Curator and writer Ray Cronin on how Colville made the ordinary profound

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, from Toronto to São Paulo, painters began rejecting figuration and perspective, embracing colour, scale and line, in pursuit of a more expressive and immediate experience. Exploring this impulse is the current exhibition Moments in Modernism, a unique conversation between artists of the era.

Nestled amongst the many large-scale abstract works on view, some of the most popular are those by Canadian painter Alex Colville (1920 – 2013), an artist whose highly controlled, but not quite real portraits of family and the Maritimes, have earned him fans around the world.  Exploring Colville’s particular expression of place and his relationship to Modernism, the AGO welcomed Ray Cronin, Curator of Canadian Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery this past April, for a public talk.  

Foyer reached out to Cronin to chat about why Colville continues to compel us and what makes him so modern:

Foyer: You’ve written a lot on Colville. What keeps you coming back to his work

Cronin: In part, it is because his work is so central to late modernity and is an existential response to World War II.  He was someone who thought very long and hard about what it meant that the first half of the 20th century was chaos. His response to the bloodshed, the incredible tragedy of it all, was very thoughtful, very philosophical, and asked what it meant to be human in the world.  It’s not unique – those questions permeated philosophy and art and culture in the 50s and 60s into the 70s. My father was a philosophy professor, and I always responded to Colville’s brand of thoughtfulness. Coming of age as a curator at a time when we struggled (and still do?) to understand what the post-modern is and worked against what came before, his works stuck out for me as something compelling, that can’t be dismissed.

Did you ever meet Colville?

I had the pleasure when I worked at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, to meet him several times. I got to visit him in his house, even had a couple conversations about philosophy. He loved that I had continued to read philosophy recreationally.  A good friend of his, at Mount Allison, was a friend and colleague of my father’s. And he liked that connection. 

There is an enduring perception of him as being a very isolated, withdrawn individual.  Did he see himself that way?

He said himself that he went to Sackville to be isolated from the art world. But what he wanted was to avoid its influence. He wanted to be in a place where he could just concentrate on his own vision. That wasn’t very flattering to his colleagues at Mount Allison but was how he felt. After serving in the war, being a war artist, and having had an art studio in London, he consciously turns inward. Read more, in this week’s FOYER, linked HERE.

The AGO Library & Archives will be closing for annual collections maintenance starting today, Monday, August 18, until Friday, August 29. Library & Archives will resume regular service on Tuesday, September 2.  

Questions? Please contact Adrienne Connelly, Access Services Librarian at [email protected]

The Library & Archives team looks forward to welcoming you in September!

Our next Volunteer outing August 22^nd 11:00am 

Hello Volunteers!

Hope you’re all well and enjoying the summer, albeit hot months! I’m delighted to announce our next Volunteer gathering will be a visit to the multi-disciplinary artist Michelle Peraza private studio, to meet her in person and take in her art. Most grateful for her generous offer in time and openness in sharing her art and philosophies with us in mutual dialogue. This will be similar to the outing I took you all on to Charles Pachter’s studio. An opportunity to mingle over various volunteer placements, meet other volunteers, inspired by art and the opportunity to meet the artist! You may know Michelle from when she was here at the AGO as Artist Michelle Peraza is a second-generation Latin American Canadian visual artist who centralizes LatinX identity and was AGO Artist in Residence last year.  Personally, I absolutely love her art and highly respect her as an individual and artist.

A note from the artist: I was the artist-in-residence at the AGO from Aug to Oct 2024. I think this from AGO’s website will give an introduction of my work (and my website) BUT in my studio will be other works from the past year I would love to share! 

This tour is limited in space and will be broken into two small groups, one at 11am and 12pm. This is first come, please RSVP and let me know if you can attend here via this link:  https://forms.gle/w7bt9nbjHKGpmNbe9

Look forward to seeing you there!

Barbara Glaser. AGO Volunteer President. 

Michelle Peraza artist website:

About:
In the discourse of coloniality. Through figuration and a research-driven practice, she explores themes of postcolonialism, transculturation, feminism, refusal, resilience, ambiguity, extraction and relocation, the dissemination of images, and representation. She seeks to engage with generational knowledge and memory by way of familial and women-centric ties. She creates large-scale figure paintings in oil of individuals close to her, people often dismissed from the art historical canon. In tandem with painting, she explores a material-based practice working with 23k gold leaf, genuine silver leaf and amate/amatl (Mesoamerican tree bark paper) as an-other method of deconstructing the colonial narrative of power. Drawing and site-specific installation serve as ways to explore world-making aesthetic strategies and speaks to the exhaustion of natural resources in the Global South. Recent research and creation draws inspiration from scholars, artists, and scientists speaking from the margins, engaging with the Alt-anthro-scene (as opposed to the Anthropocene), the Chthulucene and Mesoamerican cosmovision to explore the intersections of feminism, race, climate and health and the asymmetry of the current geological age. This research is inspired by the colonial-led movement of plant life throughout the globe, the dissemination of drawn and painted botanical images, our lived and embodied experiences of plants, geological strata, entanglement, mending, plant properties of healing, experimentation in natural dyeing with plants, and aligning her creative practice to the sun and the moon patterns.

Opening Saturday August 9, a new exhibition at the Gallery brings together a selection of rarely seen sculptures by Toronto artists Frances Loring (1887–1968) and Florence Wyle (1881–1968).  

Deer Panel (c. 1939-1941) will be exhibited for the first time since 1944 as part of the AGO exhibition Remade: Clay, Plaster, Stone.  (2nd Floor, Gallery 238)

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
Toronto artists Frances Loring (1887–1968) and Florence Wyle (1881–1968) dedicated much of their careers to raising public awareness for sculpture. In this exhibition, Renée van der Avoird, Associate Curator of Canadian Art, and Melissa Alexander, the W. David Hargraft Fellow in Canadian Art, present a selection of rarely seen sculptures from the AGO’s Collection, highlighting Loring and Wyles’s commitment to the artform and their conviction that sculpture is a lifelong process. The ten works on view are made of various materials and at various stages of completion; they will be displayed alongside archival materials and an interview with the artists, dating from 1965.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born in Trenton, Illinois, in 1881, Florence Wyle studied medicine at the University of Illinois before shifting her focus and enrolling at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was there, while she served as an instructor for life modelling, that she met her lifelong companion, Frances Loring, in the fall of 1906.  
Frances Loring, born in Wardner, Idaho, in 1887, had previously studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. The pair moved to New York to begin their careers before permanently settling in Toronto in 1912. 

Throughout their lives, Loring and Wyle were dedicated to the promotion of Canadian sculpture, and their numerous public art commissions can be seen throughout Canada. Because of this, when they passed away in 1968, their joint wills outlined the creation of the Sculpture Fund to encourage both Canadian sculpture and its artists. In 1983, their estate was gifted to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

This Week’s Foyer includes an essay by Melissa Alexander, the W. David Hargraft Fellow in Canadian Art, detailing one of Loring’s architectural models, with notes from Lisa Ellis, Conservator, Sculpture and Decorative Arts; and Justina Yu, Conservation Intern, Paintings, linked HERE.

The Henry Moore Centre, Murray Frum Gallery, and Irina Moore West and East Galleries will be closed on Friday, August 8, from 6 am to 1 pm as EllisDon will be lifting the new Air Handling units for the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery (DRMCG) into position in the new building.

Staff, volunteers, and visitors are not allowed in these galleries during this time due to safety concerns. These galleries will be stanchioned off with signage for the duration of the lift.  

Questions? 

Reach out to Lenore McMillan, Project Coordinator, Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, at [email protected]  

Hello Again,

I was looking at my photos from the past week and I wanted to share three of them before signing off. On Wednesday, the community welcomed Thomas J Price’s sculpture Moments Contained (2022) to Toronto. Performances by singer Shakura S’Aida and a gospel choir led by Kiara Picart created a celebratory atmosphere for hundreds of folks, including many of you. It was a joyful and powerful event.

Moments Contained is both straightforward and complex. On the one hand, it is simply a beautiful 9-foot bronze of a woman standing in front of the AGO. Large sculptures in front of museums are actually very common. On the other hand, the bronze depicts a clothed woman (quite rare) who is of African descent (extremely rare).

The monumental size is very apparent from up close, but when I was walking to work on Thursday morning there were very few people in front of the museum and, from a distance, she just looked like a Torontonian waiting for a cab! Often, great works of art shift meaning depending on their context. I am pretty sure in January I will be thinking that she is underdressed for the weather!

This project was made possible because of our incredible and dedicated staff.

Thank you!

Stephan

Hello Everyone,

I mentioned last week that my mother would be my guest at the Thomas J. Price public unveiling this week. She actually enjoyed a number of AGO visits, and I got to experience the museum from her perspective. One surprise and delight that she shared with me more than once was the diversity of our visitors. She sat in the new seating area in shopAGO for a long time just enjoying the ebb and flow of people.

I know that many staff and volunteers have been enjoying the museum, special events, and camps with their families this summer and that is one of the best parts of working in an art museum. A reminder as we move into another long weekend that we will be open to the public on Monday from 10:30am to 4:00pm. Thank you again to all of you who make it possible for us to open on a holiday Monday.

I will be on vacation with my family until August 17^th and look forward to reconnecting then.

Take care,

Stephan

Join Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art for a guided tour of a true passion project, Joyce Wieland: Heart On

• Wednesday September 17
• 6:00pm – 7:00pm
• In-Gallery (5th Floor)
• No registration required, just drop-in
• this Curator’s Tour is exclusive to AGO volunteers

Bold, audacious, and colourful – are we talking about Georgiana, or Joyce? – it’s BOTH!  Join Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, for this special exhibition tour, organized exclusively for AGO volunteers, in recognition of your support for the exhibition through the Volunteer Endowment Trust.

About Joyce Wieland:               

Born and raised in Toronto, Joyce Wieland (1930–1998) was one of Canada’s most prominent and prolific twentieth-century artists. Her career in the arts started in the mid-1950s at Graphic Films in Toronto. She spent the late 1950s and early 1960s drawing and painting, and was increasingly included in exhibitions across the country.  By 1960, Wieland was represented by The Isaacs Gallery, with whom she continued to exhibit until the late 1980s. Her 1971 exhibition True Patriot Love Véritable amour patriotique was the first by a living woman artist ever held at the National Gallery of Canada. This groundbreaking presentation explored Canadian identity, the North and included a number of textile works, thereby inserting women’s traditional culture and craft into the previously male-dominated realms of the National Gallery and the contemporary artworld. The early 1980s signaled Wieland’s return to figurative drawing and painting. In 1987, the AGO organized her major retrospective, the first such exhibition to be dedicated to a living woman artist in the institution’s history.  

About Georgiana Uhlyarik:

Prior to joining the AGO in 2002, Georgiana Uhlyarik held curatorial various roles at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, The Power Plant and the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation. She earned an Honours Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Toronto and a Master’s Degree in art history from York University. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at York University and University of Toronto. As co-lead of the AGO’s department of Indigenous and Canadian art, Uhlyarik’s area of specialty is the work of 20th-century women artists. Select exhibitions include: Florine Stettheimer (2017), Georgia O’Keeffe (2017), Introducing Suzy Lake (2014).

We look forward to seeing you there!

(as a guided exhibition walk-through, this talk can’t be recorded- please plan to attend!)

Hello Everyone,

The public unveiling of the Thomas J. Price sculpture Moments Contained (2022) (photo below) is next Wednesday, July 30 at 6:30pm at Dundas and McCaul. The community will come together, the artist will say a few words, and live music will be played to celebrate. My mother will be my special guest! I hope to see you any maybe your families there.

Take care,

Stephan

The acclaimed printmaker reflects on her 70-year career and new AGO exhibition

“I aim to continue to find ways – through woodcut printmaking – to innovate.” 

For Naoko Matsubara, it is crucial that her work be associated with the broader canon of modern art rather than pigeonholed as traditional Japanese printmaking. The multi-disciplinary artist has led a 70-year career and continues to be driven by a passion for breaking new ground.

Matsubara spoke to Foyer on the day of the exhibition’s opening. In a flowing white dress with a fragmented stripe design slightly reminiscent of her work, she reflected on her love of woodcut printmaking, her 70-year career, and her endless pursuit of artistic evolution.  

Link to full story (and that exhibition video I can’t stop talking about!) – HERE: