MMFA 2015: The Beaver Hall Group

Colours of Jazz, 1920s Modernism in Montreal
The Beaver Hall Group

October 24, 2015 - January 31, 2016

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting Colours of Jazz, 1920s Modernism in Montreal. The Beaver Hall Group. It is a unique, and the very first exhaustive examination of the Beaver Hall Group. It sheds a new light on this short-lived group of artists (1920-1923) whose production gave a strong impetus to artistic life in Montreal, Quebec and Canada between the two wars.
The works on view cover the period from the official existence of the Beaver Hall Group (1920-1923) to the establishment of the Canadian Group of Painters (1933).

The exhibition presents works not only by the official members of the Beaver Hall Group but also artists associated with them through friendship and solidarity. Their works represent one of the most original expressions of pictorial modernism in Canada, with women asserting themselves as professional artists for the first time, on an equal footing with men. The exhibition brings together some 140 works, in addition to more than fifty from the archives, including many rediscovered or never seen before paintings. In addition to painting, several sculptures and bas-relieves are also presented.

The Beaver Hall Group was to Montreal, in a sense, what the Group of Seven was to Toronto, but rather than offering an image of Canada’s identity through the depiction of untamed landscapes, they showed their attachment, applying a modern touch, to portraiture and to humanized cityscapes and landscapes. What they emphasized and presented in a new way was a Northern culture rather than Northern nature, although some of them also painted countryside scenes.

1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group features works by Nora Collyer, Emily Coonan, Adrien and Henri Hébert, Prudence Heward, Randolph S. Hewton, Edwin Holgate, A.Y. Jackson, John Y. Johnstone, Mabel Lockerby, Mabel May, Hal Ross Perrigard, Robert W. Pilot, Sarah Robertson, Anne Savage, Adam Sherriff Scott, Regina Seiden and Lilias Torrance Newton, along with André Biéler, Ethel Seath, Kathleen Morris and Albert Robinson.

More than twenty institutions and close to fifty private collectors have loaned works to the exhibition, which makes a remarkable body of artistic production. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to revisit some well known paintings, as well as rediscover major and significant works that have been rarely (if ever) exhibited since they were created.

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For more information, visit the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts website.

MAC 2015: Three Visions of the World

Three Visions of the World:

Patrick Bernatchez, Dana Schutz, Camille Henrot

October 17, 2015 - January 19, 2016

The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréa – MAC)l has launched yesterday its new season. MAC is offering the public a chance to experience the worlds of three artists who differ in their preferred themes, approaches and media, yet their three perspectives all share a concern for mutation and cycles. A Québec artist Patrick Bernatchez shows an interdisciplinary, polymorphous work in which metamorphosis plays a leading role. An American artist Dana Schutz surprises with her vision in her paintings and a video installation. And a French artist Camille Henrot presents a kaleidoscopic, 13-minute summary of the history of the universe (see top image).

The museum presents Patrick Bernatchez’ Les Temps inachevé in co-production with Casino Luxembourg. For the first time, his major works from two cycles representing a decade of conceptualization, creation, production, and presentation are brought together: Chrysalides, 2006-2013, and Lost in Time, 2009-2015. The show provides an opportunity to discover the practice of this artist who employs various disciplines from drawing to film and video, and also sound, sculpture, installation and photography.

The MAC also presents an American painter Dana Schutz. It is her first Canadian museum exhibition with a considerable space devoted solely to her works. Her paintings present a meld of figuration and abstraction, and her subject matter is direct and often quite graphic. She is considered to be an internationally renowned painter.The exhibition offers an overview of her work, from her beginnings to the recent output.

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For more information on this exhibition and the museum, visit the MAC website.

Sculpture II - Scvlptvre II, 2015

October 16 - 18, 2015

For the second time, this annual exposition of the local Quebec sculpture artists is being presented at the Palais des congrès in Montreal. This event is organized and presented by the Fonderie d’Art d’Inverness. It is a Quebec company that was founded in 1987, and which uses innovative methods and traditional techniques to maintain the artistic qualities of sculpture. On display is a vast variety of artistic sculptural expression, forms, and materials. Here are a few examples.

At Sculpture II, or as it appears advertised-spelled as Scvptvre II, such a variety of styles and subject matters is presented that one is bound to find at least one favourite piece, and quite a few that will catch one's attention. 

For more information about the exhibition visit the Scvptvre website.
Also visit the website of the Fonderie d’Art d’Inverness.

Art Cuba - Galerie Aura

ART CUBA

This exhibition at the Galerie Aura on Crescent street in Montreal is considered by the organizers to be the most important Cuban art show in Montreal since the exhibition CUBA at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2008. It is the first Cuban art show in Canada following the recent rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba.

The show features both internationally renowned artists whose works appear in major public and private collections, as well as a number of emerging artists.

To find more about the exhibition and the gallery, visit Galerie Aura's website.
The admission is free.

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Public Art Montreal

Launching PUBLIC ART MONTREAL partnership and website.

It was announced on October 8, 2015 that a new partnership was formed to promote and develop public art in Montreal. more specifically,  the greater Montreal. These are the participating organizations: National Bank, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Quebec (CDP), the University Hospital Center of Montreal (CHUM), the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) , École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), Hydro Quebec, Ivanhoe Cambridge, the Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal (MAC), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), the Palais des congrès de Montreal, the Place des Arts (PDA), the Montreal Transit Corporation (STM), Concordia University, the University of Montreal (UdeM), the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM), McGill University and the City of Montreal (Office of public art).

All the partners have agreed to launch a common web directory of their public art, and this resulted in an online art bank consisting of 600 works. This rich collection can be discovered through a new Public Art Montreal website which offers dedicated spaces featuring individual works, information about the artists such as their biographies or links to their sites, thematic clusters and discovery trails, as well as news and anecdotes about public art in Montreal.

This first initial phase includes 18 partners which allows to have access to 600 public art works in greater Montreal. Thereafter, the partnership will be enhanced by other public art owners. This will bring the number of works to more than 1,000. The works of 500 artists, both Québec and international, will be presented, comprising of their diverse artistic expressions, art forms and materials used. In addition, works will be positioned in their historical context, within a broader period extending from the early 19th century to the present.

Visit the Public Art Montreal website, and start to discover some exceptional works on display everywhere in the greater Montreal.

Two photos above show two sculptures belonging to the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts public art collection.

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Marc Garneau - 1700 La Poste

Marc Garneau: Une Trajectoire - Trajectory
Selected works 1985 - 2015

October 16 - December 20, 2015

The exhibition Marc Garneau: Trajectory presents a selection of works spanning thirty years of the painter’s career. In the 1980s, at a time of the renewed interest in figurative art, Marc Garneau set out to develop his own visual language which is part figurative and part abstract. It is rooted in the paintings of Québec’s Automatiste movement and American Abstract Expressionism.

For Garneau, his paintings are sites of creative experimentation where collage elements are strongly present His works are composed of various surfaces, fragments of previously discarded paintings, torn up paper, pieces of burnt wood that he incised, gouged, or layered, and other found objects. 

Garneau often sets aside the painter’s brush and uses the tools of the carpenter (a trade he has practised). He uses, for instance, chisels on the wood to carve, gouge, and incise it. He also burns wood to achieve the desired burned effect.

The artist not only explores the technical possibilities of the tools he uses but also sees this as an opening of a door to the unforeseeable. He states:

“I work by contradiction. Always. What I think is one thing, and what I do is a continuation of the thought, not its application. I try to provoke something unexpected. That’s what gives me the energy to surprise myself.”

His exposure to rural life inspired many works using fire, as in his painting Rituel (Ritual) that you can see on the right side in the photo below. In it, the wood was treated, burned, and gouged to reveal its layers. 

According to Garneau, each each of his paintings develops out of its own tensions and contrasts, within a body of work that comes together as a cohesive, coherent whole.

Garneau said that the way he often worked was to tear up an old canvas and to leave the pieces on his studio floor. When returning the next morning and seeing how they were arranged, he would right away start having ideas how and where to use them in his new creations.

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1700 La Poste is a private space dedicated to visual arts. It presents events in the form of exhibitions and lectures. It is housed in a former Postal Station F, built in 1913, that was originally conceived by the architect David Jerome Spence. It is located in Montreal's Griffintown, 1700 Rue Notre-Dame West. The building was fully restored a century later, thanks to private financing from Isabelle de Mévius, and the vision of the architect Luc Laporte.

For more information, visit the 1700 La Poste website.
The admission to the exhibition if free.

Joëlle Morosoli - IMPOSSIBLE

IMPOSSIBLE - Joëlle Morosoli
in collaboration with Rolf Morosoli
October 1 - November 1, 2015

The Chapelle Historique du Bon-Pasteur is hosting a new solo exhibition by Joëlle Morosoli entitled Impossible. It consists of four separately standing pieces. Although each piece has an individual title: Impossible 1,  Impossible 2,  Impossible 3, and Impossible 4, they are presented as integral parts of a single sculptural installation. This installation represents a departure from the artist's major body of work which consists of conceptual sculptural installations that investigate the repeated motion of sculptural parts in space. The present exhibition is stationary, nothing moves, all the sculptural elements are caught in a single artistic gesture.

Morosoli's installation is basically a drawing in space. There are the lines of the ladder-like objects, the lines of the shadows of those objects on the exhibition room's walls, ceiling, floor, as well as the line drawings of either human beings or angelic figures. The personages are trying to ascent their respective ladders, but are unable to do so. Even the sideways movements appear to be restricted, as their waving and outstretched arms (or angelic wings?) seem to suggest. 

In one piece, clearly an angel is portrayed, caught within his ladder that prevents his ascension. It is actually a cupid, judging by the arrows that cage him in. (Photo just below.) 

In the text displayed by the entrance to the exhibition hall (see below to the left, click to enlarge to read it), the artist comments on her sculpture and states that the ladder is a symbol of ascension, of an infinite progression. She also brings in focus the reference to the Biblical Jacob's ladder that leads to the celestial paradise: 

"And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." Genesis 28:12

In Morosoli's sculpture, no ascension or even climbing to some high places is possible. The imprisoned cupid and his arrows that ignite love in people (mostly carnal love) does not lead to paradise and spiritual realms. 

The Morosoli installation seems to be about the general human condition, the peoples' aspirations to achieve something magnificent, to reach some apogees and the greatness of the spirit, to make the jump from the material Earth into the spheres of spiritual completion and enlightenment, and failing to do so. The work also appears to make a broader statement on the inability to reach spirituality simply through artistic creation. The art is only that - art, nothing more and nothing less. It functions within the realms of the aesthetics, the forms, shapes, colours, and ideas, even when it tries to portray spiritual aspirations or human emotions. In the case of the Impossible, it is a feeling of a tremendous frustration of being imprisoned within one's private ladder even when attempting to get higher and higher, and coming to a realisation that one is caught, and that one's ladder does not lead anywhere that one anticipated or imagined.

Although Morosoli's previous sculptures had moving parts (totally absent in Impossible), regardless of the movement they examined and portrayed they were equally not going or climbing anywhere. Their movement was caught (imprisoned) within the sculptural concept and from, as well as within the exhibition room, when the moving shadows of the moving sculptural elements were perceived as also being a part of the installation.

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The Exhibition Invitation. (Free admission).

MMFA for Seniors

THURSDAYS AT THE MONTREAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
A new cultural rendezvous for seniors

On the occasion of the International Seniors Day, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in partnership with with Réseau Sélection, an organization which is a Quebec leader in retirement complexes, are launching a new initiative Thursdays at the MMFA. People aged 65 and over will be able to visit the museum’s permanent collections and the small temporary Discovery exhibitions for free on Thursdays year round, and also enjoy guided tours and creative workshops. This, however, does not apply to the museum's major exhibitions.

A quote from Jean-Luc Murray, Director of Education and Community Programmes at the MMFA:

“The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is delighted to provide activities for seniors that help them to enjoy our encyclopedic collection and learn more about it. An observation by Picasso – ‘It takes a long time to become young’ – sums up the approach of this unique partnership between the Museum and Réseau Sélection!”

The main goal of Thursdays at the Museum is to spark curiosity while offering an introduction to art in a pleasant and friendly ambience. The hands-on workshops are open to all, regardless of ability, and foster a relaxed atmosphere that caters to the requirements of today’s seniors. The aim is to allow participants to experiment with a variety of techniques, such as clay modelling, painting with a palette knife and watercolours, and also to introduce them to our collections: world cultures with the traditional Japanese art of suminagashi, the Middle Eastern collection with the creation of traditional lanterns, and the decorative art collections with painting on fabric.

Educational projects and art therapy are priorities for the MMFA. In keeping with its commitment to education, the MMFA devotes part of its programming to educational displays in the Studios Art & Education Michel de la Chenelière. All year long, the Museum presents school and community projects that re-examine and reinterpret the permanent collection. The MMFA also organizes tours that give groups the opportunity to gain new insight into the works and then take part in creative workshops. On the weekend, the Museum’s educational facilities are very popular with families, who come in droves to take part in a host of free activities for visitors of all ages. The Sharing the Museum programme was established over fifteen years ago to offer free educational experiences to community groups that would not otherwise visit the Museum. MMFA is also developing well-being programmes based on cutting-edge approaches to art therapy in collaboration with experts in the health field. 

Find more on the MMFA website here.