Preview
ABSENCE OR PRESENCE:
A SURVEY OF ABSTRACT PAINTING IN CANADA FROM 1950s TO 1990s
Runs until January 3
Triangle Gallery
Abstract art is often considered the oddity of the art world, a genre inhabited by artists whose canvases break free of recognizable forms and morph into fields of colour, angular shapes and bold lines that are seemingly the result of unrestrained technique.
That misunderstanding of abstract art is challenged by the exhibition Absence or Presence now showing at the Triangle Gallery. Twenty-two works from the multimillion-dollar art collection of the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery is convincing evidence that Canada has a proud, if somewhat underappreciated, body of abstract art created primarily between the 1950s and 1990s.
"Indeed, we have a jewel in the badlands, as far as the number of the works and their stylistic range," says Jacek Malec, director of the Triangle Gallery, describing the exhibition.
Curated by Curtis Joseph Collins, former associate curator at the U of L Art Gallery, Absence or Presence takes its name from a quote by famed art critic and champion of abstract art Clement Greenberg (1909 -1994). In his book Art and Culture, Greenberg wrote: "The presence or absence of a recognizable image has no more to do with the value in painting or sculpture than the presence or absence of a libretto has to do with the value of music."
Greenberg’s ideals were heady stuff for a public that at the time was steeped in the traditions of European art and preferred canvases filled with easily recognizable people or landscapes. That all changed following the Second World War, when abstract expressionism and post-painterly abstraction (a term coined by Greenberg) began to gain prominence in the imaginations of more and more artists.
In Canada, the group that advanced the cause of abstract art more than any other was Painters Eleven, a Toronto-based collective that was determined to become a cultural force in Canada. Absence or Presence includes works from six Painters Eleven members, including Jack Bush, Thomas Hodgson, Alexandra Luke, J.W.G. "Jock" Macdonald, William Ronald and Harold Town. Although they failed to capture the public’s imagination in a meaningful way, the group produced a considerable body of work before disbanding in 1960.
Harold Town’s Snap #78 offers a striking example of what was being achieved in Canadian abstract art during that time. Created in 1974 by snapping lines loaded with oil paint across the canvas, Town’s work is a vivid execution of colour. Its continuing visual impact remains clear evidence of the power of abstract art when created by such a skilled artist.
The West was not left out of the growing movement, with such artists as Moose Jaw-born Roy Kiyooka and Calgary’s own Marion Nicoll playing important roles during this period.
"Marion Nicoll, or as I call her ‘Madame Avant-garde,’ has played an influential role in Western Canada as a strong proponent of abstract art," says Malec. "In 1946, Jock Macdonald, who taught one year at the Tech (the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, now the Aberta College of Art and Design) became an important influence on Nicoll’s development as a painter. Macdonald introduced her to automatism, and this caused her style to change from an objective interpretation of nature to a subjective abstraction."
When Nicoll painted East From the Mountains, which is part of the exhibition, in 1961, she had clearly moved to the abstract period of her career, using strong blocks of colour and geometric forms to express what she described as a classical style of abstract painting.
"Painting for me is all on the picture plane, the actual surface of the canvas, with the power held in the horizontal and vertical movements of the expanding colour shapes," she says in the Marion Nicoll file in the Glenbow Museum Archive. "There can be, for me, no overlapping, transparencies or fuzzy edges; all of these are atmospheric and a hangover from romantic naturalistic painting…."
Often misunderstood, sometimes maligned, abstract art in Canada has survived thanks to a small but dedicated group of artists, curators and galleries that have stood fast in face of skepticism. Absence or Presence proves their resolve has been well-informed. |
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