” O’Brian and White begin with the statement: “Environmental explanations of national character are the product of nineteenth-century European nationalism, imperialism, and often racist, quasi-scientific theories.”367 This could be another way of characterizing the “myth of the wilderness” negatively associated with the Group. It frames the chapters’ contributions on the subject, which are positioned as demonstrating many of the ways the Group’s art has unfortunately incorporated the myth for nationalistic purposes, but turned out, in actuality, to be racist, romantic, and exclusionary. In the very same preface, however, now at the end of it, when introducing Premises for Self Rule (1994), by Saulteaux artist Robert Houle, O’Brian and White do not seem to realize the extent to which their own description of Houle’s work undermines and exposes some of the truth concealed by their opening sentence.
According to O’Brian and White, the story Houle breathes life into is one about
the right of Native peoples to the land because his “peoples’ [or nation’s] shrinking connection to [it] is at the heart of aboriginal history, spiritual meaning, and identity” (my emphasis). But as such, and contrary to what O’Brian and White state earlier, “Environmental explanations of national character,” are not just “the product of nineteenth-century European nationalism,” for they are also inherent in Saulteaux ways
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of understanding their own identity as well. Rather, environmental explanations of national character, I suggest, are more indicative of a pre-conceptual reciprocity between animal bodies and the animate earth for all peoples, whether from Europe or North America. The character and quality of this holistic relationship in turn shapes and breathes life into any kind of explanation or understanding of it, of our nationalism, or of our identity. The reciprocal participation of the animate earth and people in the ongoing emergence of the real—whether in our explanations, or our senses of belonging and togetherness, “nationhood”—through places is not just European. It is, I suggest, more a fundamental condition of being human.
The same kind of concealment is echoed by the chapter’s opening essay, “The
Myth of the Land in Canadian Nationalism,” by historical geographer Cole Harris. Harris begins by remarking how most people in the world, when characterizing their nationalism, “usually dwell on aspects of culture, history, or race; but English-speaking Canadians tend to explain themselves in terms of land and location.”368 He builds on this by demonstrating the illogical core of this anomaly with reference to the Group’s art. This story is echoed in almost every subsequent chapter contribution, which increasingly take on a more cross-cultural feel as each of the chapters progress. It nears its end with contributions including Watson’s linking of the Group entirely with Housser’s “white supremacist tract” about them, the reproduction of Houle’s Premises, and details from Jin-me Yoon’s A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996). But Harris’s premise, while partly true, also unintentionally undermines and devalues the voices of numerous
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Aboriginal peoples in Canada who have not only linked themselves with “land and location,” but also, inseparably, their cultures, their history, and their nations.369 To deny English-speaking Canadians or the Group this necessary component of an embodied life in a more-than-human world, is also to sustain the same colonial structure that Aboriginal peoples and artists, such as Houle, have often attempted to rupture.
In the words of Seneca historian and activist John Mohawk, “The destruction of
the Native cultures and people is the same process that has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet...the animals and the plant life.”370 Revisionist art historians would almost certainly agree, but their language and methodologies address the destruction of Native cultures, while frequently reinforcing at the same time the destruction of animal and plant life by denying non-Aboriginal artists the possibility of an embodied and emergent relationship within it. The colonizing process is on the surface being challenged, but like the undisturbed depths of a windswept lake, can remain alive and well underneath.
As we saw McKay doing with the art of Légaré in my Introduction, so too have
many essayists in O’Brian and White’s collection sustained an illusory disconnection between animal bodies and the animate earth, even while trying to defuse it. O’Brian and White themselves, in their introduction, set out to establish the link between the Group’s art and “the myth.” Coupled with their collected essays, this is meant to fuel the challenge to the Group’s draw and popularity in Canada, which is viewed as based on the existence of this link. The authors qualify their linkage, however, by stating that “the
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fiction of wilderness...should not be confused with nature’s wild unpredictability.”371 Their argument against “the myth,” and intention to weaken the lingering traditionalist approaches to the Group’s art because of it, however, depends on, is even rooted in, the same kind of separation they denounce. For example, to even begin positing a separation of “the myth” from the animate earth, one is already operating under the illusion that there is separation between mind and body, humans and nature. I find it suspicious that O’Brian and White have to reinforce the very thing they hope to overcome, in order for their project to be possible in the first place.
This renders their project incomplete. If they are correct, and I believe they are—
that “the myth” is false, that humans and nature are not separate (and, therefore, it should be denounced as the basis of a nation as socially and ecologically diverse as Canada)—then “the myth of the wilderness” and “the wild unpredictability” of the animate earth are, in fact, already profoundly related and connected in some way. The existence of this connection is what falsifies and precludes the myth’s inherent disconnection. To mention just one way this is so, the myth’s premise that humans are separate from the animate earth is, as Abram has shown, directly linked to humans’ “carnal embedment in a world ultimately beyond our control.”372 As such, we cannot help but sensuously experience, whether we consciously realize it or not, that it is a “wildness that nourishes and sustains us.” Furthermore, we are ever experiencing indications that there is an “ultimate unknowableness of things,” and that, because we can only perceive the world from our unique places in it, “each particular presence
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partakes of a common mystery: the unfathomable upsurge of existence itself.”373 The myth’s human-nature separation is made intellectually possible because of this mystery and various carnal immersions within it.
In short, “All our knowledge [even “the myth of the wilderness”]…is carnal
knowledge, born of the encounter between our flesh and the cacophonous landscape we inhabit” in some way.374 It is the same kind of mistake to separate “the fiction of the wilderness” from the “wild unpredictability” of the animate earth (even if only to counter the myth), as it is to endorse the myth itself. If the only way O’Brian and White’s project can stand is by keeping the “myth” separate from the wild and shifting animate earth, their solution is really no solution at all. It can never really get to the heart of their own problem, and is, therefore, still very much a part of it.
As still a part of the colonial problem, then, mainstream stories about the Group’s
art largely sever the relationship between animal bodies and the animate earth. They can often only reinforce one storyworking path instead of the multiplicity of paths that are actually possible within a diverse more-than-human world. In the traditionalist stories, this manifests as a Eurocentric notion of nationalism rooted in the “myth of the wilderness” that is universalizing, essentializing, and arrogant, even though there are other options, as revisionists have been pointing out. In the revisionist stories, this manifests as an overemphasis on the role and expression of the Eurocentric myth of the wilderness—whether in its concealed traditionalist forms, or its revealed postcolonial critical forms—in Thomson’s and the Group’s art.
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As we saw with O’Brien’s works, one aspect that is continually undermined,
concealed, or neglected in these mainstream stories is the way in which the Group’s art might also challenge, rupture, and erode its Eurocentricity from the ground up by also being complicit in an ever-unfurling indigenously oriented story encompassing it here. As such, the Eurocentric “myth of the wilderness” is one, though certainly not the only, possible story echoing from the art of Thomson and the Group, whether in its traditionalist or revisionist thread. The Group’s art can, does, and did breathe, or take on a life of its own within the life experience stories of various viewers. To begin exploring this unlearning further, Dawn’s National Visions, National Blindness (2006), will be helpful. I also want to clarify what I mean by “indigenously oriented,” specifically, because this is not the same as the Group’s claims to an “indigenous” art in Canada, although the two processes are related.375
My use of “indigenously oriented” differs from that inferred by the term
“indigenous” when members of the Group or their supporters attempt to describe the Group’s art. The latter largely places the emphasis on the objectified land alone, as meaning the Group’s art is completely “of here,” and not of Europe in any way. In my use of the phrase, however, the land and the ways its story unfurls through embodied participation with it are component. Thus, I am not simply defending the traditionalist approach to the Group’s art, nor trying to resurrect an old way of thinking about the land that has been challenged for decades. On the contrary, acknowledging that the Group is part of an indigenously oriented story ever-unfurling here is different than saying they
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produced wholly autochthonic art, completely without colonial influence. An indigenously oriented direction recognizes that colonial influence is happening, but not necessarily in a dominant way. Rather, the colonial influence is in flux, being slowly eroded, ruptured, and challenged—at times subtly, and at others not so subtly. It is, in other words, being continually brought back down to the ground, so that inhabitants can also choose to move out and around with the animate earth encompassing them in spirit, mind, emotions, and body. Acknowledging the wild contingency always already going on between human beings and the more-than-human world within our new story of art in Canada in this way actually strengthens and enhances the cross-cultural potential aspired to, but which is ever out of reach in conventional postcolonial critical approaches to art in Canada.
One of the most important demonstrations of this indigenous orientation inherent
in the Group’s art is Dawn’s sophisticated National Visions, National Blindness (2006). It counters the traditionalist story by demonstrating how the Group’s art is fundamentally linked with British aesthetic principles and ideology, rather than the conventional unmediated relationship with the land in Canada that the Group themselves claimed, and traditionalist commentators took for granted. The core of his story is assembled in his first few chapters, which were also condensed into an essay for Beyond Wilderness. He demonstrates the extent to which the Group’s thoughts and words about their art— their claims to its being indigenous to Canada, born from the land, autochthonic, modern, and free of colonial influence—are themselves remnants of British ideology
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that can be traced back to the picturesque movement. The group, as I read Dawn, are almost exactly repeating what British aestheticians were saying about British landscape art a century or two earlier. The philosophy is merely being transplanted to a Canadian context as now filtered through the brains of Thomson and the Group. This argument is extended in his book to demonstrate how much the Group’s art, then, was actually born from, and contributed to the sustenance of not Canada, but England and its imported colonial attitudes and actions against Indigenous peoples. At the same time, however, Dawn also demonstrates how the Group’s transplanted philosophy was able to claim separation from European attitudes through recourse to “Canadian” nationalistic agendas. These were everywhere working to maintain “a carefully disguised, but artfully continued, identification with established British vocabularies of national identity and imperial power,” which were largely informed by the universalized equation of landscape with nation.376
On one hand, embedded within Dawn’s argument is the conventional Eurocentric
undermining of experiencing bodies. For the Group’s art, of course, was not so entirely and absolutely “British,” as Dawn seems to suggest. They were in participation with the animate earth here. As I hope we have been relearning, the land is always active, has agency, and so does make a huge difference—much more than many art historians have acknowledged. Dawn’s story, then, fits squarely within the postcolonial critical mould discussed above that attends very carefully and refreshingly to cultural issues, but simultaneously and subtly undermines them because it does not also account
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adequately for the more-than-human setting always already underwriting them. This is one reason why commentators like Tsimshian art historian Marcia Crosby can remain unconvinced by and skeptical of Western self-critical works that seem only on the surface to be saying all the right things.377
On the other hand, what Dawn’s book does more effectively, even if only
unintentionally, than perhaps any other is persuasively demonstrate the extent to which the art of Thomson and the Group is also part and parcel of a much larger indigenously oriented story, and not the other way around. This is made evident by the fact that the Group’s art needed to be manipulated over and over again by a few Eurocentrically oriented and politically connected men for Westernized agendas. These men included, namely, Eric Brown (contemporary Director of the NGC); Sir Edmund Walker (President of the Bank of Commerce, and Director of the NGC board who hired Brown); Duncan Campbell Scott (deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs), and Barbeau. To this list one might also add the Group’s first biographer, Fred Housser. As Reid and Robert Stacey have each observed in their own ways, the Group were often “the unwitting chess-men” in the contests played out by these men.378 The story of the Group’s art as we know it today, in other words, is largely the story as it played out within the life experience stories of these few men, and not necessarily because this is The Story of the Group’s art. Dawn’s book makes this abundantly clear throughout.
As we saw occurring with the exclusionary art in Chapter Two, the fact that the
Group’s art had to be appropriated over and over again with different tactics each time
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gestures more towards the extent to which the agendas it was being appropriated for were clearly not the whole truth embodied by the art. This was not the art’s work in its fullness. The Group’s art did not, apparently, fit so neatly into a purely Eurocentric framework alone. When appropriated as such by the above men, it was continually resisted and largely unsuccessful. As Dawn recognizes, “If anything, the quest for unity provoked disunity.”379 Not only is this the case, however, because the above men’s agendas alone were in competition, but because the Group’s art was also already nested within an indigenously oriented story that threw the awkwardness of these men’s Eurocentric stories about it into relief each time.
From a storied approach, their stories did not entirely fit the places, nor peoples’
experiences within them, with which the art emerged. These Eurocentric stories, in turn, facilitated the similarly awkward exclusions now associated with the Group’s art in some life experience stories, such as, for example, the exclusion of Aboriginal art from the collecting and exhibiting practices of the NGC, the Art Gallery of Toronto, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the Glenbow Museum.380 But these are only part of the story unfurling through the Group’s art. It also animated inclusive and collaborative crosscultural partnerships that were simultaneously occurring from the ground up elsewhere in Canada. To mention one example, the life and work of artist Mildred Valley Thornton (1890-1967) comes to mind.
Thornton is not mentioned in Dawn’s book at all, but she poses a significant
challenge to the de facto association of the Group’s art with Eurocentric notions of
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nationalism and/or colonialism alone. Thornton (of British/Irish ancestry), started painting portraits of Indigenous peoples as early as 1928. During this time the Group was still together and they were in the midst of Dawn’s story linking their landscapes to national unity via an erasure of Indigenous peoples from the land. Some examples of Thornton’s work include Manitouwassis (Fig. 14), and Mary George, “Old Mary” (Fig. 15). Her portraits were done in a style reminiscent of what could be called a cross between those of the Group and American artist W. Langdon Kihn. Her colours were bold and vibrant, like Thomson’s, Arthur Lismer’s, or J.E.H. MacDonald’s. Her brushwork and style were post-impressionistic, more fluid and deliberate, like that of A.Y. Jackson or Franklin Carmichael. And her figural compositions were head and shoulder close-ups, intense, and often with little background, like Fred Varley’s or Kihn’s. This is notable for our purposes here for three main reasons.
First, Thomson was one of Thornton’s favourite painters. She reverently and
adventurously visited Mowat Lodge on Canoe Lake in Algonquin (Thomson’s workplace, sketching grounds, and place of death), while pregnant with twins in 1926. She was also a student of J.W. Beatty’s—Thomson’s, MacDonald’s, and Jackson’s friend, teacher/ student, and sketching partner—who also remained a lifelong friend of hers. Second, when Thornton was not painting portraits of Indigenous peoples, she also painted unpopulated landscapes, again reminiscent of Thomson and the Group. Some examples of these include her The Touchwood Hills (Fig. 16), and Across the Inlet (Fig. 17). Finally, her portraits depict Indigenous peoples, not in a sentimental, staged, or
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F I G . 1 4 . M i l d r e d Va l l e y T h o r n t o n ,
Manitouwassis, 1929. Oil on canvas, 88.9 x
66.0 cm. Private collection.
FIG. 15. Mildred Valley Thornton, Mary
George, “Old Mary”, c.1943. Oil on board,
50.8 x 35.6 cm. Private collection.
romanticized way, as in, for example, the earlier portraits of Paul Kane. Rather, her sitters are painted (reminiscent of Kihn), in everyday life, intimate, with their own personalities and physicality, often even facing viewers head-on (unlike even Kihn), like equals. They are included in the modern world without diminishing their continuity with cultural traditions, and have, what Dawn describes in Kihn’s portraits, a “contemporary presence.”381 In Thornton’s own words, she painted “Indians wherever I found them, in whatever they were wearing, with an absolute disregard of formality or prearranged plan.”382
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FIG. 16. Mildred Valley Thornton, The Touchwood Hills, c.1930. Oil on canvas, 76.1 x 91.0 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of J.M.
Thornton, Vancouver, 1971.
According to some revisionist commentators, such a list of characteristics would
be almost impossible within the same person—the acknowledgement of Aboriginal contemporary presence, and the love of Thomson and unpopulated landscapes are supposed to be mutually exclusive. The inherent “Britishness” of the Group’s art, manifested through the “myth of the wilderness” and its linkage to national unity, is supposed to necessitate the erasing of Aboriginal presence from the landscape in a subtle and complex act of colonization and imperialism. In the mainstream story, erasing
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FIG. 17. Mildred Valley Thornton, Across the Inlet, n.d. Oil on board, 24.8 x 32.4 cm. Private collection.
Aboriginal voices, history, ways of knowing, and presence from the land completely (or, if it is there in some way, relegating it to the past as a vanishing culture), was the only way the Group’s art could claim any fundamental link to Canadian nationalism, according to Dawn.383 And in the words of Watson, “The Canadian problem [directly fanned and fuelled by the Group’s art] is an obliterated [Aboriginal] history throughout most of its environment.”384
It is for this reason that Dawn argues Kihn’s portraits of West Coast Indigenous
peoples were so policed and manipulated by the above-mentioned men, who, I would
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suggest, are in large part the real heart of Dawn’s book. Kihn’s paintings destabilized the assumption of the disappearing Indian promulgated by Brown, Barbeau, and Scott, and the convention of the “empty landscape” (underwritten by the “myth of the wilderness”), upon which the former was dependent. This directly challenged Brown’s Anglo-centric version of national unity, and hence the importance of the Group’s art to his (and Scott’s), story of “Canada.” Kihn, according to Dawn, could only paint Aboriginal peoples like he did because he was not Canadian, but American, and so was able to become involved with supporters of Pueblo concerns in the American Southwest —where the discourse of disappearance had already long been challenged—before first coming to Canada. If he had come to Canada first, he could not have “seen” the West Coast Indigenous peoples like he painted them because “Here, he would have encountered a concept of the role of Native culture and art completely different from that.” And he would do so largely because of the Group’s art and its colonialist role in the stories of some politically powerful people.385 Thornton and her art, however, demonstrate that this mainstream revisionist story about the Group’s art is clearly not the whole story, but just one possibility that is not as pervasive as some suggest.
Born on a farm outside of Rutherford, Ontario, Thornton lived, worked, and
learned in southern Ontario—except for a brief time at Olivet College in Michigan. She moved to Saskatchewan in her early twenties after completing studies with Beatty at the Ontario College of Art.386 Although she returned to Ontario from time to time for various trips and shorter stays, she primarily lived and worked between Saskatchewan and
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British Columbia for the rest of her life. Even distanced from Canada’s artistic and political power centre in Ontario, she was, of course, still affected and influenced by the colonialist ideologies spread by people like Brown, Scott, and Barbeau. But the distance (geographical, and as a woman artist), perhaps, made it easier for her to live a life evidencing the power also inherent in the Group’s art when it is actually allowed to breathe on its own, from the ground up. As already mentioned, she was “grabbed” by the art of Thomson, developed similar painting styles and interests to his under the tutelage of one of his friends and peers, and at the same time was able to paint intensely present portraits of contemporary Indigenous peoples while growing into a prolific contemporary advocate for Aboriginal rights in Canada. The depth of her involvement in this cross-cultural life from at least 1928 until her death, can be demonstrated through numerous examples.
Through the nineteen twenties and early thirties, Thornton became an important
member of the Saskatchewan branch of the Women’s Art Association, whose work and exhibitions, as we saw in Chapter Two, were always meant to be more collaborative and cross-cultural than those of their male-dominated counterparts surrounding the RCA. After moving to Vancouver, Thornton also frequently published in the Native Voice newspaper (1946-1969), which was read throughout North America, and was the official forum of the Native Brotherhood of BC—one of the country’s first advocates for First Nations rights. Through connections made here, Thornton also became a member of the Native Sisterhood. She also became involved with the Totem-Land Society, which
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was devoted to advocating for Aboriginal arts and citizenship, and helped set in motion important events and connections eventually leading to the University of British Columbia’s hugely influential totem pole restoration project (1949-50), with Kwakwaka’wakw carvers Mungo Martin and Ellen Neel. Thornton and Neel became friends, and they collaborated on ideas and cross-cultural projects through which to bring awareness of Aboriginal art and culture into the mainstream.
Throughout all of this work, Thornton regularly travelled throughout the Western
provinces painting her portraits, and her unpopulated landscapes as she went. Unlike other portraitists in her time, she asked permission of her sitters first, and respectfully compensated them—who, she admitted, taught her much about reciprocity along the way—with gifts, including honoured cultural items such as tobacco and salmon. She developed many cross-cultural friendships as well, and many First Nations people and communities asked her to represent them in varying aesthetic and political capacities. She wrote numerous articles, and toured around the Western provinces and Canada frequently lecturing to non-Aboriginal audiences about Aboriginal art, political and spiritual rights, equal education opportunities, and improved living conditions.387 Some of these audiences included: the BC Teacher-Librarians Association; parent-teacher associations; the Social Credit Women’s Auxiliary; the Vancouver Poetry Society; and many historical and arts groups. Many of Thornton’s cross-cultural activities, and especially her portraits, have also since helped spark various Indigenous resurgence projects, including: unique Aboriginal-run and organized portrait exhibitions; projects
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contributing to the recovery of oral traditions and history; and new educational programs in Aboriginal school curriculums centred on family narratives and ancestry.388 And through all of this, Thornton loved the art of Tom Thomson and the Group.
The Group’s art, then, is also complicit in stories of resurgence, cross-cultural
collaboration, and Aboriginal rights and restitution. From a storied approach, Thornton’s work within both spheres of unpopulated landscape art and intensely present Indigenous portraiture and advocacy was not due to some awkward or incorrect linking of two incommensurate forces. Rather, it synergistically emerged through the unfurling, shifting, breathing stories of, especially, Thomson, within her own life experience story from the ground up. Contrary to Dawn’s suggestion, the increase in production of unpopulated landscape art by non-Aboriginal artists and the death of Aboriginal cultures is not “inextricably linked.”389 They certainly might be connected, of course, according to particular carnal immersions within that story, but they are not inextricably so. There is more to the story. I have been attempting to demonstrate that there is even an indigenous orientation to Thomson and the Group’s art that can also challenge, rupture, and erode its Eurocentricity from the ground up here. In order to take this one step further, let us now take a closer look at some of Thomson’s art in particular.
☈⊕♁
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One of the most widely recognized and reproduced paintings in Canada is Thomson’s The West Wind (Fig. 18). It was probably painted in early 1917 after a sketch done in Algonquin Park a few months earlier. It was adored by his peers—future members of the Group of Seven—and its subject was subsequently taken up in paintings by Lismer, Varley, Carmichael, and Casson. The two trees at the centre of the composition, despite their thinness, perhaps even delicacy, firmly capture and hold the viewer’s attention with a different kind of strength than a purely physical one. These trees usually get the share of commentators’ attention not only for their centrality to The West Wind, but because the image of the solitary tree at the centre of an unpopulated landscape also subsequently became a well-known motif for the future Group. Seldom in the commentary of the ideological edifice, even by the Group themselves, however, are the trees ever allowed to also be trees. For commentators in the traditionalist vein, like Lawren Harris and Lismer themselves, such landscapes embody “the spirit of a people,” and are “a symbol of the character of Canadians.”390 For Housser, The West Wind’s trees are “a harp” in “the same spirit of reverence as the religious paintings of the old masters.”391 For Silcox, they have achieved “the status of a symbol,” and are similarly “musical” as “the visual equivalent of a national anthem…[representing] the spirit of the whole country.”392
For those in the revisionist vein, they are also largely symbols, but with a “lengthy
prehistory in Romanticism” where a component of the “inanimate landscape...can
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FIG. 18. Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1917. Oil on canvas, 120.7 x 137.2 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
become a sentient almost human presence.”393 In the words of art historian Jonathan Bordo, they “open the way for an unfettered and direct line of projection between pictorial subject and Subject [so that] an anthropomorphic transposition becomes almost unarrestable.” This marks the image with “a palpable human absence and concealed human presence.” It is this “two-sidedness” to such paintings as The West Wind,
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according to Bordo, that leads one to project the illusion that such trees are a person, oneself, or symbols of the vitality of Canadian people, on one hand; and on the other, are also unpopulated, “empty,” and a degraded, “delimitable physical space”—inevitably leading to the erasure of Aboriginal vitality, presence, and ways of knowing from the land—as in a National or Provincial Park, such as Algonquin.
All of the above examples preclude the notion that the trees in The West Wind
are also trees, as those in the everyday lives of viewers and painters. Bordo posits that they can be a “privileged record” of a phenomenological experience and “existential presence” in the world, but they cannot be a fiction, and at the same time be very real trees. Indeed, as Paskow demonstrates, the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines of art history often deny such an embodied relationship with a painting—a story—just as it denies an embodied relationship with a more-than-human world (notice Bordo’s use of the word “inanimate” above when describing trees).394 Indeed, when art historians work within representational approaches to artworks, the object being rendered is necessarily “real.” But there is a significant difference between recognizing that the natural world is real, and acknowledging that it is animate, reciprocally participatory, and active in human lives and art. The two denials above are profoundly related, for as we have seen with the art of O’Brien, the painting is not just a representation of something outside a disembodied intellect or subjectivity, but a performative co-being rooted in the placebased, ongoing emergence of the real.
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Traditionalists come close to acknowledging that something like such a process
is happening in the life of Thomson. Housser spends a considerable amount of time praising the power of Thomson’s art because, “untrained as a painter,” “His master was Nature”:
There is no trace of an intellectual philosophy, nor of a theory of esthetics; no preachment on life, no effort to impress or improve, or lift you up, or cast you down, but just pure ‘being’ as though northern nature itself were speaking.395
Traditionalists also undermine such a process’s existence, however, by imposing their own intellectual philosophy (nationalism) onto the art in the end anyway. This only served to make the trace of its European and colonialist influence that much more exaggerated and central to the stories when viewed from within an equally intellectual and top-down postcolonial critical paradigm.
As such, revisionists have spent a considerable amount of time pointing out the
mistakes in Housser’s, and other traditionalists’, claims. For example, there is, indeed, trace of an intellectual philosophy (Romanticism) in Thomson’s work due to his being influenced by his European ancestry and socio-political milieu in Toronto. He may have also been influenced in this way while on sketching trips with Jackson and Harris, the latter with whom he traveled the same year The West Wind was sketched. There is also, indeed, trace of aesthetic theory in his work, due to the visual similarity of his art to European styles, such as Art Nouveau, Post-impressionism, and British picturesque landscape art. Finally, there is good reason to be skeptical of Housser’s claims about Thomson’s intuitive technique and “pure ‘being’” in the woods because, according to
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many of these revisionists, it is assumed that nature itself does not speak to people—art cannot be “born from the land” this way. Rather, Thomson’s art merely represents it, or his own subjective experience with it, or can only respond to it through the mediation of a transplanted colonialist and imperialist culture alone. Thomson’s embodied experience with the land, and his viewer’s embodied experience with his art, are almost everywhere undermined and so his stories are largely stifled. In other words, “the scope and significance of the reality claims...made on us in viewing paintings” are seldom intuited, and, therefore, included in the telling of the Group’s story or the story of art in Canada.396
The West Wind is generally considered to be a painting that emerged from one of
Thomson’s trips to either Grand Lake, or Cedar Lake. He had also been working as a fire ranger and guide in Algonquin Park at this time, and so had been practicing impressive knowledge and skills as a canoeist and woodsman. Lismer remembered Thomson fondly, if not with slight envy, as an artist who could “go with the stream” and paint scenes almost effortlessly, while he and his peers would be “slaving to harmonize.”397 From a storied approach, Thomson’s story—as a largely untrained artist, who grew up among naturalists, and a skilled guide and woodsman—would, indeed, have made it possible for him to intuitively awaken to and pre-conceptually “hear” aspects of the land “speaking.” This would have animated him, and carnally immersed him in the ongoing emergence of the real around Grand or Cedar Lake. Furthermore, such continued immersion would have enabled him to performatively tap into these
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places’s ever-unfurling stories, ever-interweaving with his own indigenous soul as a human being in a more-than-human world.
As a result, The West Wind also makes significant reality claims on viewers from
the ground up. The story of The West Wind is not just the story of the Canadian character; Canadian nationalism; the erasure of human presence from the land and thereby the visual cue for the creation of protocols governing conduct in Canada’s National and Provincial Parks; or the erasure of Aboriginal presence from the land, and thereby the nation, all from the top-down. These stories unfurl from it through the storyworking process, but do not wholly and completely characterize it. It is also the story of the west wind blowing across the lakes of the region, interacting with the trees on the rugged rocky shores, the clouds in the sky, and the story they and the mosses, lichens, and rains, all bring forth together in this place. Even though the painting was entitled “The West Wind,” it is interesting to note that art historians have seldom discussed the wind at all except to notice it in the background on the water or clouds. With such a title, however, Thomson was foregrounding and sinking deeper into a network of connections—an earth narrative—beyond just the trees as human or national symbol. To emphasize only the latter undermines the necessary reality claims of symbols themselves. It is worth exploring this further.
The holistic participation of wind has been generally forgotten in art historical
analyses of The West Wind. Instead, the trees as stationary objects, or as opposing forces to “the furious...gale winds,” are emphasized. And when the latter, they are often
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couched in nationalistic and symbolic rhetoric alluding to their steadfastness and “resolute nature”; their “struggling” like a “sacrificial soldier”; their reverential “poetry” in the experience of “northern nature”; their “anthropomorphism”; or their “heroic resistance.”398 The wind is implied in some of these characterizations, but more as something separate from the tree, that is to be resisted, or as a less valued participant in the painting because of its ferocity and opposition to the esteemed tree. It is more difficult, in other words, to learn from such art historical analyses the extent to which the wind is also an equal and interrelated being in the unfurling story of life and a place.
From a storied approach, this kind of forgetting of the air, and emphasis on the
objectified trees, says more about the disciplinary boundary lines of art history than it does about Thomson’s story. As Abram has pointed out, the forgetting of the air “is in some sense the most profound expression of [the] oblivion” we inhabit, when intellectually locked in “the forgetting of our human inherence in a more-than-human world.”399 The air is the most pervasive presence all entities of the world can experience. It directly envelops us inside and out so fully that nobody can literally think, speak, or do anything without its participation: it is the place we are all most intimately in. It is also the most mysterious to our senses, for it is completely invisible: “The air, we might say, is the soul of the visible landscape.”400 When painting it, one inevitably has to bring into one’s awareness its myriad interrelationships, or alliances within the morethan-human world for its aliveness to be storied at all. In Abram’s words, “As long as we experience the invisible depths that surround us [I would add: including in our paintings]
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as empty space, we will be able to deny, or repress, our thorough interdependence with...the living land that sustains us.”401
Indeed, art historians have been referring to the art of Thomson and the Group
as “empty space” for decades now. They assume that because there are no humans in the scene non-Aboriginal Canadians, including the Group, must all have largely viewed the land as “empty” and “there for the taking.” Through the performative practice of art, while standing in the wind on the shores of Grand Lake or Cedar Lake, Thomson did not forget about the air, however, for he painted an earth narrative with it at its mysterious centre, but also, intuitively, at its margins. This is much more akin to O’Brien’s dynamic and pulsating circularity, only now according to Thomson’s particular carnal immersion within it.
To our experiencing bodies the air, or wind is everywhere. Thomson’s painting, in
turn, reminds us of its essential participation with everything it sidles up against: the waters of the lake rise and shout as its fluidity rides and intermingles with the wind’s own currents, hastening, slowing, and acting out the dynamism of the moment. The clouds move with it, inhale and exhale it, multiplying and metamorphosing into one another, and preparing to possibly spill rain upon the land and join in union with the entities below. The rocks snag lichen spores from the wind and remind us with every colour and texture just how much mere “existence” is already an upsurge. And the bodies of the trees themselves bow with the wind in a dance where each organizes the space around it, and together. I feel no tension in my body anywhere when
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encountering The West Wind, no opposing force here at all. Rather, a wild contingency and commingling of bodies with other bodies, never in a homogenous or bland oneness, but in a sensuous malleability that falls across my awareness. I feel more “a steady trading” of one here with another there that is “articulated in various nodes and knots and flows” as entities shift within the animate terrain together.402
Thomson put all of these reminders right in front of us, thereby helping to
“retrieve the sensuous world from the oblivion to which our concepts too often consign it.”403 Then it took on a life of its own within various life experience stories according to particular carnal immersions in it. Jackson felt that the red outline encircling the trees burned like fire with life and energy, “satisfying and thrilling to the imagination.”404 Interestingly, he equated this red outline to the aliveness of Blake’s poetry in his Songs of Experience. The energy and musicality sensed by Jackson was also pointed out above in Silcox’s felt invitation towards a national anthem, and Housser’s to play the harp. Housser also remarked at length on all parts of the painting, rather than just emphasizing the trees:
The west wind blows directly in your face without any artistic obstructions; the scent of pines and balsam and wet mosses; the spray of falling waters, the cold effulgence of snow, or the nip of late fall when the wild geese fly, is around you...There is the dignity of a great symphonic march in the succession of
oncoming waves.405
As Abram has pointed out, “If we are thinking in literate, logical terms then these
tones [of the other entities cohabiting our more-than-human world, including through paintings] are not voices, but when we’re thinking in stories then they are indeed a kind
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of speaking...This whole terrain is talking to our animal body; our actions are the steady reply.”406 Far from being simply indicative of an erasure of human presence from the land, a romanticized anthropomorphizing of trees, or a symbol of a Canadian nationalism, the painting, from the ground up, also calls attention to the transformative power of the wind within the interconnected lives of entities cohabiting places here. The wind transforms the surface of the lake, the shape of the trees, the actions of the skies, and the story of the rocks, infusing the place everywhere with life. This same wind here has, in turn, animated Anishinabeg stories, and resonated again in Thomson’s stories, each according to their differing carnal immersions in the larger story unfolding around them.
It is not a coincidence that The West Wind gestures towards such
transformational, life-giving, and even musical energy. In Anishinabe oral histories, the west wind itself is the father of Nanabush, the supernatural trickster figure, with the power of transformation, sent to be a teacher and helper to the two-legged people.407 It is one of the four elements in Anishinabe creation stories—alongside earth, fire, and water—that Kitche Manitou (Great Spirit) used to bring forth his dream of a world of lakes, valleys, forest, streams, animals, plants, and people.408 As Anishinabe artists and storytellers Basil Johnston and Nokomis have pointed out, Kitche Manitou gave to the wind the gift of the breath of life and music.409 The west wind, then, naturally sprouts, is literally “the father of,” the rhythms of all educational and transformational stories of Nanabush in Anishinabe oral history, just as it does for Thomson’s story.
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Trickster-like qualities and energies have been associated with artists in Canada
by commentators such as art historian Allan J. Ryan.410 The new, foundational, and creationist energy that traditionalist critics of the Group feel in works like The West Wind, is partly because of this larger place-based story it is already a part of: the west wind’s life-giving breath and song. It is, of course, not wholly resonating an articulation exactly like those of the Nanabush stories. It could even be acknowledged that part of the story animating it might be, say, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous British Romantic poem, “Ode to the West Wind.” But, I suggest, it could never be predominantly the latter, and is necessarily at least partly the former because Thomson’s particular carnal immersion, through which his embodied and performative practice of art emerged, was precisely within the west wind here. This fundamentally shifts the kind of story that will unfurl concerning the west wind and a pine tree on the shore of Grand or Cedar Lake, compared to that concerning (returning to the case of Shelley), the west wind and deciduous trees on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The extent to which such integral and reciprocal participation of the more-than-human world in Canada can and does neutralize the Eurocentricity dominating stories of art in Canada further indicates the extent to which Thomson’s story might be more of an indigenously oriented one.
What seems like disconnected and subjective interpretations of The West Wind—
sometimes musical, sometimes life-giving for the people viewing it (unifying for communities/nations), sometimes transformational (the anthropomorphic trees), sometimes postcolonial critical (there are no humans here)—are all characteristics of a
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story that is on one level manifested by the power of the wind in the particular place around Grand or Cedar Lake from the ground up. Even often-discussed trees in The West Wind are part of the ongoing emergence of the real here. As Johnston points out, pine trees in Anishinabe oral histories are often synonymous with life and life sustenance.411 In an opening prayer Johnston treats them with reverence, and acknowledges their interrelationship with the wind in lines one might easily imagine Thomson also saying in paint: “A tree reflects being...Altered, it restores itself...It abides/ It lends existence yet/Endures undiminished...To the tree I can give nothing/Except my song of praise...The leaves wind-blown can/Open my spirit.”412
Johnston also points out how there are stories illustrating “man’s dependence
upon the plant world and...the [delicate] fabric of dependence and interdependence.”413 As Anishinabe children grew older, stories necessarily took on deeper meanings, in order to demonstrate their interconnection with entities beyond their immediate worlds, and to guide moral character. As such, stories often involved anthropomorphizing morethan-human entities, thereby linking certain people, family, or community members with other beings.414 Bordo’s highly intellectual way of associating Thomson’s and the Group’s erasure of human presence from landscape paintings—by emphasizing and anthropomorphizing trees—with colonialism, imperialism, and cultural genocide alone, denies Thomson and his viewers their embodied experience as indigenous souls in the unfurling more-than-human story of here.
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The wind and trees have been unfolding musically, transformationally, and
anthropomorphically in stories here, as they have elsewhere too, for millennia, according to differing carnal immersions with them. The staying power of Thomson’s West Wind in the stories of what is now called Canada is persistent, and shifting— indeed, like the wind and trees themselves—and takes on lives of its own in others’ life experience stories here. This is not simply because of some lingering effect of European colonialism, or erroneous transplanting of Eurocentric ideologies, but because of its equal participation with the west wind itself, and its ever-emergent resurgence process generating life here. This is why viewers like Thornton can be both a lover of Thomson’s stories, and a strong advocate for intercultural sharing and First Nations’ rights, education, and spiritual practice, even in the 1920s.
Some of the reality claims made by The West Wind when approached this way,
then, may seem controversial. Contrary to the postcolonial critical trend, I also see it inviting viewers to recognize that the natural world is not just a passive resource for human, cultural, and ecological exploitation. It enables the building or kindling of morethan-human relationships, or “alliances” in Bastien’s words. Just such a relationship is being balanced when Thomson’s trees are anthropomorphized instead of being merely part of a backdrop for human action, as they are in most European landscape paintings. Like Bordo, it is significant to me that “the deliberate and systematic absenting of human presence itself has no consistent precedent in the European landscape tradition.”415 European landscape paintings almost always contain humans or human traces of some
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sort, including cottages, paths, bridges, shepherds, wagons, farms, enclosures, or smoke. Perhaps more than any other genre of European art, landscape has also been frequently associated with the control of lands and its usage, as well as imperialistic and colonialist ideologies, or their “dreamwork.”416
Unlike Bordo, however, I do not believe the absenting of human presence in
landscape paintings inevitably need lead to a declaration of the land as useless (because not worked), where right conduct can only be “a kind of play...a traceless way of acting,” or the anthropomorphic tree only “a cloak for a kind of human presence that is...static and proprietary.”417 If the latter were the full story, none of these outcomes would have occurred in Europe, where humans and human traces were everywhere present in landscape art, and anthropomorphic trees not so prevalent. Yet, to name a few examples, even with humans in their landscapes, ideas emerged in Europe about human conduct and nature conservation, such as in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Gilbert White.418 Ideas also emerged there about the wilderness park, such as the Forest of Fontainebleau in the minds and lives of the Barbizon artists.419 Ideas also emerged about human impositions and the natural world, such as in the work of Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Charles Darwin.420 And ideas also emerged about static proprietary rights over land, such as in the work of John Locke.421 The fact that these ideas and cultural projects all arose out of and around the rise of European landscape art already in Europe before getting apparently established in Canada (in large part through the art of Thomson and the Group), should indicate that Bordo’s story is not
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nearly the whole story. It has yet to adequately account for the significant challenge the Group’s art did make to European landscape conventions by having theirs not be so dominated or organized by humans or human traces here.
From a storied approach, what is being erased from the land in Thomson’s and
the Group’s paintings is not so much a participatory human presence, or by corollary, Aboriginal presence and ways of knowing, per se, in a wholly and completely colonialist way. Neither is the land being simply reduced to a mere tabula rasa, and therefore teaching Canadians to imagine it that way. Rather, what is being erased is more a strictly Eurocentric way of relating to the land where it is inevitably tabula rasa until laboured upon or used by humans in the first place. The land as tabula rasa, as mentioned above, was already a part of European ideology at least since Locke, and already connected to landscape art that did have human presence, workers, and traces throughout. It was human usage that thereby gave the land meaning, or implied peoples’ rights of ownership to it, in art and life. It was precisely for this reason that Locke doubted North American Indigenous peoples could be proper land owners at all: they “worked” and lived on the land in different, often nomadic, ways that were not conducive to ownership as he and other Europeans came to know it.422
By taking humans and their traces out of the landscape, Thomson and the
Group, whether consciously or not, are also simultaneously challenging the Eurocentric way of relating to the land as primarily external property to be worked by humans and then owned as is shown—imagined—everywhere in European landscapes. This
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indicates another articulation of the indigenously oriented story ever-unfurling here. It manifested earlier in O’Brien downplaying the importance of the social narrative in his paintings. In another deepening turn of the spiral, now through Thomson’s embodied participation in it, “earth narratives” can now be experienced without human subjectivity at their centre at all. The relationship between the animate earth (the landscape painting), and animal bodies (the viewer), can now be one that performs the dynamic synergy of a reciprocal participation into being. This is more the aesthetic equivalent of an unlearning of Eurocentric ways of relating to the land, and less an erasure of Aboriginal ways and presence in it.
The West Wind stories an animate interrelationship between trees, clouds, the
rock, the lake, lichens, the wind, even the fire, which we saw Jackson notice encircling Thomson’s trees. In this vein, I would suggest that it is no coincidence that Thomson’s most famous paintings, The West Wind and The Jack Pine (1916-17), both comprise the latter energetic red outline encompassing his trees. It seems to me that his use of this line considerably extends the stylistic use of the outline in Art Nouveau design, which Thomson would have been familiar with. Above-mentioned comments like the one by Jackson seem to corroborate this. Rather, Thomson’s red outlines seem to share much more in common with the energetic, life-giving, and relationship-building form lines encircling the x-rayed entities of a future Norval Morrisseau painting. And this is not to say that Morrisseau is directly influenced by Thomson here. Rather, perhaps both Morrisseau and Thomson are able to sink into and express such an aesthetic
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development in their art because they are both tapped into the same indigenously oriented story of holism, reciprocity, and interrelationship here, albeit according to different carnal immersions within it.
Human subjectivity, finally, is not completely absent from The West Wind either.
The storyworking process always necessarily involves an active viewer. The anthropomorphic tree, in such a dialogical and active relationship, does far more than evoke stasis and propriety. It performatively engages viewers in a balanced and emergent alliance that is more akin to an Indigenous way of knowing and being with the land. While there could never respectfully yet be at the time, as Cree art historian Richard Hill laments, “Thunderbirds in the skies…[or] powerful spirits of the underworld down in the depths of the lakes” of Thomson’s paintings, there are indeed gestures toward “fragile human beings in the middle [the viewers], tending their relationships with these great forces.”423 His viewers can now—dislodged from their proscribed Eurocentric and Lockeian roles vis à vis land use and ownership—be actively “in the middle” of an earth narrative in a different kind of way. Taking humans out of his landscape challenges the paintings’ Eurocentric status as a representation, and begins to envision matter as not merely created but creative; “not a passive blend of chance happenings and mechanically determined events, but an unfolding creativity ever coming into being, ever bringing itself forth.”424 Such performativity further indicates the extent to which the story Thomson was and is telling may be much more of an indigenously oriented story than many have realized.
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The land as backdrop is not just passively mirrored back to viewers as a useless
place needing to be worked and owned by a more meaningful social narrative. It is an animate and ever regenerating source of itself, not beholden to Eurocentric ideas of land use and ownership alone, nor to human subjectivity, even though clearly interrelated with them nevertheless. Thomson’s paintings could invoke Eurocentric ideas of land use, as “landscape fit for industrialization,” if particular viewers’ carnal immersions in the stories guided them there.425 But being free from the conventional human actions in European landscapes, and therefore unlike them on a significant level, Thomson’s and the Group’s stories also make it possible to begin tending “relationships with these great forces.” One is not limited to experiencing the land, in other words, through the clatter of cattle drives, haymakers, chainsaws, pickaxes, railroads, and saw mills alone. One is invited into the mysterious depths of a place long enough to actually allow it to breathe.
Indeed, this is one way The West Wind helps to restory the local earth. Not in the
colonialist sense that means eradicating any other story but Thomson’s, or restorying the land with someone else’s (Aboriginal peoples’) stories from the top-down. Rather, The West Wind helps restory the local earth in the sense that it helps allow the local earth to be a storied place once again to begin with—restoried in that stories here are allowed to unfurl, breathe. Thomson and the Group may not have been able to see their art going in such an open direction, but people like Brown, Barbeau, and Scott could certainly feel the outcomes resulting from it doing so, which is why they had to
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continually fight and change their tactics over and over again to curb it. Thomson’s painting can invite viewers into a commitment to particular responsibilities within the ongoing process of aliveness carnally experienced as cohabitants here. One such responsibility could be the act of spending more time listening, paying attention to the myriad other voices cohabiting the more-than-human world, and to the wild and shifting more-than-human conversation one is always nested within. Such an act would help to reinvest the earthly cosmos with its own voice(s). Doing so, in turn, could help further free the human impulse to participate with the more-than-human otherness in a way that can reawaken the instinctive and dynamic reciprocity between our senses and the animate earth.
The mainstream story of art in Canada, in covering this indigenously oriented
story up again and again, has made it exceedingly difficult for people to imagine their lives from within it, no matter how frequently—consciously or not—our artists have been engaging us from precisely this place. As a result, commitments have been broken, and restitution and Indigenous resurgence has often been slow and painful, though never halted. Commitment is a performative act, and one often animated and instigated through stories, just as in a healing session with the late Rose Auger, or with many other Elders today. Restitution can reside deeply in orality—storytelling culture—where a simple “please” or “thank you” to a tree could be a good start. From within such an exchange, including that between the viewer and The West Wind, everything begins to have its own dynamism, pulse, and agency, even a tree and a painting. The surrounding
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world is imagined as, then becomes experienced, “less as a collection of objects than as a community of active agents.” Here “every human community would seem to be nested within a wider, more-than-human community,” just like it was for Thornton.426
Borduas: Beyond the Group and Landscape from the Ground Up For the first time on a systematic level in the Western world, Thomson’s and the Group’s landscapes emerged without people or human trace—Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal—in them. A critical European landscape convention and proscribed, Eurocentric way of relating to the land had been backed off from—a decolonizing movement. This could happen in Canada not because it is unique, but because, here (as in other places, as Bolt has demonstrated in Australia), one is carnally immersed in a larger story already outside a Eurocentric paradigm. Through the storyworking process, this performative art unfolded in the life experience stories of certain viewers as proof of an “emptying” of the land to control it; of the dying or disappearance from the world of the surrounding Aboriginal peoples; or as a consciously dismissive act towards Aboriginal peoples and ways of knowing specifically. This, in turn, echoed in myriad forms of cultural genocide and the imposition of a Eurocentric form of nationalism and economy over the country from the top down. We are still effected everyday by this story.
In other life experience stories the art of Thomson and the Group unfolded as a
regenerative invitation, beckoning and gesturing towards people from within a more storied relationship with the more-than-human world from the ground up. The animate
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earth could be glimpsed as having its own voice; one ever commingling with human subjectivity and social narrative (the viewer), but not necessarily dominated or organized by it. In such an emergent and creative place of interrelationship, Eurocentric ideas about land use, nationalism, and ownership are necessarily de-centred. Hill’s Thunderbirds, Yuxweluptun’s crying suns, Houle’s premises for self-rule are not so much erased, for they were not a part of European landscape conventions in the first place. Rather, they are given room to rise in the forests and mountains and from out of the animate earth now that the European peoples and proscribed ways of relating to the land (as had emerged in European landscape painting there), were weakened.
Furthermore, this occurs in Thomson and the Group’s art (as it did in O’Brien’s in
another articulation), in a way that does not require them to be disrespectfully appropriated, de-contextualized, or controlled. The ever-unfolding indigenously oriented story is, paradoxically, allowed to breathe in a quasi-Eurocentric landscape here, as out on the land, for anyone who is simply willing to pay attention and let the animate earth and its myriad voices begin to speak. From a storied approach, the Group’s landscapes, then, are not just the more concerted beginnings of Canadian nationalism. They are also the beginnings, according to a non-Aboriginal carnal immersion, of what Alfred has referred to as the construction of “an alternative vision [for Canada] that can offer release from the interminable war that has poisoned relations and psyches on both sides of the divide between Onkwehonwe and Settlers.”427 This is the case because, in order for this alternative vision to be realized, “Settlers will need to grow beyond their
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cultural arrogance and learn to be pluralist in their worldviews.” By beginning to take all people and remnants of Eurocentric ways of relating to the land out of their otherwise wholly Eurocentric landscapes, the Group’s art gestures toward their own embodied sinking into the already unfolding indigenously oriented story encompassing them here. They actually help open the door for the emergence of other, more pluralist worldviews to occur with/in the landscape.
While this may only seem unintentional to the disembodied intellect, it is obvious
to our animal bodies. As Emily Carr’s subsequent articulation of the story (or Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s and many others’), also begins to demonstrate, bodies are already paying attention to the power of the west wind. They are already paying attention to the unconditional love of the sun for mother earth. They are already paying attention to the enveloping roundness rooted by the red cedar, or breathing through the dancing sunlight— neither no less alive than ourselves. They are also already paying attention to the injustices sustained against Aboriginal peoples through the inherited privileges of colonialism in our more-than-human world. These are not just disembodied “ideas.” As Jensen has reminded us, “The metamorphosis of naturally occurring materials into carefully crafted objects is at the centre of every artwork; it speaks to our human capacity for transforming the world.”428 This is part and parcel of being human. As humans are “part of functioning ecosystems,” which are always generating and regenerating in “a continuous natural process of disintegration and renewal,”429 the presences and absences in the art of Thomson and the Group are just as much a part
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of this dynamic aliveness unfurling from the ground up. We are also affected everyday by this story of resurgence, but it is largely stifled, neglected, or undermined.
Moving beyond the Group, it is generally assumed that their periodic breaks
towards landscapes with people, industry, or cities, are more like anomalies than exhibiting consistency with their mainly “wildercentric” ideological stance. Or that their later, more permanent break towards abstraction, especially as regards Harris, was a weakening of this earlier stance.430 Or that the inclusion into the Group of predominantly figure artists, like Varley or Holgate, or those with comparatively individualistic styles, like Fitzgerald, was somewhat strained or confused.431 Or that the break from the Group’s landscape style in the Canadian artworld more generally—by artists such as Morrice, Lyman, Borduas, Paraskeva Clark, Jock MacDonald, or Bertram Brooker—is evidence of a “counter-tradition” to the Group’s art, at times a complete reversal of everything it relays, and an embracing of more international styles and ideas.432 Indeed, there is a truth in it all, but it almost inevitably leads as well to an emphasis on anthropocentric or social constructionist explanations alone. These, again, necessarily leave out a significant part of the story. Even the events of these seeming breaks or ruptures, from a storied approach, are part and parcel of the indigenously oriented story ever-unfurling performatively from the ground up here.
The “breaks” are more like living, breathing shifts, nodes, or rhythms of the same
story. The shifts occur because entities participate in the world—its permeating dreams, awareness, and imagination—from “[their] own angle and orientation, according to the
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proclivities of [their] own flesh.”433 Yet, it is also partly the same story rhythmically unfurling through these shifts because “It remains the same Earth whose life-giving breath we all inhabit, the very same mystery that we each experience from our own place within its depths.”434 Artists in particular can be exceedingly aware of just how much any interior quality to our mind or imagination is not derived from the fact that it is located somehow within us, but from a felt sense that we are located within it. As Bringhurst and Abram have both demonstrated in different ways, “The story that you tell and are is you but not your own”; the world is made of story, filled with imagination, but not because it is “our imagination, but rather the world’s imagination, in which our own actions are participant.”435 It is also for this reason that, in regard to viewers, as Paskow demonstrates:
no series of abstract statements could ever be a substitute for the proper experience of [what to one is] a great painting. The putative structures or essences signified by the abstractions may be accurate and astute, but the words themselves or the concepts that come to mind are not our sensuous experiences themselves...a currently and fully experienced…painting becomes for me an important aspect of the way I feel the world right now...an important dimension of who I am right now...linked to all sorts of other concerns ultimately tied to the way in which I am oriented to existence itself.436
Viewers, indeed, have particular imaginations, preferences, tastes, thoughts, and experiences, but these are also always nested within, animated by, the larger story ever-surrounding them. These differences in individual viewers are what organize their particular carnal immersions within the larger story—making them each a little different from the next—and tie them each to existence itself right now in a different way. Such is
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why a painting can grab an “individual,” and not another, or grab someone in a different way than their neighbour. It is also why experiencing a painting, however, can also feel so tied to the way in which an individual viewer belongs to the world, and is “oriented to existence itself.”
Abstraction, in connection with “a militant call for figurative painting” to assault
“the hegemony of the Group,” comprised the impetus for the next major shift in the mainstream story of art in Canada. It is often associated with the city; transcendentalist and essentialist quests; urban and international cosmopolitanism; the formal components of art; humanism or people in and of themselves; or their mind and emotions, instead of with the earth, people’s natural surroundings, or a sense of nationalism in Canada.437 Lyman’s famous line that “The real Canadian scene is in the consciousness of Canadian painters, whatever the object of their thought,” encapsulates the ideological movement embodied by the shift.438 From the 1930s and 1940s, the international linkages with, and technical influences from Europe and EuroAmerica—which were always present though largely concealed—started to become more openly sanctioned and, in many cases, embraced. As artist and art historian Gary Michael Dault has stated, artists became more interested in a “search for personal meaning,” and so were drawn to the possibilities inherent in an art style that seemed to allow for “more vitality and freedom in painting than the mere streamlining of nature could provide.” As such, their quest is predominantly seen by art historians as “fueled to
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a large extent by...the European surrealists...and the American abstract expressionists,” and less by a relationship with the land beneath their feet.439
In this final section, however, I want to explore how even abstraction is not only
“born from the land,” like landscape art, but another rhythmic articulation of the already unfurling indigenously oriented story here, according to the carnal immersions of artists and viewers within it. Furthermore, this larger story is not merely at the margins of a seemingly dominant and top-down influence from Europe or Euro-America. It is everywhere pressing, gesturing, insinuating, enveloping, and articulating its place-based pulse, mysterious depths, and inescapable pluralism like the myriad lichens breathing life into the cracks and crevices of the ever expanding and contracting limestone cliffs in the Rockies. Within this dynamic and living story, ideological innovations originating elsewhere—including surrealism and abstract expressionism—are participating and composing a part, but also always being moulded and slowly eroded from the ground up. I will begin by exploring and unlearning some of the more conventional approaches to some abstraction by art historians. I will then restory abstraction from the ground up by storyworking with some art by Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960).
☈⊕♁ One of Borduas’s most important and influential contributions, for Nasgaard, if I read him correctly, is the way his work both heralds modernism into Canada, and anticipates the adaptation and importance of some of its most salient features for abstract artists in
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Canada even today. The way his work does this is twofold. First, it was hugely influential in his own time while being participant in relevant European and Euro-American modernist concerns, conversations, and directions. Second, it was ever interested in the relevance of these to lived experience in Canada. In Nasgaard’s words, Borduas’s art “stands as an autonomous object for aesthetic contemplation, but [he] also pushed his painting into the real world of literal events and made it subject to the vagaries of place and time.”440 In this way, Borduas straddles the beginning and current variations of abstraction in Canada. On one hand, his surrealist automatism helped instigate the quest for, in art historian Jessica Bradley’s words, “the transcendent purity and autonomy of the art object associated with modernist abstraction.” On the other hand, it also disrupted commitments to these goals by leaving open the door (stepped through by many abstractionists today), to their “[inescapable immersion] in the fabric of the social world.”441 The latter was the element the Plasticiens largely hoped to eradicate in their art a decade after Borduas’s Automatistes, in their own carnal immersion within the larger story encompassing them.442
This important characteristic in Borduas’s stories is significant because the “fabric
of the social world,” as I have been exploring, is always encompassed by the surging natural world and its indigenously oriented story. Social systems—individual and communal, internally and externally—are necessarily and inextricably linked to the ecological systems already animating them and allowing them to be. Yet, this fundamental linkage, as we have already seen, is often undermined, if not outright
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denied, by commentators on abstract art; both artists and art historians alike, as Lyman’s emphasis on individual consciousness suggests. On one level, this makes my task seem quite challenging, for abstraction in large part does claim to be about emphasizing personal expression or the aesthetic object over and above the observable world and external natural forms. This is true whether artists have emphasized the object in and of itself, such as in abstraction movements associated with Montreal, or as an object of compelling figuration or lyricism, such in abstractions associated with Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver. It is also true when abstractionists have emphasized the aesthetic object in order to dematerialize it completely, such as in the movement as largely associated with Halifax. Even where possible exceptions come up, where abstraction and representation are more matters of degree along a continuum— as evidenced by much Vancouver abstraction in the 1950s, and certain individual artists such as Marion Nicoll, Gordon Smith, and Gershon Iskowitz—it is still predominantly self-expression, or the autonomous art object alone being privileged when compared with the subject matter of landscape art.
However, my task is also more simple than it might seem. On the surface, events
like Lyman’s battle about the prominence of landscape in Canada with A.Y. Jackson, or Dault’s synopsis of abstract art mentioned above, do seem to suggest an impetus for abstraction completely opposed to the wild contingency of humans on the more-thanhuman world. Yet, unlike landscape art, abstract art often exhibits a more overt concern for materiality; an unmediated experiential encounter with indescribable components of
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life and the depths of its mystery; embodied experience itself; or “the intelligence of the senses.”443 As a result, it is also, paradoxically perhaps, much more deeply linked to the core of my story here in some important ways. The above characteristics of abstract art, in other words, are manifestations of how abstraction itself may be carnally immersed in the larger indigenously oriented story already encompassing it here. In this vein, abstraction may not be an expression of artists’ ideological stances alone, causing artists to paint a certain way from the inside out. It will be helpful to elaborate on this a little further.
The mainstream story of art in Canada can often emphasize the aesthetic role of
ideological stances, especially with regard to abstract art, through its artist biographies, origins, and explanations. The privilege given to Clement Greenberg’s hugely influential theories on Post-Painterly Abstraction within the stories of the Regina Five, the course of prairie abstraction in general, or in the work of Jack Bush, are prime examples of this. I suggest that abstract artists, however, are also thinking and painting in a particular way because of how the encompassing indigenously oriented story is being articulated through them as carnally immersed human beings here. It is this larger story always encompassing and exceeding artists here, in other words, that makes elements of contributions by, say, Greenberg, Breton, Kandinsky, or Mondrian feel so relevant to aspects of their lives and art in the first place. The salient point to remember being not only that there were imported contributions participating in artists lives here, but that now these contributions have also sunken into, and are being animated by, the larger
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place-based story, and its participants, emerging together in a different place. Without this key relationship intact in our understanding of art in Canada, our written art histories about abstraction can also become free “to shrink the elemental power of a place.”444 They and the art they story become effectively divorced from the living places that once carried and embodied them, whether Paris, New York, Montreal, the Rocky Mountains, or Lake Simcoe. As such, abstract art all starts to seem like it too has “an exclusively human provenance,”445 whether from Greenberg, Breton, or Borduas and other artists themselves.
To illustrate, let us revisit an earlier essay, which will also help inform our
storywork with Borduas’s abstractions below. In his 1983 essay “A Sense of Place,” artist and art historian Terrence Heath began by acknowledging the oft-mentioned shift in the story of art in Canada away from the dominant landscape representation of the Group, and towards the non-representationalism of Borduas’s Automatistes, the Plasticiens, Painters Eleven, and the Regina Five. He recognizes that the Group’s ideological stance softened, expanded, and altered with the times, but then argues that:
despite all the changes, despite growing internationalism and sophistication,...for surprisingly many people, [Canada] remained tied to a sense of place. And for many artists, that sense of place remains tied to the land, whether...construed as something accessible to the eye...as process, as personal space or communally shared territory, as…objectively observed or...emotional attachment.446
For Heath, place, in the work of many artists, “persisted as an animating idea” even if it assumed “a less obvious role in the artist’s total vision.” It may not have been overtly “represented,” and may only be hinted at through a camera lens, or from an aerial view
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above. But, nevertheless, abstract painters, to Heath, seemed to cling to the “Canadian landscape tradition even while adopting...nonrepresentational art.”447 He supports his argument with many examples of artworks by artists ranging from Jack Humphrey on the east coast; Jacques de Tonnancour, Paterson Ewen, and Gordon Rayner in central Canada; Otto Rogers on the prairies; and Takao Tanabe on the west coast. His argument also moves beyond abstract modernists to encompass sculptors (Richard Prince); folk realists or abstract realists (Tim Zuck, E.J. Hughes, David Thauberger); high realists (Christopher Pratt, Jack Chambers); and mythopoeic or magic realists (Ivan Eyre, Alex Colville, Jean-Paul Lemieux).
Heath also discusses Aboriginal art—traditional and contemporary—equally in
his essay (although it is still tinged with some colonialist prejudices). Whereas Burnett and Schiff, in the same year as Heath’s essay, exclude Aboriginal art from their entire book on contemporary art in Canada (choosing a “Canadian isolated culture” framework), Heath acknowledges that “the two traditions [Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal] come together in this country.” As such, “their exchanges have been rich and varied... [and] changes have ensued in both traditions.”448 He observes that there are “many bridges by which the non-native artist is able to find reverberations of his own sensibilities in the art of [the] Indian and Inuit….[for] their work often expresses place very strongly.”449 At this point, Heath’s argument undergoes a shift. He states that while artists in Canada have almost always been animated by a sense of place, no matter their style, technique, or aesthetic ideologies, it is not always by way of what he calls
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“depiction” (not to be confused with mimetic representation; Borduas was largely a “depictor”). Rather, it can also be by way of what he terms “mediation,” where the land is rendered more “as another subject for whom the artist ‘speaks.’” This art is characterized by an animism and holism that recognizes “the world is subject as the artist is subject,” and the interconnectedness of all things, including the art object, the artist, the viewer as participant, and the more-than-human world.450 Indeed, such synergy is almost exactly that discussed by Archibald in regard to Indigenous storywork. Heath concludes his essay by demonstrating that the “attitude of mediation has become a major artistic stance in many contemporary aesthetic expressions,” and again supports his position with examples. He begins with mention of Emily Carr, and then moves through works—all exhibiting varying degrees of, and emphases in “mediation”— by artists such as Jack Shadbolt, Jack Butler, Irene Whittome, Tim Whiten, Richard Prince, Walter Redinger, Bill Vazan, Liz Magor, Bill Reid, and Karoo Ashevak.
Needless to say, Heath gestures in 1983 towards something close to what I am
exploring here. But with his adherence to the disciplinary boundary lines of art history, the revolutionary and cross-cultural potential of his argument, I suggest, was weakened. Heath still approached “place” as primarily something that can be glimpsed from outside of it. In regard to art, sense of place was still just a “stance,” an “idea,” almost purely an intellectual thing that artists put into art, as though it and art could only ever have an exclusively human provenance. While the idea is “animate” for Heath, there was very little, if any, indication throughout his essay that places are animate; that the land itself
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has agency. Even when talking about the “mediation” tradition, it is the artist that necessarily “speaks” for the land, or to it, but never with it. Because of the essay’s reinforcement of the disembodied intellect, whose primary vehicle is necessarily the written word, the living and rhythmic power of what Heath observes occurring in the Canadian artworld—the artists’ stories, the story of art in Canada—was rendered and allowed to remain impotent. It is no surprise that other critics and commentators—never fully challenged to listen from outside of their own conventionally trained intellects— could be largely dismissive of his essay. For writer and historian, Joel H. Kaplan, Heath toys so much “semantically with definitions [that] they cease to distinguish.”451 But in saying this, Kaplan too is already erroneously operating from within the assumption that the wisdom being shared about place and art is Heath’s alone. Tending only to Heath’s written words as such, place itself can hardly be much more than just an abstracted “definition,” through which art need be “distinguished,” or finalized, or explained.
From a storied approach, Heath’s essay reminds us that artists in Canada, as
human beings, are all always working and living within a much larger, place-based, indigenously oriented story. Within this unfurling story their thoughts, words, and actions are participant. It may only seem like the “idea” of place animates them, but the “idea” is only there because it is within the place, infused by it—the encompassing mind and imagination of the surging and ever emergent more-than-human world. It is not merely inside the artist’s mind alone. Cross-culturally, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal art expresses place not because both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artists just happen to
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stumble upon the same idea, but because it is the same place that is expressing, animating them. Furthermore, this is not to say that there is only one way to interpret or be in a place. It unfurls within lives according to the varying degrees and hues of carnal immersion within it. There are reverberations of similar place-based sensibilities occurring cross-culturally because those are the earth’s, the place’s. They are sensibilities reverberating through every human being here from the ground up, whether one is conscious of them or not.
Although Heath acknowledges the living presence of Aboriginal art alongside
non-Aboriginal art, he himself is unable to step into the cross-cultural fullness of his own awarenesses. It is significant to point out that while non-Aboriginal artists in Heath’s story embody both the “depiction” and “mediation” traditions, Aboriginal artists all fall predominantly within the “mediation” tradition alone. Furthermore, the trend in nonAboriginal art seems, for Heath, to be moving from “depiction” to “mediation,” even when Aboriginal symbols and designs are not present within their art, such as in Don Proch’s masks; Liz Magor’s Four Boys and a Girl (1979), or George Trakas’s landscape installations. Far from being a mere shift in an ideological stance, this demonstrates the extent to which it is non-Aboriginal artists, artworks, and ideologies that are already within, encompassed, and exceeded by an indigenously oriented story unfurling from the ground up here, and not the other way around.
Aboriginal artists are fully aware that they are always within this story; that their
art and people have been rhythmically unfolding with it for millennia; shifting, innovating,
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and breathing with it according to their particular carnal immersions. This is one reason why increasing numbers of Aboriginal commentators have been long proclaiming that there has been no break between “traditional” and “contemporary” Aboriginal art.452 Even when it may look like Aboriginal art is falling more under the influence of a Eurocentric (art)world, and it partly is too, it is more perceptually accurate to say that it is happening the other way around: that non-Aboriginal art is being increasingly stimulated and provoked by a sensuous, storied, indigenous world. In other words, nonAboriginal art is dynamically shifting according to the living pace and rhythm of a morethan-human world from the ground up. And this process is not just about power, about whose framing is first. It is about rebalancing social and ecological systems within a place, and cultivating the fertile life along these systems’ edges, in order to promote resilience and aliveness, not weaken or destroy it.
In this vein, the traditional-modern break, as Heath’s argument implies, is actually
occurring in Euro-Canadian art, practices, and ways of knowing, not in Aboriginal art, as has been so often assumed and storied in the mainstream story of art. This indicates the extent to which Eurocentric practices and ideologies may also be tenuous or unhelpful here. Such is inevitable as artists—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, representational and non-representational—continue to deepen their sensuous relationships with the more-than-human world, sink into it, grow from being “depictors” into “mediators,” and increasingly participate with the larger indigenously oriented story always encompassing and animating them here.
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Returning to Borduas, the story of his art is generally that of a progression from
apprentice church painter, to Cubo-Surrealism, to Surrealist-Abstract Expressionism, to Abstract Expressionism. His art is generally seen as moving increasingly away from representationalism, and towards a more pure modernist abstraction, where foreground and background became ever more tightly intermeshed, and any “residual references to the naturalistic world have been eliminated.”453 For commentators, this has demonstrated an increasing “power through personal interpretations beyond influences from outside”; a growing “commitment to the realization of a fully free and creative life”; and its related search for “unlimited space,” “ideal depth,” or “more clear-cut visibility.” In other words, the self-projection, hence realization, of a transcendent unity.454 There is truth in all of this, but it is only part of the story. These truths anthropocentrically emphasize and privilege Borduas’s journey of “probing self-explorations,” from which he received insight at key points along the way. First from Ozias Leduc; then the imported Surrealist writings of André Breton; then the group communication advanced by Fernand Leduc (manifesting in the formation and manifesto—Refus Global—of the Automatistes); then the art of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Piet Mondrian in New York and Paris.
What is left out here is the extent to which all of the above reverberate through
Borduas’s life and art in the first place from the ground up, according to his carnal immersion in the more-than-human world. Without the agency of this larger story already encompassing him, the insights and stories of the above people and events—
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themselves never having an exclusively human provenance either—would not have resonated nearly as much for Borduas’s own life to begin with. The progression that Borduas’s art generally takes within the mainstream story of art in Canada is itself only possible because of the more place-based one animating it from the ground up. Although I would not choose the same terminology as that proposed by Heath, it might be said that the more emergent progression I am referring to unfurls more like a performative spiralling between “depiction” and “mediation.” Borduas’s art, on one hand, may look like a rising progression towards Abstract Expressionism through religious figure painting, Cubism, and Surrealism. On the other hand, these are all rhythmic articulations of his particular carnal immersion and participation within—a deepening into—the ever unfurling indigenously oriented and place-based story that is already encompassing him here. It will now be helpful to explore this further with two of his major stories that emerged from his being in ongoing concert with the larger story enfolding him. First, the writing of the hugely influential Refus Global (1947-48). Second, the seeming culmination of his artistic vision in his abstract expressionist “black-andwhites” (1956-58).
☈⊕♁ The Refus Global was first proposed as early as 1945 by Fernand Leduc a couple of years after a collection of artists started gathering at Borduas’s home or studio. At the time, they were all “under the spell of Surrealism” and Borduas’s charisma and artistic
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vision.455 The gatherings—unlike those earlier in the Toronto Arts Students’ League (1886), the Canadian Art Club (1907), and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (1908), which led to the formation of the Group of Seven—did not only include painters, but also dancers, poets, choreographers, and critics. Leduc also proposed that these same artists officially band together into a group. Their first exhibition occurred in 1946, and they gained their name, the Automatistes, after a review of their second exhibition the following year. Borduas, the senior of the group, became more than just their visionary heart around which they all gathered and circulated, but had been named their leader as well. Leduc’s idea for their own manifesto gained significant momentum after Breton published his Surrealist manifesto, Rupture inaugurale (1947), in Paris. This latter manifesto was signed by one Automatiste, Jean-Paul Riopelle, but Riopelle steered others in their group away from following suit, and reignited Leduc’s idea of writing their own. Borduas had always had a mixture of admiration and distrust for Breton and the Parisian Surrealist movement. He declined all of Breton’s invitations throughout the 1940s to exhibit with his Surrealists in Paris. One important reason for this was Borduas’s fear that the larger Parisian movement would subsume his smaller Québécois one. In another turning of the spiral—or articulation of the same story unfurling through O’Brien, then Thomson and the Group, and so on—Borduas sensed that his place “demanded an approach quite different from that faced by European artists.”456
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Borduas started composing the Refus Global in late 1947, circulated it to the
others for feedback, then reworked it into a final draft. The whole group contributed money for its publication and four hundred copies were printed and sold in 1948. In Nasgaard’s words:
From its very first sentence, Refus Global is a passionate attack on all the
repressive social, political, historical and religious forces that had shaped the Quebecois people…[but] Special vehemence is reserved for the decadence and putrefaction of the Catholic church.457
As is well known, the publication caused a public furor and conservative authorities, especially the Catholic Church, were emphatic in their condemnation.458 Reid has called the manifesto “perhaps the single most important social document in Quebec history and the most important aesthetic statement a Canadian has ever made.”459 Although not a painting, the Refus has been frequently used by commentators to “explain” Borduas’s art.460 The two are intricately connected because, for Borduas and his followers, as Reid has stated, “the creative act could be realized to its fullest potential only in a liberated individual; therefore politics, personal security, and joyful fulfilment were essential concerns of the artist.”461
To mention just one critical link between the manifesto and the art, the Refus
extends Borduas’s Surrealist-inspired art technique of automatic painting into a social dimension. Automatic painting, from which the group’s name was derived, was a way of attempting to shut off the persistent invasiveness and dominance of the intellect in the creative process by painting without any preconceived ideas. Paintings were not to
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begin “with a motif in front of the eye or in the mind’s eye but grew, while being painted, from letting the touches of paint build up their own inherent formal relations and pictorial structure.”462 In describing his process to Maurice Gagnon, Borduas stated that:
Once the first line is drawn...a whole series of thoughts…proceed automatically. When I use the word ‘thoughts’ I mean painterly thoughts: thoughts having to do with movement, rhythm, volume and light, not literary ideas...The general idea which may be derived from a painting is a consequence of the unity of conditions under which the painting is made, and those conditions are never chosen, but accepted. Once the work is finished, the general idea is of only secondary importance. The essential beauty of a work of art is made up of nothing but its song...It follows that the work of art must be accomplished in a constant state of becoming so that instinct, from which the song flows, may express itself continuously as the work is being executed. The painter’s song is a vibration imprinted on matter by human sensibility. Through it, matter is made to live. Therein lies the source of all mystery in a work of art: that inert matter can be brought to life.463
Borduas here tellingly parallels Aboriginal voices like those of, to name only two, Jensen and Ashevak quoted above. He shifts the emphasis in the creation process from preconceived intellectual ideas, to the role of the embodied senses in ongoing participation with other material bodies. This is how he also begins to distinguish and distance himself and the Automatistes from the contemporary Surrealist movement as it had evolved in Europe. His model for spiritual and social survival in Québec was, as Nasgaard has suggested, “in effect the automatist artistic act”; freeing oneself from the dominance of rational intention, and opening up to the “consequence of magic processes” and the mystery of “unpredictable material relations.”464 In a letter to Leduc while the Refus was being drafted, Borduas intimated what was to become the core of his manifesto’s story:
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As long as one Christian value remains, decadence will continue, come what may. The terrible intentional Christian value system lives on in Communism, in Surrealism. As long as there is this authoritarian emphasis, decline will continue, willy-nilly...Intention must be pushed into the background, along with reason. Make way for the intelligence of the senses.465
He begins his contribution to the Refus with a description of the country that formed him: a “colony found…enclosed by the sheer walls of fear,’” where the Church and Christianity from Europe ingrained “every means possible to organize a monopolistic reign of selective memory, static reason, paralyzing intention.” He then observes, however, that “pearly drops oozed through the walls…[and] Slowly the breach grew wider.” Experiences and encounters with others—particularly artists and revolutionaries —changed “The bounds of our dreams…forever,” and then Borduas lays out his warrior’s call:466
We must break with the conventions of society once and for all, and reject its utilitarian spirit. We must refuse to function knowingly at less than our physical and mental potential; refuse to close our eyes to vice and fraud perpetrated in the name of knowledge or favours or due respect…We refuse to keep silent. Do what you want with us, but you must hear us out…Make way for magic! Make way for objective mysteries! Make way for love! Make way for necessities!467
Commentators (sometimes Borduas himself), have tended to discuss these
ideas, and hence Borduas’s related art, as though they are Borduas’s—inside his head; inside his writing; inside his art. These are treated as solitary and individual human acts in the vein of European modernism from the top down, rendering his words and art primarily the result of a highly personal and one-way self-projection onto paper or canvas. While they are him, however, they are not his own, nor of exclusively human
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provenance. As we have seen, this undermines the earthly sentience in which his sensitive body is situated, and “the enigmatic experience toward which [his] words point.”468 Because Borduas’s imagination is first provoked and infused by the earthly place he dwells, and the wider terrain wherein he circulates, his words and automatist artistic acts are, rather, indigenously oriented at root, not primarily Surrealist or Abstract Expressionist ones. These are simply other participants in his life experience story according to his particular carnal immersion in a diverse, more-than-human world unfurling around him.
When focusing mainly on these Eurocentric participants in his story alone (as in
our mainstream story of art in Canada), in other words, one is narrowly trying to “explain” the core of Borduas’s stories with recourse only to knowledge imposed from elsewhere and derived from our experiences as colonized people. By my listening, this is precisely what Borduas is also speaking outside of, or even saying not to do. It is the indigenous orientation of his life as a human being here that makes the abstracted Surrealism of Breton feel relevant to his life, but ultimately also so incommensurate with it and his Québec situation, in the first place. From a storied approach, I suggest, then, that we find the core of Borduas’s Refus and automatic painting—his anti-catholic, place-based love of his Québec home—more in line with, or gesturing towards, even if only metaphorically, not abstracted Eurocentric ideologies and art movements alone, but also the similarly place-based Indigenous art and ways of knowing that they are always already nested within here.
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Borduas was born in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, on the same side of the St. Lawrence
River from Montreal, and just a few dozen kilometres away from Kahnawake, the homeland of Mohawk scholar and educator Taiaiake Alfred. I find the similarities and differences between these two important figures on, what Alfred refers to as, “the warrior’s path” much more striking, telling, and meaningful than the continual projection of Borduas’s path as primarily and Eurocentrically Surrealist or Abstract Expressionist. The latter projections undermine the full power of Borduas’s stories for aliveness here. They undermine the extent to which Borduas’s art and writing—in their attack on central colonialist institutions and political hierarchies—are also the beginnings of, in Alfred’s words, a “‘strategy to break down the prejudice that exists in white communities’” when considered within the larger story always already encompassing him from the ground up.469 Although much commentary is given to Borduas’s revolutionary contribution to Canada in the mainstream story of art, it only does so, paradoxically, from a distance that ultimately reinforces the story and “authoritarian emphasis” that Borduas’s art stands to break down. Indeed, as Borduas alludes to in the Refus, little changes because whenever we think something has, what is actually replaced is “merely...one set of exploiting leaders with another.”470
In his passionate, powerful, and moving Wasáse (2009), Alfred points out that he
was not writing about change, but from within it. He is able to do this because the core of his story emerges “from inside Onkwehonwe [original peoples’] experiences and [reflects] the ideas, concepts, and languages that have developed over millennia in the
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spaces we [Onkwehonwe] live.”471 The level of Borduas’s own carnal immersion in these same spaces is obviously much different than Alfred’s, and does, of course, involve Eurocentric and colonialist threads. But this is why it is also so significant that Borduas can similarly glimpse, as he himself points out, cracks in it—its arrogance, and hypocrisy—at all. Furthermore, he can then accompany that with action that begins to question the legitimacy of structures inherent to the colonial state, and the imbalanced Eurocentric privileges of colonial society. In this regard, Borduas is one of those rare people in colonial society—often “writers, artists, [or some] spiritual people”—that Alfred identifies as “exhibiting signs of fully developed humanity,” even though he is not directly concerned with Aboriginal issues or decolonization specifically.472 Through his practice of automatist painting—embracing preconceptual, or performative participation in the world—Borduas’s indigenous soul has recovered a certain awareness for his commingling with other entities, and the extent to which his colonial society restricts, obscures, or denies his participation in the world (freely) as a human being from the ground up. Not coincidentally, it is Alfred’s Onkwehonwe “pathways of action and freedom” that seem to echo in, provide context for, or deepen our understanding of Borduas’s story here:
[One of the] big influences that have led to the pacification of our [Onkwehonwe] mentality...is Christianity. As long as we have the pacification from within the Christian religion, we always have this mentality of ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘forgive and forget,’ that ‘in the end there will be a reward for us somewhere in the white man’s heaven.’
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We must continue our struggle by engaging its corrupting power at all times and in all ways, as perpetual warriors. The only way to do this is in creative contention.473
I am not suggesting that Borduas’s and Alfred’s struggles are identical. On the
contrary, as we have seen, when one’s awareness about active participation in the world—whether through automatist art practice or otherwise—deepens and opens, it never reveals a homogenous or bland “oneness.” Rather, it reveals, in Alfred’s words, a “universal connection and at the same time [respect for] our differences...that must be regenerated in our lives and brought to meaning in non-indigenous cultures and societies.”474 From a storied approach, Borduas’s struggle and Alfred’s struggle share in some similarities because the former is always already nested within the latter. The same displaced and abstracted Christianity that has sometimes labelled “Onkwehonwe spiritual practices as ‘satanic,’” also, of course, denounced the Autonomistes’ Surrealism as “demonic” and unacceptable because, in the words of one Québecois Catholic intellectual, “‘we have faith in God, whose name does not once appear and whose Presence is nowhere alluded to in your manifesto.’”475 Alfred’s and Borduas’s creative contentions are effectively different articulations of the same indigenously oriented story unfurling from the ground up here. It is being told according to each their carnal immersions within it.
Taken even deeper, Borduas’s growing up and learning to paint in Mont-Saint-
Hilaire in particular is also significant. The way the indigenously oriented story ever unfurling in the ongoing emergence of the real there links Borduas’s body, and the body
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of his art, with the body of his home in a similar way to that mentioned by Alfred when acknowledging that “dances and songs…[and] ceremonies do more than connect us to a particular tradition or community, they connect us to the earth and to our true, natural existences as human beings.”476 This is also echoed by Simpson, who is aware that her consciousness is less inside her disembodied brain, but “as a storyteller and a writer [it] comes from the land because I am the land,” where her body and “beating heart [are seamlessly linked] to the beating river that flows through my city.”477 Alfred or Simpson’s carnal immersions are deeply wrapped and rooted by long-unfurling and regenerating presence within, in Simpson’s case for example, the Otonabee River through Nishnaabemowin, and many generations of ancestral connections. But as a human being in a more-than-human world, Borduas was never completely severed from the land encompassing him and exceeding him either, whether consciously aware of it or not.
Mont-Saint-Hilaire is named after Mount Saint-Hilaire, which commingles with
one of the last remnants of primeval Gulf of St. Lawrence lowland forest. The vitality of the mountain’s plutonic igneous rock skeleton also surges through its vein fillings comprised of some of the world’s most significant deposits of rare and semi-precious minerals and gemstones. Some of these include sodalite, and its important variety called hackmanite. Hackmanite exhibits one of the most fascinating processes in mineralogy: tenebrescence. This is an experientially magical process to the embodied senses whereby the stone changes colour when exposed to different levels of light, and
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can return to its original colour again when placed back in the dark. Sodalite in general is usually of a deep royal blue colour, mottled with patches or veins of white (like an abstract expressionist painting), and often exhibiting cracks running throughout due to its six directions of poor cleavage. It can also sometimes be white, light yellowish or greenish, or pink to violet in colour, and although opaque in a large quantity, is transparent to translucent in crystal form.478 In scale chemistry, the structure of supersodalite has also been observed to exhibit characteristics of formation governed by both “order”—regular kinetics of crystallization—and “disorder”—where proportions of its elemental structure are not dependent upon kinetic advance, but are thermodynamically governed. The relation of order and disorder to sodalite framework formation is important because geochemists have discovered that, as a result of this property, it is “a true intermediate compound between a classical aluminophosphate nanoporous material and a metal-organic framework.”479 The structure of sodalite interestingly combines “the virtues of microporous materials with those of dense structures,” sometimes exhibiting properties that make sodalite unique within each of these conventionally opposing mineralogical classification systems on their own.480
Eco-psychologists and psychologists have been increasingly reminding us about
something that Indigenous cultures have never forgotten: that “Crystals aren’t ‘New Age’—they’ve always been a part of our 4.6-billion-year-old planet.”481 Even if we do not consciously know why, humans are and have always been attracted to certain stones. They are paved into our streets, hang from our necks and ears, enhance our lines of
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communication, emotionally charge us, teach us, and protect us. After generations of our ancestors using them for exactly these same things, humans remain even today instinctively aware of how to use them. Clearly, an “instinctive expectation of animateness...was a very practical way to encounter our environment.”482 We have been tuned so thoroughly to the interior spontaneity of even stones (despite often being described as inanimate in our somewhat disconnected Western languages), that our embodied participation with them always already goes beyond mere naïve or sentimental frivolity.
On one hand, we are drawn to, and empathize with, the enigmatic presence of
stones; yet on the other, this would be very difficult, if not impossible, if we approached them only and entirely as inanimate or inert objects completely outside ourselves.483 Part of our embodied existence as human beings, no matter what our scientists or disembodied minds may say, can never perceive the situation in this way. Stones are the earth’s record keepers; our oldest embodied ancestors on this planet; forever reminding us of our own physicality, weight, and sensuous participation in the flesh of the world, especially if we are paying attention (like O’Brien’s hunters in Pinnacle Rock). Whether as house decorations, jewellery, tools, powdered beauty products, medicine, or integral parts in modern technologies, such as watches, radios, and medical instruments, stones and crystals have always been recognized on some level as both filled with energy and a conduit for it.484
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The mineralogical holism, versatility, order, and disorder embedded in the
structure of sodalite itself all unfurl in a particular kind of energetic rhythm resonating from its own interior spontaneity. This sodalitic rhythm and story would have been heightened and ongoing for Borduas, who learned to paint while nested within the voluminous depths at Mont-Saint-Hilaire. His indigenous soul encountered it through the practice of automatist painting because his body was always already carnally immersed in its mountainous echo while growing up and living around it. According to his particular carnal immersion in this ever-unfurling story, it can be said that as an artist, to paraphrase Simpson, his art came from the land because his body is seamlessly linked to the beating mountain whose emphatic presence flows through his city.
The energy or rhythm of sodalite is frequently experienced and articulated in
humans as a bridging effect between the head and the heart, the mind and the emotions, rational logic and the great mystery of the spiritual. The mental and emotional capacities in humans are so provoked by sodalite that it may seem in the beginning that bodies and the physical are irrelevant to, or relegated by, its story (as with abstract painting). But when taken deeper, crystal workers often notice that sodalite’s gift for transitioning between seemingly incommensurate poles like the head and the heart (as also with abstract painting), helps enhance that individual’s capacity, then, to move in the physical world; be a more full and complete part of it; and animate it with significant force. It “helps one to understand the nature of one’s self in relation to the universe.”485 As such, sodalite is widely recognized in the world of rocks, gems, and minerals as a
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communication stone. It is frequently associated with the reestablishing of individual and communal inner peace (order), because of its powerful ability to work through partnership and relationship disagreements, arguments, rifts, and mental confusion (disorder). Some attentive crystal workers have even recognized that sodalite has the unique capacity for combining “two experiences that one would not think normally go hand-in-hand”: an intense and jolting bolt of clarity, amidst a profound bed of calmness. Fears and doubts are diminished by this calm clarity; capacities for intuition, wisdom, and imagination are heightened; and confidence, direction, and efficiency are strengthened, so that sodalite is also often recognized as a stone for “mediators,” “leaders,” and “creative types.”486
In my view, all this is interwoven in the story unfurling through Borduas and his
art from the ground up. This is an integral part of the larger place-based story his art is already nested within, and which had been unfurling long before European Surrealism or Euro-American Abstract Expressionism alone can account for. As alluded to above, rather, this is what makes Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and automatism philosophically relevant to Borduas in the first place, not the other way around. When Leduc told Breton about Borduas in 1943, it was Borduas’s “sodalitic" qualities of charisma and strength of vision that he singled out as the impetus for him “[becoming] our master,” for it was like “The veils fell away, one by one, and truth appeared to us all in its limpid nakedness.” Borduas was the rock, the sodalite, animating the group of Automatistes. The place-based story of Mont-Saint-Hilaire, in short, also echoed
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through Borduas by helping him to unite one of the most disparate and creative groups of artists in Canada at the time. It echoed in his prowess for communicating deeply experienced truths through the Refus, which, of course, and unlike any other artist’s statement in Canada, tapped into a very different expression of holism, order, and disorder than that which is statically imposed by the imported Church, or other political or aesthetic hierarchies.
In turn, Borduas’s particular articulation of the place-based indigenously oriented
story animated him towards the sodalitic clarity and intuitiveness inherent in automatist art practice, and its embodied, pre-conceptual path to freedom, action, and inner peace. As was summoned up by the Refus, this necessarily involved individual, aesthetic, social-ecological, and socio-political rhythms. This place-based story is so strong that it continues to resonate in Québec today, working from the ground up through and echoing issues of group dynamics, diversity, and communication across sometimes seemingly incommensurate poles, and out to the rest of Canada and the world. Far from being incommensurate, however, this process is actually the growing into, or is a current articulation of the ongoing emergence of the real here (in Québec), according to the carnal immersions of bodies in place now. It is ultimately about a way of moving towards inner peace, just as has always been the story, as Alfred reminds us, of the Tekani Teioha:te, the Two Row Wampum, or the Four Directions teaching.487 This is exactly what resurgence looks like in an animate, living, breathing, more-than-human world— we are always in the middle of it, for everything is always changing in a living, breathing,
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animate more-than-human world. And, as artists often do, Borduas has animated, or breathed life into a version of this always already unfurling story through his art.
As art historian Louise Vigneault has demonstrated, even after Borduas left
Canada—on a self-imposed exile to New York (1953), then Paris (1955), as a result of the emergent order/disorder following the Refus—he continued to gradually incorporate an aesthetic vision always rooted in a relationship with the animate earth here, in Québec.488 For many art historians, Borduas’s vision culminated in his so-called “blackand-white” paintings done in Paris. His L’étoile noire (Fig. 19), is frequently mentioned as such an exemplar, if not his masterpiece. Not surprisingly, these emerged while he was feeling terribly homesick, for while in New York he was still able to return home every two or three months. In Paris he dreamed of Canada and wrote that “Never [had he] felt such loneliness.”489 L’étoile noire (as with other “black-and-whites”), is often seen primarily as evidence for Borduas’s increasing movement away from Surrealism and towards a more pure Abstract Expressionism. From a storied approach, it is also a deeper articulation of Borduas’s sinking into the indigenously oriented story that his soul longed for; the one which helped shape him through his immersion in the Mont-SaintHilaire/Montreal region of his home.
L’étoile noire is a predominantly black and white composition executed with a
palette knife. The larger surface area is comprised of white tinted rectangular spaces, the forms being only hinted at by texture created by the ridges of paint left after the knife
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stopped. These are interspersed with similar but fewer black and dark brown rectangles, which are greater in number and closer in proximity to each other nearer the bottom of the painting. They spread out like a mountain towards
the
top,
culminating in the one, lone, central black shape at the very top, which is reminiscent of the black FIG. 19. Paul-Émile Borduas, L’étoile noire, 1957. Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 129.5 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Montreal. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gérard Lortie.
star in the painting’s title. Some key characteristics of
L’étoile noire that are frequently associated with the top-down influence of Abstract Expressionism include: (1) the painting’s flattening or “new ‘all-over’ compositional format” (as opposed to Borduas’s previous figure-ground compositions); (2) its shift from an evocative poetic title, as in his previous work, to a simple description (sometimes his later work was titled by just the word “composition” and a number, or even a
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mathematical equation alone without any language at all); and (3) a focus on spatial ambiguity and visual tension created through nothing but the simplest form and structure within the art object itself.490 Part of Borduas’s story is, of course, the one conventionalized by our mainstream story of art in Canada: that he “has learned from the American Abstract Expressionists how to produce an image of ‘actuality’—an image that is not of anything but itself.”491 But the rest of the story is that “making” and “being” could only finally “become one, and everything,” to use Reid’s words, not primarily because of Abstract Expressionism, but because Borduas was also a human being, performatively telling a story in a more-than-human world.
The above characteristics are actually the various nodes and knots and flows of
Borduas’s shifting within the animate terrain with others (including Abstract Expressionists as participants), but which are all encompassed and informed by the indigenously oriented story within which Borduas is always nested. In this vein, Reid’s and Burnett’s description of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” is telling. They both emphasize that Borduas’s paintings reached a new level of dynamism and “life,” yet imply that this was largely the result of Borduas’s move to New York and Paris, and hence, the top-down influence from Euro-American sources, such as Pollock, Kline, Motherwell, and Mondrian. Indeed, these other Abstract Expressionist stories grabbed Borduas and spoke to him, but through the storyworking process these also take on a life of their own within Borduas’s life experience story because he was always already part of a much larger story animating him in this direction from the ground up. Borduas’s
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“black-and-whites” are so full of life not only because of Abstract Expressionism, New York, or Paris, but because Borduas himself is full of and participant in the life process, especially as rooted around Mont-Saint-Hilaire. To borrow from Cajete, it is the “vitality of the human experience and nature” that directly corresponds to an artwork’s “aliveness.”492 This is the larger story everything is always already a part of, no matter how much one may try to separate from it, or how much one’s culture may erroneously project that it is. Participation in the larger more-than-human story is also echoing everywhere in movements such as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism more generally: they were also animated and instigated in their own ways by Indigenous art and worldviews in the first place.
This meaningfully re-contextualizes, restories, Reid’s, Burnett’s, Nasgaard’s, and
others’ experiences with Borduas’s art within the ongoing emergence of the real here. Reid’s description of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” are brimming with references to their “translucent” surfaces like “marble”; the surfaces’ aliveness like “flesh”; L’étoile noire’s “living balance” between the whites and the blacks; its feeling of “total unity”; the paintings’ being so “full of interrelationships” that they are “a complex, living thing.” Burnett’s description refers over and over again to the paintings’ dynamism, not least created by the movement between the whites and the blacks, each taking their turns in front of the eye in the foreground, then rhythmically retreating to swap places with the other, and vice versa in a circular unfolding. Nasgaard emphasizes Borduas’s own terminology whereby the canvas has “its own vibration,” but he then explains and
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associates this aliveness with recourse only to Mondrian. This is not wrong in and of itself, for Mondrian’s abstraction was also inspired by place. It is just only part of the story, and largely the only one made available by the mainstream story, thereby concealing the aliveness of the encompassing places of here. That is the problem.
From a storied approach, this aliveness in the “black-and-whites” everywhere
noticed by Canadian art historians is directly related to the fact that for a pre-conceptual, embodied awareness “everything is animate, everything moves.”493 Furthermore, such aliveness befalls us through our art experiences because of, as Abram demonstrates, an “intensely local...orientation,” where the human imagination and experience are infused by the earthly place we dwell, or the wider terrain in which we circulate.494 Three of Archibald’s Indigenous storywork principles—holism, synergy, and reciprocity—of course, echo this same story. Borduas’s moving to New York then Paris, as his homesickness demonstrates, does not so much remove him from this larger story, but reinforces it and heightens his awareness for its importance in his life because of his having to live without it, or outside of it. The “more clear-cut visibility” Borduas admits to searching for in Paris, in this regard, is less about transcending place alone, as Burnett suggests.495 It is more about belonging to it more deeply. From this alone emerges the awareness that such holism and aliveness are rooted, as Nasgaard points out, in the “material immediacy” of cohabiting entities, or of a place, in all their dynamic, shifting, and animate rhythms to begin with.496
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The translucent surfaces of L’étoile noire and other “black-and-whites” are less
like marble, and more like the ever emergent story resonating energetically through the translucent surfaces of the sodalite at Mont-Saint-Hilaire from the ground up. The shifting dynamism between the blacks and whites is the same story always already being performed geochemically in Borduas’s place through the rhythmic tenebrescence of its hackmanite that is always already encompassing and infusing him. The total unity, abundance of interrelationships, and aliveness within Borduas’s paintings are not just a top-down effect of Mondrian or Pollock, but also a performative resurgence of the story that has always been unfurling here in this living and diverse place. As commentators such as Archibald, Bastien, Alfred, Simpson, and many other Aboriginal artists and scholars demonstrate, interrelationship and holism, (and the necessary sharing across many diverse edges as a result), is, generally speaking, the story of here. This is the story we need to keep alive for resilience and life—social and ecological—to occur here in the first place. This is the story that Borduas’s life and art, as it is with all of us (according to the particular carnal immersion of each our indigenous souls), is always nested within, deepening into, being infused by, and breathing.
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CHAPTER SIX:
ALLOWING ART TO TAKE ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN
Being Swallowed by a New Story It was a warm, clear evening in Toka Village, Guyana. The sun had long returned to its cradle in the earth and we were all gathered around the fire, waiting for a story. I was there, along with a Cowichan friend of mine from Vancouver Island, an Italian-Canadian friend from northern Saskatchewan, and various Aboriginal youth we had with us from across Canada. We were gathered together that night with many villagers of all ages from around this largely Macushi community that invited us in. An old Macushi man stood up and welcomed us visitors from Canada into the circle of their community with honour and sincerity. Then everyone—women, children, and men alike—all stared in anticipation as he stopped, let the silence in, and then shifted topics.
“That person who knows the story best, holds the power thereof,” he said. And
then he surprised us.
Instead of telling a story himself, he invited anyone from the gathering who felt
moved to do so to get up and share a story, song, or words from their heart. By the end of the evening, children had stood up and sang; adults had told stories (some funny, some more serious); my Cowichan friend shared words from his heart and one of the songs he carried; I gathered our group of youth together and we shared a song that we
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had been learning; and the Piikani youth with us even shared a story from his community south of Calgary on his own.
Although I probably couldn’t articulate it at the time, I felt my heart crack open a
little bit that night. I began to sink into a beautiful experience that I was sadly not used to having in my own life, but which I was clearly longing for. I remembered that my ancestors may have gathered like this on a fairly regular basis, especially throughout their winters around Lake Huron. I was also saddened that this kind of sharing seemed less important, less valued, in my everyday life around me today. I was deeply touched and inspired by the openness, sincerity, and intellectual gifts that came flying my way from all directions through what everyone was sharing. In the end, as the old man foretold, we all held and carried a power through what we knew best: the uninhibited expression of what was in our hearts. The sharing of it performatively contributed to the greater power of our community, which was shifting, forming, and emerging as we spoke. This emergent event in all our lives, in turn, greatly shaped, coloured, and enhanced our time together for the weeks to come. I felt like I had been swallowed up by a new kind of story in my own life. It was a story that was more mindful of the power of sharing and giving away. I am still learning about this now through one of the greatest gifts I received as a result of what I began to grow into that night: George Simon’s Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph] (Fig. 20). I will come back to this painting in a minute.
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That particular evening in Toka was nearer to the beginning of my time in Guyana
than the end. As such, I was able to spend a fair amount of time sinking into the experience of that night—and the sharing it inspired in me—before returning to Canada. It was nothing short of magical. I started sharing myself, giving things away, and opening up to a level of trust like I’ve never done before. I gave away my time from the heart to help a family in Kurupakari build a new dugout canoe so they could fish more efficiently for food. I had blisters all over my hands, developed a painful infection in my arm from the work, and got up every morning at around five o’clock to help, despite the pain. A couple of days later, an old man gave me one of his most powerful medicines from his pouch: a jaguar tooth to help protect me in the forest. I carried it with me every day for about eight years, and only just recently felt compelled to give even this away to someone very special to me. On another occasion, I gave away a bunch of my songs, singing to some people gathered in the village of Pakuri. I am not a performer, and had never sung in public on my own much at all, but I did it nevertheless as I simply felt guided to share in this way. A little later I was gifted many beautiful pieces of art— including a carving, a handwoven basket, and a jaguar claw necklace—from some of the villagers who had gathered around. I was amazed about just how much I was being taken care of by just giving myself away without any expectations or fears. Furthermore, it was not in order to get anything in return, but just to share, and connect, and be, trusting that that was enough; that that was all the world needed.
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One day I gave one of my prized bald eagle feathers away to a young, future
leader of his community in the village of Aranaputa. It was one of the toughest things I did while there. I really liked that eagle feather—its size, colouring, beadwork, and everything about it. I felt like it made me a better person somehow, as though the full power of it was contained in the possession of the individual thing itself, rather than in the processes and relationships it was always already intertwining me with through my storied living with it. I stepped back into my new story and let it go too from my heart. Many instances in the connection I was developing with this young leader kept shouting at me that he needed it more than I did, however much it hurt to let it go. He was blown away by the gift, and deeply moved. It was a moment of gifting I’ll never forget. I have since found out that a few months later he was, in fact, elected to village council. A few weeks after that gift, in another village, what happened but that I got it all back and more. I was gifted, from a completely different person all together, another eagle feather! But this one was from a harpy eagle—an eagle from that land—and, to me, it was even bigger and more impressive than the one I had given away earlier. It also came to me just when I needed it most: a few days prior to getting back on the plane to take flight back to Canada. I still carry that feather with me today and it constantly reminds me of the new story I stepped into back then because more was coming still.
Not coincidentally, the same day I received the harpy eagle feather, I was also
invited, with two of my friends, to the home of Lokono Arawak artist, George Simon. I had met him in his home village (where I had sang the songs mentioned above), the
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week before. He brought us down into his basement, which was filled with painting after painting all over the walls and floor. They were leaned up against each other in thick piles against the walls, and stacked in numerous portfolios everywhere; all different sizes. He pulled out one portfolio of recent paintings that were just hung in an exhibition about traditional knowledge, ceremony, and shamanism in indigenous cultures. He opened the portfolio up on a large table in the room, spread the paintings out a bit, and gently, almost more with his body than with his words, thanked us for being there, sharing with his community, and then asked us each to choose a painting to take and carry with us on our journey. I had never had an original painting by a famous artist before. I was awestruck. Part of me wanted to decline the incredibly generous offer. I recognized, however, that this was also his way of giving something away from his heart, so I took a closer look at what was laid out before me. I was immediately grabbed and beckoned by Into the Mystery. I chose it, but now realize that it most certainly also chose me.
I was immediately drawn to its central circle and the bean shape within it. My
attention could never stay there for very long, however. As soon as it would enter the circle with profound yearning, I would feel a deep peace and gratitude to be there come over me. But then I could not help slipping down the hole at the bottom, as though irrepressibly carried away on a river ever pouring downward. It is a bit of a surprising journey, for given the comfort I feel in the circle it was largely unexpected, if a little unsettling. Although not necessarily painful, however, I would still rather be at rest within
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the central circle, so I keep climbing my attention back up into it. This only gets me caught in the same circuitous movement: down then up, over and over again. I eventually realize that the only way to stop this unfruitful movement getting me nowhere is to just sink into the depths of where the river is pulling me—give up control and just let it happen. It suddenly dawns on me that the fall is not so much a trap to be fought, avoided, or angry with, but a release—an opportunity to embrace FIG. 20. George Simon, Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph], 2006. Acrylic on paper, 55.0 x 35.0 cm. Private Collection.
a new kind of vulnerability and awareness.
My attention is now drawn to the
warming sensation radiating downward from my chest, through my stomach and intestines, even down into my lower abdomen and base of my tailbone. It helps ground me at the base of the painting too. When I settle in to the relative stillness here, my awareness is suddenly free to open and widen toward the fullness of the picture more easily. The wavy lines in the river suddenly connect me also to the wavy lines of energy outside and moving through the central circle. They also connect me to the patterned wavy lines around the top of the circle itself. I see the painting differently for the first
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time. All of its aspects now have their own energy, or power, that, although very different, also contribute integral new dimensions to the painting as a whole. The colours, lines, movement, stillness, light, and darkness all come together before me and stimulate a holistic image in my mind of the earth. It strikes me that the complex connectivity inherent in the painting also embodies that which is inherent in the earth itself. This is mirrored back to me through the central, globe-like circle that seems to root everything else in the painting.
Almost simultaneously, then, my awareness shifts again towards the profound
relationship that exists between the earth and a womb and birth canal, which I now also see reflected in this central circle. This calls to mind the downward journey into vulnerability, outside our comfort zones, even into a certain kind of death, that we all must take before we can ever fully be able to embrace new life, new views, new awarenesses—and a new story. Although I could never have articulated it in this kind of a way within the seconds I had to choose the painting, I remember that that was it in a nutshell. I remember saying to myself that I choose this painting because it reminded me of the earth, the womb, and the continuous cycles of death and life inextricably bound up in them. I don’t know why I wanted something at the time that brought this to my awareness, but this is what was pulling at me; in spirit, mind, and body.
After choosing the painting, I asked Simon if he could talk a bit about it from his
perspective. He said it was painted after a vision he had during a traditional ceremony in Haiti a few years earlier. In the vision, he was swallowed by a snake. The experience
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was both incredibly terrifying for him, and incredibly liberating and transformational at the same time. I was again awestruck. When I was “choosing” the painting, no hint of a snake, a throat, or being swallowed by anything came up for me at all. After the artist shared what he shared, however, I looked at the painting again and it seemed so obvious: of course this was a painting about being swallowed by a snake! I could even now see a snake above the central circle (which was now also clearly a throat). But the painting’s story had now also taken on a life of its own within my own life context. The story shape-shifted into something completely different than Simon’s “meaning” because I was certainly not as used to having large, deadly snakes around as he was in the jungles of South America. And yet there was also something the same. Whether being swallowed by a snake, or sinking into the fullness of one’s relationship with the earth and the birthing process, stepping into a new story (whatever that would look like for you), will seem at first unsettling, perhaps even quite painful. Maybe a little like shedding one’s skin, in order to rejuvenate oneself, and be in the world in a new, more positive way. Part of oneself may want to resist it intensely, as it certainly is a death of sorts, but there will also be an ever-present, deeper yearning calling to the soul that cannot be denied. Furthermore, one has no idea of the gifts that it will bring until one gives over to the process and just lets go.
I realized that while in Guyana the previous months prior to getting that painting
from Simon, I had been swallowed by a snake. I was learning to wear new skin, shedding the old, and stepping into a new story. Although not necessarily in the guise of
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a snake, transformational energy within paintings in Canada also abounds everywhere. I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not we were paying attention? Are we ready to step into a new story? I believe we are, and that many have been slowly answering the call as the decades have gone by. The way such a sacred life-death-rebirth transmutation happens will look differently for everyone, depending on one’s own life experience story. For some it will involve working through some kind of “safe” but nonproductive thought to achieve wholeness. For others, it will involve working through things on more emotional, physical, or spiritual planes. For me, Simon’s painting is hung on my wall in my home, just above where I also keep my guitar and drum bag, and right next to a bookshelf where I keep my most cherished books—some of which I have drawn from extensively throughout here. I notice the painting (not necessarily in deep thought either), every time I enter my home, and every time I leave to go work on a program, write, visit, pray, sing around the campfire, or hike. In other words, every time I step out to share myself with the world in the way I know best.
The painting also helps me remember just how much the receiving of it at that
particular moment in time—just before getting an eagle feather and taking flight on a plane back to Canada—was like a ritualized invitation to continue wearing my new skin as much as I could here. Yes, there was the old story, the puzzle-piece of a life that was already waiting for me here to slip right back into again with comfort and ease. But I knew that I didn’t quite fit into it anymore. I am still very much learning to share myself in ways I learned were important to me while in Guyana, but it gets easier and easier as
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my “new” skin begins, more and more, to feel just like “my” skin. A Cherokee Elder once said something to me after my return that resonated deeply with my experience surrounding Into the Mystery. I paraphrase like this: it is common and sometimes easiest to just take first, keep taking in life, and put most of our focus on that. But it’s the other way around. We never really get anything at all until we give first, sacrifice something; give of ourselves, our lives, our stories. The earth itself continually teaches us this. Try, for example, to just take a breath without giving it away first. You can’t really do it, or it would be incredibly shallow and not that helpful. Try to just take a breath only, hold on to it forever, and just live like that: you will die.
The Indigenous Orientation of Experiencing Art One of the most significant barriers to our being able to see the fundamentally indigenous orientation of the story of art in Canada is the discipline’s continued privileging of the role of writing, the art historian, and the curator over that of any other kind of viewer, viewing experience, or orality. I briefly discussed the importance of orality in my introduction with reference to Ong’s important work in the field. I now want to enact some of that insight into this story. The final step required in this attempt at decolonizing the story of art in Canada will be to empower the audience within the restorying process as well. In this first section, I will briefly discuss why accounting for art experience stories shared by viewers who are not the conventional art or art historical “expert” is so crucial to a more complete understanding of the story of art in Canada. I
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end the chapter with a dialogical narrative analysis of some viewers’ art stories to get an idea of the storyworking process—the building of the story of art from the ground up— as it is actually at work in Canada.
☈⊕♁ Including viewer art experience stories within the story of art in Canada is crucial, but seldom done. Robert J. Belton’s groundbreaking Sights of Resistance (2001), is the closest work to date that attempts such an intervention. His sections on cultivating readers’ interpretive skills, as well as case studies from a multitude of theoretical angles and voices, including classroom exchanges with students, are unique, refreshing, and engaging in this regard. The point of departure for Belton is a concern for the “broad postmodern trend favouring the [active participation of the] audience over the traditionally sanctified artist.”497 While important, admirable, and part of the story, however, this still privileges Eurocentric intellectualism, and as a result, is tinged by a cognitive colonialism, despite postmodernism’s calls for pluralism, diversity, and openended schemes of interpretation.498 To be clear, this is not to say that everything connected to Europe is indirectly suspect, or that postmodernism is bad or unhelpful. From an earth-based perspective like the one animating this project, everything is connected anyway, everything is related. That is why my concern, rather, is more with the pressure, or seeming de facto privileging, or need to resort to European ideologies and practices to answer or explain almost any question or issue at hand (in this case
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aesthetic ones). One of the movements of decolonization this project enacts is the complimenting of such Eurocentric dominance with other voices and ways of knowing. As mentioned earlier, this is not to eradicate European ideologies or practices, but to rebalance and enhance the pools of knowledge we all have to draw from. Doing so increases our social-ecological resilience, and further enriches our lives here.
This chapter may seem at first glance to follow Belton’s kind of art historical
intervention and stem from a similar postmodern foundation. The latter is not, however, my point of departure. Instead, I see that empowering, and interfacing with the audience is an inherently decolonizing act. This is because considering viewers as active participants in the art process is not just a recent theoretical trend (as is postmodernism) in Canada. Rather, it has always been an integral part of Indigenous life-ways and worldviews here. As we have seen, it is already built in, from the ground up, to Archibald’s indigenous storywork methodology itself.
It is important to note, then, that this chapter is, quite consciously, not an
audience or reception study. To elaborate, I can now expand here on what I have already drawn on in Chapter Three from the work of Robert C. Holub. If, as he demonstrates, theories are “evidently bound to context...[and] subject to nonuniversal criteria...in unfamiliar surroundings,” I suggest that an integral contextual and nonuniversal criteria shaping and underwriting the slower, more discerning reception of reception study in North America has been the land.499 Furthermore, this necessarily includes the fundamentally indigenous orientation of human activities always already
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encompassed by it here from the ground up. It is not surprising to note two artistic developments within this context that evidence such statements. First, the migration of reception study to North America was prefigured by and coincided with the rise of minimalism in the North American artworld. As an art movement, minimalism already tended to place greater emphasis on the active participation of the viewer or audience. In the words of art historian W.J.T. Mitchell, it “seems designed to defeat the notion of the ‘readable’ work of art, understood as an intelligible allegory, an expressive symbol, or a coherent narrative.”500 Through major artist contributors to the movement, such as Robert Morris, meaning and self became “constituted in experience [with physical objects and places] rather than as an a priori.” They emerge through reciprocal and participatory art encounters into a kind of, what art and cultural historian Maurice Berger has called, “visceral groundedness.”501
Second, minimalism was also always closely associated with the land art, earth
art, or site-specific art movement concurrently rising in North America as well.502 Artists such as Morris, and especially Robert Smithson, who also did an earthwork in Canada, began to recognize the extent to which conventions and expectations of viewing practices “upheld by the institution and, by extension, by critical discourse set up the spectator for a perceptual fall.” Smithson, in particular, liked to try and accentuate, even invigorate, such a fall through his art. He challenged what art historian Ann Reynolds has termed the “sensible” or “intelligible” sight of artistic convention with art soliciting instead direct experience, emotion, or embodied expression. This was done largely
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through creative earthworks that invited participatory encounters with and in sites of the world existing outside the gallery.503 For Smithson, a sight that could only be understood through recourse to privileged intellectualism was no real sight at all because it was abstracted from the real fullness of embodied experience in the more-than-human world.504 Such intellectual abstraction misguidedly emerged, according to Reynolds, “from a psychological fear of nature, and a distrust of the organic.”505 This is not to say that Smithson sided absolutely (or “blindly”), with environmentalists, or against the economics of capitalism. His art, rather, as art historian Ron Graziani has demonstrated, was a complex hybrid of the two. For Graziani, Smithson became acutely aware of ecology and industry not as one-way streets, but crossroads, which required more awareness for the indigenously oriented process of balance, than an embattled hierarchy ever privileging the one or the other.506 Not coincidentally, Smithson has even been linked by some scholars to the tradition of American hieroglyphics, where his work evokes a kind of linguistic hybridity that balances a more earthly “space in between the visual and the aural.”507
The European influences contributing to the rise of minimalism and earth art in
North America are, of course, part of the story. The larger story encompassing this latter story, however, is that both the above developments—alongside postmodernism more generally—are also evidence of an indigenously oriented process always already inviting and encompassing humans and their thoughts, words, and actions from the ground up here, not just the other way around. These art movements are also other
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articulations of the ongoing emergence of the real through artists sinking into the rhythms and pulses of the storied and animate earth always already encompassing them. These same unfurling rhythms, I suggest, in turn influenced the reception of reception study as it had been known in Europe as well.
Art experience stories, then, are crucial to helping re-story, or decolonize, the
story of art in Canada not because of recent postmodern trends in the academy, but because they have always already been crucial for life here in some way. As Archibald has pointed out, an integral component to storywork has always been to “keep the spirit of a story alive by telling it to others and by interacting through and with story.” This occurs between storyteller and listener, where “the oral tradition ‘implicates the “listener” into becoming an active participant in the experience of the story.’” It also occurs between listeners/viewers and each other, or others in their everyday lives, because in Indigenous cultures one is frequently “taught to pass on what she/he has learned…[as] a way of perpetuating it.”508 In another example, as Bastien has demonstrated in relation to Siksikaitsitapi ways of knowing, many kinds of stories here have always embodied fundamental responsibilities and power. They are attained by various Indigenous peoples through direct experience with animals and the land, “living the laws of the natural order, respecting the powers emanating from Ihtsipaitapiiyo’pa [Sacred Power, Source of Life, or Great Mystery], and working with all the powers of the universe.”509 These stories or powers, in turn, are to be responsibly used to “strengthen life” in general, and are not to be held on to for “selfish purposes.”510 For Siksikaitsitapi,
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sharing and giving away “are ways of being that connect to and perpetuate Ihtsipaitapiiyo’pa.” They are “consistent with the natural order of the universe and help to maintain it in balance [because]...a fundamental aspect of the cosmic universe is reciprocity.”511
Beneath the increasing number of Eurocentric art theories concerned with
concepts such as embodiment, diversity, performativity, experience, and community, these aspects were already long-emerging here, from the ground up. Indeed, greater emphasis has been placed in recent decades on the role of the viewer within many nonAboriginal exhibition spaces, theories, and related literature. But one does not have to visit too many art exhibitions before realizing that there is still a long way to go in this regard; that there is still a large chasm between talking the talk and walking the talk, however well-intentioned galleries now aspire to be. Challenging the conventional role of the art historian, curator, or writing within the experience of art encounters has been a recurring theme for Aboriginal commentators. The need for other kinds of sharing in the art process, other kinds of viewer experiences, and the importance of orality in the art process, for instance, are all taken up by various contributors to Lee-Ann Martin’s Making a Noise!: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community (2004).
To name just a few of these examples, Cree curator and art historian, Richard
Hill, describes in his essay, “Meeting Ground,” his project of reinstalling the Art Gallery of Ontario’s McLaughlin Gallery in a more cross-cultural and respectful way. He remarks
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that one of his guiding principles in doing this was to value “art as part of a discursive, democratic process of understanding history and the world as we’ve received it,” instead of as primarily through “connoisseurship,” which has “long guided museums.” In another essay, Gurindji Australian artist and curator Brenda L. Croft, laments that “nonIndigenous people so often demand to know the story behind Indigenous art, as if it is somehow invalidated without such documents.” For her, this misses the larger point about how the artwork right in front of the viewer is the story; that they too are now in it and creating it even as they stand, and think, and feel with/in it. As such, the artwork is not merely rooted in some relegated past, but is an integral part of the larger story unfolding all around us together, right now. It is, therefore, not something with a completely separate story of its own that is primarily outside of everyday experience for a large portion of the population. Rather, it is also inviting the viewer to recognize his own participation in, or relationship to, the shaping of that very experience—the story as it exists and is being lived—today. In one more example, Huron-Wendat sociologist and curator, Guy Sioui Durand, challenges the art historical privileging of writing to inform art encounters, especially Aboriginal art. He advocates for greater attention to be paid to ways in which art exists in lives experientially—orally—first, and not primarily in the critical writing about it. “Orality,” he remarks, with great echoes of Ong from earlier, “is the area where existence is first exercised, conferring all its meaning on the second area, the writings.”512
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If the story of art in Canada is not primarily a European one but an indigenously
oriented one, which I believe it is, then viewer art experience stories are instinctively part of the process of decolonizing it. They have always been occurring and unfolding here beneath and behind our books and gallery walls, but have never been fully given voice within the disciplinary boundary lines of art history. As Hill has just alluded to, the story of art in Canada must ultimately be a discursive and polyphonic process if it ever hopes to be able to tell the truth that there are multiple truths. In the last section of this chapter we will turn our attention now away from the art historical frameworks inscribing, or implying, what people ought to think when they encounter art, and more towards what they actually do. The views and stories of ordinary art viewers may not be representative of anything except themselves. But that is also the point. While they may not be able to tell the brilliantly eloquent, clear, and examined story of a J. Russell Harper, Dennis Reid, or Ruth B. Phillips, they can tell an experienced story. This is not to say that the thoughts and words of ordinary art viewers about art are the final word on the story of art in Canada either. As I have already mentioned in numerous places, there is also much to be gained from the conventional story. It is just incomplete on its own. No story of art in Canada can be considered as full or as worth living as it could be unless it also acknowledges ways art lives on in the lives of those expected to relate or conform to its story.
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Alberta Art Experience Stories I I conducted fourteen interviews with Canadian art viewers who have each been touched, moved, or inspired by it in some way. To help me narrow down the selection and dialogical narrative analysis process, I chose to concentrate on viewer art encounters with Albertan art only. The story of art in Alberta, relative to the story of art in Canada, of course, has some key differences. I briefly outline some of these where necessary, but for all intents and purposes here, the two stories as we are taught them, and as they are analyzed and told by art historians/critics, are intricately interwoven and overlapping, if not virtually the same. In particular, they both greatly privilege European art theories, practices, influence, and styles. They are also both significantly enhanced and enriched by bringing a more cross-cultural, storied approach to them, which is seldom, if ever, done. Also, they both undermine the phenomenological and performative aspects of art encounters in a more-than-human world. And they are both indigenously oriented, while also both concealing this characteristic behind the disciplinary boundary lines of art history. To further enhance project manageability, I coordinated participant searches with only four Albertan artists. These artists are Aboriginal artists Aaron Paquette and Heather Shillinglaw, and non-Aboriginal artists Chris Flodberg and Peter von Tiesenhausen.
Interviews ranged, on average, between forty and fifty minutes long, and were
semi-structured in that I had a sheet of basic questions to draw from and guide my awareness if needed. But the order and number of questions, as well as the emphasis
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given each, were all primarily dependent on the conversation and relationships that unfolded in the moment. If participants wanted to go on about one particular question or story, I let them go, ran with it, and honoured that aspect in their story, even if it meant I did not get to ask all the questions on my sheet. In these instances, I tried to stay with where their passions lie and often asked questions on the spot that were not on my sheet at all. All interviews were recorded, but not transcribed. The notes informing the dialogical narrative analysis below were all taken after just listening to the conversations over again, sometimes more than twice or numerous times. I then sat with them (and Frank’s preparation questions mentioned in Chapter Three), and let the stories and our conversation stimulate connections within me, rather than my treating the viewers’ stories like material or data to be cut up, mined, and arranged. I wanted to keep the embodied voices, stories, and vitality of the conversations alive for as long as possible before writing anything down from them on the page. Participants had the option to remain anonymous under a pseudonym. Some did not mind my using their real names. In these instances, I changed their family names only. Many participants, however, did want a pseudonym. In some of these instances the participant him or herself wanted to choose their own name, and in the rest I chose them. I kept the names of companies or relatives confidential where applicable in all cases.
☈⊕♁
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Dirk Romijnen, a marketing and communications officer, designer, and cartoonist from Vancouver, was going through a tough time in the mid-nineteen-nineties. He was in the middle of a divorce and was dividing his time between Vancouver and Kelowna to help look after his boys; two weeks on, two weeks off. During one of his visits to Kelowna he took refuge in the Kelowna Art Gallery to check out their recent exhibition. “It blew my mind,” he said. It was “the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.”513 He was telling me this on a warm spring day in March 2010, but then Dirk proceeded to describe an artwork from that exhibition over ten years earlier as if the viewing experience was just yesterday. “There were a number of pieces that moved me,” he continued, “but there was one in particular”:
It was a huge square, like about a sandbox deep, filled with clay. It had a glassy, wet surface and the wall behind it had four four-by-eight sheets of plywood, maybe six of them…they had a bunch of patterns on them. They were up against the wall and this box of clay was about two feet deep, I’d say maybe fifteen feet by ten feet…And then over the course of the few days…the clay would crack and harden like skin, you know, like a deserty thing. And then up out of this broken clay comes wheat growing in the shape of a boat.
I was mesmerized by the passion Dirk suddenly spoke with. His enthusiasm was contagious and I got totally caught up in his story. Wow, I could envision the beautiful patterns on the plywood. I could feel the word “skin” as he described the cracking and hardening clay surface. And I shared his amazement for the wheat in the shape of a boat growing wildly out of this dying desert.
“For me,” said Dirk, “it was about life and death interacting together.” “What I like
about Peter [von Tiesenhausen]’s work” (see Fig. 21), he said, “is he acknowledges how
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temporary everything is…So here was this exhibit that had an expiry date [unlike the Mona Lisa sealed behind bullet-proof glass in its special building and its special room]. “It was alive!,” Dirk exclaimed with astonishment, as his voice rose excitedly to even louder and higher pitches. “And it will grow up and die,” emphasizing the latter as his voice dropped back down to earth again with a thud. He then emphatically paused a second, as though to let his last word really sink into me before continuing: “it was the first time I found myself going back to the gallery again and again just to see what was going on with the exhibit because it changed, every few days, like, it was different!”
FIG. 21. Peter von Tiesenhausen, Ship, 1993. Woven willow, rocks, and trees. 33.5 x 6.1 x 4.9 m. Demmitt, Alberta.
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“How temporary everything is,” he repeated almost more to himself this time, and I felt his awareness return into his own body again before looking back up at me: “yet, was alive; yet, was designed to die.”
He couldn’t stop talking there: “it just, ah, spoke to me on a whole bunch of ways,
ah, at the right time, ah, about what I was thinking about.” And then a long pause of silence washed over Dirk and I could feel an incredible gratitude and power welling up inside him. It dawned on me that Dirk wasn’t just talking about this artwork on one level anymore, but also about and with his relationship, his divorce, his kids, his life from that moment on, and the incredible gift he now felt reassuringly empowered to carry gently forth to share with the world. It was a gift of vulnerability and integrity, as it seemed like Von Tiesenhausen’s work was synergistically animating him with a resolve to always tell the truth, for as impermanent as everything is, there may come a time he might not be able to anymore. This was a gift that clearly endowed him with an ability to serve with compassion, and grow into the kind of leader and father he was today. He’s been stripped down into the heart of vulnerability and come back again renewed. This truth is in his body, he lives it, just as sure as the artwork itself took on a life of its own within his life experience story by animating him to return, and return, and return again to the gallery, like he was also doing for his kids. Dirk has also returned to a new relationship, whose beautiful truth rhythmically poured out lots into our conversation frequently as well. And I just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von
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Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Dirk’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Lily Somner, a nurse, gardener, and devoted mother in Edmonton, expressed
amazement at the way hers and artist Heather Shillinglaw’s paths criss-crossed for a long time before Lily actually encountered Shillinglaw’s art, or even knew she was an artist. At first, the two mothers would serendipitously meet each other at church and say “hello” as their kids played together. Then one day, Lily’s own mother came home raving about this amazing woman at church, her art, and her riveting presentation about her Cree grandmother, Aboriginal art, Elders, and natural medicines. Lily missed the presentation and so was only left imagining who this woman could be. It wasn’t until a little later, after running into Shillinglaw again and hearing her talk about her art in person, that Lily finally realized that this woman with whom she had been long connected through their kids was the same artist her mother was raving about that day. “Oh! you’re the one that my mom was talking about!” she excitedly role-played out for me in her living room.514 She replayed hers and Shillinglaw’s conversation that day, and how Shillinglaw started telling her about the art workshops she also facilitated out of her home. “Oh! I’d like to learn how to do art [like that],” Lily replied. She was fascinated by art, and fascinated by flowers, herbs, and native plants, as a gardener, and so they arranged then and there for Lily to partake in one of Shillinglaw’s workshops, all before even encountering any of her artwork itself.
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Lily proceeded to tell me about first entering Shillinglaw’s home that day for her
lesson. “It was winter time, and it’s dark, and we’re covered in snow,” she said. But then, through Shillinglaw’s art displayed inside, “you have these beautiful, beautiful things that remind you of a season that’s coming.” Lily’s voice slowed a bit as she gathered her thoughts so that I wouldn’t miss a single word: “I was,” she paused, “blown away…it was not what I expected…[another pause before reiterating]…at all.” “I didn’t have any expectations of what it was,” she continued, “because it had only been described to me, I had never seen it.” Lily kept searching for the words to properly capture the fullness of the experience: “it, it…how can you expect that?,” she began. “How can you, you—look at what she does!,” she exclaimed, as she happily walked me over to stand in front of her own Shillinglaw work on the wall. “How can you even possibly in your little, in my limited imagination, even expect something like that because if you look at art history, and you look at Aboriginal art…it’s not what she does…she kind of does her own thing” (see Fig. 22). Lily clearly left Shillinglaw’s home that day full of welcomed surprise after having had learned much about Shillinglaw’s art. She got to do so through both hands on instruction, and by being moved to purchase one of Shillinglaw’s originals from her Medicine Pouch series. Lily’s happiness drew me in further and I fell deeper into her story.
No matter what we shared with each other concerning Shillinglaw’s art, Lily kept
bringing the conversation back to the same few kinds of iterations. She must have been tired of repeating herself, as though I wasn’t paying attention, or really hearing her. For
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Lily, it always seemed to come back to beauty, joy, and life: “I think she’s creating beautiful things,” she might say. Or she frequently mentioned how Shillinglaw’s particular collage style, and method of collective creation with not just paint, but musical score, leather, beads, buttons, and especially watch parts contributed to the beauty and joy: “they [Shillinglaw’s plants and flowers] look alive!,” she’d say. On more than one occasion Lily mentioned how she just gets “the feeling of lightness, of joy” when she looks at Shillinglaw’s art, and she told me that “it can actually [cheer her up].” When I agreed with her at one point, saying that I also thought FIG. 22. Heather Shillinglaw, Medicine Pouches, 2009. Mixed media, 50.8 x 40.6 cm. Private Collection.
Shillinglaw’s art was beautiful, Lily broke into a cheerful laugh,
replying through the chuckles: “I know! Do we need anything more than beauty?”
I finally quieted my own mind and sunk into this realization she kept coming back
to. My awareness shifted to the last lines of one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems, “Swan.” After deepening into the myriad layers that unfurled from an encounter with a swan flying overhead, Oliver asks:
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And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?515
I could suddenly begin to see what Lily was getting at. It had been all around us the entire time. We weren’t shut up somewhere in some quiet room without any distractions, as though we were living in a vacuum. Instead, Lily had us sit together in her living room with tea, and in front of a very large picture window from which the light of the sun easily lit everything up with an airy lightness. And her kids were running all around us: in and out of the room playing games and laughing; talking to Lily in the middle of our conversation; pulling Lily away so she could help with a craft, or direct one of her kids’ actions with a pair of scissors after she had accidentally cut into her clothes. And throughout, Lily would return to me and our conversation beaming herself with a joy and vitality that perhaps only a mother knows. Her kids, like her “favourite patch of [native] orchids out back,” were always already a part of our conversation, as well as of the one she had ongoing with Shillinglaw’s art. And, I see now, it could not have been any other way. This was everyday life for Lily, and that was the point all along. They were the story. Her kids were the beauty, the joy, the life that Lily now cultivated as Shillinglaw’s art blossomed and took on a life of its own within her life experience story. After all, it was her kids who even brought Lily to Shillinglaw in the first place. And I just had the honour of learning about how Shillinglaw’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Shillinglaw’s art taking on a life of its own in Lily’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
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Crow Dennett, a successful businessman in the oil industry from Weyburn,
Saskatchewan, and now living in Calgary, was walking down fourth street in Calgary one Saturday afternoon and was suddenly stopped unexpectedly in his tracks by some large paintings gesturing towards him from the window of the Master’s Gallery. “Geez,” he said, as he replayed what was going through his mind that day, “those are really good oil paintings, like, who is that?”516 The paintings pulled him inside to take a closer look and he was in awe by what he encountered there. “They had the place full of his [Chris Flodberg’s] stuff,” Crow recounts, “several really large pieces.” It wasn’t one painting in particular that captured Crow’s imagination, but the impact of them all together. “It was more the subject matter and…the quality of work,” he said. The show Crow was referring to was of Flodberg’s series entitled Matters of Denial. “I haven’t seen —you do not see [art like this anywhere],” he remarked. And just like that, another story had clearly begun unfolding for him in his life. That same evening its pulse continued to reverberate around him.
Crow and his wife had invited Crow’s sister over for dinner and while gathered
around the table, his sister had something she just had to share. Crow’s voice slowed and became very expressive to try and recapture his sister’s astonishment: “you wouldn’t believe the paintings I just saw; they, they just floored me.” “She was just gaga over these things,” Crow emphasized. And in continuing on with his story, Crow smiled and replied to his sister, already knowing what she was probably going to say, “you mean the ones in the Master’s…I saw the same paintings…they’re amazing, I’m gonna
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go back.” And Crow did go back a couple days later and purchased one. The painting now dominates his dining room, hanging largely on the wall above his own dinner table. It generates numerous conversations with guests at dinner parties, he tells me, and his ten year old son will even sometimes talk about it. And like so many others before me, I got caught up in his story as well.
For Crow, Flodberg’s painting grabbed him because of its seemingly veiled
invitation to fight. When looking at Flodberg’s lavish feast tables, in their lavish dining halls—like something right out of Versailles—juxtaposed with the scenes of death and destruction that have overtaken the ruined world around, Crow feels confronted by their statements of excess (see Fig. 23). They are “oozing with excess,” Crow remarks. “And just compound that with the price of one of his paintings, okay, that’s excess,” he states emphatically. But “it’s all part of it, you know,” he continues, “there’s something about the fact that this, this guy [Flodberg], he’s, he’s forcing me to do this…and I don’t know if that’s what he’s thinking, but that’s the feeling that I get.” “I find it provocative,” Crow says, “and that’s what I like about him.” “Being a crow,” he quips, “it’s in my nature, you know, I like a good scrap.” Crow feels like Flodberg is taking a jab directly at him as a successful businessman in corporate Calgary, but finds this deeply honourable: “I like that he’s doing that…I think ‘good on you [for not pandering to me with a beautiful pump jack or landscape].’”
As we sink even deeper into Crow’s story, it starts to come clear to me that the
confrontation he experiences while encountering Flodberg’s art unfolds in his life
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experience story with a remarkable rhythm of courage, maturity, and strength. The hidden power of his relationship with Flodberg’s art is seemingly inherent, for Crow, not in the work itself, but in who he envisions Flodberg himself to be as a result of this encounter. Above all else, Crow chooses to honour and support the commitment, authenticity, and courage it would take of Flodberg to throw it in his face that he’s “part of that whole mess…running your lives off…in your typical rat race scenario…[and] making me sit back and think about that, you know, how important is that…sit back and look at myself.” Crow also admits that he doesn’t “want to be totally laid out on the floor” in a fight, but his story gives me new insight into the real power of
FIG. 23. Chris Flodberg, Double Image Catharsis II, 2005. Oil on canvas, 137.2 x 106.7 cm. Private Collection.
confrontation and challenge in our lives. It suddenly enters my awareness that he is living proof of how much acknowledging and accepting the whole truth at all times—all one’s successes, and all one’s failures, such as, in this case, Crow’s becoming swept up in materialism, his
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contributing to environmental destruction, and, as he also told me, his probably living a life he always told himself he’d never live—can help people overcome their fears or personal weaknesses. Such a world of truth and resilience is ultimately the kind of world Crow wants to live in. And Flodberg’s art has helped animate within him the gifts of commitment and courage that he carries for it.
Even in the end Crow recognizes that this story is still being written; that the fight
is not yet over. Now, “what’s the last, the latter half of my life gonna be like?,” he puts out into our conversation as his imagination continues to be fired by Flodberg’s painting. And just then he breaks into a story of growing up in Saskatchewan, “kickin’ horse turds in the prairie,” never having to lock their doors, getting on the bike and going down to the river to fish, killing gophers, and “we did a lot of dreaming, right.” “I have a, kinda have a yearning to get back there,” he discloses to me. “The older I get,” he continues, “the more, I guess, you kinda wanna go back to your roots.” And so Flodberg’s art has taken on a life of its own, continues to rhythmically unfurl in Crow’s life, and I suspect that he will not back down. Crow’s story continues to unfold like the prairie sky through his sweeping, dynamic, and living articulations of commitment, authenticity, and courage in the face of personal challenge and weakness. And I just had the honour of learning about how Flodberg’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Flodberg’s art taking on a life of its own in Crow’s life story… and now mine…and now yours.
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The three art stories above, coupled with the one surrounding the encounter with
Paquette’s art introduced at the beginning of Chapter Four, are the kinds of stories that can be concealed or neglected by the disciplinary boundary lines and conventional story of art in Canada. But these are the gold. These kinds of stories are the ones through which we glimpse the real story of art in Canada flowing, breathing. They are the ones animating Canadians through art experiences that inevitably unfurl into the current faces of culture and society right now. Returning to my Introduction, if Reid is correct, and I believe he is, when he says that painting “most directly presents the Canadian experience,” then our story of art clearly has much more work to do yet. For I hear a lot of thought in it, but very little experience beyond an artist’s alone. I get nothing in our conventional story of, say, Dirk’s compassion and integrity as a leader that fuels his life experience story, and hence many others in Vancouver, from the ground up; of Lily’s boundless capacity to love and care for the children, the earth, and people around her in Edmonton; or of Crow’s unwavering courage and commitment to help lift his world out of the sloughs of fear, mediocrity, and personal weakness in Calgary. Within such stories as these lies the Canadian experience as it is living and breathing and co-emerging into the real today. And such stories are unfurling all around us, if we pay attention.
Various elements have also come to characterize the chapter in the master
narrative of art in Canada that we may refer to here as the conventional story of art in Alberta. These might include the unique importance of Maxwell Bates, W.L. Stevenson, and Marion Nicoll within the story; the different aesthetic directions taken between
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Calgary and Edmonton; and the provincial democratization of the arts in the 1960s facilitated by Les Graff. It will be helpful to explore art experience stories like the ones above within the context of three other overlapping elements that have also come to characterize the story of art in Alberta: (1) the fierce individualism of Alberta artists on account of being “on the periphery of the established art world”;517 (2) the close linkage between handmade crafts, especially ceramics, and other art forms, relative to other parts of Canada;518 and (3) the unapologetic embracing of the landscape genre and concern for place, even long after these fell out of fashion in national and international aesthetic and academic practices.519 In the conventional story of art in Alberta these characteristics help outline ways it differs from the larger story of art in Canada more generally. For the remainder of this chapter I explore the question of how, then, might the storywork like that beginning to unfold above through the art of Von Tiesenhausen, Shillinglaw, Flodberg, and Paquette compliment, enhance, and enrich our understanding of and approach to our conventional stories of art.
Alberta Art Experience Stories II In one of the main texts establishing the story of art in Alberta, art historian Nancy Townshend frequently emphasizes the unique individualism characterizing Alberta art. The story she tells has been mirrored by others, and has been characterized as one “of the struggle and full flowering of a grassroots culture developing from the inside out in an isolated province that tried to both appease and to rally against great colonial
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forces.” Five major factors, Townshend remarks, “ensured that individualism was entrenched in Alberta’s modern post-war art.”520 These factors include: differing ways of objectifying the world; the advocating of personal expression by key mentors; varied artist backgrounds; different kinds of training; and new media.
Although these are all part of the story, of course, these are all human factors—
and ones emphasizing an artist’s life alone. When privileged, as we have already seen, they can lead to the neglect of the more-than-human world always already enfolding the artist and artworld in the first place. Albertan artworks, just like anything else, while embodied with individuality (indeed a characteristic of modernism), are not really individual at all. They are also integral parts in the co-emergence of the real here alongside many other aspects of our more-than-human world. And to the extent that one artist’s style and practices differ from another’s, this is not unique to Alberta.
When approached from the ground up, it becomes less important to emphasize
an artwork’s or the Alberta artworld’s individuality, although it is certainly part of the story. It becomes much more important to recognize how this, rather, unfolds in life experience stories in order to attain balance and harmony, not aloneness, isolation, and struggle. Not surprisingly, individualism is not one of Frank’s story capacities, nor one of Archibald’s storywork principles. In fact, it is just the opposite. In Archibald’s words, “the design may be attributed to a particular person, [but] her designs reflect her relationship with family, community, nation, land, and nature (my emphasis).”521 A storied approach to art in Alberta can both acknowledge the individuality marking an artist’s designs and
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artworld, and emphasize that this is still ultimately about their interrelatedness. Stories, as we know, breathe, always work with something, and take on a life of their own.
When asking participants about what grabbed them, drew them in, and captured
their attention about the Alberta artworks inspiring them, they almost unanimously started off with some particular aspect of the artwork. Mana Hill, a Métis and lover of Paquette’s art in Edmonton, could not stop talking about Paquette’s work Unexpected Thunder, which she purchased some years back. “That is by far my favourite,” she emphasized, “I don’t know how to explain it—it’s just, it’s just he’s captured it, like, the title is so appropriate for the painting.”522 “It’s very simple,” she continues, “but it just takes your breath away because its simplistic, but yet it just kind of throws you back.” As she continued to deepen into the story it became clear that the particular way Paquette uses his ravens and birds in his art was in large part what “drew [her] to him.” “I love the birds,” she repeated more than once during our conversation. Mana Hill also owns some original Alex Janvier and Daphne Odjig works, but feels that Paquette speaks to her relationship with the natural world “more than probably any other artist.” For her, Paquette’s “spiritual[ity], and connection to nature is by far the greatest.”
Similarly, Lisa Victors, an artist and curator in Sarnia, Ontario, also credited an
individuality in Von Tiesenhausen’s work for grabbing her in what came to be a profound way. She was in the midst of helping her community plan a major commemorative event for the 150 year anniversary of the first commercial oil well in North America. She spent a considerable amount of time searching for an artist that could engage the community
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from not just a critical perspective on what such an event might signify, but one that could provide an honest opening for community dialogue. She was struck by one of Von Tiesenhausen’s works as it crossed her desk one day in a magazine. The image captivating her was simply the carving of an eye in a number of trees. It was the “subtlety,” she said, “I almost feel like that burns into people more than…the more blatant kinds of expressions.”523 It inspired her to search out more Von Tiesenhausen works only to discover that “they’re all just amazing images.” “I looked at many artists,” she iterated, “who call themselves environmental artists, and it didn’t resonate, you know…but there was something about Peter’s work that resonated.”
In one more example, Geoff Hampton, a cosmetic surgeon in Calgary, was
overflowing with surprise when describing an encounter with some of his favourite Flodberg artworks. At an exhibition of some of the artist’s landscape paintings it struck him one day that “the trees were cool because you realized ‘okay, there’s something different going on in this guy’s brain.’”524 Geoff was captivated because “the stories that went along with the trees had nothing to do with the trees.” “This is actually really…it’s different—it’s different,” Geoff repeated with emphasis, “he’s [Flodberg’s] got something different going on than anything that I’ve seen.” This element of individuality moved Geoff so much that he purchased one particular painting of a tiger that he could not take his eyes off of. The painting still surprises him to this day because he really doesn’t feel, nor has ever felt, any kind of affinity or connection with tigers at all. “It just was a, it was a very neat painting,” he said, pausing in between each of the last three words to make
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sure I really got them, “it was literally…I just, I remember looking at it thinking ‘that [pause] is a very cool painting, and I just, I want to own it.’”
While the individuality of the artworks in the above art experience stories was
clearly important, this was never the whole story. Mana Hill was grabbed by the individuality of Paquette’s simple style utilizing many kinds of birds and bird forms. As she sank deeper into her story, however, I was increasingly touched by how the individuality of Unexpected Thunder, rather than contributing to a carving out and establishing of something equally individual, animated a cleansing or replenishing pulse for a parched spirit that longed no more to struggle in isolation, but to fully belong to the world. “It fills my soul, it fills my soul,” she stated twice with an undeniable satisfaction:
it’s in the room, you know, where my computer is—you know, I see it everyday— and there’s some pieces that…[are nice pieces], but it’s like whatever, it doesn’t really do much…when I see this one here [Unexpected Thunder], it definitely fills my soul.
Mana Hill was adopted when very young by a Polish couple, strong Roman Catholics, and only found out at the age of eighteen that she was Métis. Her adopted parents kept that part of her hidden because they thought it would bother her to find out she had Aboriginal blood. In fact, the opposite happened and she has been on a search ever since to rediscover who she truly is. She’s reconnected with half-siblings, in particular a half-brother in Fort Chipewyan, who was never severed from his Aboriginal heritage like she was, and so he’s taught her a lot. It was this always already unfolding story in her life that drew her to Aboriginal art, and especially Paquette’s, in the first place.
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Part of the draw, however, was also that Paquette’s art was on some level never
really something she just finally met somewhere. They were in each other all along, like stories already waiting to have life breathed into them. Mana Hill’s given Métis name at birth was a word for “bird.” Paquette’s art, and Unexpected Thunder in particular, has animated her, replenishes her, in her own life experience story in a way that goes way beyond any matter of “interpreting the artwork.” “It has helped me to find a sense of identity,” she pointed out in our conversation. And as we got talking further about her pull towards Aboriginal art, her voice suddenly lit up with an incredible joy and lightness as she could not help but reply by way of another related story.
She told me about meeting a Métis man in a shop in Edmonton who, after a
conversation about their heritage, invited her to a wake for a respected Elder who had recently passed into spirit. She accepted the invitation, and I could feel her body start to smile with warmth through the phone as she proceeded to tell me about the circle dance she got to participate in while there: “that was the first circle dance that I had been to, and you know what Troy, I sat there and I thought, you know, ahhh, I’m home. Like, it felt so…it felt comforting, and just, like, so familiar. It was pretty wild.” Wow, I thought to myself, unexpected thunder, indeed, all around her. Just as Archibald has reminded us, “Stories have the power to make our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits work together” if we are paying attention and letting them breathe. And just like the cleansing and rejuvenating rains pouring gently over a sacred wound, Paquette’s art has taken on a life of its own in Mana Hill’s life experience story. It is an important companion—a
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material semiotic companion—for her as she continues to remember that she always has been part of a much larger more-than-human story enfolding her all along. And I just had the honour of learning about how Paquette’s art matters in the everyday life of someone it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Paquette’s art taking on a life of its own in Mana Hill’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Lisa Victors was grabbed by the individuality of Von Tiesenhausen’s subtle, open,
and engaging approach to environmental art. As she sank deeper into her story, however, it also became clear just how much the individuality, for her, was more about an inherent capacity for generating dialogue, connection, and community, not individuality alone. She returned again and again in our conversation to mentioning how integral to the entire experience of Von Tiesenhausen’s installation in her gallery was his being there in person, and “actually talking to the guy.” Von Tiesenhausen’s unique way of doing his installations necessitates his being in and engaging with the community, listening, paying attention, and participating for at least ten days prior to the opening of the show. Very little is pre-planned or arranged. He creates the work from the ground up in that time with whatever is available and becomes available to him while there. This made a powerful impression on Lisa.
For her, “much of his work…was as much about the ten days he spent in the
community creating the work and engaging the community in that process.” “That… continues to resonate here,” she remarks with clear and profound admiration, “people… remember being part of something when Peter was here more than, and they talk about
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that more than, what was actually in the installation.” Construction workers, for example, and other people who would not necessarily be your typical gallery-goers were coming in and out on their lunch breaks to show friends the work they had helped move in or out in some way. She is also aware from numerous conversations that “many people miss him dearly and want me to bring him back.” “It was just this total community engagement,” she repeated in awe, “and then there was the curiosity, and then there was dialogue.” CBC was even calling her to find out what was going on. “You know, there was this creation of a myth,” Lisa remarked, and it has kept on rhythmically articulating through the community in different life experience stories: “it continues to generate conversation and dialogue.” Lisa proceeded to tell me other impassioned stories that had unfurled from this experience, which continued to unexpectedly connect what was going on in Sarnia to wider conversations and events, including to Von Tiesenhausen’s trip to the Arctic some years before for another art project called The Watchers, and to the coast guard ship he used to get there. There was like this unexpected “web of connectivity with others in the world,” Lisa pointed out. They felt part of a much larger story always already going on around them than what might have been immediately evident if focusing on just the artist, the artwork, or community alone.
As I got more and more caught up in all of the stories surrounding her experience
with Von Tiesenhausen’s work, I began to see just how much it took on a life of its own in so many lives, especially within Lisa’s own life experience story. She herself is an incredibly powerful community connector and builder. Von Tiesenhausen’s work, it
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seems to me, resonates so much with her because it animates her own incredible gift she carries for the world. After weaving me through more stories relating to Von Tiesenhausen’s work, she disclosed that the capacity to continue to “reach for what’s beyond your grasp…that’s what excites me, or that moves me…and Peter’s got it in spades!”
That’s just it. From what I hear, Lisa does too. She put an incredible amount of
work into helping Von Tiesenhausen complete his installation by securing municipal approval (including the incredible amount of bureaucratic hoops involved in such a process), to bury a bust of one of his Watchers fifteen feet below the sewers underground, just outside the gallery. She’s involved in city council meetings. She hosts regular open dialogue nights at the gallery to help create openings for dialogue and community connection around anything and for anyone through art. All this in the name of the recurring themes running throughout our conversation: community, dialogue, and connection, not just in particular aspects of the painting itself. Von Tiesenhausen’s work is a companion that has helped animate this within her so she can continue to help her community reach for what might seem beyond their grasp at times: a fully engaged and connected community in all their differences. Even if people have to begin by saying, “well I don’t get it…why is this art?,” Lisa says, “that in itself opens the dialogue.” And I just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von
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Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Lisa’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Geoff Hampton was grabbed by the individuality of Flodberg’s craftsmanship and
perceived mental process lying behind his paintings. As he sank deeper into his story, however, it was precisely this perceived individuality that helped enable Geoff to belong more fully to the world, not stand proud in a false sense of individualism. Repeatedly throughout our conversation, I found myself somewhat thwarted when trying to talk to Geoff about what it was specifically that he liked about some Flodberg artworks. On one level, I could tell he was absolutely mesmerized by Flodberg’s art, that it definitely captured his imagination, for his voice was highly expressive and full of emotion. On another level, however, it kept weirdly seeming to me that he didn’t like his art.
For example, he loved Flodberg’s painting of the tiger, which he ended up
purchasing. But he also kept telling me over and over again that he didn’t really like tigers, and that any experience he’d ever had with tigers did not influence his pull towards the painting at all. He was adamant. Similarly, the trees in Flodberg’s landscapes captivated him immensely (see Fig. 24). But although Geoff does love nature, he told me that his captivation by these particular paintings had nothing to do with trees themselves, or the landscape in general. Furthermore, Geoff would frequently mention things like: “I couldn’t tell you [what the trees represent], you’d have to ask Chris [Flodberg],” or “I don’t claim to be able to understand what goes on,” or “I don’t know what the significance of it is.” He would continually pull back from the paintings,
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physically, emotionally, and intellectually, on one hand, but on the other, was clearly very engaged through every cell of his body nevertheless. I started to give up on trying to figure out why he could possibly like these paintings so much when he seemed to feel so little connection to the actual content or meaning in them. Just then I realized that that was the problem, I was trying “to figure it out” instead of just listening to his enchanting story.
What captivated Geoff,
“more than anything else…was an awareness of…Chris [Flodberg]…that there’s something very much different about him.” “The mental thing [that goes into an artwork] is the FIG. 24. Chris Flodberg, Late Summer Reflections, c.2004. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 152.4 cm. Location unknown.
first, the physical thing is, to me, the second,” he stated. As
we deepened into this story, it became even clearer. It didn’t even necessarily matter what that mental process was, for him; just that there was this amazing mental process at all. “That’s right, that’s right,” he smiled, physically elated to have the awareness finally out, spoken, heard. “That’s exactly it, that’s exactly it,” he repeated again with
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emphasis. And then the floodgates opened. Our conversation surrounding Flodberg’s art took on a life of its own, weaving through stories of John Lennon, Freddy Mercury, brilliant cosmetic surgeons in his field pushing boundaries with face transplants, NASA astronauts trying to come up with ways to melt polar ice caps on Mars and create new civilizations in space, and Mozart. Geoff is absolutely mesmerized and awestruck by “people who really do think out[side the box], and come up with stuff [creatively].” “Yes, most definitely,” he reiterates, “most definitely.” “Just that same thing,” he continues, “you have somebody like Chris [Flodberg], where that just has to come out of you…it’s that which impresses me.” This is very important to Geoff, for the breaking of new ground, the trying of new stuff, he says, is how “we gain more knowledge.”
“The
mastery of something,” he continues, “and the intrinsic ability of somebody else to master something that I know I’ll never be able to accomplish…I just love it, I truly love it.”
“It would never enter into my mind,” Geoff says, pointing towards the Flodberg
painting hanging on the wall behind me in his office, “to put a breakfast table filled up with food and put it in front of a city with an airplane landing behind it.” And towards the end of our conversation full of statements like this, I was suddenly struck by Geoff’s incredible humility. As a successful medical doctor, Geoff’s ego has plenty of opportunity to grow, inflate, and dominate, yet he is genuinely fascinated with people, what makes them tick, and learning. Flodberg’s art animates his own life experience story with an insatiable and refreshing childlike wonder for the world and all of its creation. This is an
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incredible gift that I felt in touch with even after only talking with him for less than an hour. In more ways than one, Geoff’s story is one about the preciousness of the imagination, of vision, and of wonder. And these and Flodberg’s mastery of his art are, indeed, aspects of modernism more broadly. But here they interestingly come into their own through the experience of belonging more fully to the world as a humble, though highly specialized, medical doctor. Moreover, they are all encompassed within his playful personality and character that allows for a trust that everyone is doing exactly what they are meant to do. This is not just an intellectual “interpretation” of Flodberg’s art, this is how it lives on in Geoff’s life. And I just had the honour of learning about how Flodberg’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Flodberg’s art taking on a life of its own in Geoff’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
One of the endpoints currently finalizing our story of art in Alberta is that art and
the artworld here have always revelled in its individuality. If we stop part way through the art process at the artist’s life and artwork alone, it does seem like this is so; it is part of the story. But ending the story here also stifles the work’s full story, and ways in which it is always already working with, animating, and instigating lives in our more-thanhuman world from the ground up.
☈⊕♁
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The two other major characteristics mentioned above, which have also helped art historians summarize the story of art in Alberta, will be explored together in this final section. For our purposes here, Alberta’s crafting movement and persistent embrace of the landscape genre, are related because they are both rooted in a strong sense of regionalism. This, in turn, is also how these characteristics overlap with the idea of individuality explored above, for it is also linked to regionalism. After all, Alberta’s landscape is, of course, different than that of other provinces. Townshend remarks that “Compared to previous milestones in Alberta’s visual arts…Alberta’s crafts…developed during a relatively hermetic period.” She quotes Alberta craft pioneer Luke Lindoe in saying, with reference to ceramics specifically, “‘we were able to be isolated and independent. Consequently, ceramics in Alberta grew as a thing separate, not tied to any apron strings.’”525 Along with the teachings and work of another major Alberta craft pioneer and artist, Marion Nicoll, such sentiments ensured that craft constituted an important foundation in Alberta’s artworld. Lindoe and Nicoll were both strong advocates for handmade objects exhibiting self-reliance in the maker, and utilizing local materials from the land here.
This practical and pedagogical emphasis on the importance of local materials
and place in handmade art also links craft with Alberta artists’ long association with landscape and art concerned with place and nature. The most sophisticated and informative exploration of this characteristic in the story of art in Alberta is art writer and curator Mary-Beth Laviolette’s An Alberta Art Chronicle (2006).526 Acknowledging that
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landscape painting in Alberta has “never been about just one thing,” Laviolette broadens the conventional approach to contemporary art in Canada, in order to include the continuing tradition of landscape, nature, and place-based art in Alberta.527 Within this framework, she observes three overlapping generational approaches to the land in Alberta, each representing a deepening relationship with place.
The first generation of Alberta landscape artists—including Illingworth Kerr, A.C.
Leighton, Maxwell Bates, Roland Gissing, H.G. Glyde, and Marion Nicoll—were most interested in the landscape as subject matter. This was largely the case whether or not artists approached it from within a more objective English tradition; European impressionistic or expressionistic tradition; or through a more abstract, personal, and intuitive dimension. The second generation of Alberta landscape artists—including Ken Christopher, John McKee, William Duma, Harry Savage, Robert Sinclair, Takao Tanabe, and Norman Yates—were less interested, according to Laviolette, in what was being told, and more in how it was being told. The third and current generation—including Jeffrey Spalding, Stephen Hutchings, Brent Laycock, Chris Flodberg, Peter von Tiesenhausen, Lyndal Osborne, Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, and Joane CardinalSchubert—“examine more closely the content of their subject matter and what they want to say about it.” As such, the subject’s “meanings, connotations, and associations, including related social and political issues,” are often touched on by this generation. The new immediacy and elementalism in third-generation works, in turn, branches out into art more generally concerned with nature and the environment in all its diversity, as
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well as into works of shared concern but utilizing new media, such as photography, video, nature itself, and other mixed media items. The concerns of third-generation artists also branch out into art that is more particularly concerned with place—namely, the place called Alberta.528 Laviolette does point out some instances where certain Alberta artists do not necessarily fit squarely within these categories. They—such as Maureen Enns, Ted Godwin, Dulcie Foo Fat, and Von Tiesenhausen—can sometimes straddle two categories at the same time. Most it seems, however, can be categorized within just one.
Clearly, all of these shifts in the Alberta artworld are part of the story; they each
embody a truth in the story of art in Alberta. They are also all approached by Laviolette in a Eurocentric way that emphasizes imported art practices and theories, despite her frequent claims to Alberta’s self-reliance, regionalism or individuality, and Alberta artists’ unique concern for place, here. The following are just a few examples demonstrating this emphasis, even if only unintentional. First, it was the “first generation [of landscape artists who] established landscape as a primary subject matter for art in Alberta,” and less so “the overwhelming presence of the environment” itself.529 The human activity, here, tends to be privileged over the larger story it is always already encompassed by. Second, Laviolette states that the second-generation prairie modernists “apply many of the practices of 1960s [New York] abstract painting to create…The Big Picture.”530 This erroneously implies that it is Euro-American Colour-Field painting on its own creating the big picture here, rather than the living, expansive, earthly big picture always already
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encompassing artists on the prairies, and which is creating, animating, or articulating itself from the ground up through collaboration with Colour-Field painting in the first place. Third, it is primarily the European or Euro-American intellectual turn towards Postmodernism heralding that “an artistic sea change is underway in Canada,” by way of the third generation of landscape artists.531 Postmodernism alone is emphasized, by Laviolette, for directing artists’ attention toward content, toward environmentalism, toward other socio-political issues, and enabling the rise of contemporary Aboriginal art and its concerns. This erroneously assumes that some of the key insights offered by postmodernism, as we have already seen, were not already available here from the ground up. On the contrary, many postmodern insights had already long-been embodied by many Indigenous ways of knowing here.
The extent to which these common omissions infiltrate every level of our
conventional story of art in Alberta can be elaborated on through a look, for example, at what Laviolette says about the place of Lindoe's and Von Tiesenhausen’s art within the story. She quotes from a 1992 Lindoe artist statement when he wrote: “Art is not the most important undertaking of my life. That priority goes to the maintaining of my relationship with the natural world.”532 She then diminishes the full potential of the statement by concentrating on it as being primarily an indication of the artist’s unaccommodating nature in the face of connoisseurs: “that’s Luke Lindoe for you. He seemed to spar with all of the labels attached to him.” And then she proceeds to label
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him herself from the top down as an “early modernist” ceramic sculptor, painter, and geologist, who interprets the environment romantically and subjectively.533
Laviolette also quotes from Von Tiesenhausen himself, who says his work is
“communicating nature as nature does, directly through the senses.”534 But then she immediately quashes the possibility of this occurring in the next sentence by emphasizing that it is Von Tiesenhausen himself “creat[ing] a more tactile, more elemental and more heightened art,” bridging “the older tradition of landscape painting and the…other methods and media used by Alberta artists to engage with the landscape and the natural world around them.” The very ground-up, embodied communication alluded to by both Lindoe and Von Tiesenhausen is de-emphasized, if not denied outright. Within the disciplinary boundary lines of her writing, Laviolette can only talk about “being inter-connected or intimate with the environment [as] an aspiration for some Alberta artists [my emphasis], and a desire that the highly urbanized contemporary art world can barely grasp.”535 She cannot fully acknowledge that “being inter-connected or intimate with the environment” is something we all already are, as human beings, no matter how urbanized. These Eurocentric predispositions when one is trying to discuss the human-nature connection, even if only unintentional, indicate that the story they amount to can only ever be part of the story. They too presume to explain artists’ stories, rather than allowing them to breathe. And the indigenously oriented storywork process always already enfolding artists and their art from the ground up is concealed or denied.
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What became abundantly clear throughout my listening to actual art experience
stories, however, was that the artwork itself was never the end of the story. It was never really the beginning of anything either, if by that is meant a definitive transition point whereby everything from that point onward is different due to the artist’s message. This places way too much emphasis on art as a transition point, and not enough on what happens between transition points. This is one reason why Archibald’s conversation with Elder and storyteller Tillie Guiterrez so resonates for me here. It is worth repeating: art does not give answers, it shows the way. Similarly, many participants animated an awareness in me for just how much there seemed to be a disconnect between everyday art lovers, on one hand, and the conventional stories art historians often imply are ours as Canadians, on the other. Not all participants read art historical works, though many did and were quite knowledgeable in the conventional story of art in Canada. Either way, for most, the stories art historians told did not seem “to fit” completely, or left them feeling a lack of confidence in their own embodied encounters with the artworks.
One of the most outspoken participants in this regard was Peter Ross, a hotel
manager in Banff, and lover of Von Tiesenhausen’s work. For Peter, the most exciting moments when encountering art come from doing the work oneself because “it’s there already,” he emphasizes with a pause, so I would really get the power of what he was saying. He has attended speaker sessions at galleries before, but is sometimes “turned off” by listening to art historians speak. These speakers, he says, sometimes “seem to be oblivious to reality around [them].” Although he recognizes a kind of mastery they
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may have “at presenting art,” most of what they say just seems to be what he calls “art babble.” He does not feel that they include him and his reality much at all.536 Another participant echoed these sentiments in gentler terms. Noel Bélanger, a production coordinator and photographer from Calgary, recognizes that art is in part “a language of specialists,” just like one would go to a geologist to find out more about rocks, but it also needs to remain open and accessible.537
It seems to me that, in general, the language and stories of art have not been
kept that open and accessible for the most part, although this circumstance does also seem to be changing. The telling of a story of art, or the doing of art history or criticism, in my view, should not preclude or undermine a viewer’s capacity for art appreciation and experience. It is largely in such instances, I would suggest, that a viewer or a community may begin to feel like the story being told about them, or that is supposedly relating to them in some important social-ecological ways, does not fit. Participants would frequently question their own experience after passionately opening up to me. They would question whether or not they really got the message intended by the artist, or really knew what they were talking about even though they were not some kind of expert. These moments deeply saddened me, for their own beautiful, empowering, and often inspirational art experience stories were often immediately devalued within their lives as though they needed to be experts on “art,” as opposed to experts on the pain of broken relationships and promises; on the love of one’s children; on the love of the
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earth and natural world encompassing us all; on missing home; or on the knowledge, or lack thereof, of each our own ancestors and gifts we carry for the world.
Nature and the land are, of course, key elements in Alberta artwork, whether by a
first, second, or third generation landscape artist, or an artist more generally concerned with nature in all of its manifestations. But as human beings always encompassed by a more-than-human world, nature is always gesturing towards and articulating itself within our life experience stories in vastly different ways, according to each our own carnal immersions within it. This is why when Von Tiesenhausen’s (through Dirk’s), story is approached from the ground up it becomes about far more than just an aspiration to an “inter-connected or intimate [relationship] with the environment” through “a more tactile, more elemental and more heightened art,” as facilitated by postmodern intellectualism within the artist himself. Such is part of the story, but so is the temporality of other aspects in Dirk’s life, as well as his integrity, truth telling, and compassion, which, although related, of course, may not necessarily be about or directly concerned with the land at all. This is also how Flodberg’s statements of excess within ruined cityscapes, or his paintings of both obliterated and pristine environments, can be environmentalist, and also animate childlike wonder for people, as well as a commitment to confront personal fears and human weakness. Miriam Landrenne, a highly respected Elder in the Métis Nation and activist for Aboriginal women’s rights in Canada from Edmonton, is overflowing with excitement and honour when looking at and talking about Shillinglaw’s art. As we heard in Lily’s art
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experience story above, Miriam is also animated by Alberta, the landscape, and the natural world surrounding us through Shillinglaw’s work. She is particularly pulled into one of the works Shillinglaw had recently given her as a gift—and which she is showing me as we speak (Fig. 22). Sprawling across the picture plane are tall chutes of leaves and stems extending from top to bottom and almost completely blocking out the sky in the background, which is only visible in the small spaces between the foregrounded flowers. Almost immediately the painting captures Miriam’s imagination and animates the joy she feels when lying in the tall prairie grasses:
you know when you lay down in the grass and the grass is all around you…and you’re looking through the grass…when you’re running in the hills, or something, and then you just get to the top of the hill, or the side, and you lay down, and you see through the grass.538
And just then she feels compelled to show me the front of a recent brochure she had made up for a political campaign she was embarking upon for the Métis Nation of Alberta. The picture on the front is a close-up of her standing in tall prairie grass coming up to her waist and she is amazed by how much the story of the land continues to unfurl from the ground up in her life in various articulations, all animated now by Shillinglaw’s art. “It’s funny how things start to connect,” she remarks.
Miriam is drawn into the painting even more closely by the seed bead dew drops
gracing the surface of Shillinglaw’s painted leaves and flower petals. “This is particularly beautiful,” she says with a smile and gesture towards the mixed-media painting, “it’s like jewels…it looks like the dew…when the dew is on the flowers, or on the grass, in the
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morning.” Her reference to the morning suddenly began to deepen into other rhythms she felt unfurling through Shillinglaw’s art. Miriam would often reply to my statements and questions with stories. She was seldom direct except when speaking about the injustices she saw all around her everyday perpetrated against Aboriginal peoples, particularly Métis people and Aboriginal women. Throughout our conversation she always came back to stories of this ilk, including forays into the persecution of Métis people in Canada throughout history; Prime Minister Harper’s apology to Aboriginal peoples in Canada; the life and work of Louis Riel; and current stories about denigrated grave sites and maltreated Aboriginal women in prison. These kinds of issues have been the story of her life, for she gets routinely discouraged by present-day Canada: “I’ve been made to feel unwelcome in my own country, and I’ve nowhere to go,” she states solemnly and with a deep-rooted pain I can feel hanging on her every word. But then she comes back to Shillinglaw’s art, and it seems to awaken in her a new morning, bejewelled with dew drops in the sun, as she quotes a line from Riel that became like a motif in our conversation: “‘My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.’”
Much more than just a belief, it is an awareness for Miriam that Shillinglaw’s art is
part of a budding movement in Canada that is doing just this kind of work prophesied by Riel. Furthermore, she pointed out, on numerous occasions, sentiments like how the history of Métis people is “an integral part of the Canadian history,” and that the issue surrounding Riel and Métis history is not just for the Métis: “it is a national issue…it is
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part of me, it’s part of you, it’s part of the Canadian psyche…but most Canadians don’t know anything about that,” she laments. Laviolette included contemporary Aboriginal artists in her list of third generation nature artists in Alberta for their contribution towards dispelling illusions about a nature outside of history or devoid of non-European cultures. Miriam would agree that this is part of the story, but as Shillinglaw’s art takes on a life of its own in her life experience story it also goes way deeper than that. It animates a deep love for her own ancestors. It also animates and empowers her within her life as what I pictured as a generous protector. She is devoted to fighting for those who do not have a voice, or means, or circumstance to fight for themselves. With Shillinglaw’s art breathing into her the revered words associated with Riel, she can glimpse a more optimistic outlook for Canada. And she is reassured that she is not alone, for she seems to be able to feel her own spirit returning to her through Shillinglaw’s art, just as Riel foretold. It is like a guide inviting her to continue on with her own work for Métis people, Aboriginal women, and ultimately all Canadians. And I just had the honour of learning about how Shillinglaw’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Shillinglaw’s art taking on a life of its own in Miriam’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Julie Dubois, an artist from a nursing background living in central British
Columbia, is greatly interested in Von Tiesenhausen’s work mainly because “it resonates with [her] own experience…interests…and beliefs.”539 The environmental intimacy, tactility, and elementalism of his art noticed by Laviolette is definitely speaking
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to Julie as well, but while this aspect of his art helped draw her in, that is definitely not the end of the story. Like Von Tiesenhausen, she lives on a large piece of remote land and spends a lot of time cultivating her relationship to it. She feels “really tuned in to [her] land,” and is very aware that “it effects [her] and ultimately [she effects] it.” This was so much so that when she finally encountered Von Tiesenhausen’s work in person she felt “really ready to find somebody like Peter.” He was like someone walking a parallel path, which greatly excited her.
As she sank deeper into her story, she returned to talking about the first work of
his to capture her imagination: his willow Ship (Fig. 21). I could feel the self-confidence well up within her voice as she elaborated on the story. The artwork animated her with a relief and encouragement, for it was simple and open-ended enough, she said, that she “could even create [her] own story about that piece and the land.” And with that, Von Tiesenhausen’s story took on a life of its own within her life experience story. More than animating an intimate relationship with the land—this she already had—it invited her into a new story where, she says, she could be “more certain of speaking my mind.” “Because of Peter [Von Tiesenhausen]’s art,” she continues, “I began to use my own voice, to be more clear.” While growing into this story, she has been learning to speak more intentionally about her own concerns. One of the last things Julie said to me was a quote from Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral. Julie really felt it important to share, and so offered it up without my prompting her at all: “you shall create beauty not to excite the senses, but to give sustenance to the soul.” Von Tiesenhausen’s art has clearly
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provided sustenance for Julie’s soul by helping her find her own voice, rediscover ways to share her own gift with the world that she clearly cares very deeply for. It seems that, for her, going inside herself, finding her own voice, and honouring her own feelings and creativity, is to be more grounded to the earth. It also seems to help her become more able to observe situations with a motherly compassion, which she exudes in amplitude. In this way, she is better equipped to reciprocally help provide sustenance to the souls she encounters in her own way, just like she did for me throughout our conversation. And I just had the honour of learning about how Von Tiesenhausen’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Von Tiesenhausen’s art taking on a life of its own in Julie’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
Whereas for Mana Hill Paquette’s art animated a more intimate relationship with
the natural world than probably any other artist, Diane Stuart feels the opposite. For Diane, there is not such a strong connection to the land or Alberta unfurling through Paquette’s art, relative to other artists. From this point of divergence, however, it is interesting that both Mana Hill and Diane end up stepping into relatively similar stories nevertheless, with or without the land in their awareness. Diane was immediately captivated not just by Paquette’s art, but by “the way he was using the art.”540 It greatly moves her how Paquette makes digital art reproductions from time to time available to all who want to use them for free through his website. One such artwork, Coming Home, has made a long and lasting impression on her.
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The painting shows a village of tipis in the snow in the evening. The largest tipi in
the foreground extends almost all the way to the top of the painting and is lit up with a fire inside. By the firelight, silhouettes of a family can be seen inside the tipi, and just above it in the evening sky the northern lights dance around the moon in humanoid shapes reminiscent of a round dance. “He [Paquette] uses the theme of the home, and people returning home,” Diane mentions solemnly, after acknowledging Paquette’s inspiration of residential school survivors in it. “It is a striking metaphor,” she continues, “how people need to return…to some kind of a place of…belonging…and a place in the world.” She elaborates further by saying that, to her, “it’s such an important part of being a human being to be able to have some continuity with ancestors.” And it is amazing to her how Paquette is “able to get across…big concepts, in…[a] very simplistic kind of a style.”
What I realize as we sink deeper into her story is just how much—as with all art
experience stories, whether told by a retired administrative assistant or an art historian —the story is less about some objective reflection of the artwork itself, and more an embodiment of the story within the storyteller’s own life that allows her to be.541 Diane is a non-Aboriginal person, and is deeply moved by Paquette’s story envisioning residential school survivors returning home to their families, cultures, places, and ancestors. This is what art historians might say the painting is “about,” which certainly ties in to Laviolette’s categorization of contemporary Aboriginal artists as contributing to nature art by dispelling the illusion of a pristine nature outside of history or devoid of
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non-Europeans. But there is a synergistic story power that, as Archibald demonstrates, also really brings it “to life.”542 More than being merely “about” Paquette’s ancestors, the painting also animates Diane toward awarenesses concerning her own ancestors. She thinks about their connection with Paquette’s ancestors, and the disconnect she feels from a history that is necessarily profoundly interwoven with her, though also partly taken away from her in some way. Despite the great privileges she inherits as a nonAboriginal person as a result of the half-histories taught her, it seems she cannot help but feel an incredible void or emptiness, nevertheless, because un-whole feels unwhole, no matter what side of the chasm one was born on.
For Diane, Paquette’s art stimulates her awareness of “how disregarded [the
Aboriginal side to the] story is, and all sorts of history that Aboriginal people have not actually ever been invited to share.” “The more I realize that,” she says, “the more important I think it is.” “There is something in that particular art that Aaron [Paquette] does,” she continues, “in the stories…that is very important for modern day people to hear…the connection to everything, seeing things in a holistic way.” And then she sinks even deeper: “to rise above…what we’ve been, we have to know what we’ve done and how it’s not a very good way of progressing.” Paquette’s art, she says, has “made me think a lot more about how history’s told through the eyes of the dominant society that has taken charge.” It has animated “a simmering passion” within her to take a stand in her own, mainly non-Aboriginal, community for “more equality and more understanding between cultures.” Even though she’s aware that “there’s been people that have been
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working for centuries…to try to get [the Aboriginal] voice heard,” she cannot help but wonder what’s happening to all this work because she does not see near the amount of learning, healing, and sharing she might expect after all this time around her. Diane laments that “it’s such a shame…everything’s so disintegrated…separate.” “[Art] academics meet,” she continues, but it seems like their discussions are sometimes “so divorced from…everyday lives.” She feels that art, especially Paquette’s art, can actually make a difference in bridging the gap between people and cultures, “if people are encouraged to understand: how does this apply to my life?…how does this relate to me?…[art] is a living thing, you know.”
For her own part, Diane has started to take matters into her own hands. With
Paquette’s art as her companion, she has taken it upon herself to try to share it as much as she can, “to get his art…[and] Aboriginal stories into, you know, places where people can hear it and see it.” She has, for example, volunteered at a small local museum to question and challenge what they are doing with their “First Nations Room”: “it’s way past time,” she states, “that people have a voice and a way to express what the history was, you know.” She also sidestepped into various stories during our conversation about myriad exhibition, theatre, and community art event visions (some of them incredibly elaborate), that she’s had come to her, which would all be facilitated in some way by Paquette’s art. These would be to help “batter down the [rigidity of the] walls,” and really help “people understand each other.” Would it not be amazing to explore having so-called ordinary members of the audience help in the design and staging of an
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art exhibition? She told me, “yes,” and to keep her in mind indeed, with an ecstatic smile and eagerness to participate.
Paquette’s art also has a way of getting “into our heart,” she said, and so after
retiring a few years back she made the commitment to “spend some time…following my heart.” “The salmon,” she continued, “I’ve always loved the salmon…just the energy that salmon have,” and so she took it upon herself to build a clay oven at her home in the shape of a salmon. Diane blew me away with the strength, passion, vision, and action that Paquette’s art has helped animate within her life experience story. I am not surprised at all how connected she feels to the salmon and their energy. Like the salmon, she carries an incredible gift for the world: to acknowledge the importance of always returning to the place of one’s creation, coming home, no matter the obstacles and strong river currents working against us. In her own way, she strives to bring events and cycles to closure. As such, every encounter in her life seems more like a gathering of wisdom, which can be tapped into in order to instinctively do what is right, no matter the currents of public opinion, hidden agendas, or manipulation for personal gain. She seems intuitively aware that wisdom is not something one receives while still and deep in thought, but that one swims into it by applying inner truths to one’s own life.543 And I just had the honour of learning about how Paquette’s art matters in the everyday life of someone else it is supposed to story. I got to feel the breath of Paquette’s art taking on a life of its own in Diane’s life story…and now mine…and now yours.
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The above art experience stories, and the thousands of others always already
going on around us, significantly enrich our story of art in Canada. The ones above reveal a more complete power inherent in at least the art of Paquette, Shillinglaw, Flodberg, and Von Tiesenhausen: ways in which it really does live on, breathe, and animate our world, the Canadian experience, and the essence of our cultural evolution in its fullness. Archibald’s indigenous storywork methodology, as we have seen, reciprocally involves equal participation between storyteller, story, listener, and context of the story encounter. Too often, our story of art in Canada only accounts for the storyteller and the story, end of story. This is not the whole story. This chapter has attempted to help demonstrate that, as human beings always already encompassed by a much larger more-than-human story here, the full story of art in Canada is always already an indigenously oriented one. It is always already unfurling from the ground up, and cannot be separated from story listener, nor from the context of the story encounter. If Canadians are to have a story of art that feels more like “a fit” for everybody—one that resonates with and empowers us—it is much more likely to unfold in the realm of concrete everyday life, not the abstract. The power of art—its story—is not primarily in the ways artists have done something different or unique on their own, nor necessarily in the messages they alone express in their art, but in how the synergistic entirety of the storywork process deepens or awakens viewers’ abilities to fully belong to the world. Without this crucial element, it is difficult for viewers’ lives to avoid being as incomplete, shallow, and fragmented as the story they are told is animating them. And it is no
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wonder, then, how so many Canadians—ordinary viewers and art historians alike—are suddenly feeling like they have woken up in someone else’s story.
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EPILOGUE:
CONCLUSIONS AND FORWARD
The Story of Art in Canada This project has been the first concerted attempt to decolonize the story of art in Canada—a story that many Canadians, inside and outside the artworld, have been growing increasingly disenchanted with. I have argued that a significant root of this disenchantment has been the story’s entrenched Eurocentricity, due in large part to the disciplinary boundary lines of the art historical tradition, especially its branch of art criticism. These effectively conceal the actual indigenous orientation and aliveness of art here. The problem is that when the engine and fuel driving the story are all rooted in Europe, or European styles, thoughts, and practices, lived experience here is continually subordinated, concealed, or devalued, even if only unintentionally. When and if it is valued, it is often only done so through an abstracted lens privileging an intellectualism that can seem benevolent on the surface, but conceals an arrogance and fundamental disconnection at its core. This core, as it is manifested in the conventional story of art in Canada, continually subordinates voices that are equally contributing to the story, but which it cannot or will not fully pay attention to. Namely, those of people not directly involved in the artworld, the actively participating more-than-human world always already encompassing all human activity here, and the indigenous voices that have long interwoven with and from this place. These voices together demonstrate, in
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other words, what is unfolding through the art process here from the ground up, but which is continually subordinated or concealed.
In order to acknowledge, reinvigorate, and open the story of art in Canada back
up to these always already active voices, I re-visited the story from a more crosscultural approach, one that I have called a storied approach to art. I developed the storied approach by drawing from two key works: Jo-ann Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork, and Arthur Frank’s Letting Stories Breathe. The significant components of the approach allowed me to: first, recognize art (and our art histories and criticism), as stories. That is, as living, breathing, open-ended companions that tell us, just as much as we tell them. In this light, they are to be taken seriously, for there is much more in play through art than mere entertainment, decoration, escape from “real” life, or nice things on the periphery of our lives that we may or may not need. Second and third, they allowed me to recognize art as performative and always working holistically with things. Stories act, and not just with or through storytellers’ minds or artworks alone, but through places, things, viewers, and other stories. They are embodied by bodies, materialized in the act of telling (whether by a human or non-human voice), and take on a life of their own in the shifting, breathing, and animate more-than-human world. While the conventional story of art in Canada largely privileges artists and their artworks in the story, the storied approach acknowledges stories’ aliveness by also accounting for viewers, and the context of the story encounter within the process as well.
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Finally, the storied approach allowed me to acknowledge art in Canada in a way
that was not beholden to the conventional Eurocentric approaches and thoughts that are largely about art, or trying to explain it. It acknowledges it instead from the ground up, as a living thing, in a way that is more interested in speaking with it, and allowing it to do what it can do. Because of this, major concerns, points, and influences stemming from abstract European sources are discussed, valid, and still able to be recognized as important parts of the story, they just do not dominate it, control it, or shape it in any kind of privileged way. In order to further develop and deepen into the storied approach, I also drew heavily from the work of David Abram, especially his Becoming Animal. This enabled me to explain more clearly the extent to which a perceived separation from the animate earth, everywhere embedded within the disciplinary boundary lines of art history, is a significant, if not the significant, veil obscuring our art historical conversation around art in Canada. When this veil is pulled back, the indigenous orientation of art, and the storied approach to it—both always already rooted here—become much more evident, even empowering.
Re-envisioning the story of art in Canada from a storied approach entailed two
main steps. First, I identified three key points in the story—moments that have been generally acknowledged by art historians as central points of reference for the story of art as we know it—and re-visited them with the above components in mind. The three points of reference were: (1) the art of Lucius O’Brien around the time of confederation and birth of a more self-aware artworld in Canada; (2) the art of Tom Thomson and the
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Group of Seven; and (3) the art of Paul-Émile Borduas and the official turn towards abstraction and internationalism in the Canadian artworld. Bringing the storied approach to bear on these points of our conventional story allowed us to unlearn major aspects of the conventional story that were so entrenched in Eurocentricity that they concealed aspects of lived experience here. This, then, cleared a space for us to relearn aspects of those same stories as they have been always already unfurling from the ground up here. Engaging in this first step of the research project demonstrated the extent to which it is Eurocentric thoughts, words, and actions that are nested within the larger story of here—as manifested through the animate earth and Indigenous voices long breathing and sustaining it—not the other way around, as it is so often implied and assumed by our conventional story. A concealed indigenous orientation of the story of art in Canada was revealed.
The second step of the research project involved opening up aspects of the story
of art as we know it today even more: to the voices of viewers of art and contexts of art encounters as well. Doing so revealed the extent to which the story of art in Canada is, indeed, an indigenously oriented, living, breathing entity that is open-ended and animating us from the ground up, according to our carnal immersions in it. It is more than just the fixed and Eurocentric explanations of art we read in art history books. I included viewer voices in the project by conducting fourteen interviews with people who have been touched, moved, or inspired by art, in order to gather their art experience stories. For project manageability, I asked four Albertan artists—Heather Shillinglaw,
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Chris Flodberg, Aaron Paquette, and Peter von Tiesenhausen—to help put me in contact with project participants. In this way, it was demonstrated how the re-envisioned story of art in Canada does respectfully acknowledge, even empower, the aliveness of art, all peoples, and the animate earth encompassing us, here, just as it always has, in the ongoing emergence of the real.
In a nutshell, the re-envisioned, always already, indigenously oriented story of art
in Canada, then, is this:
The animate earth moved, breathed, and shifted as it rolled, heated
stormed, cooled, burned, eroded, swam, flew, blossomed, sang, fought, dreamt,
and loved. Over time, these ongoing rhythms unfurled again and again in new
combinations, collaborations, and surprise encounters, all the while staying a
little bit the same. They eventually gestured towards, pulled, animated, then
instigated more-than-human dreams and imaginations so all of creation could
work together towards balance and aliveness according to each creature’s
particular carnal immersion in the ever unfolding story. Certain two-legged
creatures always remembered their integral part in and contribution to this great
emergence of real life, and told and retold it in various ways so their children and
grandchildren would never forget. Some other two-legged creatures, for their own
important reasons and contributions, grew to forget about the sensuous fullness
of their lives within their original home. These two-leggeds, mainly from Europe,
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started to move more freely around the world and some came to Canada. They
imported some of their forgetfulness to this new place.
nevertheless, were valuable, sought after, and helpful. Many others supported
and encouraged their destructive and crippling effects, but something else
unexpected happened. The aliveness of the more-than-human world here, still
intact and unfurling through the animate earth and the stories it always animated
here, began to pull at and enlarge their bodies and imaginations once again. It
encompassed and provoked their awarenesses, which now included such human
agendas as Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction.
It re-animated and re-instigated through art practice their interwoven connection
with their more-than-human world once again, which could never be completely
gone even though it was forgotten.
East Coast air that cycles in the deep and gushes with an offering from the
surfacing whales. The ever unfurling and encompassing stories of here began to
take on a life of their own, according to creatures’ particular carnal immersions
within them. They animated more stories, and more stories, and those continued
to animate even more yet. Some unfolded in the shape of particular kinds of
cities. Some in the shape of particular kinds of governments. Some in the shape
of new kinds of music, and language, and beadwork, carvings, landscape
Some of these two-leggeds’ stories and the practices they instigated,
This gradual reawakening moved as sure as the shallow, rocky soil in the
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paintings, figurative drawings, abstracts, installations, and performance art. Each
articulation of the story being a particular piece of embodied place-based truth,
where the whole answer is not in the story, but in that there is a story.
course, still retained much of their old forgetfulness, which breathed life as well
into stories that took shape as new fears, new illusions of separation, and new
rules and controls that worked counter to much of the life here. Sometimes new
technologies, new knowledges, and even a new culture now called the Métis
people were also instigated, ushering in a new kind of hope and possibility. Either
way, the larger story these were all already nested within was unrelenting,
immense, and strong. Its downward pull continued to work and erode away at the
forgetfulness, yearning to thrive again in unison with all creatures’ souls, and ever
shifting and breathing life into new articulations of balance and aliveness
particular to here. Storms storied storms, illnesses animated illness, learning
storied more learning, and beauty animated beauty. Creatures and new carnal
connections continued to sink and paint and perform with/in this larger story
enfolding and animating them here. Place-based awarenesses opened up more
and more with the deepening rhythms of each new generation. And the stories of
the more forgetful two-leggeds, according to their particular carnal immersions,
began to sound more and more like those of the ones who continued to
remember. The larger story encompassing them all together continued to unfurl
Some of the two-legged creatures’ carnal immersion in this larger story, of
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and breathe and share its balance and aliveness in the ongoing co-emergence of
the real here.
Canadian visual art everywhere also took on a life of their own through the
synergy created between the story, storyteller, listener, and the larger story
encompassing them all. For a while, the stories of one particular type of listener
—art critics—became privileged as the main story summarizing and explaining
them all. This craft too, however, is rooted primarily in the old forgetfulness.
Given its inherent shortcomings due to its displaced position within a new, larger
story here, it also started to become eroded, just as sure as the receding glaciers
bite into the limestones and shales of the Canadian Rockies. As a result, other
voices, ears, minds, and hearts are opening up everyday to the real fullness and
aliveness of the stories that animate them. They are also opening up to the
power and responsibility that comes with sharing them, as well as to listening to
others’ stories here.
The stories waiting to have life breathed into them in the shape of
A Brief Word On Aboriginal Art In Canada544 Aboriginal art has always been a significant part of what we now call Canada. Today, it i s k e y t o h o w Cana d ian s— inc l u d in g n o n -A bor i g in a l Canadians —repres e n t themselves.545 Non-Aboriginal people in Canada account for the majority of purchases of Aboriginal art, but these purchasers are not necessarily buying the art merely
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because it was created by an Aboriginal artist. As we have glimpsed in the art experience stories below, there is often more emotion, thought, physical influence, and even spiritual connection involved in the purchase, even if not a complete culturally informed understanding.546 Aboriginal voices are clearly becoming more influential, respected, and popular in mainstream Canada—so much so that, as John Ralston Saul suggests, some Canadians are “starting to imagine ourselves in another manner.”547 It will be helpful now to account for Aboriginal art more directly within the context of this project.
Aboriginal art, the original articulations of the storied life emerging from the
ground up here, is that unfurling rhythm within which all subsequent art and story in Canada is nested. It is for this reason that contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art is contributing so strongly to the slow awakening of more social-ecologically resilient societies in Canada today. In a recent public opinion survey, seventy-seven percent of respondents agreed that there is “a great deal” for Canadians “to learn from Aboriginal heritage, culture, and the unique relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and the land.”548 The increasing popularity of contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art also demonstrates that the relationships formed and knowledges shared resonate with Canadians.549 The subtle social-ecological partnerships between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal Canadians within their own stories and contexts form a significant and unfolding political dynamic. Within its more “natural context,” contemporary Canadian
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Aboriginal art helps to enrich, respectfully and reciprocally, Canadians’ lives with a deeper experience of living together in this place.
Most of my interview participants expressed great admiration for, and holistic
interconnectedness through, Aboriginal art. Those who were not so drawn to it, generally recognized its powerful aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual depth, nevertheless. They just felt that on one level, usually a cultural level, they could not relate. This paradoxical twofold experience—the awareness that something deep, even important is going on, on one hand, and a kind of distance, on the other—indicates to me that: (1) there is an incredible downward pull being experienced and yearned for at the moment; yet (2) we are still in the middle of figuring out how to share across cultural and ecological edges in a positive way that enriches and promotes Canada’s socialecological diversity and resilience instead of destroying it. While more and more Canadians—artists and non-artists alike—are experiencing the downward pull towards rediscovering their ongoing connection to the animate earth, the storywork of contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art that they are nested within neutralizes the force of Canada’s top-down political and social structures.
One of the most famous examples of a contemporary Canadian Aboriginal
artwork that has generated much social-political reverence, power, and authority is The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, by Haida artist Bill Reid. Reid (1920–1998) was a carver and goldsmith who, inspired by the art of his great-great-uncle Charles Edenshaw (1839– 1920), combined Haida traditions with European jewelry techniques to make his own
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art, which subsequently influenced a growing awareness of Aboriginal art traditions, a wave of emerging Northwest Coast Aboriginal artists, and a surge of intercultural sharing in Canada.
The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, installed in the courtyard of the Canadian Embassy in
Washington, DC, tells the story of thirteen travellers—animal and human from Haida Gwaii—journeying together in a traditional Haida canoe. The accompanying text introduces layers of the sculpture’s metaphorical depth as it came to Reid in a stream of consciousness dictated to his wife, Martine. Right from the beginning, Reid made no provision for an “answer,” or meaning, contained in the work alone: “Here we are at last, a long way from Haida Gwaii, not too sure where we are or where we’re going, still squabbling or vying for position within the boat, but somehow managing to appear to be heading in some direction.”550 He introduces the thirteen travellers, each embodying aspects of their relationship to the land of Haida Gwaii, as well as to each other and the Haida people. In the end, Reid returns to the use of the inclusive pronouns we and us when concluding with still more uncertainty: “Is the tall figure who may or may not be the Spirit of Haida Gwaii leading us, for we are all in the same boat, to a sheltered beach beyond the rim of the world as he seems to be, or is he lost in a dream of his own dreamings?”551 It is telling that Reid includes all Canadian viewers—us, we—in this multi-species boat from Haida Gwaii. The storywork relationship, including the viewers and their contexts, guides the viewer into a profound relationship with Haida Gwaii: its people,
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land, and ecosystems. The sharing and partnership forged here is not always easy— some of the characters in the boat interact through an embrace (Bear Mother and her children), others in a quarrel (the Wolf and the Eagle)—but it is a partnership shaped by a distinct Aboriginal way of knowing about equality, mutual respect, and mutual accommodation between humans and the more-than-human world in a Canadian context. This is the kind of relationship that many sustainable development and business commentators in Canada have increasingly been seeking. David Lertzman and Harrie Vredenburg, from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, argue that “global sustainable development will not be achieved in a cultural vacuum. In the global context, sustainable development is by its nature and of necessity a crosscultural endeavor. With their long-standing use and knowledge of ecosystems, Indigenous peoples play an especially important role in the cross-cultural dialogue on sustainable development.”552 Around Haida Gwaii and along BC’s west coast are found many examples of failed government policy and unethical industrial practices for resource extraction.553 It is not difficult to find examples of this in other provinces as well. Mark Lightner, a retired geologist and executive in the oil industry from Calgary is a collector of Flodberg’s art, as well as of Aboriginal art. In his art experience story, he told me that while employed in the oil industry he became very aware of environmental issues and that he felt “somewhat conflicted” as a result. As he acknowledged, people in his position work
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within an established structure driven by growth and profit, and many of the policies and practices that corporations put in place encourage employees to feel a sense of entitlement—to feel that, in carrying out their work, they are simply “being responsible.” Mark’s experience suggests that while conscience and hindsight may lead one to question the ethical grounds of one’s activities, the corporate structure tends to demand that one repress these thoughts and dampens any inclination an employee might have to challenge that structure as a respected and engaged citizen. The storywork inherent in contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art dissolves just such a hierarchical imbalance within a viewer’s own experience. For Mark, Aboriginal and landscape art (like Flodberg’s)—both of which find prominent places in his home side by side—mesh with his own experience, making him aware of his surroundings in a more reciprocal and holistic way. Referring to the Canadian Aboriginal and landscape art in his living room, he remarked that when he looks at the images, he thinks, “You know it’s so peaceful, it’s so uncontaminated, there’s no buildings, there’s no people . . . it’s serene.” He went on to contrast this purity with the modern environment: “You go walking around town and you see garbage all over the place, and run-down buildings, and . . . yeah, it affects me, subconsciously, and gradually you become more and more aware that people, houses, buildings, roads are taking over the world and leaving fewer and fewer pristine places.”554 When Mark walks the streets of Calgary, the sense of ecological harmony he finds in his contemporary art collection is thrown into relief by the seemingly rampant disrespect surrounding him.
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The stories expressed in his art collection take on a life of their own: they become teachers, conveying subconscious lessons. Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art carries significant political and ecological weight. It communicates by engaging viewers in a distinct intercultural partnership, based in Aboriginal storytelling traditions unfurling from the ground up, that embodies a solution to the socially and ecologically unsustainable practices promoted by mainstream industrial and political structures. This solution is related to principles like holism, reciprocity, and interrelatedness. The embodiment of this political consciousness in the storywork experiences of contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art engages viewers in an expression of themselves as interrelated with the land and the other beings that share it. This sustains the life and importance of a storied life for contemporary Canada. As we have seen, a sharing of knowledge through the arts has always been integral to the resilience of Canada. Today, the process is being adapted by artists to confront the colonial attitudes and behaviours that have contributed to many of the soc i a l-ec o log ic a l im b al a n ces curr e ntl y e xper i e n ced in C a nadi an s o ci e ti e s. Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art continues to engage societies in the age-old process of learning from each other, interacting with mutual respect and adaptation, and maintaining balanced relationships with the surrounding world from the ground up. The Spirit of Haida Gwaii was one of Reid’s crowning works in a long career, life, and learning process largely concerned with this theme of reciprocity and balance. The importance of this can be traced through Reid’s lifelong work on an essay he called
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“Haida Means Human Being.” In 1979, while confined to a Vancouver hospital, Reid began this essay, which he revised several times throughout his life: it explored the question “What is a human being?” For Reid, becoming human beings was a creative act where “we first had to invent ourselves.” This self-invention is more effectively sustained in communities such as early Aboriginal communities, where “access to [artistic/creative] skills was denied to no one.” Reid argues that over the course of Canadian history, some people became less human by turning their attention away from supporting this kind of creativity and toward the taking away or destruction of this basic creative ability in others around them. In the end, he envisions a time when Canadians will be “neither displaced aborigines nor immigrant settlers,” but will realize how becoming human is wholly dependent on how we creatively invent ourselves in relation to our homeland and the world around us. This is a theme that fuels his courageous, vulnerable, and powerful conclusion: “In the Haida language, Haida means human being…I wish for each of us, native or newcomer—or, as so many of us are now, both— that however we say it, we can recognize ourselves someday as Haida.”555 Aboriginal art and stories animate a unique soul-connection between humans and the more-than-human world immediately around them. In The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, not only is everyone equal or “in the same boat,” but the “boat goes on, forever anchored in the same place” (my emphasis).556 The storywork of this sculpture ultimately expresses a political statement that reverses the process that destroyed the creative ability for humans to invent themselves in relation to here. It subtly works to
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rebuild the necessary relationships for a balanced life in Canada. It reinstates Aboriginal knowledges and practices as crucial contributions to the sustenance of life in this place, and it engages non-Aboriginal Canadians as balancing contributors to this working partnership. Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art succeeds at doing this when it is purchased by non-Aboriginal collectors. Over time, the motives behind the collecting of Aboriginal art have changed. There is frequently much more emotion, thought, even spiritual connection in such transactions than in the past. Whatever their initial reasons, collectors have the advantageous position of being able to “hear” the story again and again as they view their works day after day. Each time they do, the story unfolds, from the ground up, in a different context, taking on a life of its own. It presents different layers of meaning within their life experience stories and in the Canadian public sphere, as we saw in the last chapter. The political consciousness inherent in a storywork encounter with contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art can be at work even for people who do not become purchasers. In another art experience story shared with me, Leo Campari, the son of Italian immigrants, and who was greatly moved by the work of Heather Shillinglaw, began discussing his experiences with her art in the context of his own background and upbringing. He told me that when he and his siblings were growing up in industrial Ontario, they felt little connection either with their Italian heritage or with the land. Cultural and ecological considerations took a back seat to just living and working. Leo
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later moved to Alberta and encountered Shillinglaw’s art at the same time he discovered the prairie landscape. Her art “confronted him,” he said, with something he was not used to in his day-to-day life—an acknowledged connection with the land. It also helped him make sense of his new surroundings and inspired him to think more about his own relationship to the land. He went on to say that Shillinglaw’s art and its stories keep appearing for him in unexpected ways as he grows with and learns about Alberta as “home.” He is inspired “to connect all the time with the creative process” in his own work. Shillinglaw’s art has also helped him to grow more aware and proud of his own Italian heritage.557 In a similar way, when Reid envisions a time when all people “in the same boat… forever anchored in the same place,” Canada, can call themselves “Haida,” a paradox immediately arises. When human beings are engaged in a respectful and accommodating partnership, the self is not destroyed, appropriated, replaced by someone else’s way of doing or understanding things, as is frequently an overwhelming fear in many relationships with “others.” Rather, the self becomes clearer, as an integral contributing member to the diversity of the world around.558 The storywork inherent in contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art engages viewers in an experience where all participants, whatever their background, are rooted, nested, in the “natural context.” This dissolves the validity of what Youngblood Henderson has called the “artificial context” often limiting the Canadian political system and, I add, the discipline of Canadian art history. It clears space for an equal partnership to be expressed and
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affirmed. Leo’s story demonstrates that his deepening relationship with the land in Alberta through Shillinglaw’s art also helped him deepen his relationship to Italy. “Italian,” like “Haida,” is ultimately an expression of “human beingness” and, when in equal partnership with Aboriginal knowledges in Canada, it too can enrich local society, making life here more whole and resilient. Aboriginal creative works and projects such as Reid’s, Shillinglaw’s, and Paquette’s have given, and give, Aboriginal people an important voice within Canada.559 Animating—“storyworking”—the natural interconnection between an individual, art, the animate earth, and an intercultural society lies at the heart of the (political) consciousness of Aboriginal art in Canada today. Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art not only visualizes aspects of this consciousness for others but also communicates it, or performs it, with others. It does not just import ideas from political science, but also generates subtle political resistance from the ground up through the practice of Indigenous storytelling in a visual medium. In a still strongly colonial society like Canada, one contributing system tends to overwhelm or dominate others, and benefits generally tend to flow top-down in one direction through rigid borders between different cultures.560 The storywork process in contemporary Aboriginal visual art actively engages viewers in the experience of living in a Canada in which this structure has been neutralized. The principles of holism, interrelatedness, reciprocity, respect, responsibility, reverence, and synergy, functioning together in a contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art encounter, engage Canadians in the
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experience of a sharing or partnership based on consent, mutual respect, and mutual adaptation, unlike experiences that may emerge in the political, institutional, and hierarchical structures of mainstream society and its story of art. This rich form of sharing harks back not only to the original Indigenous knowledges concerning living in this place but also to modern lessons about “the real spirit of intent in treaty making,” reconciliation, and sustainable development.561 It is a sharing that involves more than just an intellectual somersault or a linear relationship between artist, artwork, and viewer. Active participants in this contemporary Aboriginal art process reciprocally perform together what Ralston Saul has called “a philosophy of minorities,” even if only temporarily or subconsciously.562 Here, an equal sharing between different people, cultures, and communities can enhance the collective knowledges and practices contributing to living in society. In short, contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art communicates and engages Canadians in a political relationship that is based on, in political scientist Michael Murphy’s words: “equality . . . an equal right to exercise choices and make decisions that for too long have been the exclusive privilege of non-Aboriginal peoples through their control of the modern state.”563 With all other art and story in Canada necessarily nested within this always already unfurling larger story from here, Aboriginal art is always already working to neutralize the dominance of imported art practices, theories, and styles, which are largely privileged and emphasized by the discipline of art history. It animates the always already unfurling indigenous orientation of the story of art in Canada.
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Directions for Future Research One major area of research that this project opens up is that concerned with the indigenous orientation, or storied work, of other artists in Canada beyond O’Brien, the Group, and Borduas. The richness these artists have already provided the conventional story of art makes them great partners in dialogue, but there are, of course, many other artists—native Canadians with various ancestral backgrounds, or immigrants alike— with important stories to tell from here. All humans have an indigenous soul and so are always already in ongoing conversation with the animate earth and more-than-human world, whether they know it or not. Allan Edson’s Fond de Bois (1870); James Duncan’s Falls Near Lake St. John, Canada East (c.1850-60); Otto Jacobi’s Falls of Ste Anne, Quebec (1865); Robert S. Duncanson’s A Wet Morning on the Chaudière Falls (1868); or Daniel Fowler’s Fallen Birch (1886), for example, are other works that tap into an earth narrative similar to O’Brien's, and according to their own carnal immersions within the larger story.
That there are many other artists and works to look at in this way demonstrates
the extent to which the privileged place European methods and ideas have in the story of art in Canada can be relaxed, made more social-ecologically balanced, and more cross-cultural. Many artists indeed flocked to Europe and European art trainers, particularly in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. But this does not necessarily mean these top-down transplantations wholly dictated the direction of art and the way Canadian artists and their viewers, in turn, “saw” their places here. For example, Harper
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emphasized that, particularly through the popularity of Otto Jacobi, Adolphe Vogt, Bierstadt, and William Raphael (in the wake of Cornelius Krieghoff), “The German influence was thus very real in Canada.”564 Similarly, Marmaduke Matthews, despite living well over half his life in Canada, is summarized by Harper as “[remaining] English to the very core.”565 Even more telling, Horatio Walker and Homer Watson, despite being born, raised, and performatively encountering the unfurling rhythms of the earth here from birth, like O’Brien, are primarily recognized as the “greatest Canadian expression” of the Barbizon tradition—these artists’ work is largely only related to through European art understandings alone.566
Canadian artists linking O’Brien chronologically to the Group, are often
recognized as “observing” and being continually stimulated by “ideas…[and] a broad awareness of what was happening in the United States, England, and Germany [and a little later, France, and Japan].”567 They are less recognized for being participants in an already unfolding story encompassing them from the ground up. The indigenously oriented agency of their social-ecological surroundings, and their reciprocal participation with them, through the performative practice of art, is frequently undermined. Even when “‘Canadian’ qualities...such that one would not readily feel that they were by painters of any other country,” do emerge in the story of art, this is often explained away by emphasizing a social narrative such as: imported Romantic ideologies, “‘to please the public,’” or to “‘become rich fast.’”568 Frequently, little to no consideration for the earth narrative always encompassing, animating, and reciprocally participating with
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these other participants in the story of art here is given. As a result, Canadian artists’ places, and the myriad animal bodies contingent upon them in the ongoing emergence of the real, are often relegated to landscape as “subject matter”: a separate dimension outside oneself that can be observed, responded to, and represented, but seldom actively living, breathing, enfolding, and unfolding.
Other instances within the conventional story of art in Canada that are ripe to be
re-visited in this way now include, for example, the perceived break between the Group’s art and contemporary figurative and abstract artists, such as John Lyman and Bertram Brooker. This is part of the story, but not the whole story. Art historian Adam Lauder says of Brooker, sometimes called Canada’s first abstractionist, that his art speaks “to a counter-tradition [to the Group’s unpopulated landscape art, by taking]… the figure, and in particular, the sensory capacities of the body as its principle subject.”569 From within the Eurocentric disciplinary boundary lines Lauder is working in, this does seem like The Truth. These same boundary lines, however, conceal that “sensory capacities of the body” are always already interwoven with and actively participating in the flesh of the world, the unfurling rhythms of the animate earth engaged by the Group.
From a storied approach, then, I suggest that Brooker’s art is less a complete
break, and more another deepening articulation of the same ever-unfurling story engaged by the Group, but now according to Brooker’s carnal immersion within it. Similarly, the return to landscape art, and representation in the 1980s, after Borduas
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and abstraction rendered it seemingly irrelevant, may also share rhythms with this same story. It can now be explored as another articulation of the indigenously oriented story unfurling from the ground up here. The flowering of “contemporary” Aboriginal art itself, in the 1970s through the later twentieth century, can be re-storied in this same way. It is, perhaps, more indicative of a sinking deeper into the ever-unfurling indigenously oriented story of here, according to changing carnal immersions within it, and less the effect of a one-way, top-down influence from European art theories and styles on Aboriginal peoples.
Another future direction this project points to is the opening up of the
conversation about and with art in Canada to other voices than just the art historian’s or critic’s. Including more viewer art experience stories within our tellings of the story of art in Canada will allow for a much more respectful, holistic, diverse, enriched, and resilient story. Such a story will be a more empowering one that can better “fit,” animate, and instigate Canadians. It can give us a story that is more alive to grow, step, live, and breathe into, rather than one that might feel deadened or incomplete in its pressure towards “explaining” us.
A related future direction for research, then, entails the extent to which art in
Canada, as the place-based indigenously oriented story it is, might be re-storied in our everyday lives. From a storied approach, we can better see how much our art is to be taken seriously: as actually educating our spirits, hearts, minds, and bodies in ways to live and work together in a diverse, more-than-human world, without us necessarily
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even knowing it. More awareness and research pertaining to the storywork—the dialogical and cross-culturally active synergy—of art in Canada could facilitate significant benefits in the overall health, well-being, and resilience of Canada and Canadians. Government policies around the arts could better account for such benefits while budgeting, so that arts programs are not always the least funded or valued within the fabric of society as a whole. The way we teach and approach art and the history of this place and its peoples would also be greatly enriched and enhanced. Educators and curriculum designers will not need to reinforce the top-down, abstracted hierarchy in schools by treating arts courses as just an “option” that is less relevant to life than, say, sciences or languages. To extend this direction even further, this would significantly improve the level and quality of Aboriginal education in Canada. Aboriginal students already have the system working and stacked against them for various complex reasons. The emphasis placed on reading, writing, and concrete memorizing in school curriculums and learning methods exacerbates these odds considerably. Taking arts and story seriously in the everyday lives of Canadians will open up new creative ways to teach, inspire, and empower in a way that is much more cross-culturally respectful and equal.
Finally, this project points to future directions for art historical research regarding
the increasing concern for decolonizing the story of art in Canada. Not only does this project challenge the conventional story of art in Canada, it demonstrates a way to begin newly performing it with more cross-cultural and ecological respect and
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awareness. While certainly not the final word, of course, this story will at least animate others and take on a life of its own in a decolonizing movement not to eradicate European ideologies or practices, but to rebalance and enhance the pools of knowledge —of which our art is a significant part—from which we all have to draw for the socialecological resilience of life here.
Among other aspects, for example, this story opens new insight onto issues of
appropriation and intercultural sharing. If the story of art in Canada is indigenously oriented, even for non-Aboriginal artists, say, when might cultural appropriation actually be the manifestation of a deepening into the aliveness of a place? Furthermore, the story of art, far from being just a nice little story about art, is to be taken seriously for its power over how we imagine ourselves in our places, and live in the larger story always encompassing us wherever we are. I would love to see more research being conducted on how shifts and movements in artist’s careers and the story of art in Canada, which have long been assumed the primary result of top-down European influence and power, might actually be a more nuanced co-emergence of the real unfolding just as much, if not more so, from the earth here. Moreover, this process does not simply involve the earth as a passive backdrop that artists respond to, use, or are unilaterally inspired by. Rather, it is one where the earth is an active agent quite literally and reciprocally using, animating, and instigating the artist within the larger story they are already nested within. The more multivocal, reciprocal, and place-based our pool of stories of art can be, the more they will be able to help breathe and embody aliveness here.
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Notes for Prologue 1
Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 3-4. 2
Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 6. 3
See Karim-Aly Kassam, “Practical Wisdom and Ethical Awareness Through Student Experiences of Development,” Development in Practice 20.2 (April 2010): 205-218; and Karim-Aly Kassam and Wisdom J. Tettey, “Academics as Citizens: Collaborative Applied Interdisciplinary Research in the Service of Communities,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 24.1 (2003): 155-174.
4
Micheline Marchand and Daniel Marchildon, “From the Straits of Mackinac to Georgian Bay: 300 Years
of Métis History,” report on the origins and evolution of the Penetanguishene area Métis community,
submitted to the Moon River Métis Council of the Métis Nation of Ontario (December 2006), 42. For more
on the occupations of the Penetanguishene Métis community, see 78-118.
5
Ibid., 39 and 80, respectively.
6
Ibid., 58.
7
Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 110.
8
Ibid.
9
See Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2009), 266.
10
David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 296.
11
Ibid., 286.
12
For one of the best explorations of this, within the particular context of human relationships with the
desert throughout history, see David Jasper, The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
13
Abram, Becoming Animal, 292.
14
Alex Janvier, in personal communication with the author, St. Albert, Alberta, 3 June 2010.
Notes for Chapter One 15
ix.
Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
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16
“Bridging Art and Audience: Storytelling in the Presence of Historical Canadian Art,” presented at Unspoken Assumptions: Visual Art Curators in Context, 16 July 2005, Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta; available online from: http://curatorsincontext.ca/transcripts/hudson%20thomas.pdf, 6. 17
Ibid., 6 and 19, respectively.
18
Ibid., 19.
19
Ibid., 2 and 6-7, respectively.
20
Ibid., 7.
21
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 111. 22
“The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment Through Their Writing,” in An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, 3rd ed., eds. Daniel David Moses and Terry Goldie (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005), 245. 23
Taking Back our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2009), 7. 24
See Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 41.
25
See Tim Fulford and Kevin Hutchings, eds. Native Americans and Anglo-American Culture, 1750-1850: The Indian Atlantic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1-38. 26
While the Indian Atlantic as Fulford and Hutchings describe it flatlined around the middle of the nineteenth century, as colonial power became more and more domineering, it would be a mistake to assume, then, that this also signaled the end of cross-cultural influence and exchange between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian artworld. Recent art historical works demonstrate that this is not the case, even if it only occurred amidst a much more politically insidious context. See, for example, Ruth B. Phillips’s “Nuns, Ladies, and the ‘Queen of the Huron’: Appropriating the Savage in NineteenthCentury Huron Tourist Art,” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, ed. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 33-50; Virginia G. Berry, Taming the Frontier: Art and Women in the Canadian West, 1880-1920 (Calgary and Winnipeg: Bayeux Arts and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2005); Frances W. Kaye, Hiding the Audience: Viewing Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2003); and Leslie Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006). 27
Fulford and Hutchings, Native Americans, 18.
28
Anne Whitelaw, “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery of Canada,” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.1 (2006): 212. 29 30
Ibid.
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 28.
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31
Ruth B. Phillips, “Aboriginal Modernities: First Nations Art, c. 1880-1970,” in The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, ed. Anne Whitelaw, Brian Foss, and Sandra Paikowsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 349. 32
Ibid., 350.
33
Ibid., 349.
34
See, for example, Marie Battiste, ed., Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision (Vancouver and Toronto:
UBC Press, 2000). 35
Marilyn J. McKay, Picturing the Land: Narrating Territories in Canadian Landscape Art, 1500-1950
(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 4.
36
Ibid.
37
Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), 241.
38
W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. Landscape and Power, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1-2.
McKay actually misquotes Mitchell on more than one occasion, this being one of them: McKay quotes the
concept as “cultural practice,” not the correct “cultural medium.” See, McKay, Picturing the Land, 4.
39
Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 253.
40
Ibid., 244-45.
41
McKay, Picturing the Land, 92.
42
Ibid., 95 and 99, respectively.
43
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1968), also quoted in David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous:
Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 66.
44
David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 173.
45
Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976), 7.
46
Kainai artist, Joane Cardinal-Schubert’s, important travelling exhibition of Aboriginal art, opened
posthumously 5 November 2011 at the Royal Alberta Museum, is called “Narrative Quest,” and directly concerns the link between Aboriginal art and story. Métis artist, Aaron Paquette, has also characterized this link in his personal blog, stating one of his art’s motivating principles of “sharing what [he’s] gleaned after twenty years of art making” because, in his words, “we're all in this crazy experiment together.” See, Aaron Paquette, “HBC—Half Breed Clothing,” The Art of Aaron Paquette, weblog, 11 September 2009, available from: http://aaronpaquette.blogspot.com. 47
Dale Auger, Medicine Paint: The Art of Dale Auger, with foreword by Mary-Beth Laviolette (Vancouver: Heritage House Publishing, 2009), 7.
48
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 14; and quoting Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-
Body Medicine (New York: Norton, 2008), 24.
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49
Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2009), 75.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid., 161.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid., 162.
54
Ibid., 165.
55
Anne Newlands, Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings (Richmond Hill, ON: Books, 2007), 24.
Firefly
56
This description about exploring how stories can do what they can do is a borrowed description used to discuss the task of socio-narratology (described further below), by Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 17. 57
James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, “Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), 266. 58
Letting Stories Breathe, 39.
59
Episkenew, Taking Back our Spirits, 71.
60
Leslie Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 32. 61
See David Burnett and Marilyn Schiff, Contemporary Canadian Art (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, with
The Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), 13-24.
62
Abstract Painting in Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2007), 10, 15, respectively.
63
For an expression of this bewildering disconnect between art historians and the public, see, for
example, Peter White, “Out of the Woods,” in Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art, eds. John O’Brian and Peter White (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2007), 11-13. 64
Steven M. Leuthold, Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity (Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1998), 46.
65
See ibid., 56-58.
66
Ibid., 6.
67
Ibid., 7-8.
68
Ibid., 3.
69
See Gombrich, The Essential Gombrich (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 7.
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Notes for Chapter Two 70
Steven M. Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New York and London:
Routledge, 2011), 1.
71
For more on all the frameworks discussed below, see ibid., 2-3.
72
Thank you to Gerald McMaster for reminding me of this point.
73
See Reid, Concise History, 37.
74
Laurier Lacroix, “Writing Art History in the Twentieth Century,” in The Visual Arts in Canada: The
Twentieth Century, ed. Anne Whitelaw, Brian Foss, and Sandra Paikowsky (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 415.
75
Robert Harris, “Art in Quebec and the Maritime Provinces,” in Canada: An Encyclopaedia of the
Country, Vol. 4, ed. J. Castell Hopkins (Toronto: Linscott Publishing Co., 1898), 357.
76
J. W. L. Forster, “Art and Artists in Ontario,” in Canada: An Encyclopaedia, 347.
77
Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1999), 12.
78
Ibid., 6.
79
Ibid., 12. For “Trickster hermeneutics,” see ibid., 15-16.
80
Ibid., 12 and 8, respectively.
81
Ibid., 15.
82
Ibid., 14.
83
See, for examples, Virginia G. Berry, Taming the Frontier: Art and Women in the Canadian West
1880-1920 (Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2005), 54, 27, 59, 76, 90.
84
Newton MacTavish, The Fine Arts in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan Co., 1925), 1.
85
See Leslie Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 270.
86
Albert H. Robson, Canadian Landscape Painters (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1932), 211.
87
Ibid., 214.
88
Ibid., 13.
89
Graham McInnes, A Short History of Canadian Art (Toronto: Macmillan Co., 1939), 10.
90
Ibid., 10-11.
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91
Ibid., 96.
92
Quoted in Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 417.
93
R.H. Hubbard, ed. An Anthology of Canadian Art (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), 9.
94
Quoted in Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 417.
95
See “Canadian Culture and Ethnic Diversity,” in Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples, ed. Paul Robert Magocsi, 304-316 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 312-13. 96
My translation. Gérard Morisset, Rapport de l’inventaire des oeuvres d’art (Québec: Ministère des Affaires Municipales, de l’Industrie et du Commerce, 1940), 26. The full untranslated passage is: “Les livres des comptes ne contiennent pas que des mentions sur nos artisans…[alors] nous touchons ici du doigt une préoccupation nouvelle: la mise en valeur de notre passé artistique au point de vue national.” 97
My translation. Gérard Morisset, Québec et son évolution (Québec: Société Historique de Québec, Université Laval, 1952), 6. The full untranslated passage is: “...résister efficacement à l’ennemi, que ce soit l’Anglais ou l’Iroquois.” 98
See, Lee-Ann Martin, “Contemporary First Nations Art Since 1970: Individual Practices and Collective Activism,” in The Visual Arts in Canada, 378. 99
See, for example, Joan Murray, The Best Contemporary Canadian Art (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1987). Murray states that Aboriginal artworks “do not influence, and are not influenced by, most of the artists this book features,” and, therefore, need “to be treated separately, as they often are, because of their different cultural background and objectives” (viii). 100
David Bringhurst, Geoffrey James, Russell Keziere, and Doris Shadbolt, eds. Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, and the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, 1983), 9.
101
See Laurie Meijer Drees, “White Paper/Red Paper: Aboriginal Contributions to Canadian Politics and Government,” in Hidden in Plain Sight: Contributions of Aboriginal Peoples to Canadian Identity and Culture, vol. 2, eds. Cora J. Voyageur, David R. Newhouse, and Dan Beavon, 282-299 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 288-89.
102
Martin, “Contemporary First Nations Art,” 383.
103
Lacroix, “Writing Art History,” 422.
Notes for Chapter Three 104
The themes, again, are: (1) culture and hybridity; (2) primitivism and otherness; (3) colonialism; (4) nationalism; (5) art and religion; (6) symbolism and interpretation; (7) style and ethnicity; (8) sense of place; (9) social order; (10) gender; and (11) the self.
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105
See, for example, Newlands, Canadian Paintings, 328, for Vera within an inclusivity framework; Reid,
Concise History, 195-96, for Cloud, Vera, and Dhârâna within an isolated culture framework; and McKay,
Picturing the Land, 189, for Cloud within a postcolonial critical framework.
106
See, for example, Ann Davis, The Logic of Ecstasy: Canadian Mystical Painting, 1920-1940 (Toronto :
University of Toronto Press, 1992), 132-35.
107
See, for example, Reid, Concise History, 195-96.
108
Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 122.
109
There are only four other people Frank mentions only slightly more often than Archibald regarding
stories in his entire book: philosopher and art theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin; and storytellers, Leo Tolstoy,
Frederick Douglass, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
110
Jo-ann Archibald, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (Vancouver and
Toronto: UBC Press, 2008), 3 and 2, respectively.
111
Ibid., 3 and 12, respectively.
112
Ibid., 2.
113
Ibid., 96-98.
114
Ibid., 76.
115
Ibid., 149 and 100, respectively.
116
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2010), 28, 2, and 3, respectively.
117
Ibid., 20-21.
118
Ibid., 25.
119
Ibid., 28.
120
David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 10 nΩ.
121
Alan Paskow, The Paradoxes of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 160.
122
Ibid., 161 and 168, respectively.
123
Ibid., 162.
124
See, ibid., 159.
125
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 86.
126
Ibid., 104.
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127
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 126.
128
For more on phenomenology, and its contributions to transcendental and immanent consciousnesses, from a cross-cultural art perspective, see Steven M. Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), 244-46. For more on art and embodiment, see Joyce Brodsky, “How to ‘See’ with the Whole Body,” Visual Studies 17.2 (2002): 99-112.
129
Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, with foreword by Leroy Little Bear (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 46.
130
It should be noted that this attention to context is not the same as in most Western social constructionist art theories, which can often inform postcolonial art criticism as well. There are some similarities, of course, for the phenomenological dimension of the storied approach does not deny that part of an art encounter may very well be an embodied experience within a city’s art gallery or learning institution, rife with the stories, socio-economic conditions, and power relations surrounding those places. But sociologists of art—such as Pierre Bourdieu, Janet Wolff, and Howard Becker—very seldom extend their contextual considerations past humans and human institutions, power relations, or society alone. This effectively undermines humans’ own sensuous and inter-participatory experience in a more-thanhuman world—an animate earth. Most sociologists of art also deny or do not allow appeal to aesthetic elements in the art process, such as beauty, ugliness, daintiness, elegance, balance, and delicacy. The aesthetic may be tolerated, but it usually does not “in any way drive the history of art” (Nick Zangwill, Aesthetic Creation [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 169). Zangwill’s is a good critique of sociological art theorists in general, see especially, 167-79. He calls the latter point of view “sociological scepticism,” and it takes two overlapping, but differing, forms: “production scepticism” (i.e.: Wolff and Howard), when the aesthetic is not granted an equal role in art production; and “consumption scepticism” (i.e.: Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton), when the aesthetic is not granted an equal role in art consumption (167-70). Alternatively, the phenomenological dimension of the storied approach never separates humans and their societies from the more-than-human world, and it can account for both aesthetic and sociological elements in the art process, for they are both felt experiences between sensate bodies and an animate world. 131
For more on the phenomenological connection between language and the animate earth, see David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
132
Jeannette Armstrong, “Land Speaking,” in Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing, ed. Simon J. Ortiz (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 181. For more on the experiential symbiosis between places, stories, and knowledge in an Indigenous context, see Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
133
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 138.
134
Louis Riel, The Queen vs. Louis Riel, Accused and Convicted of the Crime of High Treason: Report of Trial at Regina (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1886), 159.
135
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 40.
136
Ibid., 39.
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137
Ibid., 40. See also Gerald McMaster, “Object (to) Sanctity: The Politics of the Object,” International
Journal of Canadian Studies 12 (Fall 1995): 12-13.
138
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 126-27.
139
Barbara Bolt, Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image (London and New
York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2004), 11.
140
Ibid., 12-13.
141
Ibid., 14.
142
Ibid., 120.
143
Ibid., 123.
144
Ibid., 123 and 124, respectively.
145
Ibid., 124.
146
See respectively, for example, Donald W. Buchanan, Canadian Painters: From Paul Kane to the Group
of Seven (Oxford and London: Phaidon Press, 1945), 7-8; and J. Russell Harper, Paul Kane’s Frontier
(Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1971), 44.
147
Bolt, Art Beyond Representation, 129.
148
Ibid., 146.
149
Ibid., 186. For an example of this within North America, many Aboriginal basket-makers talk about
singing particular songs as an integral part of plant harvesting for, and in the making of baskets. They
might refer to a “basket [as] a song made visible” (Tom Hill and Richard W. Hill, Sr., eds. Creation’s
Journey: Native American Identity and Belief [Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press and the
National Museum of the American Indian, 1994], 133.) Thank you to Gerald McMaster for bringing this to
my attention.
150
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 124-25.
151
Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 58-59.
152
Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, with foreword by Leroy Little Bear
(Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 86.
153
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 11-12.
154
Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, with foreword by Jim Harrison
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2006), 32.
155
See, ibid., 252.
156
Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 2.
ENDNOTES
432
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157
Abram, Becoming Animal, 72.
158
Robert C. Holub, Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), ix.
159
Abram, Becoming Animal, 77-78.
160
See, James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, “The Context of the State of Nature,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2000), 15-16.
161
Ibid., 14.
162
For more on hybridity relative to culture and art, see Leuthold, Cross-Cultural Issues in Art, 10-26. Leuthold argues that there are more positive forms of hybridity (cultural incorporation and integration), and negative forms (cultural homogenization and assimilation). Furthermore, hybridity has become a concern because art and culture now regularly occur in a global economic context, where “The intercultural is the culture of our time” (26).
163
For example, the latter is one of the premises of Archibald’s entire book. See also, Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976), 7; Gregory Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education, with introduction by Vine Deloria, Jr. (Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1994), 140; Julie Cruikshank, The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, “Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal Thought,” in Battiste, ed. Reclaiming Indigenous Voice, 266; Cajete, Native Science, 28-55; Betty Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 90-95; and Jo-ann Archibald, “An Indigenous Storywork Methodology,” in Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples, and Issues, eds. J. Gary Knowles and A. Cole (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008), 371-384.
164
Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003), 2.
165
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 11.
166
E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, pocket ed. (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 2006), 461.
167
See, for example, Reid, Concise History, 1-17.
168
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 106.
169
See, ibid., 73. Frank himself draws this phrase from Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, who use it to describe the particular kind of practice of criticism or “methodology” they associate with Michel Foucault; a kind of practice they ultimately call antimethodology.
170 171
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 73.
Ibid., 74 and 72, respectively. See also Catherine Kohler Riessman, Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008), 53; Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein, Analyzing Narrative Reality (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2008), 27-28; and Bent Flyvberg, Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
ENDNOTES
433
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172
See, Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 108.
173
For an excellent discussion on the inextricable link between cultural and ecological systems from a more scientific (ethnobotany) perspective, see Nancy J. Turner, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt, and Michael O’Flaherty, “Living on the Edge: Ecological and Cultural Edges as Sources of Diversity for SocialEcological Resilience,” Human Ecology 31.3 (September 2003): 439-61. The essay focuses particularly on the “edge” zones between ecosystems, and across which cultures share, interact, and exchange knowledge, technologies, and resources. These edges are especially important in the social-ecological relationship because they provide increased social-ecological resilience, upon which the health and
survival of both ecosystems and human cultures depend.
174
For more on the differences and similarities between Frank’s dialogical narrative analysis method and
conventional narrative analysis, see Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 72-74.
175
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 74.
176
See, ibid., 87; and Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 12.
177
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 96. For more on Frank’s understanding of “narrative habitus,” see, ibid.,
52-54.
178
Quoted in Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 140.
179
Quoted in ibid., 139.
180
Ibid.
181
Ibid., 93.
182
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 97.
183
Ibid., 98.
184
Ibid., 99.
185
For more on Frank’s description of each act, see Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 104-110. For more on
Archibald’s storywork principle of reverence, see Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 109.
186
For more on Frank’s description of each form, see Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 112-144.
187
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, 30th ann. ed., with additional
chapters by John Hartley (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 8.
188
Ibid., 45.
189
Ibid., 42.
190
Ibid., 73.
191
See, ibid., 75-76.
ENDNOTES
434
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192
Ibid., 32-33.
193
Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 102.
194
Ibid.
195
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 80-82.
Notes for Chapter Four 196
Abram, Becoming Animal, 23.
197
Ibid., 49.
198
See ibid., 230.
199
The above art story and related quotations concerning the purchase of Paquette’s Transformation, were all drawn from “Conversation with Michael Hatcher,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 7 March 2011. I have received permission to use and quote his story here.
200
“Metamorphosis,” in Topographies: Aspects of Recent B.C. Art, eds. Grant Arnold, Monika Kin Gagnon, and Doreen Jensen (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1996), 96.
201
See Dennis Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien: Visions of Victorian Canada (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1990.
202
Ibid., 1.
203
Ibid.
204
See, for example, “The Britishness of Canadian Art,” in Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art, eds. John O’Brian and Peter White (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 197.
205
Ibid., 2.
206
See, for example, Newton MacTavish, The Fine Arts in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1925), 23-27; Graham McInnes, A Short History of Canadian Art (Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1939), 49-51; and David Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art From the National Gallery of Canada (Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1990), 38-41.
207
See, for example, R.H. Hubbard, ed., An Anthology of Canadian Art (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), 18; Barry Lord, The History of Painting in Canada: Toward a People’s Art (Toronto: NC Press, 1974), 76-79; and J. Russell Harper, Painting in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 193-95.
ENDNOTES
435
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208
For more on O’Brien and picturesque ideals, see, for example, William Colgate, Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1943), 38-40, 175-77; For O’Brien and romanticism, see, for example, Anne Newlands, Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000 (Willowdale, ON: Firefly Books, 2000), 237. For O’Brien and Barbizon School ideals, see, for example, Ken Lefolii, et al., eds. Great Canadian Painting: A Century of Art (Toronto: Canadian Centennial Publishing Company, 1966), 32-33. For O’Brien and his relation to British aesthetic standards or Pre-Raphaelite ideals, see, for example, Albert H. Robson, Canadian Landscape Painters (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1932), 47-67; and Dennis Reid, “Our Own Country Canada”: Being an Account of the National Aspirations of the Principal Landscape Artists in Montreal and Toronto, 1869-1890 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1979), 228-30. For O’Brien and Luminism, see, for example, Dennis Reid, A Concise History of Canadian Painting, 2nd ed. (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 1988), 86-87; and Sandra Paikowsky, “Canadian Painting,” in Profiles of Canada, 3rd ed., eds. Kenneth G. Pryke and Walter C. Soderlund (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2003), 495-96. 209
See Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 29 and 16.
210
See ibid., 31.
211
See Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 41.
212
See Anne Newlands, Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly Books, 2007), 232.
213
See, respectively, ibid., 232; Colgate, Canadian Art, 30 ; and Harper, Painting in Canada, 185.
214
See McKay, Picturing the Land, 13, 6-7, and 155-57.
215
Becoming Animal, 94.
216
Samuel Thompson, Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the Last Fifty Years: An Autobiography (Toronto: Hunter, Rose & Company, 1884), 186. Thompson visited The Woods in 1833 after arriving from England to take up land nearby around Barrie.
217
When O’Brien was not much more than a newborn baby (1933), he was with his mother on three shorter visits to Thornhill, Vaughan Township, north of York (Toronto), during the illness of her mother, Mrs. Gapper, and then illness and subsequent death of her brother, who both resided in Thornhill. The following winter, the O’Briens spent the entire winter in Thornhill to care again for Mrs. Gapper through her illness. In the spring of 1835, there was a very quick return trip to Thornhill to get O’Brien’s new sister baptized, and then later that autumn, O’Brien and his older brother were taken down to Thornhill again to spend a few months with their aunt. In subsequent years the O’Briens just returned to Thornhill, at least once a year, on various shorter family visits. See Mary O’Brien, The Journals of Mary O’Brien, 1828-1838, ed. Audrey Saunders Miller (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968), 203-207, 218, 236, 244, 260, 261-62, and 267.
218 219
Abram, Becoming Animal, 270.
David O. Evans, Kenneth H. Nicholls, Yvonne C. Allen, and Michael J. McMurtry, “Historical Land Use, Phosphorus Loading, and Loss of Fish Habitat in Lake Simcoe, Canada,” Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 53.S1 (1996): 196.
ENDNOTES
436
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220
Anonymous, “The Fishing Tourist,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review 4.4 (October 1873): 273.
221
See Lawrence J. Jackson, Christopher Ellis, Alan V. Morgan, and John H. McAndrews, “Glacial Lake Levels and Eastern Great Lakes Palaeo-Indians,” Geoarcheology: An International Journal 15.5 (2000): 415-40.
222
William Elsey Connelley, Indian Myths, illus. William Wallace Clarke (New York and Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1928). Elsey Connelley was an adopted member of the Wyandot Nation and given official permission to publish these stories and history.
223
See A. A. Reznicek, “Association of Relict Prairie Flora with Indian Trails in Central Ontario,” in Proceedings of the Eighth North American Prairie Conference, ed. Richard Brewer (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1983), 33-39.
224
See Suzanne Needs-Howarth and Stephen Cox Thomas, “Seasonal Variation in Fishing Strategies at Two Iroquoian Village Sites Near Lake Simcoe, Ontario,” Environmental Archeology 3 (June 1998): 109-120; and Oro Historical Committee, The Story of Oro, 2nd ed. (Oro Station, ON: Township of Oro, 1987), 1-2; and Innisfil Public Library, “The Wendat (Huron) at Contact,” in The Native Peoples of Simcoe County: A History of Simcoe and Area Native Peoples, online virtual branch (Innisfil, ON: Innisfil Public Library, n.d.), available from: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/settlement/kids/021013-2111.2-e.html.
225
See Marcel Trudel, “Samuel de Champlain,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James H. Marsh (Toronto: Historica Foundation, 2012), available from: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/ samuel-de-champlain.
226
See Vincent Levesque, “The History of the Huron-Wendat Nation,” educational website of the HuronWendat Nation (Wendake, PQ: Kwe Kwe Communication), available from: http://www.wendake.com/ history.html; Innisfil Public Library, “The Archeological Record,” in The Native Peoples of Simcoe County: A History of Simcoe and Area Native Peoples, online virtual library branch (Innisfil, ON: Innisfil Public Library, n.d.), available from: http://www.innisfil.library.on.ca/natives/natives/index2.htm; and Elsey Connelley, “The Wyandot,” in Indian Myths, n.p. 227
See Chippewas of Rama First Nation, “About Us,” online history (Rama, ON: Rama First Nation, n.d.), available from: http://www.mnjikaning.ca/about.asp; and Mary O’Brien, Journals, 57-63, 187-88, 246-47, 272, 277.
228
The Woods was indeed a dream come true for the O’Briens. On their first visit to Lake Simcoe, the area enthralled O’Brien’s parents, fueling their musings that they should get land there. His mother’s words exactly were: “Meanwhile we sit on the rail [of the boat], talk, and dream. My dream is that...we will pay a visit to Lake Simcoe again” (Journals, 60).
229
Ibid., 184.
230
Ibid., 185.
231
W. [Willy] E. O’Brien, “Early Days in Oro,” Pioneer Papers 1 (1908): 24.
232
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 193.
ENDNOTES
437
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233
Henry O’Brien, “Reminiscences of Lake Simcoe,” Pioneer Papers 3 (1910): 9.
234
See Mary O’Brien, Journals, 195 and 214-15.
235
See ibid., 195.
236
Ibid.
237
For beavers and their crucial interrelationship with Canadian wetlands, see Sharon T. Brown and
Suzanne Fouty, “Beaver Wetlands,” Lakeline 1 (Spring 2011): 34-38.
238
See Mary O’Brien, Journals, 195 and 214-15.
239
For O’Brien taking early to art, see ibid., 223. For boating across the lake to a family friend’s, see ibid.,
200. For loitering on the lake, see ibid., 209.
240
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 197.
241
See ibid., 240.
242
Ibid., 198. For the walking with moccasins episode, see ibid., 210-11.
243
See Marise Thivierge and Nicole Thivierge, “Leatherworking,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, ed. James H. Marsh (Toronto: Historica Foundation, 2012), available from: http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/leatherworking.
244
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 257.
245
See ibid., 228.
246
Ibid., 230.
247
See Innisfil Public Library, “The Reserves and the Changing Circumstances of Native Peoples in Canada,” in The Native Peoples of Simcoe County: A History of Simcoe and Area Native Peoples, ch. 15; Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 94-95; and Chippewas of Rama First Nation, “About Us.”
248
European farmers were taking more and more hunting and fishing grounds, and European whiskey traders—“‘the most unprincipled miscreants it is possible to conceive’”—were indirectly fueling rising murder and suicide rates. See Smith, Sacred Feathers, 95.
249
See Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Coldwater-Narrows Specific Claim, online fact sheet (Ottawa: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2010), available from: http:// www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100030412/1100100030413; and Innisfil Public Library, “The Reserves and the Changing Circumstances of Native Peoples in Canada.”
250
See Donald B. Smith, “Peter Jones,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, vol. 8 (Toronto and Québec City: University of Toronto and Université Laval, 2000), available from: http://www.biographi.ca/ 009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=38114.
ENDNOTES
438
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251
See Smith, Sacred Feathers, 106-108.
252
See Innisfil Public Library, “The Reserves and the Changing Circumstances of Native Peoples in Canada”; and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Coldwater-Narrows Specific Claim.
253
Bond Head was trying to get them to remove completely from the Lake Simcoe area altogether, and onto Manitoulin Island in northern Georgian Bay, but it did not unfold like he had hoped. See Innisfil Public Library, “The Reserves and the Changing Circumstances of Native Peoples in Canada”; Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Coldwater-Narrows Specific Claim; and Chippewas of Rama First Nation, “About Us.” 254
See Mary O’Brien, Journals, 187 and 247, respectively.
255
See ibid., 247.
256
See ibid., 219.
257
See ibid., 210, 257, 272, and 234 and 257, respectively.
258
See Andrew F. Hunter, A History of Simcoe County, vol. 1 (Barrie, ON: The County Council, 1909),
69-71; and Andrew F. Hunter, A History of Simcoe County, vol. 2 (Barrie, ON: The County Council, 1909), 3.
259
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 57-59.
260
Ibid., 184.
261
Ibid., 62.
262
Ibid., 196. For mention of an occasion where the O’Briens would have learned this technique by
observing the Chippewas doing it, see ibid., 60.
263
Becoming Animal, 72.
264
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 240.
265
See Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, updated
and expanded ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2008).
266
See Frederick M. Johnson, “The Landscape Ecology of the Lake Simcoe Basin,” Lake and Reservoir
Management 13.3 (1997): 228.
267
For gatherings around the fire, see Mary O’Brien, Journals, 240, 240-41.
268
For the sleigh ride, see ibid., 222. For scampering on the ice, see ibid., 249.
ENDNOTES
439
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269
The bear and cedar swamp drawings (with one other), were engraved by J. W. Cook for A. W. H. Rose, Canada in 1849: Pictures of Canadian Life; or, The Emigrant Churchman in Canada, by a Wilderness Pioneer, 2 vols., ed. Rev. Henry Christmas (London: Richard Bentley, 1849). They already begin to illustrate very telling aspects that hint at the later formal system characterizing his art, but to conserve space I will reserve my commentary for his most popular work from the 1870s and 80s. For water being the dominant element in his art, see Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 88.
270
Indigenous Storywork, 93.
271
Mary O’Brien, Journals, 251.
272
Ibid.
273
For the Gagen reference, see Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 25. For O’Brien’s reputation in the 1870s, see Reid, “Our Own Country Canada,” 226.
274
Anonymous, “Fine Art: The Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review 11.6 (June 1877): 681.
275
Ibid., 682.
276
Anonymous, The Nation 2 (14 May 1875): 226; and Anonymous, “The Fine Arts in Ontario,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review 3.6 (June 1873): 545, respectively.
277
Anonymous, “The Fine Arts in Ontario,” 545.
278
Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 23. For a full discussion of the differences between social narrative and earth narrative, in the context of the landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, see ibid., 18-23.
279
For a detailed account of this relationship in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British landscape, see John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
280
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 25.
281
This painting is known by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre as Landscape with Lake.
282
Anonymous, “Fine Art,” 681.
283
Lucius R. O’Brien, 47.
284
Bierstadt’s St. Lawrence River from the Citadel, Québec (c.1880), is a similar version to O’Brien’s of Princess Louise’s original drawing in that it also includes another rampart wall perpendicular along the bottom of the painting. The difference here, however, is that the viewer is set so much further back on the rampart that she has space to move. It is far less awkward and constrictive, and this new rampart wall in Bierstadt’s painting even includes other figures enjoying the same linear view over the landscape as the viewer. The social narrative emphasized by Louise is left in tact.
285
The Globe, 2 May 1881, also quoted in Reid, “Our Own Country Canada,” 323.
ENDNOTES
440
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286
Ibid., 322-23. The emphasis is mine.
287
Lucius R. O’Brien, 48.
288
Ibid.
289
Lucius O’Brien, “Grandeur of the Rockies,” The Globe, 27 August 1887, also quoted in Reid, Lucius R.
O’Brien, 81.
290
Lucius O’Brien, “The National Park,” The Globe, 15 July 1887, also quoted in Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien,
80.
291
Lucius R. O’Brien, 50.
292
Ibid., 81.
293
Lucius O’Brien, “North-west Scenery,” Toronto Daily Mail, 4 September 1886, also quoted in Reid,
Lucius R. O’Brien, 74.
294
Lucius O’Brien, “Among the Rockies,” Toronto Daily Mail, 29 July 1886, also quoted in Reid, Lucius R.
O’Brien, 74.
295
Lucius O’Brien, “North-west Scenery,” quoted in Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 74.
296
Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 78.
297
See ibid., 79.
298
Ibid., 78-80.
299
Ibid., 82.
300
Ibid., 80.
301
Lucius O’Brien, “Grandeur of the Rockies,” quoted in Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, 81.
302
Anonymous, “Exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists,” The Canadian Monthly and National Review
10.1 (July 1876): 91.
303
Letting Stories Breathe, 41.
304
Quoted in Jensen, “Metamorphosis,” 114.
305
Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2003),
15.
306
Ibid., 10.
307
Ibid., 13.
308
Ibid., 15.
ENDNOTES
441
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309
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 97.
310
“Afterword: Remembering Ancestral Conversations,” in Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 185.
311
In Dianne Meili, Those Who Know: Profiles of Alberta’s Aboriginal Elders, 20th anniversary edition
(Edmonton, AB: NeWest Press, 2012), 23-24.
312
See Abram, Becoming Animal, 275-76.
313
Ibid., 277.
314
See Martin Whittles and Tim Patterson, “Nápi and the City: Siksikaitsitapi Narratives Revisited,” in First
Nations, First Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in Canada, ed. Annis May Timpson
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 97-119.
315
Peace, Power, Righteousness, 22, 5.
316
Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache
(Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 75.
317
See respectively, Leanne Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation,
Resurgence and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011), 68-70; Abram, Becoming
Animal, 275; and Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits, 7.
318
George Melnyk, “The Artist’s Eye: Modernist and Postmodernist Visualizations of the Prairie West,” in The Prairie West as Promised Land, eds. R. Douglas Francis and Chris Kitzan (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007), 375.
319
Letting Stories Breathe, 105.
320
Ibid., 41.
321
“First Peoples Literature in Canada,” in Hidden in Plain Sight: Contributions of Aboriginal Peoples to
Canadian Identity and Culture, vol. 1, eds. David R. Newhouse, Cora J. Voyageur, and Dan Beavon
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 175.
322
Harper, Painting in Canada, 196 and 185, respectively.
323
Lefolii, et al., Great Canadian Painting, 33.
324
Reid, “Our Own Country Canada”, 316, 317, and 318.
325
Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 50.
326
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 8-10.
327
Landscape Painters, 47, 55, 67.
328
See Reid, Lucius R. O’Brien, xi.
329
“Our Own Country Canada”, 318.
ENDNOTES
442
______________________________________________________________________
330
Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 41.
331
“Picturing the Picturesque: Lucius O’Brien’s Sunrise on the Saguenay,” Revue d'art canadienne /
Canadian Art Review 17.2 (1990): 153.
332
McKay, Picturing the Land, 166-67, for Sunrise specifically. For its relationship to the nomadic concept
of territory more generally, see 147 and 5.
333
See Ramsay, “Picturing the Picturesque,” 156.
334
See, for example, George Monro Grant, ed., Picturesque Canada; the Country as it Was and Is, vol. 1,
illustrations supervised by Lucius R. O’Brien (Toronto: Belden Brothers, 1882), frontispiece, 6, 32, 51,
160, 262, and 290.
335
“Picturing the Picturesque,” 156.
336
Ibid., 154-55.
337
Native Science, 33-35.
338
Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 91; and Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 91, respectively.
339
Lucius R. O’Brien, 30-31.
340
Lucius R. O’Brien, “Art Education—A Plea for the Artizan,” Canadian Monthly and National Review
(May 1879): 585.
341
Lucius R. O’Brien, “Art Education,” 584-85, and 586.
342
Douglas Cardinal and Jeannette Armstrong, The Native Creative Process: A Collaborative Discourse (Penticton, BC: Theytus Books, 1991), 90; quoted in Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 27.
343
Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge (Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing, 2000), 12.
344
Ibid., 15.
345
Ibid., 92, 94.
346
Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education (Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1994), 228.
347
See, for example, ibid., 86-96.
348
Battiste and Youngblood Henderson, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge, 9.
Notes for Chapter Five 349
William Blake, Milton: A Poem [c.1804], in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, newly rev. ed., ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 96.
ENDNOTES
443
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350
The original members of the Group of Seven were: Lawren Harris (1885-1970), J.E.H. MacDonald (1873-1932), A.Y. Jackson (1882-1974), Fred Varley (1881-1969), Franklin Carmichael (1890-1945), Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), and Frank Johnston (1888-1949). Before the Group disbanded, it also came to include A.J. Casson (1898-1992), Edwin Holgate (1892-1977), and L.L. Fitzgerald (1890-1956). Although Tom Thomson had suddenly died before the official formation of the Group, he was so close to them when alive that when abbreviating the Group’s name to just “the Group” throughout this dissertation, I also include Thomson under its umbrella.
351
John O’Brian, “Wild Art History,” in Beyond Wilderness: The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art, eds. John O’Brian and Peter White (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), 21.
352
See, for example, MacTavish, Fine Arts in Canada, 154; F.B. Housser, A Canadian Art Movement: The Story of the Group of Seven (Toronto: Macmillan co. of Canada, 1926); McInnes, Short History, 80-81; William Colgate, Canadian Art: Its Origin and Development (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1943), 81-102; Donald W. Buchanan, The Growth of Canadian Painting (London and Toronto: Collins, 1950), 27; and Hubbard, Anthology, 24.
353
See Charles C. Hill, Canadian Painting in the Thirties (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1975); David P. Silcox, The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson (Toronto: Firefly Books, 2003); Ross King, Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010); and Ian A.C. Dejardin, “Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven,” in Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, ed. Amy Concannon, exh. cat. (London: Philip Wilson Publishers and Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2011), 10-27.
354
Dejardin, “Painting Canada,” 26.
355
See Jonathan Bordo, “Jack Pine: Wilderness Sublime or the Erasure of the Aboriginal Presence from the Landscape,” Journal of Canadian Studies 27.4 (Winter 1992): 98-126; Scott Watson, “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of Modern Canadian Landscape Painting,” Semiotext(e) 17 (1994): 93-104; Lynda Jessup, “The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change…,” Journal of Canadian Studies 37.1 (Spring 2002): 144-79; Dawn, National Visions; and O’Brian and White, eds., Beyond Wilderness.
356
Jessup, “The Group of Seven,” 166.
357
See especially Bordo, “Jack Pine”; Watson, “Race, Wilderness, Territory”; and Dawn, National Visions.
358
For an example of a “traditionalist” downplaying criticism against the Group, see Silcox, The Group of Seven, 39. For an example of postcolonial criticism that downplays the traditional approach to the Group, see O’Brian and White, “Introduction,” in Beyond Wilderness, 5.
359
Peter White, “Out of the Woods,” in Beyond Wilderness, 20.
360
See Donald W. Buchanan, "The Story of Canadian Art," Canadian Geographical Journal 17.6 (December, 1938): 279; and Joyce Zemans, “Establishing the Canon: Nationhood, Identity and the National Gallery’s First Reproduction Programme of Canadian Art,” Journal of Canadian Art History 16.2 (1995): 7-35.
361
“Out of the Woods,” 20.
ENDNOTES
444
______________________________________________________________________
362
See, Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 1; and Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 2.
363
“Out of the Woods,” 13. See also, for other examples referring to this dilemma, Whitelaw, “Placing Aboriginal Art,” 198; and Hudson, “Landscape Atomysticism: A Revelation of Tom Thomson,” in Painting Canada, 30.
364
O’Brian and White, “Introduction,” in Beyond Wilderness, 4.
365
White, “Out of the Woods,” 18-19.
366
Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 32.
367
Beyond Wilderness, 236.
368
Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 27; quoted in Beyond
Wilderness, 239.
369
See, for just a few examples, Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 18; Alfred, Wasáse, 206-07,
269; Bastien, Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 80; and John Mohawk, “A Basic Call to Consciousness: The
Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World,” in Basic Call to Consciousness, ed. Akwesasne Notes
(1978; reprint, Summertown, TN: Native Voices, 2005), 90-91.
370
“A Basic Call to Consciousness,” 90.
371
Ibid., 4.
372
Becoming Animal, 69.
373
Ibid., 69-70.
374
Abram, Becoming Animal, 72.
375
See, for example, Lawren Harris, “Revelation of Art in Canada,” The Canadian Theosophist 7.5 (July
1926): 87.
376
Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 53.
377
See “Construction of the Imaginary Indian,” in Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics of Art, ed.
Stan Douglas (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 267; also quoted in O’Brian and White, Beyond Wilderness, 219.
378
Reid, “Introduction,” in The Group of Seven, exh. cat. (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1970);
quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 105. See also Robert Stacey, “The Myth - and Truth - of the True North,” in
The True North: Canadian Landscape Painting, 1896-1939, ed. Michael Tooby (London: Lund Humphries
and Barbican Art Gallery, 1991), 39-40; also quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 260.
379
National Visions, National Blindness, 311.
ENDNOTES
445
______________________________________________________________________
380
See, for example, Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 313; Frances W. Kaye, Hiding the Audience: Viewing Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2003), 55-92; and Kaye, Hiding the Audience, 93-138, respectively.
381
Dawn, National Visions, National Blindness, 121.
382
Mildred Valley Thornton, Indian Lives and Legends (Vancouver: Mitchell Press, 1966), 10; quoted in
Sheryl Salloum, The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton (Salt Spring Island, BC: Mother Tongue
Publishing, 2011), 40.
383
National Visions, National Blindness, 269.
384
“Race, Wilderness, Territory,” 104; also quoted in Beyond Wilderness, 282.
385
National Visions, National Blindness, 127.
386
See Salloum, Mildred Valley Thornton, 1-9.
387
To our ears today, some of her message might still seem tainted with colonialist ideas, (i.e.: advocating
for equal opportunity through granting Aboriginal peoples official citizenship into Canada, not selfgovernance outright; or equal education through allowing Aboriginal students into Canadian schools with all the other children in the country), but she was way ahead of her time in always striving “for mutual exchange, collaboration and education, as opposed to personal profit or exploitation,” through her lectures and portraiture. Salloum, Mildred Valley Thornton, 43.
388
See ibid., 64-65.
389
National Visions, National Blindness, 313.
390
Harris, “Revelation of Art in Canada,” The Canadian Theosophist 7.5 (July 1926): 86; Lismer is
paraphrased in Joan Murray, Masterpieces: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (Toronto: Prospero
Books, 1994), 76.
391
Canadian Art Movement, 120.
392
The Group of Seven, 49-50.
393
Bordo, “Jack Pine.”
394
Paradoxes of Art, 158-97.
395
Canadian Art Movement, 118-19.
396
See Paskow, Paradoxes of Art, 168.
397
See Housser, Canadian Art Movement, 117.
398
For the gale winds, see Lord, History of Painting, 136. For the list of rhetorical terms, see Murray,
Masterpieces, 76; Hudson, “Landscape Atomysticism,” 30; Housser, Canadian Art Movement, 120; Bordo,
“Jack Pine”; and Lord, History of Painting, 136, respectively.
ENDNOTES
446
______________________________________________________________________
399
Spell of the Sensuous, 260.
400
Ibid., 226.
401
Ibid., 260.
402
See Abram, Becoming Animal, 251.
403
Ibid., 49.
404
Quoted in Housser, Canadian Art Movement, 120.
405
Ibid., 120.
406
Becoming Animal, 276.
407
See Johnston, Ojibway Heritage, 17-20.
408
See ibid., 12.
409
See Johnston, Ojibway Heritage, 12; and Nokomis, “The Ojibwa Creation Story,” in Native Art in
Canada: An Ojibwa Elder’s Art and Stories, personal website (2006-2012), available from: http://
www.native-art-in-canada.com/creationstory.html.
410
See The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999).
411
Ojibway Heritage, 43.
412
Ibid., 32-33.
413
Ibid., 43-44.
414
See ibid., 122.
415
“Jack Pine.”
416
For “dreamwork,” see W.J.T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, 2nd ed., ed.
W.J.T. Mitchell, 5-34 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 9-10. For other examples of associations with landscape painting to land control, imperialism, and ideologies such as that of “manifest destiny,” see Barrell, Darkside of the Landscape; Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); and the exhibition “The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920,” curated by William H. Truettner at the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, March 15-July 28, 1991 [Andrew Gulliford, “The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920,” exhibition review, The Journal of American History 79.1 (June 1992): 199-208].
417 418
Bordo, “Jack Pine.”
See, for example, Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 1-25.
ENDNOTES
447
______________________________________________________________________
419
See, for example, Thomas, Art and Ecology, 149-95.
420
See Dumas, Essai de statique chimique des êtres organisés, 3rd ed. (Paris: Fortin, Masson, 1844);
and Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1859.
421
See Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (1689; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), II, para. 27.
422
See Youngblood Henderson, “The Context of the State of Nature,” 20.
423
“Graveyard and Giftshop: Fighting over the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, in Beyond Wilderness,
215.
424
Abram, Becoming Animal, 303.
425
Watson, “Race, Wilderness, Territory,” 102.
426
Abram, Becoming Animal, 269.
427
Wasáse, 265.
428
“Metamorphosis,” in Topographies: Aspects of Recent B.C. Art, eds. Grant Arnold, Monika Kin
Gagnon, and Doreen Jensen (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1996), 96.
429
Ibid., 114 and 109, respectively.
430
See Ann Davis, The Logic of Ecstasy: Canadian Mystical Painting, 1920-1940 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1992), 115-16.
431
See, for example, Harper, Painting in Canada, 283, 297.
432
See, for example, Reid, Concise History, 202, 218, 223, 247, 249; and, for Brooker, Adam Lauder,
“Bertram Brooker,” YorkSpace Digital Library (June 2012): 14, available from: http:// yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/15499/Lauder-B_Brooker_08062012.pdf? sequence=3.
433
Abram, Becoming Animal, 271.
434
Ibid., 272.
435
Bringhurst, Tree of Meaning, 176; and Abram, Becoming Animal, 270-71, respectively.
436
Paradoxes of Art, 195-96.
437
See, for example, Reid, Concise History, 247-49, 211-12.
438
Ibid., 211-12.
ENDNOTES
448
______________________________________________________________________
439
“The Alternate Eden: A Primer of Canadian Abstraction,” in Visions: Contemporary Art in Canada, ed. Robert Bringhurst, Geoffrey James, Russell Keziere, and Doris Shadbolt (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1983), 80. See also Harper, Painting in Canada, 344, 347-48; and Reid, Concise History, 226-29.
440
Abstract Painting, 375.
441
Bradley, Perspective 96 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1996), 15; also quoted in Nasgaard, Abstract
Painting, 376.
442
See Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 166.
443
Borduas to Fernand Leduc, 6 January 1948; quoted in Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 15.
444
Abram, Becoming Animal, 262.
445
Ibid., 281.
446
Heath, “A Sense of Place,” in Visions, 47.
447
Ibid.
448
Ibid., 62.
449
Ibid., 65.
450
Ibid.
451
Kaplan, “Multiple Vision,” Canadian Literature 103 (Winter 1984): 81.
452
See, for example, Doreen Jensen, “Metamorphosis,” 90-121; Gerald McMaster, “Contributions to
Canadian Art by Aboriginal Contemporary Artists,” in Hidden in Plain Sight: Contributions of Aboriginal Peoples to Canadian Identity and Culture, vol. 1, eds. David R. Newhouse, Cora J. Voyageur, and Dan Beavon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 155-56; and Aldona Jonaitis, Art of the Northwest Coast (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2006). 453
Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142.
454
Harper, Painting in Canada, 344; Reid, Concise History, 233; Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 89; and
Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 143, respectively.
455
Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 66-67.
456
Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 140.
457
Abstract Painting, 83.
458
See Ray Ellenwood, Egregore: A History of the Montreal Automatist Movement (Toronto: Exile
Editions, 1992), 145-55; and François-Marc Gagnon, Chronique du mouvement automatiste québécois 1941-1954 (Outrement, QC: Lanctôt, 1998), 494-556.
ENDNOTES
449
______________________________________________________________________
459
Concise History, 233.
460
See, for example, Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 64.
461
Concise History, 235.
462
Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 63.
463
Gagnon, “Conversation with Borduas,” 1 May 1942, trans. Ray Ellenwood, quoted in Nasgaard,
Abstract Painting, 63-64.
464
Abstract Painting, 84.
465
Borduas to Leduc, 6 January 1948, quoted in Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 83.
466
Borduas, Refus Global / Total Refusal: The Complete 1948 Manifesto of the Montréal Automatists,
trans. Ray Ellenwood (Holstein, ON: Exile Editions, 2009), 3, 3-4, 4, and 5, respectively.
467
Ibid., 15.
468
Abram, Becoming Animal, 272-73.
469
Malcolm X, as quoted in Alfred, Wasáse, 236.
470
Nasgaard, Abstract Painting, 83.
471
Wasáse, 34.
472
Ibid., 106.
473
Ibid., 67 and 59, respectively.
474
Ibid., 266.
475
See ibid., 108; and Gérard Pelletier, editorial in Le Devoir (13 November 1948), quoted in Reid,
Concise History, 236, respectively.
476
Wasáse, 250.
477
Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 95.
478
See John W. Anthony et al., eds. The Handbook of Mineralogy (Chantilly, VA: Mineral Data Publishing
and Mineralogical Society of America, 2001).
479
Lionel Beitone et al. “Order—Disorder in the Super-Sodalite Zn3Al6(PO4)12, 4tren, 17H2O
(MIL-74): A Combined XRD—NMR Assessment,” Journal of the American Chemical Society 125.30 (2003): 9110. Wulf Depmeier, “The Sodalite Family—A Simple but Versatile Framework Structure,” Reviews in Mineralogy & Geochemistry 57.7 (2005): 235, 232.
480
ENDNOTES
450
______________________________________________________________________
481
Doreen Virtue and Judith Lukomski, Crystal Therapy: How to Heal and Empower Your Life with Crystal
Energy (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2005), 1.
482
Abram, Becoming Animal, 43.
483
See ibid., 44.
484
See ibid., viii.
485
Phyllis Galde, “Sodalite,” in Llewellyn Encyclopedia (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn
Worldwide, 2013), available from: http://www.llewellyn.com/encyclopedia/term/Sodalite.
486
Patricia Jean Martin, “Sodalite,” online essay for personal crystal worker website (2006), available from: http://www.controverscial.com/Sodalite.htm. See also Rebecca De Carlo, “Sodalite,” That Crystal Site, online website (2013), available from: http://www.thatcrystalsite.com/guide/properties-glossary.php? init=s.
487
See Wasáse, 266.
488
See “Peinture et territoire en dialogue. Regard de Paul-Émile Borduas sur l’Amérique,” Mens 10.1 (Autumn 2009): 51-93.
489
As quoted in Reid, Concise History, 243.
490
See Reid, Concise History, 241-42; Burnett, Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142; and Nasgaard,
Abstract Painting, 88.
491
Reid, Concise History, 241.
492
Native Science, 46.
493
Abram, Becoming Animal, 269.
494
Ibid., 268.
495
See Masterpieces of Canadian Art, 142-43.
496
See Abstract Painting, 89.
Notes for Chapter Six 497
Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture (Calgary: University of Calgary Press,
2001), 2.
498
See ibid., 14.
499
Holub, Crossing Borders, ix.
ENDNOTES
451
______________________________________________________________________
500
“Wall Labels: Word, Image, and Object in the Work of Robert Morris,” in Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, eds. Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Krens, David Anti, and Maurice Berger (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1994), 63-64.
501
“Wayward Landscapes,” in Robert Morris, 26.
502
See Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2002), 3.
503
Ann Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003), 45 and 43, respectively.
504
See ibid., 74-75.
505
Ibid., 221.
506
See Ron Graziani, Robert Smithson and the American Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 120-21, 182.
507
Richard Sieburth, “A Heap of Language: Robert Smithson and American Hieroglyphics,” in Robert
Smithson, eds. Eugenie Tsai and Cornelia Butler (Berkeley: University of California Press, for the
Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004), 222-23.
508
Indigenous Storywork, 149, 31-32, and 126, respectively.
509
Blackfoot Ways of Knowing, 93.
510
Ibid., 90.
511
Ibid., 142.
512
For all the above quotations see, respectively, Richard Hill, “Meeting Ground: the Reinstallation of the
Art Gallery of Ontario’s McLaughlin Gallery,” in Making a Noise!: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community, ed. Lee-Ann Martin (Banff: Banff International Curatorial Institute and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, 2004), 54; Brenda L. Croft, “What About the Dots and Circles?! The Children Need Them,” in Making a Noise!, 125; and Guy Sioui Durand, “Ak8a-Enton8hi of Saliva and Quill,” in Making a Noise!, trans. Jane C. Lamb-Ruiz, 131. 513
All of the quotations from and references to Dirk Romijnen’s art story are from “Conversation with Dirk Romijnen,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 18 March 2010.
514
All of the quotations from and references to Lily Somner’s art story are from “Conversation with Lily
Somner,” in-person interview with the author, Edmonton, Alberta, 20 March 2010.
515
Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 15.
516
All of the quotations from and references to Crow Dennett’s art story are from “Conversation with Crow Dennett,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 30 April 2010.
517
Patricia Ainslie and Mary-Beth Laviolette, Alberta Art and Artists (Calgary: Fifth House, 2007), xi. See also Nancy Townshend, A History of Art in Alberta, 1905-1970 (Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 2005), 1 and 98.
ENDNOTES
452
______________________________________________________________________
518
See Townshend, A History of Art in Alberta, 205.
519
See Mary-Beth Laviolette, An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent and Contemporary Art
(Canmore: Altitude Publishing, 2006), 18-21.
520
A History of Art in Alberta, i and 98, respectively.
521
Indigenous Storywork, 2.
522
All of the quotations from and references to Mana Hill's art story are from “Conversation with Mana
Hill,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 20 December 2010.
523
All of the quotations from and references to Lisa Victors's art story are from “Conversation with Lisa
Victors,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 8 May 2010.
524
All of the quotations from and references to Geoff Hampton’s art story are from “Conversation with
Geoff Hampton,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 25 March 2010.
525
A History of Art in Alberta, 205.
526
For Laviolette's linking of Lindoe to this tradition in Alberta, see Alberta Art Chronicle, 53-55.
527
Ibid., 21
528
Ibid., 44.
529
Ibid., 27.
530
Ibid., 29.
531
Ibid., 44.
532
Lindoe, “Artist Statement,” in Come Walk With Me: A Luke Lindoe Retrospective, ed. Linda Carney
(Medicine Hat, AB: Medicine Hat Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), 11; quoted in Laviolette, Alberta Art
Chronicle, 53.
533
See Laviolette, Alberta Art Chronicle, 54.
534
“Artist Statement,” in Peter von Tiesenhausen: Projects (Grande Prairie, AB: Prairie Regional Art
Gallery, 1994); quoted in Laviolette, Alberta Art Chronicle, 52.
535
Alberta Art Chronicle, 51.
536
All of the above quotations from and references to Peter Ross’s art story are from “Conversation with
Peter Ross,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 23 April 2010.
537
From “Conversation with Noel Bélanger,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 17 April
2010.
538
All of the quotations from and references to Miriam Landrenne’s art story are from “Conversation with
Miriam Landrenne,” in-person interview with the author, Edmonton, Alberta, 24 April 2010.
ENDNOTES
453
______________________________________________________________________
539
All of the quotations from and references to Julie Dubois’s art story are from “Conversation with Julie DuBois,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 29 March 2010.
540
All of the quotations from and references to Diane Stuart’s art story are from “Conversation with Diane Stuart,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 17 March 2011.
541
See Frank, Letting Stories Breathe, 44.
542
Archibald, Indigenous Storywork, 12 and 100, respectively.
543
For more on salmon energy, see Jamie Sams and David Carson, Medicine Cards (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 232-34.
Notes for Epilogue 544
Much of the information in this section was already published in Troy Patenaude, “Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art: Storyworking in the Public Sphere,” in How Canadians Communicate IV: Media and Politics, eds. David Taras and Christopher Waddell (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2012), 317-48. I have received permission to re-use it here.
545
These two points are especially evident through such significant markers of Canadian identity as Northwest Coast carving, woodland painting, and inuksuit (as in the logo for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics). See McMaster, “Contributions to Canadian Art,” 158; and John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008), 36, 52–53.
546
This point is contra McMaster, “Contributions to Canadian Art,” 157, and more reflects the reenvisioned story of art in Canada as discussed throughout this project.
547
Ralston Saul, A Fair Country, 36.
548
Contemporary Aboriginal Arts in Canada (Ottawa: Canada Council for the Arts, 2008), 5. This number is based on the findings of a 2004 Ipsos Reid public opinion poll.
549
A recent proliferation in books discussing Canada in a new, more holistic way and from a diverse range of fields—including language arts, anthropology, history, landscape painting, and politics— demonstrates that many Canadians are seeking a more meaningful relationship with their own geophysical and social-ecological realities than is currently being provided through mainstream political and social structures. See, for example, J. Edward Chamberlin, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004); Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008); Victor Suthren, The Island of Canada: How Three Oceans Shaped Our Nation (Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2009); Petra Halkes, Aspiring to the Landscape: On Painting and the Subject of Nature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Ralston Saul, A Fair Country; Kaye, Hiding the Audience; Annis May Timpson, ed., First Nations, First Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009). The latter three works further discuss this trend as being directly related to or influenced by Indigenous ways of knowing and the contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canada.
ENDNOTES
454
______________________________________________________________________
550
Bill Reid, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,” in Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, ed. Robert Bringhurst (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 244.
551
Ibid., 246.
552
David A. Lertzman and Harrie Vredenburg, “Indigenous Peoples, Resource Extraction and Sustainable Development: An Ethical Approach,” Journal of Business Ethics 56.3 (2005): 251.
553
See, for example, Ralston Saul’s discussion of the “elite failure” of Canadian politicians and the fisheries industry in regards to West Coast shrimp trawling (A Fair Country, 189–91). See also Lertzman and Vredenburg, “Indigenous Peoples,” 241–42, for a more general discussion regarding the unsustainability of current industrial trends. This discussion helps introduce their proposed model for sustainability within the context of a case from the West Coast logging industry. To be sure, there are people within governments and industries in Canada who are working to change unsustainable trends. And change has been happening, however slowly, especially as more and more Aboriginal people, with their knowledge and cultural teachings, are included as equal and respected consultants and contributors in the courtroom and on scientific panels. However, much of this particular life-experience story has yet to unfold.
554
All of the quotations from and references to Mark Lightner’s art story are from “Conversation with Mark Lightner,” in-person interview with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 25 March 2010.
555
Bill Reid, “Haida Means Human Being,” in Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, ed. Robert Bringhurst (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 147, 150, 161. The essay was published in full for the first time posthumously in 2000.
556
Reid, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii,” 246.
557
All of the quotations from and references to Leo Campari’s art story are from “Conversation with Leo Campari,” phone conversation with the author, Calgary, Alberta, 19 April 2010.
558
For more on this process, see the work of ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin, especially Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato: New World Library, 2003).
559
See McMaster, “Contributions to Canadian Art.” See also Marie Battiste, “Maintaining Aboriginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 202. One of Battiste’s main points here is that “Western education has much to gain by viewing the world through the eyes and languages of Aboriginal peoples.” She discusses the importance of respecting and protecting Aboriginal rituals, ceremonies, and tribal knowledge in this endeavour—all of which are issues engaged, operationalized, and shared through contemporary Canadian Aboriginal art. For further discussion on the storywork of other important Aboriginal artists in Canada, including Norval Morrisseau and Joane Cardinal-Schubert, see Patenaude, “Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art.”
ENDNOTES
455
______________________________________________________________________
560
See, for example, Marie Wadden, Where the Pavement Ends: Canada’s Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 226–29. Aboriginal peoples have made many important contributions to the dominant Canadian system, as demonstrated by the contributors to Hidden in Plain Sight (ed. David R. Newhouse, Cora J. Voyageur, and Dan Beavon). However, as many Aboriginal writers have argued, Canada’s colonial structure is still deeply entrenched within educational, political, and judiciary systems that are characterized less by a possibility for an equal partnership and more by an emphasis on a one-way, top-down flow of knowledge.
561
The comment about treaty making is from Wanipigow’s administrator of social development programs, Marcel Hardisty, quoted in Wadden, Where the Pavement Ends, 226. It relates to Hardisty’s statement to Wadden about the importance and intensity of “sharing” to Aboriginal peoples in this historical context. The treaties, he notes, originally involved a level of intercultural sharing that holistically included the actual raw resources of water, minerals, land, and air, but that has often been concealed or neglected in mainstream Canada today. For more about “sharing” as it relates to the reconciliation process in Canada, see Michael Murphy, “Civilization, Self-Determination, and Reconciliation,” in First Nations, First Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in Canada, ed. Annis May Timpson (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), 251. Murphy argues, contra Tom Flanagan, First Nations? Second Thoughts (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2000), that reconciliation is indeed bound up with Aboriginal nationalism and “encompasses a forward-looking relationship among equals who will seek to establish bonds of trust and mutual respect.” This kind of sharing, however, is, according to Murphy, often thwarted by civilizationist policies and paradigms, such as Flanagan’s, which predict the inevitability of assimilation. For “sharing” and sustainable development, see Lertzman and Vredenburg, “Indigenous Peoples,” 239–54. The authors argue that a substantive intercultural sharing through dialogue between Aboriginal peoples and the resource extraction industries is key to sustainable development in Canada.
562
Ralston Saul, A Fair Country, 79.
563
Murphy, “Civilization,” 267.
564
Harper, Painting in Canada, 196.
565
Ibid., 197.
566
Ibid., 201.
567
Ibid., 197.
568
Ibid., 181, 180, and 181, respectively.
569
“Bertram Brooker,” YorkSpace Digital Library (June 2012): 14.
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456
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The Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Whittles, Martin and Tim Patterson. “Nápi and the City: Siksikaitsitapi Narratives
Revisited.” In First Nations, First Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in
Canada. Edited by Annis May Timpson. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.
Whyte, David. “All the True Vows.” In The House of Belonging. Langley, WA: Many
Rivers Press, 1997.
Wilson, Shawn. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax and
Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008.
Withrow, William. Contemporary Canadian Painting. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1972.
Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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Young Man, Alfred. “Towards a Political History of Native Art.” In Visions of Power:
Contemporary Art by First Nations, Inuit and Japanese Canadians. Edited by
Ingo Hessel, Bryce Kanbara, and Alfred Young Man. Toronto: Earth Spirit
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Zangwill, Nick. Aesthetic Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Zemans, Joyce. “Establishing the Canon: Nationhood, Identity and the National
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Zimon, Kathy E. Alberta Society of Artists: The First Seventy Years. Calgary: University
of Calgary Press, 2000.
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Aaron Paquette, Transformation (2009)
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation, including a reproduction of the painting(s) above, worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Aaron Paquette
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Marmaduke Matthews, Hermit Range, Rocky Mountains, c.1888 Lucius O'Brien, Hermit Range, Selkirk, B.C., near Glacier Hotel, 1887 Lucius O'Brien, Lords of the Forest, 1874 Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1916-17
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. On behalf of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the owner of the said painting(s), I understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify the name of the Art Gallery of Ontario when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Sean Weaver Art Gallery of Ontario
! Reproduction Application Form
The conditions for reproduction permission are listed on the second page of this form. Sign and return the form to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Images will be released on receipt of payment and the completed form. Name:
Troy Patenaude
Organization:
University of Calgary
Mailing Address:
428 Parkridge Crescent SE, Calgary, AB T2J 4Z4 Canada
Telephone:
403-389-7579
Email:
[email protected]
Name of publication, exhibition, etc. in which reproduction will appear: PhD dissertation Date of Publication:
n/a
Publisher:
n/a
Distribution:
n/a (diss. will be stored by U of C for educational purposes only)
Language(s ):
English
ISBN#:
n/a
Page count:
around 500 pages
at most 6 copies may be printed for my examining committee, and that’s it
Print Run:
Check each applicable to indicate proposed use of image:
XX ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
Photographic material required:
❍ ❍ ❍
Interior (circle b/w or colour) Cover/jacket Poster Exhibition display Magazine/journal Internet Other (describe below)
Check applicable user type:
❍ ❍ ❍ ❍ XX ❍ ❍
Commercial Non-profit institution Museum/gallery University press Scholar Personal Other (describe below)
High-resolution digital image on CD Low resolution digital image, emailed High-resolution digital image, FTP (please provide FTP instructions)
❍ ❍ ❍ ❍
4x5" colour transparency 8x10" colour print Slide Other (describe below)
Will use the B & W digital image you already have in your possession - please email it when applicable
Agnes Etherington Art Centre | Queen's University | Kingston ON | K7L 3N6 T: 613.533.6000 x 77970 | F: 613.533.6765 |
[email protected] | W: www.aeac.ca
APPLICATION TO REPRODUCE AN IMAGE
PERMISSION IS REQUESTED BY:
Name
Troy Patenaude
Company Name
University of Calgary
Address
428 Parkridge Crescent SE, Calgary, AB T2J 4Z4 Canada
TO REPRODUCE THE FOLLOWING ITEM(S): (Please give full details and reference numbers)
!
RCIN 405305: Lucius O'Brien, View From King's Bastion, Quebec, 1881! RCIN 404834: Lucius O'Brien, Quebec from Point Levis, 1881!
Print run (please specify)!
Colour
Up to 50 printed copies + university electronic database for up to 10 years x
Black and white
For one-time publication in: Book
CD/DVD Cover
Newspaper/Magazine
Television
Academic Journal
O t h e r ( p l e a s e Student thesis state)
For use as: Inside Illustration
x
Jacket/Cover
TV Still Other (please state)
Rights required: One country, One Language World Rights, One Language World Rights, Multiple Languages Other
Standard TV x
Non Standard TV Video/DVD
Duration: Title of publication/ programme:
Decolonizing the Story of Art in Canada: A Storied Approach to Art for an Intercultural, More-ThanHuman World
Publisher:
THE FOLLOWING CREDIT LINE MUST BE USED: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014 Please also credit the photographer as per the metadata or the transparency label
THE APPLICANT AGREES THAT THIS PERMISSION, IF GRANTED, SHALL BE SUBJECT TO THE CONDITIONS LISTED BELOW AND TRANSPARENCIES (IF SUPPLIED) WILL BE RETURNED WITHIN ONE MONTH OF THE DESPATCH DATE.
by Applicant
Date 28 July 2014
For office use only! ! SIGNED ________________________________! Date ___________________! ! Approved by the Picture Library, Royal Collection Enterprises
SIGNED
CONDITIONS GOVERNING PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ITEMS IN
THE ROYAL COLLECTION.
1. All colour transparencies, digital images and photographic prints of items in the Royal Collection have been made by gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen, and by or under the direct control of the employees of the Royal Collection. Copyright therein, by reason of the Copyright Act 1998, belongs to Her Majesty accordingly.
2. No transparency, digital image or print is to be reproduced without written permission from a member of staff of Royal Collection Trust.
3. The licence to reproduce – (a) is confined to the photographic material of the items listed overleaf and to the specific purpose indicated; (b) confers no exclusive rights of reproduction or rights in perpetuity; (c) is not to be sold, assigned, transferred or otherwise dealt with in the absence of permission in writing from Royal Collection Trust; (d) may not be utilised in relation to any scheme of free gifts or inducements to purchase other articles.
4. In the reproduction process, the object illustrated in the transparency, digital image or photograph may not be cropped, bled off the page, overprinted, printed on coloured stock, altered or manipulated in any way without prior written approval from Royal Collection Trust. If a detail is used it must be identified as such.
5. The following credit line must be used whenever an image from the Royal Collection is reproduced “Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014”. In addition, the correct image caption details must be used and where required, the photographer must be credited. Failure to credit an image may result in additional fees being charged.
6. If so required, proofs must be submitted for approval, and only such reproductions as are approved may be published. If no proofs are approved or where permission to reproduce is withdrawn, any reproduction fees already paid in connection with the specific project will be refunded.
7. Reproduction is only permitted from photographic material supplied by Royal Collection Trust. At least 2 copies of the publication must be provided free of charge to RC upon publication.
8. All reproduction fees, photography costs, initial transparency hire, and print purchase fees must be paid to Royal Collection Trust before photographic materials will be despatched or permission to use images given.
9. A hire fee will be charged per month per transparency. In addition, a deposit may be required per transparency.
10.Loss or damage to a transparency will result in a replacement fee of up to £600.00 being charged. All transparencies must be returned in adequately packed stiffened envelopes and via method of delivery requiring signature upon receipt to: Picture Library, Royal Collection Trust, St. James’s Palace, London, SW1A 1JR. Transparencies returned from outside the United Kingdom must be marked ‘British returned goods’ on the outside of the envelope.
11. This licence may be revoked at any time if the Licensee is in breach of any of its terms.
12.This licence shall be governed by the laws of England.
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: William Blake, Elohim Creating Adam, 1795/c.1805
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission for one-time use to reproduce an image of the artwork(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will also fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. On behalf of the Tate Gallery, the copyright owner of the said artwork(s), I understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify the name of the copyright owner of the said artwork(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said artwork(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Bernard Horrocks Intellectual Property Manager Tate Gallery
Mother Tongue Publishing 290 Fulford-Ganges Rd. Salt Spring Island B.C. V8K 2K6
Phone 250-537-4155 Fax 250-537-4725 Email
[email protected] www.mothertonguepublishing.com
REQUEST FOR USE OF PRINTS/ARTWORK/PHOTOGRAPHS FOR REPRODUCTION Nov.13.13 Dear Troy Patenaude, I am granting permission for one-time useage of the following material:
Three photos of Mildred Valley Thornton’s art from The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thornton by
Sheryl Salloum published by Mother Tongue Publishing 2011,
1) Manitouwassis, 1929 (on p. 46)
2) Mary George, "Old Mary," c. 1943 (p. 58)
3) Across the Inlet, n.d. (p. 104)
to be reproduce in your PhD dissertation entitled When a Bear Charges, or Artists Paint: Re-
envisioning the Story of Art in Canada. The PhD with images will be stored by the University in their
dissertation collection only. A fee of $100 for useage would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Mona Fertig, Publisher
PERMISSION GIVEN TO:
PRINT NAME___________________________________ADDRESS_______________________________________
SIGN ____________________________________ PH:__________________________________________________
DATE: _______________________________ EMAIL:_____________________________________________________
PLEASE SEND/FAX SIGNED FORM TO: Mona Fertig Mother Tongue Publishing Fax: 250-537-4725
http://www.mothertonguepublishing.com
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Paul-Émile Borduas, L’étoile noire, 1957
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission for one-time use to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. On behalf of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), I understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify the name of the MMFA when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Marie-Claude Saia Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
23 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: George Simon, Shamanic Signs Series [Fertility Petroglyph] (2006)
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. I, the copyright owner of the above painting(s), understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation, including a reproduction of the said painting(s), worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
George Simon
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Peter von Tiesenhausen, Ship, 1993
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the artwork(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said artwork(s), understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said artwork(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said artwork(s). Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Peter von Tiesenhausen
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Heather Shillinglaw, Medicine Pouches (2009)
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Heather Shillinglaw
22 July 2014
Re:
image reproduction permission for: Chris Flodberg, Double Image Catharsis II, 2005 Chris Flodberg, Late Summer Reflections, c.2004
To whom it may concern:
As per earlier discussions with the author, Troy Patenaude, I hereby grant him permission to reproduce an image of the painting(s) listed above in his PhD dissertation. I am aware that the said dissertation will now fall under the University of Calgary’s non-exclusive distribution licence as further elaborated below.
I understand that the University of Calgary will not distribute the submitted dissertation if, in its reasonable judgment, they believe the said permission of third party copyright holders has not been secured. I, the copyright owner of the said painting(s), understand that the University of Calgary may reproduce, translate, and/or distribute the submitted dissertation worldwide in print and electronic format and in any medium, including but not limited to audio or video. I agree that the University of Calgary may, without changing the content, translate the submitted dissertation to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation. I also agree that the University of Calgary may keep more than one copy of the submitted dissertation for purposes of security, backup and preservation. I am aware that the University of Calgary will clearly identify my name as the copyright owner of the said painting(s) when applicable, and will not make any alteration to the reproduced image(s) of the said painting(s) other than as allowed by this letter. Finally, I acknowledge that the University of Calgary is not responsible for any misuse of the submitted dissertation by third parties who access the submission through the University.
Sincerely,
Chris Flodberg