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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
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 Paterson Ewen, Northern Lights, 1973 (taken from AGO website) | "According to Paterson Ewen only one of his paintings comes from a direct experience -- that of seeing the aurora borealis while snoeshowing in Algonquin Park. And yet that painting, Northern Lights, with the earth seen from space and the land mass of Canada occupying a disproportionate area of the globe, can hardly be said to be a painting of direct experience." - Philip Monk, Phenomena: Paterson Ewen Paintings 1971-19987, exhibition catalogue, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1988), p. 22 |
| Puttering around through old magazines at the library, I found a hard-copy thread of 80s art criticism, controversy and intrigue. Here's the short version: Philip Monk curated a show by Canadian artist Paterson Ewen in 1988, and wrote a catalogue essay that focussed on the semiotic and material aspects of Ewen's work, referring to a number of American artists such as Robert Smithson, Jackson Pollock, Richard Serra and Robert Morris. Canadian artists Greg Curnoe and Andy Patton took great offense to Monk's approach and wrote scathing responses that were printed together in Parachute, summer of 1989. Curnoe accused Monk of "sanitized and a-historical writing," which held Paterson Ewen up to "imagined international criteria," neglecting the "real context of his work and ideas." Patton suggested that Monk was "groping for coherence and literacy at the expense of one of Canada's major painters." Monk responded in the following issue of Parachute, "...I feel that this demand for history and context, rather than letting the work stand in its own right, is an unconsciously envious attempt by Curnoe and Patton to diminish the achievements of Ewen's art." Pretty darn shirty all round! Yet I am really very curious about the larger context. As LM mentioned recently in another thread, the 80s were full of "tyrannical art ideologies." But despite all the emotional lashing out, each piece contains great historical detail and/or art insights. All three of these guys were confident, smart, and engaged. Why do they seem to feel so threatened? Here's a few quick thoughts: Point for PM: The Canadian art world was so clique-dependent, that for a critic to suggest one particular artist's work might participate in a discourse beyond the borders was to threaten the entire, small-stakes art economy at home. Point for GC and AP: The Canadian art world was very poor at recognising it's own excellence, and critics were required who demonstrate the value of great works in context of Canadian regional cultural influences. Point for PM: Post-modern, semiotic discourse created a shared social sphere for discussing visual art, adopting a language that was universally applicable and not dependent on insider knowledge of the artist's personal biography or intentions. Point for GC and AP: Post-modern, semiotic discourse stripped vital artworks of their specific, local socio-political function, and applied a layer of seemingly alien abstraction in its place. I wish I could post the essay and articles in their entirety. Here instead are quotes representing three of my favourite bits from each participant: Philip Monk: "If alienation from the natural world was something Ewen was trying to overcome and, as Robert Morris emphasizes, it is the turn to the natural world that is concomitant to working in material, then it is the material form of working that overcomes that alienation, rather than the fact of depicting, or representing nature itself..." From Phenomena: Paterson Ewen Paintings 1971-1987, exhibition catalogue, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1988), p. 26 Greg Curnoe: "Surrealism had an early influence in London [Ontario] dating from Selwyn and Irene Dewdney's friendship with Lionel Penrose wo worked in London from 1938 to 1945; he was the brother of Roland Penrose and a friend of Alix and James Strachey, translators of the Standard Edition of Freud's writings. Irene Dewdney has said recently that surrealism was a consuming interest for both her and her husband, and coincided with the first publication of Freud in English: this interest carried forward into their pioneering work with art therapy in the late forties at Westminster Hospital, the same veteran's hospital where Paterson Ewen stayed when he first arrived in London." From "Paterson Ewen: Phenomena Paintings 1971-1987, Monk's Dream," in Parachute (July-September 1989) p. 61 Andy Patton: "What Ewen did [in leaving Montréal for London] was to leave the city of Borduas and Molinari for the city of Curnoe and Chambers. It is always difficult to generalize about an art community as surprising and complex as London's but I want to point out certain emphases there that may have pushed the transformation of Ewen's work. The most obvious difference between the London and Montréal scenes at that time was that leading artists in London were by and large far more interested in the possibilities of representational work. And certainly the London community was much more strongly oriented toward recording the influence and events of daily life. From the international standpoint of the time, Montréal's concentration on abstract painting was much more advanced. What London offered Ewen were, from that standpoint, ways of working which were officially more retrograde since representation had been superseded in some way that was permanent. From our present perspective, artists in London were maintaining certain possibilities which were in disrepute and which would only later become relevant again. From "History Evaporates: Philip Monk and Paterson Ewen," in Parachute (July-September 1989) p. 65 Final (for now) Note: Canadian artist Ian Carr-Harris, much much more favourably disposed, also addressed Monk's take on Paterson Ewen in an in-depth (and interesting) article in Vanguard: "The obvious problem which emerges, and the one we face in this country, is a crisis arising from the failure of a local middle class to understand the importance of self-validation, or when it settles for validation from elsewhere, becomes colonial or branch-plant. Abdication of cultural self-interest always has the same consequences -- invalidation of the culture and voice of the class it represents. It is, in fact, a self-betrayal. In Canada, this betrayal has been fairly genial, and disguised by the difficulties of disentangling the cultural and political concerns that distinguish an evolving culture from its British and American colonial attachments. But geniality cannot disguise the confusion that results within our society, and the barely concealed contempt -- expressed as patronizing ignorance -- that others reveal towards that confusion. The consequence is further erosion of energetic action within our culture. This is tragic." From "Standing on the Mezzanine: Ewen, Wiitasalo, Monk, and the AGO" in Vanguard (December 1988 - January 1989) p. 10 | |