MMFA 2019: Montreal Couture

Denis Gagnon

Denis Gagnon

MONTREAL COUTURE
10 contemporary Quebec fashion designers 

March 2 - September 8, 2019

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is showcasing Quebec fashion by bringing into focus for the first time creations of 10 local designers who define current Quebec fashion. These both established and emerging artists have very different and distinctive styles: Philippe Dubuc, Denis Gagnon, Ying Gao, Helmer Joseph, Nathon Kong, Marie-Ève Lecavalier, MARKANTOINE, Fecal Matter, Atelier New Regime and Marie Saint Pierre.

Not necessarily intended to be worn, quite a few of the exhibited pieces are simply artistic, design concepts to be admired and used to stimulates ideas for future fashion creations.

Denis Gagnon (see images at the top of the article) blew through the Quebec scene at the beginning of the 2000 with his irreverent style and spectacular pieces characterized by a sophisticated use of volumes, pleats, leather and zippers. In 2010, the MMFA dedicated an exhibition to him. It followed the 2008 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition and preceded The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier in 2011.

Marie Saint Pierre

Phiippe Dubuc

For more than thirty years, Marie Saint Pierre, the first fashion designer admitted to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, has created clothing with precise and timeless cuts, marrying form and function

Since 1994, Philippe Dubuc has reinvented the men's wardrobe with minimalist, modern lines, meticulous finishing and embossed materials.

Marie-Ève Lecavalier

Marie-Ève Lecavalier

Nathalie Bondil, MMFA's Director General and Chief Curator, explained what inspired this exhibition:

"This exhibition is a tip of the hat to Quebec fashion. It was born at last fall’s Museum Ball, NUIT COUTURE where dramatic installations paid tribute to Quebec fashion designers. Some were known to me, others were a revelation, but all amazed me with their talent ... these designers, established or emerging, experimental or international, were all notable for the quality of their output and the audacity of their inspiration. How could I ignore this opportunity to show off the couture created in our local ateliers? I have tremendous respect for these demanding métiers and the people who excel at them ... right in our own back yard." 

Markantoine

Markantoine

The exhibition also highlights the work  Ying Gao, whose work encompasses fashion, industrial design and robotics. She explores the use of new materials, such as medical latex, and interactive sensory technology that terns a garment into a participative piece.  Her creations were exhibited in the world’s major museums. 

Ying Gao

Ying Gao

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Montreal Couture exhibition is presented in conjunction with the retrospective Thierry Mugler: Couturissime exhibition.

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

MMFA 2019: A Model in the Studio

A MODEL IN THE STUDIO

MONTREAL 1880-1950

NEW ACQUISITIONS

January 29 – May 26, 2019

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' (MMFA) exhibition A Model in the Studio, Montreal 1880-1950: New Acquisitions, illustrates the development of live model representation in works by Montreal's leading artists.

Drawing life models was traditionally taught at the old masters’ studios and later at art schools as an indispensable study of the body’s proportions, poses, musculature, as well as the model’s overall compartment, including action, mood and even the emotion expressed through the bodily spacial gesture. It no longer seems to be viewed as fundamental in present day art teaching settings. Yet, I recently visited a school of animation art where nude model drawing techniques are taught and diligently attended by the future video games and futuristic films artists.

At the end of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th centuries, at the Montreal art academy, only men were permitted to enrol into nude drawing classes. The female students were only allowed to draw models with their private parts covered, even when working with female models. There was also big difference between works executed by the academy students and the more daring posing from the artists’ own studios, whose drawings were rarely exhibited before the 1920s.

Additionally, nude images were censured in the art books of that time by either blackening them completely, or by inserting white strips to cover anatomically correctly depicted private parts. The visitors will have a chance to see example of such censorship at the exhibition.

Of the 70 works chosen for this show, most have never been exhibited before or are recent acquisitions. They demonstrate the creative impact of the nude drawing training process that was once the foundation of all representations of the human body. From the quick sketch to the completed drawing, not only the model but also the artist’s personality is revealed in the lines he or she created.

The exhibition features a number of graphic artworks, several pochades (the type of sketches used in painting) and sculptures, all executed between the late 19th century and mid-20th century. They were made by some thirty artists – including five women – who worked in Montreal: Louis Archambault, Ernest Aubin, Henri Beau, Fritz Brandtner, William Brymner, Edmond Dyonnet, Clarence Gagnon, Pierre Gauvreau, Henri Hébert, Louis-Philippe Hébert, Prudence Heward, Edwin Holgate, Alfred Laliberté, Ozias Leduc, Jean-Onésime Legault, Arthur Lismer, John Lyman, Mabel May, Rita Mount, Louis Muhlstock, Ernst Neumann, Moe Reinblatt, Jori Smith, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté and Lilias Torrance Newton.

Included is also a single contemporary work in a different medium: photography. In this black and white image that very much resembles a pencil drawing, the artist Donigan Cumming sought to provide some perspective for the timelessness and universal value of a nude body study of an ageing couple.

Jacques Des Rochers, the MMFA’s curator of Quebec and Canadian art before 1945 and also curator of the exhibition, explains the motivations for the show:

“Everyone recognizes the importance of representing the human body; it is such a cliché that we often fail to study its development in the studio, which is taken for granted. Although in the Western world it is associated with academicism and modernism, I thought it would be interesting to focus on the way in which it evolved in the Montreal context, with the help of recent acquisitions.”

The MMFA and live models in Quebec and Canada

The MMFA possesses an enviable collection of representations of live models by Quebec and Canadian artists. Interestingly, the Museum’s first academic nude, Eve, an 1879 painting by Wyatt Eaton, was only acquired in 1922, in the decade that gave rise to the modern nude. Then, in 1932, the Museum was offered its first modern nude, titled Studio Scenes No. 2: The Rest Period by Ernst Neumann.

The Museum’s recent major acquisitions include most notably Kneeling Nude in Profile or Sleeping Muse, 1921, and Discouragement, 1924, by Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté; a group of drawings by John Lyman, Prudence Heward, Pierre Gauvreau and Louis Archambault, as well as bronzes by Louis-Philippe Hébert, Henri Hébert and Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté.

The Art Association of Montreal

The creation of an art school was among the goals the Art Association of Montreal (AAM, today’s Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) set itself when it was founded in 1860. However, twenty years went by before the school’s first spaces were opened and an advanced course was offered. The art school, directed in 1883 by Robert Harris and then by William Brymner from 1886 to 1921, offered students an academic type of instruction modelled on that of the Paris studios in which Brymner had trained. From its inception, the AAM’s art school presented an annual exhibition of its students’ academic drawings and awarded prizes to them. As of 1912, the AAM was housed in a new Sherbrooke Street building, where the art school occupied three huge studios—the very ones where Edwin Holgate would give lessons in drawing in the 1930s. In 1940, Arthur Lismer agreed to be the director of the school, which became the School of Art and Design in 1943. In the years following World War II, many artists who were resistant to academicism, including Louis Archambault, joined the school as teachers and offered other perspectives. A number of the artists who taught at or attended the school are represented in the exhibition

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Hover you mouse over images for description  and credits.

The exhibition is located at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Graphic Arts Centre, Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion – Level S2 

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

Art Souterrain 2019

Steve Giasson, Rubis

ART SOUTERRAIN 2019
11th Edition - True or False

March 2 - 24, 2018

Art Souterrain or UnderGround Art is an annual event in right at the downtown of Montreal  It rans for 3 winter weeks and is presented inside the over 6 km long Montreal’s underground pedestrian network and 8 satellite locations. Works of art were chosen by curators Maude Arsenault, Martin Le Chevallier and Joyce Yahouda will be accessible at all times, free of charge. The Festival will also present a number of interesting mediation and discovery activities. 

Contemporary works by 60 well-known local and international artists evoking aspects of the “True or False” theme will enliven the heart of Montreal.

Justin Langlois

Among the ARTISTS:

The Frenchman Alain della Negra and the Japanese artist Kaori Kinoshita will sow the confusion between the real and the virtual by presenting their short film NEIGHBORHOOD, story of the life of their avatar with the followers of the game of Sims.

THE BEST AVAILABLE EVIDENCE by visual artist Rebecca Marino is inspired by a document the artist discovered on the evidence of the existence and legitimacy of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The work challenges personal belief boundaries by playing with the idea of ​​evidence.

At the Palais des Congrès, Philippe Ramette will use photography to bring humour and strangeness into the world while reflecting on the notion of "irrational".

Holly Andres offers a series of photographic snapshots inspired by childhood memories, carefully staged as a cinematic melodramas. Her work echoes works of Siàn Davey who celebrated family life in its unpredictable complexity with an almost documentary approach.

The self-taught Quebec artist Emmanuel Laflamme, former cartoonist, in his work FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT multiplies the references to the first step of the man on the Moon while questioning the authenticity of the event.

The conceptual artist Steve Giasson questions our beliefs with his work WITHOUT TITLE (CINQ RUBIS ). He claims he has hidden five rubies in the buildings along the underground route, raising a question about the very existence of his work.

Marc Lee takes a critical look at the limits of our information society with his video installation POLITICAL CAMPAIGN - BATTLE OF OPINION ON SOCIAL MEDIA. From his premise that the social media reflects our own opinion, he mixes real images, videos and tweets in real time to create a continuous newsletter  

Artist Philippe Battikha presents a well-known Montreal issue: construction sites. His sculptural and sound installation PREVENTATIVE INTERVIEW plays with the spectator who will doubt his perceptions.

A monumental installation THE TERRIL by Edward Hillel, uses humour to denounce the economic, political and social powers of multinational corporations.

The Montreal artist Dominique Pétrin examines in his work THE TRUE OF FALSE how by using hypnosis in his performances he can distort the visual cognitive processes and alter the perception and consciousness. 

Brendan George Ko, Head In The Sand

Brendan George Ko, Lava Tube

New and free activities:

"Running pace" will allow the public to combine physical training and discovery of the Montreal's underground course with a sports coach and mediators.

Guided tours: will offer three thematic tours to allow festival-goers to understand underground works from different angles.

During the Nuit Blanche, each artist present at the lounch will be accompanied by mediators whose mission will be to inform the public about the artist's work and his career

Mediation sessions will be organized on weekends, and middays on weekdays to discuss the works in the underground route.

Films: Cinéma paranoïaque at Cinéma du Parc.

Also, the satellite locations will have each special planned activities: meetings with the artists, creative workshops or round table.

Jean-François Lachance

Jean-François Lachance

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Programming, activities: www.artsouterrain.com

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The Last Wife

Centaur Theatre / 50th Season

THE LAST WIFE

Quebec Premiere

February 12 - March 3, 2019

Written by Kate Henning, The Last Wife is a historical drama presented within a contemporary setting and with present-day vocabulary. Though the play is about the King Henry VIII's sixth and the last wife Katherine Parr, it equally well portrays Henry VIII himself, his three children Edward, Mary and Elizabeth (who will all in turn become English monarchs), and Thomas Seymore, a brother of Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII.

The play takes the audiences behind the throne into a home not unlike that of any power family today. Almost 500 years ago, Katherine Parr manoeuvred her way through the halls of power and earned the respect and trust of her husband, King Henry VIII. Though history shows that a wedding with the notorious King proved fatal to several of his wives, but in last wife Katherine Pratt he met his match in wit and negotiation, and gained a formidable ally worthy of ruling the country while he fought in France. Moreover, she had prepared his heirs - Edward, Mary and Elizabeth - to rule the British empire. The Last Wife is a smart, funny and potent examination of patriarchy, family, sexual politics, and, surprisingly, even women’s rights.

The playwright Kate Hennig explained her attraction to Katherine Parr:

 “After watching the events of the Arab Spring on the news in 2011, I became curious about the wives and daughters of tyrants. That led me to Henry VIII, which led me to Katherine Parr. The Last Wife is an ‘imagined’ history based on actual people and events. What I was deeply interested in was the humanity of these iconic characters, imagining what made them do what they did, thereby shaping history. Creating a contemporary voice for this history allows us to see ourselves and our own personal and political struggles. It also raises questions such as do women see power, specifically political power, as a position from which things get done or is the teaching of children--an archetypically feminine domain--a more powerful platform for change than seeking political office?”

 The play’s director Eda Holmes stated:

“The uncanny political timeliness and social relevance render The Last Wife popular both here and in the US. It’s full of sexy characters and life and death stakes--pillars of great theatre--but what emerges as the thrilling core of the story are Katherine Parr’s gutsy intelligence and resilient pragmatism. Kate [Hennig] has unleashed a modern woman into history, giving us a new prism through which to view power, patriarchy and feminism. In fact, she has done the very thing that historian and women's rights campaigner, Dame Mary Beard, proposes: she has redefined the structures of power.” 

The play brings the nearly 500 years old historical events to life with great mastery. All the actors shine in their roles, especially Diana Donnelly who portrays the lead character Katherine Pratt, the last wife of Henry VIII. She succeeds in enacting the complex drama of Katherine Pratt’s life, who succeeded in navigating the tough corners of her relationship with her unpredictable husband King Henry VIII, at the same time being a devoted and dedicated stepmother to his three children.

Even in the case you are not much familiar with this particular period of English history, the play will still hold your attention. It might even make you search later on at home in your books or online for the historical accounts of those times. 

PRODUCTION TEAM

• Written by Kate Hennig
• Directed by Eda Holmes
• With Diana Donnelly, Robert Persichini,  Antoine Yared, Mikaela Davies, Anne-Marie Sahen and  Alessandro Gabrielli.
• Set & Costume Designer Michael Gianfrancesco
• Lighting Designer Andrea Lundy
• Music Composers Anna Atkinson and Alexander MacSween
• Fight Director Anita Nittoly
• Assistant Director Jessica Abdallah
• Assistant Set & Costume Designer Zoe Roux
• Coach to Mr. Gabrielli Jonathan Patterson
• Stage Manager Melanie St-Jacques
• Assistant Stage Manager Danielle Skene

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Hover your mouse over images for description and credits.

For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

PAC 2019: Into the Wonder Room

INTO THE WONDER ROOM
February 13, 2019 - January 5, 2020

Montreal’s Pointe-à-Callière (PAC) Museum of Archaeology and History presents a new exhibition Into the Wonder Room that features the mysterious and quite unique world of cabinets of curiosities. It showcases over 1,000 rare, exotic and quite unusual objects. The impressive installations take visitors on a journey around the world, as a homage to the beauty and strangeness found in it. The exhibition brings together objects from the collections of the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France, as well as hundreds of items from the collections of several museums in Québec and Canada, as well as from private collectors.

Curiosity cabinets historically represented and still represent the passion of individuals to collect certain items, displaying them in their homes as both decorative or museum type of pieces. Presently, if collecting rare items, some collectors keep them in secure safes or storages spaces. Collectors often have individual preferences as to the items they chose to collect, determined by their personal hobbies, travels, or scientific interests.

The PAC Museum exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to explore curiosities from other times and places. It presents the history of cabinets of curiosities, or “wonder rooms”, down through the ages, from the homes of European aristocrats, great explorers, and scholars in past centuries.

The final zone of the exhibition is also dedicated to the “curiosity rooms” at the homes of seven Montréal and Québec based contemporary collectors. It displays their passion and personal universe through the filmed interviews and objects from their collections. Of a special interest especially to children would be the display of objects belonging to a collector Denis Allison who is at once a plangonologist (doll collector), an arctophile (collector of old stuffed toys), and a ludophile (toy collector).

The exhibition layout is a kaleidoscopic display of large installations, each representing an immersive wonder room that recreates the spectacular effect of a cabinet of curiosities, including scores of multicoloured butterflies and birds, along with a multitude of unusual objects from around the world. It also showcases mysterious objects, fantastic creatures, mounted animals, and scientific instruments. Among the more impressive and fascinating are a mastodon tooth, a dinosaur egg, an albino moose, a Victorian-era ornithological display case, aKaga school samurai armour, a two-headed calf, an armillary sphere, and Virginia deer whose antlers became locked in battle, causing their death.

Francine Lelièvre, Executive Director of Pointe-à-Callière states:

“It’s important to remember that cabinets of curiosities are the ancestors of today’s sciences and museums. With this exhibition, we are paying tribute to explorers, scientists, and collectors from every era, driven by a quest for knowledge, cultural diversity, far-away lands, and a rare and sometimes mysterious or exotic object that can spark awe or astonishment in the viewer. In this sense, Into the Wonder Room is a veritable invitation to discover and be fascinated by the diversity of the world. It will surely appeal to visitors of all ages”.

Click on images to enlarge them.

All Photos @ Nadia Slejskova

For more information on the current exhibitions, activities and programs, visit the PAC Museum's website.

Francine Lelièvre, Executive Director of Pointe-à-Callière