Canada and impressionism by Dominik Brabant

Exhibitions

which was included in the pages of André Breton’s Nadja (1928) to illustrate one of the sites of his doomed love affair with the eponymous character.

Maar’s photograph is closely cropped, enabling the occupants of the rooms, who are standing near the windows or on the balconies, to be seen more easily.

The eerie, depopulated urban spaces of Paris that feature in Boiffard’s images are themselves made strange by Maar’s photograph. As Dawn Ades observes in her catalogue essay on the artist’s street photography (Fig.25), Maar subtly critiques Boiffard’s preference for the streets, cafés and hotels of Paris to be desolate, the better to foreground and flatter the intensity and singularity of the male protagonist’s experiences of Surrealist ‘mad love’. Appropriately, the room ‘Everyday Strange’, a term only indirectly derived from Bretonian Surrealism, gives a sense of how her work defamiliarises Surrealism itself, even as it makes a significant contribution to the movement.

The exhibition navigates a little less successfully the impact and legacy of Maar’s affair with Picasso, her one-time partner, and perhaps the most frequently cited territorialising influence on the production and reception of her work. Did it really need to devote so much space to him, including three of his portraits of her, which seemed to reintroduce the notion of woman artist as muse and therefore as a source of cultural and erotic capital for the modernist artist? Similarly, it includes numerous iterations of Maar’s photographs of the production of Picasso’s Guernica, and although the exhibition includes a recording of a conversation between Maar and Frances Morris (1990), in which Maar discloses, rather equivocally, that her photography influenced his ‘masterpiece’, these seven photographs in the exhibition cast her more as scribe rather than agent of Modernism. Maar’s devastating work The conversation (ex-catalogue; Fig.26) represents Maar’s own narration of the impact of Picasso’s concurrent relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. Whereas Walter is depicted frontally, Maar has her back to the viewer and her face is completely obscured. It is a shame that

and her practice. It makes clear her awareness of not only the threats posed to the individual by totalitarianism in the 1930s, but also the desirability of solidarity and collective identification.

Given the overshadowing of women’s art by their ‘significant’ others and the cultural capital generated through affiliations with avant-garde movements such as Surrealism, the exhibition’s ambition to isolate Maar’s practice and insist on its singularity is fully understandable. Nonetheless, the exhibition makes it impossible to avoid thinking of Maar in the context of Picasso. Given the longstanding heteronormative, patriarchal frameworks that have shaped the reception of women Surrealist artists, perhaps it is difficult to imagine otherwise, but the exhibition leaves the impression that more ‘Debutantes’ are still sorely needed.

Maar’s show of resistance to the impact of Picasso’s complicated love life on her has not been taken as the structuring principle for the room.

The room ‘On the Street’, featuring Maar’s documentary photography, is perhaps the most challenging and provocative in the show. Although her well-known witty, innovative and sometimes discombobulating photomontage works are wellrepresented in the exhibition, her reportage work from her travels around Spain (1933) and England (1934), shown here, make the timeliest contribution to contemporary practice. Maar’s photographs of people in search of solace and succour amid the political, social and economic crisis of the 1930s resonate in our own context of rising populism, ethno-nationalism and Brexit. From the photograph of a destitute woman selling lottery tickets (1934; pl.66) to another of a street evangelist holding a sign reading ‘Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand’ (1934; pl.70), the subjugation of the individual in the name of church, family and state is laid bare. The attention paid to these documentary photographs, which acknowledge her contribution to anti-fascist grass-roots politics, complicates the exhibition’s efforts to otherwise individualise Maar

26. The Conversation,

by Dora Maar.

1937. Oil on canvas, 162 by 130 cm.

(Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Madrid; courtesy FABA; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019; photograph Marc Domage; exh.

Tate Modern London).

1 Catalogue: Dora Maar. Edited by Damarice Amao, Amanda Maddox and Karolina ZieblinskaLewandowska. 208 pp. incl. 240 col. + b. & w. ills. (Tate Publishing, London, 2019), £40.

ISBN 978–1–84976–686–9.

Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne 24th January–24th May by dominik brabant

This exhibition closes a gap in the contemporary understanding of Impressionism in an informative and visually stimulating way. Organised by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and curated by Katerina Atanassova, the exhibition opened at the Kunsthalle Munich (19th June–17th November 2019), where it was seen by this reviewer.1 With a display of 120 paintings – many of which are from private collections and have not previously been shown in public – the exhibition adopts a chronological approach to presenting the history of the engagement of Canadian artists with the Parisian art scene.

From the 1880s Canadian artists increasingly visited Paris, sometimes staying for years. They regularly returned home for visits and many settled back permanently. In Paris

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Exhibitions

they usually studied at such academies as the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, which were open to foreigners and women. Initially, however, Canadian artists, who often stayed among their own communities, did not necessarily choose the Impressionists as their lodestar but rather academic figurative painters or the older artists of the Barbizon school. Using the example of thirtysix artists, the exhibition traces their at first tentative, and from the 1890s increasingly consistent, adoption of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist motifs and techniques. Those among them who were particularly ambitious, such as Maurice Cullen (1866–1934) or James Wilson Morrice (1865–1924), were faced with the double challenge of having to succeed in the French Salons and then advertising their new Paris-taught skills at home, especially in Montreal and to a lesser extent in Toronto.

As well as being displayed in chronological sequence, the paintings are also grouped into thematic sections. These themes are further discussed in essays in the catalogue, which are complemented by a prologue

by Adam Gopnik, who sings the praises of a joyous and light-flooded global Impressionism, and an epilogue

by Tracey Lock, who compares Impressionism in Canada with that of Australia.2 Lock adheres to Norma Broude’s cosmopolitan model of a

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worldwide Impressionism that is not exclusively focused on French painting as the paragon.3 A central subject of the exhibition is landscape painting, the genre preferred by Canadian artists. Among the examples of their depictions of French landscapes, Landscape with poppies by William Blair Bruce (cat. no.5; Fig.27) is clearly a homage to Monet.

On the other hand, William Brymner’s Border of the Forest of Fontainebleau (1885; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston; no.1) recalls more strongly the Barbizon tradition.

Other works offer a rather conservative naturalism, as practised in France by Jules Bastien-Lepage, or echo James McNeill Whistler. As a successful American with close connections to Europe, Whistler became a guiding figure for some Canadian artists.

Views of modern city life, a subject that Manet and Degas introduced to Impressionism, were more rarely chosen as a subject, but among the examples in the exhibition are Paul Peel’s sun-flooded Luxembourg Gardens (1890; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; no.11) and Morrice’s Quai des GrandsAugustins (1904; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; no.10), whose composition with large areas of graduated browns and ochres and anonymous figures recalls Whistler and the Nabis.

In 1913 the critic Charles Louis Borgmeyer wrote of Morrice that he was ‘not a Master Impressionist, he is a legitimate successor of theirs. Not that he decomposes his tones, or uses the “comma” of Claude Monet, or the

27. Landscape with poppies,

by William Blair Bruce. 1887.

Oil on canvas, 27.3 by 33.8 cm.

(Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; exh. Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne).

28. The picnic,

by Henri Beau.

1904–05. Oil on canvas, 72.5 by 92.5 cm. (Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec; exh.

Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne).

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29. The train, winter, by Clarence Gagnon. c.1913–14. Oil on canvas, 56 by 71 cm. (Private collection; exh.

Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne).

superposed touches of Cézanne. He is too personal for that’.4 This assessment could be transposed to other artists, such as Henri Beau, whose idyllic, almost Pointillist The picnic (no.16; Fig.28) openly references Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863; Musée d’Orsay) but without adopting the latter’s scandalous combination of a nude with modern figures.

Further sections cover subjects preferred by Canadian artists. Among these are views of the coast, including the beaches of Brittany, and Venice, painted by artists travelling in the footsteps of the French Impressionists, or the representation of children, often shown playing or performing simple tasks, either outdoors or in sheltered middle-class surroundings. A final section covers the role of women. As subjects for paintings they were often shown pursuing quiet activities such as needlework or reading. As Anna Hudson argues in the catalogue, such artists as Peel and Franklin Brownell portrayed women in their role as artistic muses or emphasised their physical beauty. Female artists, on the other hand, such as the little-known Helen McNicoll, sought new ways of representing women by moving away

from patriarchal reification. In Florence Carlyle’s The studio (1903; Woodstock Art Gallery, Ontario; no.65), for example, the reclining model, who has just interrupted her reading, gazes straight out of the painting at the artist or the viewer – perhaps a late echo of Manet’s Olympia (1863; Musée d’Orsay).

A strength of the exhibition is the opportunity it offers to examine how the artists of a country that was united only in the wake of the Confederation in 1867 sought to use the pictorial means of Impressionism (and its successor styles) to depict the distinctive character of the Canadian landscape in painting. Despite the challenge posed by painting en plein air in the weather conditions of the Canadian winter, Cullen and Morrice worked together at SaintAnne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, creating landscapes in which the snow – with its diverse shades – became the central motif. Nonetheless, within this search for a national identity the legacy of French Impressionism remained strong, as is shown, for example, by Clarence Gagnon’s The train, winter (no.99; Fig.29), which shows a sunlit valley crossed by a steam locomotive.

This visual layering of unspoilt nature

and the relentless encroachment of modernity was gradually abandoned by a group of artists formed in 1910 and known since 1920 as the Group of Seven. Wanting to liberate themselves from French models, they preferred a more nationalistic image of Canada, realised in paintings with Nordic connotations, in which strong colour contrasts are married with decorative-ornamental surfaces that depict a landscape untouched by human hands (1915; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; no.111). However, the exhibition demonstrates astutely that the works of the Group of Seven became possible only on the basis of the achievements of the previous, Impressionist generation of Canadian artists. In her catalogue essay, Gerta Moray describes the attitudes of the later artists as ‘modernist antimodernism’ (p.115) and discusses the current debates surrounding this group of artists and their quest for an autonomous Canadian art.

Being partly an example of international cultural transfer and partly a search for national identity, Canadian Impressionism incorporates deep-rooted tensions.

In the exhibition, which is intended to appeal to the broader public, these are evident only on close study of the works and with a knowledge of the context. What is more important, however, is that the exhibition and the catalogue create an awareness of the artistic riches of Canadian Impressionism and, at the same time, open promising new perspectives for future work on the subject.

1 The exhibition will travel to the Musée Fabre, Montpellier (13th June–27th September) and to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (30th October 2020– 21st March 2021).

2 Catalogue: In einem neuen Licht: Kanada und der Impressionismus, 1880–1930. By Katerina Atanassova. 256 pp. incl. 300 col. ills. (Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, 2019), £33. ISBN 978–3–89790–548–1. English edition: Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons. ISBN 978– 3–89790–547–4. The literature on Canadian Impressionism is limited; see, for example, C. Lowrey, ed.: exh. cat. Visions of Light and Air. Canadian Impressionism, 1885–1920, Montreal (Musée de Quebec), and touring, 1995; and A.K. Prakash: Impressionism in Canada: A Journey of Rediscovery, Stuttgart 2015.

3 N. Broude, ed.: World Impressionism: The International Movement, 1860–1920, New York 1990.

4 C.L. Borgmeyer: ‘The master Impressionists (Chapter VII)’, The Fine Arts Journal 28 (1913), p.347.

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