Contemporary Canadian Art - Essay Example

Contemporary Canadian Art Contemporary artists working since the early part of the 1900s have dedicated themselves to depicting the range of human emotions within the colors and lines of their work. The modernists, such as Picasso, focused on the emotions themselves with little or no reference to the symbols or issues of the times in reaction to the perfectionism of the photograph and the machine age. They felt that the only way to portray the realism of the subject was to break the rules of art in order to explore images of pure emotion. Lyotard (1984) describes this process as an attempt “to make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible” (78). This “something that can be conceived but not seen nor made visible” is often referred to as the sublime, a quality of transcendent greatness “with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation” (Wikipedia, 2006). The presence of this sublime element was felt to inspire the imagination in a specific direction based on which elements remain visible or understandable. Its significance is in the way in which it brings attention to the uncertainty of meaning inherent in the work, such that no resolution makes itself apparent. The ultimate goal for artists of this period was to forget the training they received in art school in order to recapture the sense of wonder and imagination reflected in art produced by children or ‘primitives’, those who had received no art training. It was by forgetting the rules that the intuitive or sublime elements of art were able to shine through. Artists such as Canadian-born Joyce Weiland were able to circumvent the rules of established art by exploring their creativity in more than one medium, but not all artists found it necessary to forget what they’d learned. For a Canadian artist such as Norval Morrisseau, the self-taught nature of his art enabled him to create images that translated to the canvas directly from his heart. Yet each of these artists managed to convey a deep sense of spirituality and connection to the land of their birth as a comparison of Weiland’s painting “Experiment with Life” (1983) with Morrisseau’s “Shaman with Sacred Corn” demonstrates. As might be guessed, there is a world of difference between these two artists in terms of their art, their approach to life, their attitudes toward their homeland and their ways of expressing themselves which are revealed by taking a quick look at their biographies. Wieland was born in the city of Toronto in 1931 and lived with her parents, an older brother and sister until both her parents died while she was still in her junior years. After the small family was orphaned, Wieland was cared for by her brother and sister, spending much of her high school years comforting herself with her drawings and comic strips (CyberMuse, 2009). She was thus encouraged both to find a means of supporting herself and to do so within the world of art. Practically-minded, she studied commercial art and showed sufficient aptitude that she was able to finance an art trip to Europe where she hoped to learn more (MacNevin, 2008). She developed a strong interest in film animation and began working within that medium as well as continuing with her drawings and paintings. When she returned to Canada, she met the man who would play a significant role in her life, Michael Snow, marrying him in 1956, and held her first solo show at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto (MacNevin, 2008). The couple moved to New York in 1962 to further Wieland’s career and she moved smoothly into the filmmaking scene within the underground community (CyberMuse, 2009). However, her time in New York made her appreciate her homeland to an even greater extent and she was back in Canada by 1970. By this time, her art had expanded again, this time to include various forms of quilts, yet she continued painting and producing films as well. She died in 1998 as one of Canada’s most well-known feminist painters. This biography is very different from that of Norval Morrisseau. Morrisseau was born only a year later than Wieland, but in very different circumstances. He was born on the Sand Point Ojibway reserve and raised in a traditional Anishinaabe home rather than being raised in the more modern influences of the city. This also meant he was raised by his maternal grandparents rather than his parents as many or his siblings as Wieland. His grandfather was a shaman and spent a great deal of time teaching his grandson about the traditions and legends of their people. This was strongly contrasted with the heavy Catholic influence of his grandmother, creating a deep spiritual conflict within the young boy (Hill, 2006). Like many native people, Morrisseau was sent to a Catholic residential school when he reached the age of 6 and it was here that he learned of the oppression of the European traditions as he was forbidden to speak in his native language and his cultural traditions were discouraged. After only two years, he was back on the reservation and attending the local community school (Hill, 2006). Although he had been involved in producing his own art from a young age, his life was changed forever when he became desperately ill at the age of 19. No medical cure would work for him and, in desperation, his grandparents called on the ancient traditions of the tribe. The medicine man gave Morrisseau a new, powerful name to help him overcome the bad spirits that were trying to take him away and the youth miraculously recovered, signing his name ever afterward with the symbols for Copper Thunder, the new name he was given (Robinson, 2005). Having been self-taught in his artistic talents, Morrisseau nevertheless demonstrated a very strong modern style in his art that soon excited those who saw it. Anthropologist Selwyn Dewdney brought Morrisseau’s work to the attention of the American modern painter Jackson Pollock in the early 1960s. Pollock saw in the work elements of the revolutionary Picasso and immediately sponsored an exhibition in Toronto. Although he was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1978 for his artistic achievements, the artist had numerous difficulties and his work rarely made it out of Canada. Toward the end of his life, he was confined to a wheelchair by Parkinson’s Disease, unable to paint. He died on December 4, 2007. From these vastly different biographies, one would expect to find vastly different approaches taken to the creation of art and, when comparing these two works of art, one is not disappointed. Wieland’s painting depicts a wide landscape full of energy and destruction. It depicts a human-like shape in the right foreground and a line of houses along a distant flowing horizon line. The landscape depicts a rich green land full of life covered by a brilliant blue sky with shades of aqua, violet and green. The human figure is also depicted in shades of blue as it stands at an oblique angle to the viewer with the far arm thrown back as if gesturing and the forward arm gesturing in the same direction. These arm positions are important as they seem to be directing the brilliant yellow, orange and red flame-like structures back across the hill away from the village. The foreground, including elements of the human figure, is filled with areas of yellow, orange, red and black depicted in ways that suggest flowing fire, more flamelike around the figure than along the left portion of the painting. Interpreting these shapes in this way, the black areas then emerge as charred ground. However, these black shapes take on a suggestion of life and movement in themselves, one nearly mirroring the posture of the human figure. These dark areas are balanced by another dark area in the upper regions of the painting, particularly in the upper right as billowing smoke, while the orange and yellow of the flame is only partly balanced by the central region in which some of the houses on the horizon spout flames from their roofs. Confronted with what at first seems to be an image of violent destruction, it may be difficult to understand why the artist might have titled her piece “Experiment of Life” or why this piece might be considered a celebration of the homeland. Part of the answer to these questions lies in the artist’s approach to her artwork: “I think being an artist is about following your own way and having the courage to be who you are and what you are. To have self-knowledge … that deep, dark discovery of self, part of which is maturing, part of which is creating wholeness” (CyberMuse, 2009). To reach that ‘deep, dark discovery of self’, one must have the courage to burn through all of the elements of the self to become the bright burning beacon seen as the figure in the painting. The vibrant colors are kept balanced to illustrate a homeland (the landscape) that is rich and full and capable of allowing the individual to burn through to the inner good without destroying the country. While other houses are burning, the sense comes through the flowing shapes and the unmuddied colors that these are indications that others are also finding their inner fires and setting them alight. The hope of the brilliant blue sky is overshadowed by the darkness of the overhead clouds, indicating that not all is perfect within this world, but the figure is gesturing the clouds and fire in the direction she wants it to go and thus again reinforces the concept of a controlled burn – or perhaps even an alternate interpretation of the fire. The colors flowing across the landscape could as easily be interpreted as the energy of life as it breathes and flows and changes the land it touches, inside and out. From the simple seeming flowing shapes and forms of the image, Wieland develops a concept of the wealth of her homeland and her spiritual connection to it. It is this sentiment that arises out of the image created by Morrisseau. In this image, the artist presents a mid-range portrait of an Anishinaabe shaman. The man is drawn with bold lines and solid colors. His cloak is elaborately patterned with a number of colors representing the traditional symbols of the tribe. These include brilliant mid-blues, deep brick reds, sunset yellows, lime and forest greens and purples ranging from mid- to deep. The garments he wears under this cloak appears something like a turquoise chain mail. The shaman’s arms are crossed in front of his body at the elbow with his right hand held up to the sky on the left and his left hand holding three ears of sacred blue corn to his right breast. The shaman looks up at the sky to the left with a large yellow eye with a red iris and his nose seems to be pierced with green jasper, a sacred stone to the native tribes. He also wears an elaborate headdress in patches of bright colors with eye-like designs on each patch. The shaman fills most of the available picture plane. What can be seen in the background is three solid blocks of color separated by thick orange lines that radiate from just below the shaman’s eye and from the approximate mid-point of the left arm. These three blocks of color are a yellowish green at the bottom left, a pure blue in the upper left and the same yellowish green in the upper right extending down most of the right side of the image. Because the blue block of color expands at the edge of the picture plane framed by the gold of the rest of the background, this color seems to be emanating from the shaman himself as he offers up the sacred corn to the god of the skies. It is this expression that gives the painting its strong emotive powers. Like Wieland’s painting, it is difficult to see at first how Morresseau’s painting works to convey concepts of homeland, but again, this meaning can be teased out by analyzing its parts. The central key to the painting is the central concern of the Anishinaabe life and is pictured in the painting’s center in the form of the three ears of blue corn. This is the only element of the painting that gets a highly detailed treatment as the many individual kernels of the corn are depicted held in the shaman’s hands. “Corn holds great ceremonial value among many indigenous societies, and is used in various dances, celebrations and rites of passage … corn is intertwined with virtually every aspect of life: infants are fed fine cornmeal during naming ceremonies; it is often used in daily prayer; it sustains us through our earthly physical lives; it nourishes our spirit in the next world” (Diaz, 2009). The rest of the painting is presented with bold lines and solid blocks of color that are strongly reminiscent of the styles developed by Picasso but were a self-learned means of conveying, in the most succinct form possible, the central ideas of the Anishinaabe spiritual life. The clothes worn by the shaman had spiritual significance to Morrisseau’s people to the extent that he received a great deal of criticism from them for making too much of their beliefs evident (Hill, 2006). The emphasis on blue from the upper left to the lower right of the image presents a strong diagonal that lends the painting a degree of its energy while the vivid, bold colors provide the rest. This emphasis strongly ties the painting and its subject to Morrisseau’s concept of his homeland, the native spirit and the native food source that his people have depended on for centuries. At the same time, the shaman is seen to be praying, his eyes are yellow and red which could be an indication of distress and he is using three ears of corn which could be interpreted as a particularly urgent request, all demonstrating the concern Morrisseau felt at the changes that had taken place in his land since the entry of the newcomers from across the sea. The golden background counteracts this concern with a source of hope. In both Morrisseau and Wieland’s paintings, the artists opted to use bright, bold colors that are sharply defined against each other as a means of expressing the joy and the hope they found in their homeland even as they recognized hardship. Wieland’s painting is perhaps a bit more expressive because it speaks to its audience from a similar background and visual language and has a greater scope of imagery available on its surface. Morrisseau’s painting is likely as expressive as Wieland’s to those who understand the important elements of the Anishinaabe people but much of this information is oral and is closely held by the tribes. In spite of this, Morrisseau’s painting is still able to convey this same sense of value in life found in Wieland’s work. The bold colors used in each keep the energy up while the subjects depicted in each demonstrate both the hope and the despair of their home. References CyberMuse. (2009). “Joyce Wieland.” National Gallery of Canada. Available April 3, 2010 from < http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/cybermuse/docs/bio_artistid5908_e.jsp> Diaz, RoseMary. “A Sacred Place: Meditations on Corn.” Sharing the Art of New Mexico. (2009). April 3, 2010 Hill, Greg. (2006). Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist. Canada: Douglas & McIntyre. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. MacNevin, Suzanne. (2008). “Joyce Wieland: Canada’s Greatest Female Artist of the 20th Century.” Available April 3, 2010 from Robinson, Donald C. (2005). Return to the House of Invention. Canada: Key Porter Books. Wikipedia contributors. (2006). “Sublime (philosophy).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available April 3, 2010 from Appendix A “Experiment with Life” (1983) Appendix B “Shaman with Sacred Corn” Read More