I’m working on a video exhibition with the public art organization No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment. It’s called Four Directions, and its opening will coincide with the opening of Evergreen at the Brickworks, Toronto.

SUNDAY September 26, 2010 – December 31, 2010

The exhibition is designed to reflect the mandate of the public art organization No. 9: that contemporary art can stimulate positive social and environmental change. The group video exhibition features four powerful environmentally themed video artworks, each screened inside one of four restored drying kilns (long tunnels). The kilns are located at the North end of the Heritage Brick Factory, Building 16, which is a 52,000 square foot space, the largest building on-site.

A still from Lessons of Darkness. Image: uashome.alaska.edu

The works to be screened are Lessons of Darkness by the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog and three Canadian artists:

L’Or blanc/White Gold, a No. 9 commission by Isabelle Hayeur
The Cyanide Flats: 50?54´15´´N / 95?20´20´´W, a No. 9 commission by Val Klassen
Waterspeak by Dana Claxton

The exhibition’s goal is to acknowledge manmade environmental destruction and to offer alternative ways of thinking about a healthy earth that suggest re-growth and healing. The exhibition will present a journey for the viewer from Herzog’s bleak documentation of Kuwait’s burning oil fields to Isabelle Hayeur’s curtain of softly falling salt crystals, followed by Val Klassen’s still signs of hope within a ravaged landscape, to Dana Claxton’s mesmerizing plea on behalf of water.

Without being overly didactic or preachy, together the three works will provide a response to Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness. As the viewer progresses through each tunnel, he/she will witness environmental devastation, followed by works that engage the emotions to suggest mindfulness, respect and honour for our environment.

Check out No. 9 Contemporary Art & the Environment, HERE.

I saw Julian Schnabel introduce his film Before Night Falls, about the Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas when it had its North American premiere at TIFF in 2000; the artist and filmmaker shuffled up onto the stage in his bathrobe and slippers and gave a highly entertaining Q and A.

Artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. Image: salon.com

This year, he’s back - for his upcoming show at the AGO, which opens September 1st - and will introduce his Carte Blanche selection, which is Hector Babenco’s film Pixote (1981), about child criminality and survival in the Brazilian slums and Before Night Falls. Schnabel will introduce both screenings, which will be followed by a discussion.

Surely, a screening and talk not to be missed. If Schnabel is an excellent artist, he is surely an equally excellent filmmaker.

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The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” - for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

From this morning’s Ottawa Citizen, we learn that Shirley Thomson, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, has died.

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, 1987. Image: makefive.com

Thompson is known for her staunch defence of the gallery’s decision to purchase Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire for $1.8 million in 1988. You can’t help but smile remembering the hou-ha that that caused, considering today’s $100 million plus prices that we see at auction. She also acquired the famous “meat dress” by Montreal artist Jana Sterbak.

From the article, which quotes her as saying “We know that some of the cutting-edge Canadian artists, by the very nature of their innovation, are not necessarily going to please a broad expanse of the public. However, we are morally and esthetically committed to these artists.”

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Just saw this:

“Steven Shearer…will represent Canada at the 54th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2011 (Venice Biennale), from June 4 to November 27, 2011. The only international visual arts exhibition to which Canada sends official representation, the Biennale is among the most prestigious contemporary art exhibitions in the world.

Steven Shearer’s drawings of metal-heads. Image: wecantpaint.com

The artist was chosen by a national selection committee comprised of senior contemporary art curators from across Canada and formed by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), organizer of the Canadian representation for the 2011 Biennale. The NGC’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, will organize the exhibition of Steven Shearer’s work.”

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“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…

Last week, we attended a cocktail party in honour of the new director of Canadian Stage (CanStage) - Matthew Jocelyn. He has just announced his programme for the 2010-2011 season in Toronto, and it sounds FANTASTIC.

Merce Cunningham dancers performing against a backdrop by Robert Rauschenberg.
Image: nytimes.com

I spoke briefly with Mr. Jocelyn, who is interested in encouraging multidisciplinary artistic collaborations a la Merce Cunningham/John Cage/Robert Rauschenberg.

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Curator William Huffman of the Toronto Arts Council has, in collaboration with the Art Dealers Association of Canada (ADAC) organized some 200-odd Canadian artworks to be displayed to foreign dignitaries during the G8 and G20 summits.

After the fake lake brouhaha, this comes as a better bit of G20 art news, as my fellow blogger Leah Sandals acknowledges in her post HERE.

Gershon Iskowitz, Midnight No. 3 (B244), 1986. Oil on canvas. All images courtesy of ADAC.
Image courtesy Miriam Shiell Fine Art and the Estate of the Artist.

The works, which include one of Brian Jungen’s hockey masks and a sculpture of bears – front and back – by Dean Drever hanging in the Prime Minister’s Office, have been specially chosen by Huffman and a crew of 12 people to represent the breadth of contemporary Canadian artistic practice. Also on display in the PMO will be 2 landscapes by Winnipeg painter Ivan Eyre. There will be a stunning Riopelle in the leader’s lounge, and work by legendary Quebecoise artist Francoise Sullivan. Alongside these will be works chosen by the Ontario Crafts Council.

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The finalists for the 2010 Sobey Art Award were announced today. The artists, selected by a jury from each region of Canada, are competing for the Award’s $50,000 top prize. Bendan Tang may be the newest kid on the block, but our money’s on Duke & Battersby or the excellent Daniel Barrow, who was passed over in 2008.  Do we have wonderful artists in this country, or what?

The 2010 Sobey Art Prize shortlist:

• West Coast and Yukon: Brendan Lee Satish Tang

A work by Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Image: illusion.scene360.com

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Michelle Kuran has written an excellent article on the state of Canadian art criticism, in the Ryerson Review of Journalism. Read the article HERE.

Young, and determined critic Naja Sayej. Image: torontoist.com

Though Ms. Kuran did contact VoCA for our perspective, we were out of town and didn’t manage to make the interview happen.

Quoting everyone from R.M Vaughn to Artstars’ Nadja Sayej to Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes and Eye magazine’s David Balzer, the article is an interesting insight into the ‘criticism-by-omission’ that dominates today, and not only in Canada, of course.

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