Abstraction

• Emerges in Paris in work of Fauves – colour extremes - and Cubists – breaking up surfaces

• Eventually, painters motivated by inner world

• Art becomes divorced from ordinary class who are looking for literary interest and delicacy of execution

• 1913 Armoury Show, NYC, brings abstraction to North America

• Canadians are slow to react– WW1 interrupts work of artists– Dominance of Grp of 7– In Quebec, academic tastes in Montreal and

Quebec City + conservative influence of R.C. Church discourage intellectual curiousity of artists

• Abstract movement remains insignificant until after WW2

Post World War II

• Abstraction emerges as major force in Toronto and Montreal

• Early Canadian experiments are the work of 5 men: Bertram Brooker, L.L. FitzGerald, Fritz Brandtner, Lawren Harris and J.W.G. (Jock) MacDonald (who is not J.E.H.

MacDonald of the Group)

Defining Abstraction

• Kandinsky described non-figurative or abstract art as differing from older forms because it does not start with a basis in nature or the natural object but “invents” the form of expression in other and different ways.

Defining AbstractionFor our purposes:

ABSTRACTION = derived from nature or an object even though representation may be so formalized as to have little relation to the original

NON-OBJECTIVE = creation entirely from the imagination without relation to any natural form.

Bertram Brooker

Courtesy: National Gallery of Canada

Ascending Forms Evolution

Bertram Brooker

• Brooker was the centre of a whirling intellectual circle in Toronto

• Varied careers: writer, editor, movie theatre manager, reporter

• Born Croyden, England in 1888 and moved to Winnipeg in when 12.

• From 1913 – 1921, worked in Regina as a Graphic Designer

Bertram Brooker• In 1921, at age 33, moved to Toronto • Joined Arts and Letters Club, befriended

Lawren Harris• 1929, back in Winnipeg, met and

befriended L.L. FitzGerald• Back in Toronto, continued to correspond

with FitzGerald, discussing theories of modern art although he is not an artist; his abiding love is music

Bertram Brooker

• Although not an artist, Brooker has been experimenting with painting since 1922

• He tells Harris that if he were ever to paint, he would paint music

• He describes his painting experiments as “shapes made up of floating areas of colours and conceived as verbs representing action and movement”

Bertram Brooker• Arthur Lismer sponsors a show of

Brooker’s experimental paintings• Sounds Assembling was included in the

1925 Wembley Exhibition• Brooker’s abstracts reflect his concerns

with spiritual (he was a Theosophist)• he was an innovator and experimental

painter, leaping from one interest to another without assimilating any

Bertram Brooker• He was a pioneer who demonstrated the

possibilities for art

• In his work, movement suggested by curves, loops and twisting forms

Bertram Brooker

• In the early 1930’s, after meeting L.L. FitzGerald, his work becomes representative. He never returns to abstraction. However, the representative works show that influence.

          

The St.Lawrence

Torso

Generally, the modernist paintings of Brooker and Harris are very analytical, not emotional.

They do not exploit the tactile values of surface textures; these will emerge in Montreal in the 1940’s

Fritz Brandtner

• Emigrated from Danzig, Germany in 1928

• Familiar with Kandinsky, Mondrian, Feininger, Nolde, Kokoshka, Munch, Picasso, Leger etc.

• Surprised to find Winnipeg just coming to know work of VanGogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne - vaguely

Fritz Brandtner• One kindred spirit in Winnipeg was

FitzGerald

• In his paintings, Brandtner worked to build compositions of “inter-related structures”

• Wanted to quickly pass figurative element and dwell on formal qualities

• Had two shows in Winnipeg – very controversial – before moving to Montreal

Abstract Composition, 1950

Coloured ink 15” x 22”

Abstraction, 1940

Encaustic 18” x 24”

Andre Bieler• Served in trenches during WWI, decided to

study art while receiving a small war pension of $36 per month

• Studied in Woodstock, NY and then moved to Switzerland to apprentice with uncle

• Studied Paris• 1931, returned to Montreal and set up

studio on Beaver Hill Rd, near the Beaver Hall Group

Andre Bieler• Became close friends with John Lyman and

showed with him in the Eastern Group, a forerunner to the Contemporary Arts Society.

• Taught most of his life at Queen’s• Paintings show interest in rural life of Quebec• Greatest influence as an organizer responsible for

helping bring about Art Councils and support for visual arts and artists.

Andre Bieler

• Worked in watercolour and oils

• Also known for some large mural commissions

BielerWrote in 1937:

“In 1919 a group of painters…went to the north to work out their salvation, feeling within themselves that if Canada was to have an art distinctly its own – a national art – they had to feel the earth, the sky, the trees with which they were living… Today, the artist is returning to the study of life, people working, the crowds of city streets, the social aspect which is so much of our time…”

John Lyman• Born 1886, Biddeford, Maine• Brought to Canada as child• 1907 studied in Paris and the next year at Royal

College of Art in London• 1912 studied at Julian, Paris where he met Morrice

who was a life-long friend and mentor• 1913 show of his paintings was hated by critics;

he left Montreal for Europe and lived abroad for 18 years until Depression ruined his independent means and forced him to return home.

John Lyman

Lyman’s works emphasized that painting was an art of sensation, of feeling responses to the stimulus of colour and form ordered to produce a rich, profound effect not unlike music. Therefore,

1. Colour chosen for aesthetic, not imitative reasons

2. Forms simplified and made more massive, more significant

3. Compostion designed to achieve an economical fusion of these elements

John Lyman

• In 1931, when Lyman returned to Montreal, he found there had been few innovations in the art scene – dominated by Suzor Cote and Gagnon, it was “academically sterile”

• Fortin was the only innovative talent to develop in Lyman’s absence.

• Meeting Andre Bieler, the two men established “L’Atelier”, an art school, which closed after one year and two exhibitions.

John Lyman and the Contemporary Arts Society

• By mid 30’s, Lyman was developing a successful reputation and a small but devoted following

• Convinced that Montreal was developing new talent and that Toronto’s Canadian Group of Painters had failed to strike out in a vital new direction that would inspire young artists, he brought together a group of artists who shared his views to show in December, 1938 – They called themselves “The Eastern Group” and included Jack Humphrey, Goodridge Roberts

John Lyman and the Contemporary Arts Society

• In 1939, the Contemporary Arts Society was organized

• Purpose: to promote living, modern art

• Members included laymen and artists sympathetic to Layman’s theories; only condition of membership was that they could not be members of the Royal Canadian Academy.

John Lyman and the Contemporary Arts Society

Lyman’s theory about art:

1. It is a creative and cerebral process

2. It should have no sentimental or literary content

3. It is the relationship of one form to another and of one colour to another in a formal spirit which has true aesthetic value and gives pleasure to the eye

John Lyman and the Contemporary Arts Society

• There were few French speaking artists attracted to the society but Lyman and Borduas shared some rapport in their interest in formal qualities of art and the broader subjective response to it.

• Their aims led to subjective rather than objective outlooks and encouraged non-representational approaches

John Lyman and the Contemporary Arts Society

• Society sponsored “Art in Our Day” in May 1939, showing Dufy, Derain, Kandinsky, Marc, Modigliani, Rivera, Utrillo, Vlaminck

• WWII erupted 3 mos. Later and brought an influx of Europeon refugees to the city.

Goodridge Roberts

• One of best known members of CAS.

• Interested in invoking inner responses to aspects of nature by a painterly investigation of particular districts.

• He asserted that his paintings are not just an interpretation of nature but a reflection of the artist

Goodridge Roberts• B. 1904

• Spent childhood near Kensington Gardens where he learned awareness of greenness of trees, their density and lightness, compactness of shrubbery and how light emphasizes its solidity

• In the Gatineau, came a feeling of the one-ness with nature through effects of sunlight and mist

Goodridge Roberts• From his formal art education at Ecole des

Beaux Arts and at Slade Institute in England, learned tonal rendering

• Early paintings use very restricted palette and gradually more complicated compositions.

• By 1933, surfaces are denser with “white of the paper drowned by opacity of pigment”

Goodridge Roberts

• Surroundings are a constant interest – he is aware of deeper meanings and relationships

• Each part of a painting must have a meaning in relationship to the whole

• Interested in only the plastic qualities of painting, not a sociologist or historian

• Spent middle part of career as a teacher, by 1943 is able to quit and work full-time at art

Modernism in Montreal• 1940’s and 50’s brought an explosion of

thought that shook French Canada that was sparked by liberal minded professors in Quebec.

• It initiated a break with traditional social and intellectual customs

• It encouraged broader and freer educational opportunities

• It enlarged horizons of thought