I just – finally – got the press release announcing the world premiere retrospective of El Anatsui, the African artist whose shimmering, decadent textiles made from metal bottlecaps are stunningly beautiful.

The artist El Anatsui. Image: ethicarts.org

This is going to be THE exhibition to see in Toronto, if not Canada, this fall. I’m sure of it.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa
October 2, 2010 to January 2, 2011 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

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VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and part three, below.

“Recent Snow”: Michael Snow That/Cela/Dat, 2000. Image: canadianart.ca

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VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and stay tuned for part four, coming this week.

Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue, 1968. Image: courtesy Bill Clarke.

Bill Clarke edits Magenta Magazine Online, a great new publication which you can read HERE.

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Are art galleries and museums the new churches? What is the relationship between art and faith? Does art that can inspire us to that degree even still exist?

The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Image: artblat.com

Emily Carr, Wind in the Tree Tops, c. 1936-1939. Image: heffel.com

I was marveling with a friend the other day at how in the early 20th century – only 100 years or so ago – people were profoundly shaken by bright colours and loose brushstrokes in painting. I was speaking specifically about the reaction of Torontonians to the early work of A.Y. Jackson and other painters who had been influenced by the likes of Edvard Munch and the Impressionists in Europe.

A.Y. Jackson, The Red Maple, 1914. Image: yorku.ca

And then today on CBC Radio’s Q, today the Reverend Jennie Hogan spoke about the relationship between faith and art, and how the Mark Rothko room at the Tate Modern can have such a profound spiritual effect on people.  Is art, she asks, replacing religion?

James Turrell’s Roden Crater Project. Image: 1.pb.blogspot.com

At a time when religion indeed seems to be on the wane, is art able to replace it? Or is art that powerful (I’m thinking Rothko, Barnett Newmann, James Turrell, even Emily Carr, even still being produced?)  Much of today’s art, as Hogan put it, unfortunately seems to be no more than a knee-jerk reaction to things.

Maybe it’s architecture, though, not art. If museums are the new cathedrals, as Hogan argues in THIS Guardian article, then maybe it’s not the art but the architectural space that now provides the sublime experience.  This is something that was brought up after Gehry built Bilbao and architecture fans flocked there like catholic pilgrims to Lourdes.

If at first glance it seems unlikely that art has replaced religion, I can think of two artists who have the power to create a faith experience, one in the positive (inspiring belief), and the other in the negative. Canadian David Rokeby’s award-winning interactive sound installation Very Nervous System (1986 – 1990) is an  invisible computer interface that sets body movements to music. Imagine walking down the street and suddenly your body movements begin to create sound! Though I haven’t seen it in the flesh, on THIS video, it seems sublime. Click that link also to find out how it works.

Secondly, and on the other side of things, is Gregor Schnieder, possibly the greatest German artist of his generation. His numbingly claustrophobic, absolutely terrifying basement installation, Weisse Folter at the K21 in Dusseldorf in 2007 shook me so profoundly that it still haunts me now, years later.

Gregor Schneider’s Weisse Folter. Image: 3.bp.blogspot.com.

So great art hasn’t lost any of it’s power. It may seem like more of a challenge for art to generate an almost spiritual reaction, but it’s still there. Perhaps it’s just harder to see, with so many mediocre artists clouding our view of it.

“Maximillian?…No, Maximultimillion” is the response attributed to Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a Max Aitken, when he was once asked his name.  It gives you a sense of the grandeur with which the Canadian media baron must have swirled about London social circles in the early 20th century.

Lord Beaverbrook. Image: photobucket.com

I noticed, the other day in the Art Newspaper, THIS article about how the UK-based Beaverbrook foundation is having to sell Cherkley Court, the former home of Lord Beaverbrook, for whom the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, is named.

Cherkley Court, in England. Image: exclusiveheritageavenues.com

As you probably know, the Foundation and the gallery have long been locked in a bitter dispute over which paintings belong to whom, and the Foundation needs the money from the sale of Cherkley Court to pay its legal bills. Read more about the ongoing battle, HERE.

For What? One of Frederick Varley’s excellent war paintings, made in 1918 while with the CWMF. Image: warmuseum.ca

While reading an advance copy of Ross King upcoming book Defiant Spirits, about the Group of Seven, I discovered that in 1916, Lord Beaverbrook founded the Canadian War Records Office and the War Memorials Fund, through which many of the Group – A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, and Arthur Lismer – were commissioned to record the war.

The brilliant novelist Evelyn Waugh. Image: blogs.guardian.co.uk

Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. Image: finebooksmagazine.com

I also discovered that as owner of the British papers the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and the Evening Standard, Beaverbrook employed the novelist Evelyn Waugh (one of my favorites) and then lampooned him in one of my favorite films, Scoop, as Lord Copper and as Lord Monomark in both Put Out More Flags and Vile Bodies.

A note: I also found out, in Ross King’s book, that former Prime Minister Mackenzie King loathed the work of the Group of Seven – he thought they were far too outlandish, despite their desire to create a Canadian style of painting.  Plus ca change…

I went to the preview opening of the excellent new exhibition by famed American minimalist artist Sol Lewitt at the Toronto artist-run centre Mercer Union last night.

The installation at Mercer Union. All images: VoCA

Another view of the installation.

Lewitt’s wall drawings, which are painted directly on walls, and for which buyers purchase the instructions, caused quite a sensation back in the 1960s, one collector recalled, because “no one was doing anything like that”.

The exhibition was originally mounted in the gallery in 1981, and was recreated as part of the 30th anniversary year of Mercer Union. Click HERE for a very interesting review of the original show by John Bentley Mays.

There’s also, in the back room, some vitrines displaying books on Lewitt’s work that offer fascinating insight into the work. The catalogues came from the collection of a local collector and are a fantastic compliment to the wall drawings.

How did Sol Lewitt come to show his work at Mercer Union in the first place? The story, as told to me by Mercer co-director York Lethbridge, goes like this:

“One of (Mercer’s) original board members, Michael Davey, had met Sol LeWitt while completing graduate studies in Scotland in the ’70s. LeWitt and Davey kept up correspondence, so when Mercer Union was starting out, looking for diverse programming, Davey invited LeWitt to do a project at 29 Mercer Street (our first gallery space). Given the board was bootstrapping operations, LeWitt agreed to work with the artists on the board to install the work, so he came to Toronto with his assistant and future wife Carol Androccio and completed the drawing in 2 days with help from then board members Peter Blendell, Michael Davey, Jamie Lyons, Robert McNealy, Jaan Pooldaas, Judith Schwarz, Renee van Halm, Cheryl West and Robert Wiens. LeWitt also showed work with the David Bellman gallery, who, I think, helped pay for his travel.”

Some of the catalogues on display.

Apparently, this installation is only the second time the work has ever been shown. It would have been appropriate for the AGO or the Power Plant, but as a former board member of MercerUnion, I’m proud that Mercer is looking so good.

I encourage people to support the upcoming exhibitions spaces in Canada – Mercer’s mandate is to show innovative projects by living contemporary artists, and artist-run centres are essential spaces run by artists for artists that support the exhibition of new work where there isn’t always yet a strong market.

The show will be on July 10 – August 28, 2010, and the opening party is tomorrow (Saturday) from 2 – 5 pm, with a talk by Anthony Sansotta, an expert draughtsman who worked with Sol LeWitt for many years at 3 pm.

Please click HERE for Mercer Union’s website, where you’ll find more info and upcoming exhibitions etc.

There seems to have been a lot of talk about the democratization of art lately.  Recently in the Globe and Mail, columnists Russell Smith and Lynn Crosbie have both offered their thoughts on recent developments in the cultural sphere.

Jan Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1658-60. Image: navigo.com

In THIS article, Smith focuses on an online movement known as “folksonomy …or social tagging. It has created software that permits anybody to look at various museums’ online collections and label each image with as many descriptive keywords as they like.”

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