|
|
|
Isaacs Seen Panel Discussion: Make the Scene: Get Critical University of Toronto Art Centre Thursday, June 23, 2005, 7 - 8:30 pm Moderator: Sarah Milroy Panelists: Harry Malcolmson, Barry Lord, Joyce Zemans Liz Wylie [Art Curator, University of Toronto Art Centre] Welcome to everybody who is here this evening. Thank you for coming to this panel discussion. We are very excited to see all of you here. There are some very distinguished guests tonight - curators, artists, writers. We are pleased to have all of you with us, and we hope for some very stimulating discussion. I'm Liz Wylie, the art curator here at the University of Toronto Art Centre. On behalf of our Director, Niamh O'Laoghaire, who is visiting in Ireland right now, and our Board, I would like to welcome everyone here this evening. I am going to give very brief introductions to our distinguished panelists here this evening, and then I'm going to turn it over to our moderator, Sarah Milroy. I'll start with Sarah, who studied English Literature at McGill University and Cambridge University, and Art History at Hunter College in New York. She is the former editor and publisher of Canadian Art Magazine and has served as a correspondent for CBC Radio's Arts Report. Since 2001 she has been the chief art critic for the Globe and Mail, and Sarah will be our moderator this evening. We have three panelists. Going in order from Sarah, the next person is Harry Malcolmson. In the mid-60s. Harry Malcolmson was the art critic for the Toronto Telegram, which was a daily newspaper, covering the Toronto, Canadian and international art scene. As well as appearing weekly in the Telegram, Harry was art critic for Saturday Night magazine, and contributed articles to the Toronto Star newspaper, Canadian Art Magazine and Art Forum magazine. As a young lawyer during the Isaacs years Harry defended Robert Markle, an artist in the Isaacs stable, and he acted both for and against dealer Carmen Lamanna in civil law-suits. For over forty years. Harry and Ann Malcolmson have collected Canadian and international art, redirecting their collecting focus in recent years to historic and vintage photography. Next we have, in the centre, Barry Lord, who is known internationally as one of the world leaders in museum planning. In the early years of his career, Barry held positions as a curator, education officer and director at several of Canada's public art galleries and museums. He was editor of Arts Canada magazine in the mid-1960s, and published his landmark book. The History of Painting in Canada, in 1974. He and his partner Gail Lord founded the successful international consulting firm Lord Cultural Resources in 1981. At the far end we have Joyce Zemans. Joyce is currently a professor at York University where she teached art history and co-directs the Schulich School of Business's graduate program in arts and media administration. Joyce has organized many exhibitions of art as a freelance curator for various galleries across Canada. She is a former dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York, and was Director of the Canada Council for the Arts from 1989 to 1992. So there you have the line-up. I now turn the proceedings over to Sarah. Sarah Milroy Thank you, Liz. There is something I have to do before we proceed, because this event and all the thinking about art in Toronto in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that has gone on over the past few weeks because these exhibitions have been organized here are all of course the result of Av Isaacs' magnificent work as an art dealer in the city. We have just seen him do what is so characteristic of him – he has just slipped into the back row. So I'm going to insist, Av, that you come and sit up here in the front. (Applause.) I have a feeling that it was as welcome a request as a colonoscopy appointment. (Laughter.) Do forgive us Av ... we love you. Harry Malcolmson There is not much doubt I am the dean of this group. My Toronto art gallery experience dates back to the 1950s to the Picture Loan Society on Charles street presided over by the inimitable Douglas Duncan. That is where Ann and I spotted a magnificent Borduas on the gallery floor that we bought for $300. As Liz indicated I wrote on art for a range of media during much of the period we are considering. It was lively time. A claim to fame – still remembered by some – is that at a party at our then Robert Street home we played the Beatles – the first time lots of art people heard She Loves Me Yah Yay Yah.. Sarah and some of you are just back from Venice. I covered the 1968 Biennial for the Toronto Star. (Hmmm that was 37 years ago. Of course, I was only 15 at the time.) The Biennial was unique in that the exhibition was opened by the police, actually the Italian army, in the face of the student uprising that roiled Europe that year. The police have closed art shows on too many occasions to mention. However, Venice 1968 was probably the only time the authorities opened not closed an important art show. It was necessary. The students didn't just want to prevent the show opening; they wanted to destroy the art. On our way to Venice, Ann and I arrived in Paris in late May just at the moment when the student riots which had closed the city for almost a month, had ended. It was an erie experience to walk the deserted garbage littered streets of Paris with nary a tourist to be seen. At the Louvre, not only was the room empty in which the Mona Lisa was displayed, but we had the whole museum to ourselves. It occurs to me that something that Av and I have in common is that neither of us possess any ostensible qualification for our respective roles, as gallery owner and art critic. As an arts graduate, Av had no background that would entitle him to adopt his role as galerist. But at least he could draw. On my side, I had never taken an art course, had no family background and can't even write my own name legibly. For the artists I admired this wasn't a problem; for the artists I criticized it was easy to dismiss comments as written by someone with no credibility. So everyone was happy. Such was the 1960s. In the late 1950s, art in Toronto was simple. Harold Town ran the scene. Gradually, the momentum shifted and Toronto became a gallery scene. A pattern emerged, persisting to this day, where Toronto became the collecting centre of Canada. The artists dominated in Montreal and Vancouver but in Toronto galleries and collectors dominated. Dorothy Cameron showed Montreal and cross Canada artists; Jerry Morris exhibited Cuban and international artists in his Emilio del Junco manifestation and NY artists in his Jerrold Morris Gallery reincarnation. Jack Pollock specialized in Richard Hamilton. David Mirvish focused on Clement Greenberg endorsed artists. I am very sorry Jared Sable isn't here. I wanted to complement him on the wonderful art he brought to Toronto, not just at the Sable Castelli, but as Director of the Dunckelman Gallery. Jared brought California artists to Toronto at a time West Coast art was not that well known even in NY. In each of these galleries, the proprietors expressed their personalities through their choice of artist and stood behind them – aggressively more often than not. Av is a fascinating variant. He was not like the others in that he didn't offer opinions; didn't project his personality. In fact, he was kind of opaque. Who knew what he really thought? The one liners delivered in a charming brusque manner didn't convey much information as to his thinking. He delighted in expressing wonderment at the art on show. For me, there was a curious separation between Av Isaacs and the Isaacs Gallery and its artists. Av maintained a kind of Chinese wall between himself and his artists. Certainly, he was supportive financially, but basically it was his role to provide the gallery space and keep the gallery open. He didn't paint the pictures or remotely suggest to artists what they should paint. I think the key to understanding Av is to consider the breadth and scope of his art interests and the range of medium he presented. Given our focus exhibitions on artists and their work down the hall and elsewhere, it is easy to overlook that the over the lifetime of the Gallery the exhibitions included: Picasso Graphics Japanese Woodblock Prints George Roualt the French Christian print maker African Sculpture; Oceanic Sculpture; Indian Miniature Painting of the: 17 th - 19 th centuries Chinese Scroll Painting; New Guinea Sculptures Innuit Art; Folk Carvings; Primitive Art; Tent Rugs from Tunisia Trust me, in presenting these shows, Av was not responding to local demand. The work piqued his interest and for reasons only he knows he decided to present these exhibition. Ann and I still have our Indian miniature paintings and New Guinea mask. Work we would never come to know or own if it were not for his initiative in bringing this work to Toronto. In the 60s there was a lot of interesting art shown in Toronto, but the Isaacs Gallery was the scene. For the most part, the other galleries showed non-Toronto artists whereas Av showed Toronto resident artists. And living in Toronto, the gallery artists could be encountered at the gallery not only at the time of their openings but at the openings of their peer group and often during the day. Remember that Toronto in the 60s was infatuated – with itself – as a place that had had no indigenous culture and suddenly had one. This is period of the explosion of local theater, Can Con authors and live local culture. You could walk into Isaacs Yonge street to find Marlene Markle and Martha Black scurrying about on gallery tasks, Av was available for some one liner repartee, and there was a good chance a gallery artist would be present. This was as good as it gets. At the other galleries, there was an owner or assistant to talk to but not often an artist. The Isaacs openings were occasions. You might go to other galleries when an artist you were interested in was opening, but you went to the Isaacs openings because the gallery was having an opening. The openings were not frequently merely by the artists, but by the full community of gallery artists, media people and the middle class collectors. The audience inclulded a few drunks in off Yonge Street to cache the free wine and beer. Having said that, I need to subdivide the Isaacs gallery artists. The distinction I would make is between the Pilot Tavern artists and the non-Pilots. The Pilot was a drinking hole on Yorkville Avenue just west of Yonge. The Pilots included Gord Rayner, Bob Markle, Richard Gorman, Micky Handy and Dennis Burton. The non Pilots include William Kureluck, Christian Pflug, John Meredith, Les Levine. Characterizing Mike Snow is a little more difficult. The Artists' Jazz Band in which Michael participated was a Pilot activity but having said that Michael's ambitions and range separates him from the Pilots. I am struck that from to-day's prospective the work of the non Pilots is more favorably regarded than the Pilots. It has turned out the artists working in self-imposed isolation which would include Kureluck, Christina Pflug and Les Levine seems to have weathered better than the headline artists of the period. It is interesting that although the Isaacs Gallery was in a sense the epicenter, it was not where in retrospect we saw the most interesting art of the period. The most exciting moment in the 60s was the arrival of Andy Warhol in Toronto for his exhibition at the Jerrold Morris Gallery. Dorothy Cameron showed Refusal Global Quebec artists. David Mirvish Gallery – much derided for its lack of Canadian content - exhibited Noland, Olitski and Stella. I remember the sensational Louise Nevelson party at the Ports Restaurant to this day. Jack Pollock undertook an economically insane practice of buying Richard Hamilton's from Petersburg Press in London at full price, selling them at 50% off to Toronto collectors and then using the proceeds to buy more from England, a kind of Ponzy scheme in reverse. Needless to say, in due course his gallery folded. The Laing Gallery exhibited not just Milne and the Group of Seven, but held Borduas and Riopelle shows at a time both artists were producing their best work. And I must not neglect Walter Moos presence. The Gallery's wall displayed an international bias including wonderful European work by William Scott, Roger Hilton, Tapies, Appel, and lots of Sorel Etrog, an artist achieving a lot of international exposure and acclaim at the time. Gershon Iskowitz and later Mashel Teitlebaum were crowd favourites. As we moved forward in time into the 1970s, Carmen Llamana's contribution became dominate. Carmen's radical and rigorous artists made the Isaac's artists, particularly the Pilot catagory, seem dated. If I am correct that the Pilot artists have not aged well, it is interesting to ask why. There are a range of reasons. One is stylistic. The painting was basically late stage abstract expressionist. By the mid 60s, the NY avant garde had left behind abstract expressionism, hard edge painting the style which initially supplanted abstract expressionism was on its last legs. OP Art practiced by Bridget Riley and Vassarrely was in vogue. The famous Green Gallery first show of Pop Art happened, as I recall, in 1962. But none of this seemed to impact the work of the Pilot group. As personalities, the Pilots' role models were the 1950s Cedar Tavern hard drinkers. A lot of artists energies was consuming in nursing hangovers. And remember 60s was the period of psychedelic drug scene. Someone noted to me this week that the Isaacs artists Pilot and non-Pilot alike lacked a sense of historicism. I don't think they really thought about where art was and where it was going. They mainly wanted to paint arresting pictures for their own sake. What happened was as much about lifestyle as art. At the time, Michael's Snow was accepted as a key figure; but the work was too intellectual, too complex and hard to understand for many. The most admired figure of the Pilot artists was Graham Coughtry. Graham painted some wonderful painting. He was a suburb colourist. (Some of his great painting, owned by the AGO, could have been included in the Shape of Colour exhibition. It is a sad commentary on the degree to which Coughtry's work has fallen out of fashion that the work is not included in that show.) Essentially, I suppose the nudes reliance on a figure ground structure was insufficiently adventuresome. In effect, the work reworked old ground rather than broke new ground. What I am saying I suppose is that in retrospect the Isaacs Gallery made it, but for the mot part the artists didn't. But it is not as if this conclusion has become apparent just now. For a contemporary voice on the subject I would like to turn to a source I regard as absolutely authentic, namely my own commentary. In March, 1965, Michael Snow organized for Av a Toronto/New York exhibition. The NY artists included Donald Judd and David Weinrib; the Toronto artists Burton and Rayner.. For what's its worth, here is what I said in my column: "Judd is the show stopper. His forms are closed and regular; all is rigid, reserved and mute." Thank goodness I got that right. "The show may have been intended to show the opposite, but it is the gulf between the New Yorkers and the Toronto artists Rayner and Burton that shows up. The Toronto artists are explicitly and sensually relating to their environment while the American artists take a far more aesthetic, abstract and absolute stance. In an August, 1965 article that certainly didn't win me popularity awards, I wrote: "The Isaacs expressionists were formed almost 10 years ago. The group's style was centered on abstract expressionism and in 1965 its members continue to paint variants of that style. The New York avant-garde discarded abstract expressionism when its potential had been exhausted, and then moved on. No such thing has happened in Toronto. This is the reason Toronto art looks dated and conservative to knowledgeable visitors." Barry Lord Good evening. Harry said he would be mildly controversial, and I think he has lived up to that. Harry did a useful job of covering the scene. I was going to make some comments about many of the same galleries as Harry, so let us really focus specifically on Av and the Isaacs Gallery in the 50s and 60s and put a little context to Harry's remarks. We had a situation in the 50s, and 60s particularly, if you think of literature before Atwood and all that has happened with Canadian literature. If you think of music, TV, theatre, you have that situation which Harry was describing of Toronto discovering that it had a culture. But the most significant thing is that we needed to find authentic artists who were capable of expressing who we were and where we were at. And who was to do that? We had quite a few cultural bureaucrats who were necessarily very cautious and had to operate within the terms of their institutions. And then we had Av Isaacs. I think the great accomplishment of Av is that he was a standard and a model for all of us in that he had confidence in his own eye, in his own judgment, in his own feelings about the artists that he showed. That was really what radiated in those one-liners, in the very terse comments that he would give you. As a critic myself, I was often trying to get a little more information. He always very much avoided any kind of commentary or anything of the sort, but simply expressed his enthusiasm. That was great because the quality came from that kind of real visceral reaction on Av's part, not only to the paintings, I think, but to the people. He had that kind of relationship with his artists that was really very splendid. The cartoon you referred to is ironic because, of course, we do not think of Av in that sort of role, as being so worried about the international scene. But in fact he was extremely effective because of his emotional commitment to the people he was working with, and the people he chose turned out to be very, very strong. In 1968, I myself was also overseas. I was at Edinburgh, at the Edinburgh Festival with Mike Snow. Av had arranged for him to be at the Festival, and there was a major Mike Snow exhibition there, and I was covering that at the same time, at the same summer that you were there, and of course '68 was the remarkable turning point, the summer of that year. Av's vision, then/ led him to artists that I think, just to go contrary to Harry's judgment for a change, (we very often were contrary in our opinions of these things) led him to German – who I can glimpse down at the far end here – Meredith, Coughtry, Chambers – so many artists that he responded to so positively – and of course Mike Snow and Joyce Wieland. And I think those are in fact now today very important artists that we need to see much more of. He established what the National Gallery a few years ago called the Toronto School. They did an exhibition called "The Toronto School" which almost entirely consisted of Av's artists. And of course that reached out not only to that group, but also to Kureiek, Prent and people of that kind, actually extremely varied, extremely wide, and it was this confidence in a sensual, visceral reaction to what there was: if it was Tunisian carpets, then so be it. That's what we got that month. It was terrific to have that great presence in the art scene, and I think the transformations that happened in the 60s as not only Canadian art but also Canadian literature and Canadian theatre found their feet and became a strong presence. Av was really at the heart of that. That was a terrific contribution that he made. Let's remember that he was also at the centre of the London School, which was an extremely important step forward, with Curnoe, Chambers, and John Boyle (who was not at the Isaacs Gallery), and Tony Urquhart, of course, who also exhibited with Av, and many others. That group of artists was extremely important, just extremely important (and Jamelie Hassan) in advancing onward, and precisely at the time which Harry is describing when he was finding so much more quality for himself in artists like Judd. At the same time what was happening in Canada was that the power, the value, the quality that really major painters like German and Meredith had established in the Isaacs Gallery in the Toronto scene was actually being taken up and taken further, and in some cases was, in Curnoe's case, in opposition to what was happening in Toronto, and achieving a statement in figurative terms that was really extremely important. And absolutely contrary, as we know, not only in Curnoe's case but in every one of those artists' cases, absolutely without reference to what was happening in the New York scene. To step outside the Isaacs Gallery, to two doors down the street to the Carmen Lamanna Gallery, we had the major exhibitions of the Rabinowitch brothers, who I remember writing about in Art International in the early 70s. And now, of course, the Rabinowitch brothers, both of them, are very well established in Europe as major sculptors. Their work was discovered and first shown in the Lemanna Gallery. And also they came out of London, the London scene. So the London scene equally was very wide-ranging as the Toronto scene had been. And again, Av was very much at the heart of that. And then let's not forget the movement on to the Inuit Gallery, and not only Inuit, but also other First Nations work – First Nations ancestral, traditional work, and also contemporary work, is an area that Av had a passion for and that he communicated to us. Those three accomplishments, not only the Toronto School, but also the London and the strength of the aboriginal art, which today I think, and in the last five to ten years has again been just extremely important. This has been what has been going on in Canada, and this is what is of real value and significance to us. Now, to come to the comparison to today, which you asked us to do, there are three points I'd like to make, that I think are three significant differences between then and now that are worth looking at. The first one is the biennial, or annual, or triennial – as you like – exhibition. In the 60s, we had the National Gallery Biennial. Every two years it defined where Canadian art was at. Sometimes it did it very badly. Sometimes it did it relatively well. It was always criticized, but nevertheless there was an attempt by the National Gallery to say "This is where we are; this is what has been happening in Canada's studios during the past year." We had the Montreal Spring Show, and the Winnipeg Spring Show, both very major exhibitions that similarly did a survey. We had these survey exhibitions. Those were in fashion at the time, or had been been in fashion at least, and of course they suffered from the inevitable British curator, or critic or whoever was invited over, or sometimes an American critic or curator, and quite often the viewpoint was to discover what those great countries out there think of us. Nevertheless, sometimes there were Canadians choosing them. They were not necessarily terribly well done, but they were done, and therefore one had something to fight against, one had something to identify and say that is what's happening or that's not what's happening. That was extremely important. The value of them, I think, can be seen in the case of someone like Curnoe. Greg's work was first seen in one of those biennials, by Ron Bloore, who was then director at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery. He thought it was pretty interesting stuff and got in touch with Greg, saw some more, and had an exhibition which was then seen by Richard Simmonds and a group of other people, and then that exhibition started to travel. And the next thing you know, Curnoe is well known, also exhibiting and selling here in Toronto. I've been in touch with quite a number of young artists in the past five or ten years, and that kind of entry ... It is very sad. What can one do with them? I was visited by an artist from British Columbia about six months or a year ago. She had very good work, but what could I tell her? I took her around to a few galleries myself, and gave her a list of some others to take it to, but really, the dealers are all busy, they have lots of other people, and as a matter of fact there wasn't one of them that I could think of that would have had the kind of gut reaction that I could have counted on from Av, if he had still been in business, where she could have gone and at least gotten a strong, visceral reaction to her work. The problem is that without biennials, without annual surveys, the only entry possible for a young artist is through the commercial route. We see artists forming co-ops down on Queen Street and small galleries desperately trying to find ways to bring their work to public attention. And it is not the dealers' fault. They can only handle so many, and so on and so forth. We need those kinds of public exhibitions. It is the job of the Art Gallery of Ontario, it is the job of the National Gallery, it is the job of our major public institutions to do that, and they are not doing it. That is an extremely important thing that we need to fight to bring back. And what do you know? Biennials are fashionable again! The Tate is now doing a Tate-Britain Triennial of British artists. We have international biennials, of course. The Carnegie and the Whitney, by the way, have never stopped. The Whitney does exactly that every year, and it defines where American art is at. It is often criticized. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. But it always gets reviewed. And you have, of course, international biennials as well: not only Venice, not only the Carnegie, but many others. So we desperately need that. It is just an absolute crime that our public institutions are not doing it. I think I saw Dennis Reid here. I have lectured on it. It is really a critical necessity that must be done in order to allow young people to develop. The second point is, and this is very much in answer to Harry's closing points, that we need retrospectives. Do we know the measure of Meredith? Do we know the measure of German? Even Coughtry? You can only reach that kind of conclusion when you see a really definitive retrospective, well organized by one who knows the work, knows w. Gaucher dies ... we don't see a retrospective. Meredith dies ... we don't see a retrospective. Many of the living artists – German, Bloore, etc. – we need to see definitive retrospectives of these major artists, including many of those who were at the Isaacs Gallery. And until we see them, let us at least be kind enough to reserve judgment, because when you see a retrospective, then you see the full commitment. Harry and I have seen many of the works over the years, but it is when you see it all together that you really see the measure. The third and final point is just to call attention to the tremendous difference in the quality and importance of aboriginal art. Av was very much pointing us to that in his galleries – major artists like Robert Houle. We have significant work being produced there which has not b een adequately appreciated, It is not being seen enough, and really needs a significant focus. I'm delighted to say that one of our current jobs – we are currently working with the Bill Reid Foundation in Vancouver to establish a new national gallery of aboriginal art. It's a very exciting project. I have just come back from Vancouver where we are working on that, and I hope that will help to change the balance and to change the appreciation of aboriginal artists Those are some of the key things that Av accomplished and that we have the duty to carry on. Milroy Thank you very much. Joyce? Joyce Zemans I'd like to begin by asking a question. I know a number of people in the audience, but I would like to know how many of you visited the Isaacs Gallery in the 1950s or 60s. I presume that everyone else in the room has been there since. That was very helpful to me because it gives me an idea of who this audience is and what their interests are. It's a very strong turnout. The organizers were commenting on this. Obviously this is a subject of great interest to many people. Sarah's questions in her note yesterday led me to go even further back than Barry in terms of asking the question of why the Isaacs Gallery was so important. And part of it is really a question of the maturity of this country. Barry alluded to this. 1967 was a kind of turning point, a catalyst, when our history started to be written from a Canadian perspective. Barry certainly wrote from a uniquely Canadian perspective on Canadian art history. But it is a very interesting moment to look at the 1950s and to understand that in Toronto there was the Isaacs Gallery, there was the New Design Gallery in Vancouver started by Alvin Balkind and Abraham Rogatnick, and there was Guido Molinari's gallery in Montreal. Almost at the same moment, around 1955, these things all began. And I don't think that it is accidental that it happened at that moment What is very interesting is how history has been written. For example, Jack Bush used to say in the 1950s, and this comes to your question of the educational institutions and the AGO etc., in that period there were a number of artists shown. Douglas Duncan was obviously showing. Nobody ever talks about the Baton's Art Gallery, but interestingly enough Batons was showing some really contemporary work, and Pearl McArthey was reviewing it in the Globe & Mail. But what happened in the 40s, aside from the political environment and the lack of maturity of our institutions was that - the AGO by the way was showing Montreal art, Borduas, etc. in the 40s, showing contemporary art in the Print Room in a small gallery, as was the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal. But it wasn't a focus. The National Gallery wasn't anywhere near the idea of contemporary art at that moment. Bush was saying in the 1950s that they had lied to him. The Group of Seven had hidden the fact that they had international inspiration, that they knew what was happening in the larger world. He had no idea until the Skira books came out after the war with quality reproductions, of what was really happening.elsewhere. The fact is that Edna Tacon was showing non-objective art in Toronto in the 1940s, and Jock Macdonald was here and showed in Bart House Art Gallery in 1947 with an exhibition of abstract water-colours at that time. But when Jock was teaching at the Ontario College of Art, several of the people whom we have alluded to before said that he was the only person who even discussed contemporary or abstract art with them. The focus of the teaching was extremely narrow. Many artists looked elsewhere (Tony went to Buffalo) if they could, and the only place where artists could really show and be seen was not even the biennials, which began in the 1950s, but in the 40s, it was the artists' shows, the Societies, and if you were lucky you would get a work hung in one of these exhibitions or at the CNE. But there was all this jockeying for position. If you were part of the abstract group, then it depended who was on the jury. You might get foisted off, or you weren't considered. It is a very important history and I bring it up to get us to the mid-50s and the point when Av opens his gallery. Yes, there were other galleries, and there were other things happening across the country. I have a quote from Graham Coughtry that I'd like to read. This is in response to a question that one of my students asked several years ago. What were Saturdays like at the gallery? "They were fucking great, man. Everyone went. This was a big deal, to see the openings. You would go and meet your fellow artists, and the next thing you knew, if it was a good show, and even if it wasn't, you'd go down the street to the old Pilot Tavern. It became an event all of a sudden, looking at art. Mutual respect that artists had for each other became something. I can remember walking into the Pilot Tavern – I had a good show – and having a whole gang of people stand up and applaud me. It was like being at the Geminis, or something. Give me a break." The fact is that I would attribute part of the accomplishment of the gallery to the fact that, unlike the other galleries that I have spoken of in different parts of the country, and there were artists' communities, etc., but there wasn't that sense of comradery, the sense that this was a happening place. They went to other galleries on Saturday. They didn't just go to the Isaacs Gallery. But at the Isaacs Gallery there was that buzz. There were other artists. It was a place that you went to meet. So it was about the art, it was about the experience, it was about the opportunity that was there. [tape exchange] But what Av did was not just to exhibit the art, but to create a sense of openess and opportunity. And I honestly believe that as I go back historically to try and understand why it is the Isaacs Gallery out of all these galleries that get singled out, it is because of this sense of community. Historically, the barrier, so to speak, was broken in the mid-1950s, by the Painters Eleven, three of whom actually showed with Av in the early days. Jock Macdonald and Jack Bush and so on, i cannot go through all their names, but they began showing as a group in 1953, but in 1954 under the name of Painters Eleven they showed in New York, they showed in Toronto and Montreal, they got picked up by Richard Simmonds, their 1958 exhibition got picked up from the Park Gallery and was shown across the country. But the fact is that even though historically that kind of cohesive group – which wasn't cohesive at all, they didn't have a common platform other than a dedication to abstraction and a dedication with William Ronald to getting their names out there, getting their work seen and making as big a splash as they possibly could. It's interesting that as an historian you look back to Painters Eleven, and it has that kind of cohesive thing. Jock said in one of his letters that this is the group that is going to replace the Group of Seven in the Canadian ethos. And the fact is Dennis, who is here somewhere, wrote that in 1948 or the early 50s the ethos of the Group of Seven still dominated this city. We're talking here as if everybody knew about the Isaacs, and that it was really central. People who were collecting knew about the Isaacs, and artists knew about the Isaacs, and there was a really important thing that happened. It was a catalyst. The other thing that I'd like to say – I realize that there is an issue of time – but what is striking is the role that Av played. It was the artists, it was the gallery, but it was also Av as an advocate looking for ways in which he could broaden the base. So he did it by organizing exhibitions showing his artists in Vancouver. He showed it by promoting his artists,as all dealers did, internationally. Sometimes he promoted them even without their knowledge. He worked with the public galleries – and that's a whole other discussion: what the public galleries were doing, the development of the biennials. The role that Richard Simmons played in Extension Services, showing Painters Eleven,the Regina Five. We would not have the notion of the Regina Five if Richard Simmons who had been in Regina hadn't picked up Ron Bloore's May show and then travelled it across the country. It was also shown at the National Gallery, in 1960. So the point is that Av was there. He was bullying the curators at the National Gallery, saying "We agreed when the Association of Canadian Art Dealers met with you that someone from the National Gallery was going to come down every couple of weeks so that they would see what was happening in Toronto." If they didn't show up, Av was on their doorstep. It is interesting that among all the other artists we have discussed, we have never mentioned Mark Prent. Av was prepared to show Mark Prent, not once but twice, and to take the challenge and to take on authority, if you will. I don't think he saw it coming the second time; presumably once was enough. It was interesting that with respect to the Dorothy Cameron case, he wrote: that this was not only about Dorothy Cameron, but that "Every artist in this country will be affected by the ultimate decision in Dorothy Cameron's case." One dealer wrote to say that she would sign the communique for Dorothy's sake though she believed the whole thing should be dropped because you don't need too much publicity, it just brings it to public attention. Isaacs wrote, "The whole thing cannot be dropped and forgotten," as she had suggested. "It is a very much a live issue that affects everyone. The purpose of this statement is to inform public opinion so that perhaps a change in the public's attitude can in a manner affect the attitude of the Supreme Court." And with the Mark Prent Defence Fund, it wasn't just a local thing, he got international support to address this issue. And over the years, whenever there has been an issue around censorship, Av has been at the forefront, and artists and dealers have understood that he could play a leadership role in addressing these issues. I'm just going to say one more thing about the past and the present. I was trying to show that though there were other galleries, private galleries in the 40s, including Douglas Duncan, maybe it wasn't the right moment. I'm sure that's part of it, because there were things happening across the country. But why did it gell in Toronto? Why did it gell around the Isaacs Gallery? Why did the Isaacs Gallery last much longer than most of the other galleries that came and went – very interesting ones during this period of time? The way in which artists talk about Av's role, and my colleagues have discussed this – his openess, his lack of judgmentalness, his feeling that if the artist believe that he or she wanted to show something then it was worth showing, the work wasn't censored before. In 1954, the Stern Gallery showed Marian Scott, who was working abstractly in Montreal, and Stern wrote "you can show anything you want as long as it's not totally abstract." (Laughter) You know, it's incremental. Today, the situation has changed. I think that it would be very hard for any gallery to play the role that Av played at that moment in time. We have not only other private galleries, more responsibility taken by the public galleries in terms of the biennials, but now a focus on contemporary art, not just in small back rooms but in major exhibitions. I agree with Barry that there need to be other formats. There are also artist-run spaces, the parallel galleries, which have created an alternative model of exhibition that's been very important. But the art market is a very interesting phenomenon. If you show in the parallel art galleries you may have the artistic community engagement that you have with other galleries, but it is much harder to move into that market situation as an artist. And so there is a kind of division that happens. There are a variety of changes that have occured. So I'll just say that I think that Av showed phenomenally interesting artists. In any case, some artists' reputations moved back and forth. I think the idea of retrospectives of some of these artists, whose work we haven't seen in any depth, is a terrific idea. I've done this myself, and I have the pleasure of seeing before my eyes, as I have done the work, the way in which the artist's career and achievement really materialized. I think that what the AGO has done in terms of its archival focus on a few artists in depth is incredibly important. The problem is that it's a very few artists, and the rest of the artists in terms of contemporary collectinv don't have the opportunity to be seen in that depth or studied in that way. So, I'll simply say that Av was the right man, in the right place, at the right time. Milroy Thank you so much. That was a great big history lesson. I'm delighted it is being recorded, because there is a lot of valuable detail there that will be helpful. I think a couple of things have emerged here. Definitely the sense of Av in particular as being someone who created a kind of social space around art, which was a lot more than a place where people liked to party, but a social space of debate and sharing ideas in the city. My own impression of the gallery, and it is accentuated more by hearing you speak tonight^is a sense of a place that is passionately (although it took in the world and there was a lot of observation of international art) it was what Greg Curnoe might have described as passionately local. It was about establishing here before we could get anywhere else as a city. The more I reflect upon it, those fish didn't swim into international waters, with very few expceptions. What had to happen first in this city, and I believe this is a process that we are still attempting to complete in a real way, was to establish a sense of this place, this history, this community. My own sense is that the gallery was extraordinarily important for the whole city's sense of itself in that regard. I think the issue of censorship has been touched on a couple of times. Obviously, that's kind of one of the leit motifs of this accomplishment. But I think that those battles and the way they were foucrht, and the passion with which they were fought, has given a lot of subsequent people courage in this city, and so that's extraordinarily significant. And also the issue of aboriginal voice. The fact that it was the first Inuit gallery was so pioneering, the first gallery in the world to show Inuib art exclusively. So think about that, when you think how many galleries do that now. It is kind of mind boggling to consider how significant that is. We talked a lot specifically about Av. And I want to force us a iittle bit to pull the camera back and talk about the city as a whole. Barry has spoken about the loss of the biennials, particularly paradoxical given that it has risen everywhere else, and the loss of dependable road-tested retrospectives. Like the idea of the biennial, the idea of the retrospective has become unfashionably bland, maybe they are not -curatorially exciting as a premise. Of course there are budgetary concerns, but we don't tend to do major full-career retrospectives of living artists in this country. I think that is a really good point. I wanted to ask, maybe not so much Barry but the other two to talk about one of the questions I sent to you yesterday. What has been gained? What has been lost since then? There are a lot of people in the audience who were present then ... Zemans Let's ask the audience ... Milroy That is a good question to ask the audience. But we did get quite a passionate sense of what Barry thought had been lost, but I have a wierd feeling sometimes that I arrived ath the party forty years too late, because there is so much about what happened in that moment. Perhaps it was the rise of nationalism that kind of lifted Toronto up on a huge enormous wave. It all seemed to come together at the same moment. And certainly the gallery was a part of that/ if you go and look at the shows. There is so much reference to Canadian content, the new flag/ the national anthem, and so on. That was very significant. And the other thing 1 noticed, Av, is that I get a sense that in that moment in the '60s and early '70s that there was a lot of interdisciplinary cross-pollinization between the arts. I think that is starting to happen again now. In a hopeful moment I wonder if we are re-entering some kind of a similar type of moment in Toronto, where we are willing to consider our Canadianess again, or maybe willing to entertain more open interdisciplinary activities. Those are some of the things that I wonder about. But what do you think of the loss? Harry Malcolmson? Malcolmson I'm not so sure it's a loss. It was just a magic time. It was the era of the Beatles. That really was important. It was the period of Trudeau too. It was the period of Expo 67. And so there was enormous optimism in Canada about Canada. One of my most memorable moments was the Joyce Wieland exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada on July 1, 1967. They had for that exhibition a brass band ... Dennis Reid [from the audience] 1971 Malcolmson 1971 ... Thank you. But there was a brass band, wasn't there. And a giant cake. It was really a love-in, and of course Joyce was doing a love-in. Do you remember Joyce's work where she did the lip-kisses, she spelled out "0 Canada" on pillows, we all bought fabric ...So there was a warmth and love, a Trudeau character, that was not strictly confined to art. It was really a very magic time to be a Canadian and to be part of that period. So in a sense I don't know if there's a loss, but the world moves on. One of the things that I'm aware of over the period is that there is a cyclical element to art as there is to other things and there are stronger periods. And then, my sense was that at the end of what I call the Pilot period some of the energy dissipated and there was a shifting in other directions. So we can say that Carmen's gallery really dominated, but that wasn't a loss; that was fresh energy. Over time, fresh energies have come and the whole wave, as Joyce has emphasized with her historical remarks, moves on. So I don't like to think of it as loss so much as just a transfer of new energies to new people and new circumstances. Barry Lord I think one of the gains that's worth noticing came to my attention because one of my favourite critics from this period, Gail Dexter ... I found one of her articles from back then as we were doing a bit of research for tonight, and it was an article from the '60s about Carol Conde, Eleanor Mackie and Milly Ristvedt, grouped together in which Gail wrote eloguently about the fact that ... this was in the Star, she was a critic for the Star for many years. By the way, she started at eighteen. I was twenty-seven when I took over Canadian Art and made it into Arts Canada Magazine. The youth of a lot of people in the '60s is also worth noting, I think. I don't know to what extent you have the voice of youth today. That sort of was a factor. But anyway. Gall's article was about these three women artists, and how remarkable it was that they were not content with being housewives and so on. Eleanor Mackie already had several children, but, what do you know, she was spending her time in the studio, painting and exhibiting, and they all took themselves very seriously as professional artists, and how remarkable this was for women. And of course we know Av, with the kind of promise he gave to the work of Joyce and others, was part of that. But one of the really big changes, one of the big improvements certainly, is that nowadays that kind of article would not be written, because we all take it for granted that there are serious women artists. Just to add just a line to what I was driving at in referring to the need for biennials and retrospectives, the tragedy is to go into a young artist's studio and see real talent and real passion and real commitment, real capability, and see a link with other Canadian artists. So one says "That's really pushing farther than Jack Chambers did on that line" ... or whoever you happen to recognize. And he looks at you blankly and says "Jack Who?" We laugh at that, but that's terrible. That is an absolute tragedy because it means that we are losing the potential for a Canadian tradition. And if we want to talk about loss, I think that in that period we had a grasp, suddenly, that there was something that was ours and that you could build on it, you could run with it and go with it. Many fall by the wayside. It doesn't mean that every artist who plugs into it is able therefore to become great. But the point is simply that it is a terrible thing when an artist is working in a vacuum, and of course we know the they are never working in a vacuum because we have an enormous power to the south of us which is always telling us about the Judds and the Warhols, and what have you. So that young artist doesn't know about Jack Chambers, and he sees himself in relation to Warhol or whatever, and that's what he sees as his tradition or her tradition. And that is a terrible shame bbecause it is a loss of the potential of a real tradition that we can build, we have the potential to build, if our private and public institutions will do the job of making everybody familiar with the tremendous accomplishment we have. Even just looking at this exhibition, you can see that Meredith is a pretty damn fine painting. That's pretty major stuff. I want to see a retrospective of Meredith. I wrote about him at the time. I thought he was really major. We can't judge it until we see that retrospective. Joyce Zemans One of the other things I noticed when I was doing the research on Curnoe was that, looking through a lot of catalogues from the '60s and early '70s, I noticed a profusion of exhibition catalogues that were simply biennials, or they were "Three Artists from Montreal", this was the exhibition title, or "Some paintings by Jack Chambers". There was this sense of ... "The Regina Five" was such a show ... a sense of just information-giving as a curatorial responsibility, and that museums would simply just get it up to be talked about, rather than necessarily having to frame it. The exhibitions toured a lot. What are the artists in Montreal doing? Reading through Curnoe's letters and diary, and reading the letters that were sent to him/ you really sense the way in which people in different cities ... Kiyooka would talk to Curnoe, and Curnoe with Molinari and they would compare notes, and there was quite a fervent appetite for knowledge about other parts of the country. And I think that really broke. The wheels really fell off that for a while, I think mostly in the '80s, and I think it's actually starting to happen now ... Lord That's exactly what a biennial does for you. I can remember reviewing biennials in which we said, "Let's look; at the Montrealers, now look at the Halifax artists, the Vancouver artists." You could do that. Milroy Does anywone in the audience have any thoughts on this, or any questions they would like to ask about this subject ... Vera. What a perfect person to stand right now. Vera Frankel Av is the only one who can answer this. I've enjoyed this immensely. It's kind of like reliving my first years in Toronto. Note: The remainder of the audience participation was difficult to transcribe from the tape. We are currently trying to capture as much as possible and will add it to this transcript as soon as possible. [CCCA]
|
|
Copyright ©1997, 2012. Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. All rights reserved. |