Missed Lecture

Paul Emile Bourdas 1905 - 1960

apprentice to Ozias Leduc in 1921. Studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts de Montreal in 1923 and in Paris at Ateliers d'art with symbolist painters Maurice Denis and Georges Desvalliers.

On Surrealism and Psychic Automatism
Verbal expression of the function f though which is exempt from control exercised by reason, aesthetic or moral concern " I was able to try out the investigative procedures of psychoanalasis on patients, recording their dreams and free associations which I then interpreted " Andre Breton interviewed by Andre Parinaud

Psychic Automatism
Under the pretence of civilization and progress we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed supposition or fancy.

It was pure change that pair too our mental world, which we pretended to be concerned with any longer and in my opinion by the. most important part has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud. Andrej Breton/ Sigmund Freud, influenced by Hopkins Dada & Surrealism. While serving as a medical orderly in the French army during world war one. Breton had become acquainted with Sigmund Freud’s theories of the unconscious. 

Andrej Breton 
Before long Breton was making use of such spontaneously crying material for poetic pirates and along with the poet Phillippe Soupault published the first fully automatiste Photo Surrealist text The Magnetic Fields in 1920. A highly controversial text, the work was condemned by politicians and clergymen as extremist and sociopolitical propaganda. " Prisoners of drops of water, we are but everlasting animals," We must abort the noiseless towns and the enchanted posters no longer touch us. Referring to recruitment materials post world war one. 

They developed “techniques of ‘automatic writing’ whereby, partly on the model of Freudian ‘free association’, rapid flurries of writing were carried out in the absence of any preconceived idea.”
– Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism, pgs 16-17 

“To break definitively with all conventions of society and its utilitarian spirit! We refuse to live knowingly at less than our spiritual and physical potential; refuse to close our eyes to the vices and confidence tricks perpetuated in the guise of learning, favour, or gratitude; refuse to be ghettoed in an ivory tower, well- fortified but too easy to ignore; refuse to remain silent -- do with us what you will, but you shall hear us; refuse to make a deal with fame and its attendant honours: stigmata of malice, unawareness or servility; refuse to serve and to be used for such ends; refuse all intention, evil weapon of reason -- down with them, to second place!”

- Paul-Émile Borduas, Écrits/Writings 1942- 1958, 45-54.

Refus Global (Global refusal) 

 Freed from conscious and rational control, language is set free to make new and challenging meanings and associations. The surrealist atmosphere created by automatic writing is especially concise to the production of the most beautiful images. The first totally non- preconceived painting and therefore the forerunner of the Automatiste movement. The non-preconscieved painting is devoid of a final goal or result. The painter is also, at a loss for words and in search of resonance or justification in the painting. The artist has no intellectual preconception before starting the work, even the unconscious meaning is completely and totally elusive. Interpretation begins only when the work is complete. 

Paul Emile Borders " ABSTRACTION VERTE " was purchased by poet Remi Paul Forgues shortly after Exhibiton at the Dominion Gallery in Montreal in 1943, it is now in Montreal Museum of Fine Art since its accommodation in 1980. 

Paul Emile Borders " ABSTRACTION No.23 TETE CHEVAL OU FEAR-ANE 1942. 

Traveled to France in 1930, his past experience with children before this point led to his ability to deter from realism and transformed his influence on painting. He drew attention at the Canadian Book Fair in 1940 where he exhibited his work. He was inspired by landscape and natural environment. Eg. Pink Abstraction on Canvas. Spring 1942  exhibited a series of 45 Gouaches at the Foyer de L'Ermitage in Montreal. Expressing and exploring personal and non preconceived expression, transposing the concept of automatic writing. 

Paul Emile Borders "LE BATEAU FANTASTIQUE" 1942 

Titled " The Phantom Boat" a preliminary attempt at adopting a new approach. 

Incorporates the opposition of line and colour in gouache. 

Paul Emile Boduras " Automatisme 1.47" Sous le vent de l'île. 1947

Red, green and dark burn umber browns blended with a pallet knife on smeared slurring background accented with aquamarine and deep teals and greens. Speckles of red, lime green and pine with accents of white over murky smeared background. Abstract, heavy impasto. 

Refus Global ( GLOBAL REFUSAL ) 

To break definitively with all conventions of society and its utilitarian spirit ! We refuse to live knowingly at less then our spiritual and physical potential; refuse to close our eyes to the vices and confidence tricks perpetuated in the guise of learning, favour, or gratitude; refuse to be ghettoed in an ivory tower, well fortified but too easy to ignore; refuse to remain silent -- do with what you will, but you shall hear us; refuse to make a deal with fame and its attendant honours: stigmata of malice, unawareness or servility; refuse all intention, evil weapon of reason --- down with them, to second place !" - Paul Emile Borduas, Écrits/Writings 1942- 1958 45-54.

Paul Emile Borduas., 

The Circular Pass, Nest of Aeroplanes, La Passe Circulaire Au Nid D'Avions 1950 

In 1950 Borduas wrote his essay " Communication intimie å met des Amis" Itimate message my dear friends. There he recalls poetical works and carries a profound social potential assimilated by the multitude of men and women with nothing to assist them but the power of the work itself. From the 1940's on Paul Emile Borduas was a renowned proponent of no-figurative art inMontreal. In 1950 he began to devote his energies to exploring the relationship between form and background in abstract works. This painting in which the configuration of the movement of the clustered shapes empties the core, superbly illustrates the dynamism of the relationship in the work. 

Paul- Emile Borduas 

" L'etoile voire "  Black Star 1957

Painted before his death in 1960. influenced by American abstract expressionism, his paintings from this era were emphasized by arrangement dark patches on a textured white background. Borduas passed away February 22 1960. 

Paul Emile Borduas " Chatoiement " - Shimering 

The concept of abstract " that which operates on pure qualities, not on realities" Abstraction is often defined in terms of what is not : The absence of figuration, the elimination of all anecdotal content. Abstract art deals with light, colour, and matter for its own sake. Emphasis on rhythm and articulation of form in space, the physical presence and flat surface of the painting, the radical simplification of sculptural volumes. 

FRANCOIS SULLIVAN 1925 

Studied at L' Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montreal between 1941 and 1945. 

In 1941 she met Paul Emile Borduas and exhibited with the Automatizes and signed their 1948 manifesto " REFUS GLOBAL" to which she contributed to with her essay " La Danse et :'Esperie". She returns to L'Ecole de Beaux Arts, in Montreal in 1960 to study sculpture with Louis Archambault. 

Françoise Sullivan ( 1948) Danse dans la Neige 

Sullivan was considered one of the most significant pieces of performance art in Canadian Art History. Art Books, celebrated as part of an imposed cycle of dance solos dedicated to the seasons, preformed outdoors. 

Danse Dans La Neige was filmed with her friends Franscoise Riopelle and JeanPaul Riopelle and Maurice Perron and was improvisational. 

Françoise Sullivan " Chute Concentrique" Concentric Fall, Sculptural 1962 

Sculptural work depicting weightlessness, late 1960's minimal design. reduced in form to essentials and downplayed personal expression. Expressive and dynamic art form. The medium allowed the artist to to work from home and to be with her children. She was able to assemble pieces from a nearby metal scrapyard. Sculpture often doubled as sets for dance performances and used by affiliated performance artists.  Later married Paterson Ewen. 

Françoise Sullivan " Colour Painting " No.2, 2005 

Colour field painting in red yellow, pink and green. Beginning of the 1990's she began painting abstraction and monochromatic works. Produced the illusion that the images appear to vibrating on the surface of the work and appear to glow from within using colour and light. 

Large scale canvases recalling minimalist work, influenced by artists such as Ferrand Leduc, Agnes Martin and Richard Tuttle. The images retained the movement and sensuality that characterize her performative dance movement. 

Jean Paul Riopelle 

Riopelle studied at the École des beaux-arts (1942) and then at the École du Meuble (1943–45), both Montreal, where he met teacher Paul Émile Bourdas.Riopelle traveled to Paris on a Canadian government fellowship in 1945 and in 1946. 

Jean Paul Riopelle 

Influential inthebrith of automatism, experimented with Marcel Barbareu, Jean- Paul Mosseau and Bernard Morisset in a makeshift studio on Rue Saint Hubert Montreal producing some of his first Automatism works. 

French Surrealists emphasizing the term : Inscope" relegating amophique stylization. 

Jean Paul Riopelle : Pavane 1954 

Studying in Paris through the 1950's Riopelle developed his well known mature style of creating large, colour mosaic paintings through the use of palate and knife. Colours on Canvas directly from the tube. 

Riopelle was signed only the Pierre Matisse gallery in NYC, he was inspired by the French Avant Garde artists relocating in New York. He was also in a 25 year relationship with the feminist painter Joan Mitchell. 

Jean Paul Riopelle " Perspectives" 1956 

Abstraction./ Colour field painting blotted with palette knife, red blue and orange speckled with white accent. He experimented with dripping and splashing paint, creating densely covered canvases in vivid colours. Paint applied in quick brush strokes all over the canvas. This resulted in a thinly worked surface in a heavy impasto stylization. The marks are suggestive of the painters action of applying the paint. 

Jean Paul Riopelle (1923 - 2002 ) 

Studied at L'Ecole de Beaux arts in 1982, and then at the E'cole du Meuble 1943 -45 both in Montreal, where he met his teacher Paul Emile Bourds, he traveled to Paris on a Canadian Government fellowship in 1945 and again in 1946. 

Jean Paul Riopelle La Joute 1969 - 1970 

The only fountain made work by Riopelle 1923 to 2002 an imposing suclptural grouping located in the quarter international de Montreal. Initially it was installed at Montreals Olympic Park for the1976 Olympic Summer Games. La Joute has stood since 2004 inthesquare dedicated to the artist. The 30 Elements that surround the Tower of Life depict various animals and mythological figures that market this great artists childhood and imagination, noting Owl, Fish, Bear and Dog. Since it was reinstalled the work has included a circle of fire. 

FERNAND LEDUC 1916- 2014 

1938 to 1943 Leduc studied at the L'Ecole de Beaux Arts de Montreal, forming the group known as Le Automatiestes and composing The REFUSGLOBAL MANIFESTO 

Fernand Leduc ( 1946 ) La Dernière Campagne de Napoleon, The Last Campaign of Napoleon

- Was featured on a Canadian Postage Stamp, the denunciation of the paternalism and intellectual repression of Quebec institutions and advocated the night to personal freedom in cultural and spiritual expression. The group was aiming to create social political and cultural change in osciety through the province. They helped pave the way for " The Quiet Revolution " of the 1960's during which the province experienced major social change. 

The artist was an endorsement of modernism and abstract painting as well as the recognition of art as a liberating force. 

Documents pertaining to the REFUS GLOBAL MANIFESTO were later condemned by politicians and clergymen as extremist and sociopolitical propaganda advocating archaism. 

Fernand Leduc " PORTGES ROUGES" 1955
The red doors, likely allocated with the sociopolitical movements through the radical movements of the 1960s, the socialist liberation in Quebec and the secularization of state in province. His writings as well as his correspondence remain essential documents for understanding Quebec's cultural climate during the 1940s and 1950s. He will become a sort of theoretician and propagandist of the group, "so long as we recognize that the theory comes after creation and not before."
Leduc, captivated by Alfred Pellan's exhibition in 1940, then strongly impressed by the exhibition of Borduas gouaches in 1942 - from whom he will say he learned the basics - will be of all the demonstrations of the group of Automatists until at the Espace 55 event, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which devotes a non-figurative painting that is more sparse, more orderly and often out of sync with automatism. Leduc, séduit par l'exposition d'Alfred Pellan en 1940, puis fortement impressionné par l'exposition des gouaches de Borduas en 1942 – de qui il dira avoir appris l'essentiel -, sera de toutes les manifestations du groupe des Automatistes jusqu'à l'événement Espace 55, au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, qui consacre une peinture non figurative plus dépouillée, plus ordonnée, souvent en rupture avec l'automatisme

Fernand Leduc Jaune 1962 
" With Jaune (Yellow), the formal and chromatic equilibrium of his work relaxed and colour definitively took centre stage en route to “islands of light,” to borrow the title of Fernand Leduc’s collected writings. From this point on he would work with coloured forms shifting in a chromatic space placed in a state of tension. In the 1970s, the vibration of light alone became the subject of his “microchromes,” accomplished by superimposing multiple layers of thin paint. Leduc’s journey continued on from there. It traversed the twentieth century and emerged into the twenty-first, always extending further this quest for light, which becomes a place, a celebration of life, a pure coloured study of day or night . . . " Press release 2014, MNBAQ.ORG, The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

MARCELLE FERRON, 1924-2001
Ferron trained both L'Ecole des beau art de quebec and L'Ecole de Meruble de Montreal. In 1948 her interest insight was effectively translated into a new medium through stained glass. She was made a Knight of The National Order of Quebec in 1985. 

MARCELLE FERRON, LASCIVE 1959 
Nonfigurative paintings, vibrant colours and larger fluid forms dominated the canvas. Thick application of paint on canvas. Painting straight from the tube, using a palette knife. Her studies include a strong introspection on light and a modernized impressionist perspective. 

“I was tired of painting. So many collectors bought paintings and locked them in bank vaults. The stained-glass windows allowed me to make public art.... One day a woman stopped me in the street to talk to me about Champ-de-Mars metro station. ‘Whether it's sunny, rainy, or snowing, I love your stained-glass windows at Champ-de-Mars. Those big dancing shapes always warm my heart.’ That woman was neither a collector nor an art critic, but she understood the meaning I meant to give that work.”

- Marcelle Ferron L'esquisse d'une mémoire, 222. 

BERTRAM BROOKER 1888- 1955 
Born in 1888 Croydon Englan, immigrated to Canadain 1905 settling in Manitoba with his family. Wrote in 1925 that he was seeking in his painting to create a new language to apprehend inner life. - as quoted by Roald Nasgaard, Abstract Painting in Canada, 25. 

BERTRAM BROOKER, Sounds Assembling 1928. 
Abstract work resembling visual qualities similar to italian futurism and the reimplication of dynamism, speed and energy. Brooker was also determined as an early abstract expressionist in Canada, his first exhibition to be held and organized by his close friend Lawren Harris. 

BERTRAM BROOKER, Ascending Forms 1924- 1934 
Abstract work depicting space and time, neutral tones in a wide range of colour. Influenced by Lawren Harris in the soft tonal quality and shapes depicted through paint and canvas and also majorly through the use of gradiential change in colour. 

BERTRAM BROOKER Caledon Hills 1935 
Similar to early cubist works, resembling cubist studies by cezanne e.g. Mont Saint Victoria circa 1904. fragmented landscape in a geometric abstraction, soft use of tonality and colour. Merging of organic and abstract form. 

BERTRAM BROOKER, White Movement 1936 
"Brooker was a grounded pragmatist. As a marketing executive with deeply philosophical concerns about how mass communications (i.e. advertisements) “must arouse and produce action,” Brooker’s mystical instincts were as much professional as they were artistic. In fact, in the 1930s Brooker authored a series of influential advertising stratagems informed by vitalist principles of “direct communication” that might otherwise be considered divergent or fantastical. It’s an interesting spin by curator Adam Lauder that, considering the mass media theories of another influential Canadian thinker, Marshall McLuhan, more than three decades later, puts Brooker’s visionary art and ideas into an entirely new dimension." Art Gallery of Windsor, Press Release "A Beautiful Hypothesis" published in CanadianArt February 19 2009 

BERTRAM BROOKER, Quebec Impression 1942 

BERTRAM BROOKER “Ovalescence” 1954

MARION DALE- SCOTT, 1906 - 1993 
In1907, when she was only 11she had the privilege of studying with William Brymner and Alberta Cleland at the Art Association of Montreal, and by the following year was already exhibiting her work. She studied at the Ecole des beaux arts, Montreal and the Slade School of Art in London. 

MARIAN SCOTT "FOREST STAIRWAY" ( Cliff Path) 1930 
Abstract painting resembling Emily Carr, depiction of a pathway up a hillside in forest. Silhoutted tress and willowy branches amidst foreground, pink sunset in the background stairs main focal point through the centre of the painting. 

MARIAN SCOTT "' SEATED WOMAN" 1946 
Abstract paintingd depicting woman with light hues overlaying the gestural form, curvature abstracted geometric form of the female silhouette on abstracted non figurative background. 

MARION SCOTT " SKUNK CABBAGE" 1948 
"Montréal-born artist Marian Dale Scott’s experimental œuvre is closely tied into the history and development of modern art in Québec. From her earliest figurative works and landscape paintings, to her studies of human interaction in urban and industrial cities, Scott’s work resulted from an ongoing negotiation between artistic trends and her own aesthetic vision. Throughout her career, Scott often turned to the realm of nature to express universal themes and to reveal the world beyond appearances. Influenced by synthetic cubism, her “abstract-realist” works of the 1930s and 1940s include bold and expressive studies of the botanical world. Scott’s interest in flora is evident in Skunk Cabbage, a close-up view of an isolated leafy arrangement as seen from a slightly angled perspective. " McGill Visual Arts Collection In Honour of Rosalind Goodman

MARION SCOTT UNTITLED 1972

PAINTERS ELEVEN

Tom Hodgson
Alexandra Luke
Harold Town
Kazuo Nakamura
JockMacdonald
Walter Yarwood
Hortense Gordon
Jack Bush 
Ray Mead

Two canvases represent Oscar Cahen. Canvas turned to wall represents William Ronald. 

J.W.G JOCK MCDONALD 
Born in Thurso, Scotland in 1897.

Graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1922, while there he specialized in textiles and commercial advertising, and qualified to teach art.
In 1926, Macdonald moved to Vancouver to join the faculty at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts (VSDAA). 

J.W.G MACDONALD, Indian Burial, NOOTKA 1937

In this image, as in his other Nootka sketches and paintings, Macdonald attempts to capture the spirit of life in the Nuu-chah-nulth village. Although he painted a number of small oil-on-panel works, he completed only one major canvas, Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, B.C., 1935, during his stay at Nootka. This work, based on a sketch he had done in situ, was painted after the artist’s return to Vancouver.Though the graveyard and the priest in Indian Burial are clearly Christian, Macdonald has added a level of complexity to the narrative by introducing in the right foreground a mourner with a traditional ceremonial mask. The mask was absent in the preliminary sketch, and it seems to challenge our entry into the scene, its expressive features dramatically evoking the continuing presence of the power of the old ways.1

 The painting is striking in its organization, displaying a designer’s delight in carefully balanced areas of colour and pattern. The priest, his hand raised, creates a strong vertical focus, leading us both forward toward the open grave and the mask and then beyond the blue cross on the casket toward two centrally located crosses in the middle ground and on, following the curving path, into the distance, where totem poles and a lighthouse border the ocean. In September 1938 the Vancouver Art Gallery reproduced the recently acquired painting on the cover of its Bulletin, and the following year included it in the Canadian exhibition at the San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition.2

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “Drying Herring Roe” 1937 

 the last representational canvas he painted of life in Nootka. At the time, he considered it the best painting he had ever made. He worried that the unfamiliar subject matter would not be understood, so he explained in some detail the Nuu-chah-nulth custom of taking twenty-foot branches out in canoes and submerging them in deep water. “In two weeks the branches are raised up, plastered with herring eggs [which are hung up] to dry out and cure in the sun. The village is festooned with masses of mimosa coloured (yellowish) hanging foliage.”3  The painting received immediate praise and was included in the Century of Canadian Art exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London that same year.

J.W.G " Jock" MACDONALD " FALL ( Modality 16 ) 1937 
" The task of the artist, for MacDonald was to break out of the tangible reality of daily existence to realize the highest planes of art expression. 
-Ian M. Thom, The Early Work : An Artist Emerges 


J.W.G " Jock" MACDONALD " The Ram" 1946 
Canadian abstract expressionism, gestural movements similar to Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee, Kandinsky he used for reference in his teachings at Ontario College of Art and Design. Jock Macdonald was a leading pioneer of abstract painting in Canada. Committed to the belief that contemporary art had to be based on “20th-century concepts about nature, space, time and motion,” he became a staunch advocate for contemporary artistic expression. He was a founding member of the Canadian Group of Painters and Painters Eleven, and he established the Calgary Group.

J.W.G " Jock" MACDONALD "The Witch" 1948 

J.W.G " Jock"MACODNALD" The Bearer of Gifts" 1948 

J.W.G " Jock" MACDONALD "Fleeting Breath" 1958 

J.W.G "Jock"MACONDALD " FarOffDrums" 1960 

In Far Off Drums, an exquisite painting that is both vital and harmonious, Macdonald resolved the crucial issue of space and the relation between figure and ground. It transcends its own material reality to echo the life of the spirit that for years he had sought to portray. Macdonald completed this work about a year before he died, and it resonates with the melancholy knowledge that his dream of having years dedicated to painting once he retired from teaching would not be fulfilled.

Macdonald uses painterly line as a structuring element to contain thinly applied areas of colour. His line is as classically elegant here as that of the Italian painter Duccio (c. 1255–1319): it flows gracefully on an open ground as light permeates the composition, and materiality, or form, is suggested only in the delicately coloured areas. Line itself is ethereal. Macdonald no longer relies on the heavy and structural underpinning or applied surface design he had used in the modalities, or the decorative embellishments of his automatics. Rather, the elements here are fluid, and there is a finely balanced tension between line and the thinly painted surface.

Macdonald included this painting in his solo exhibition at the Here and Now Gallery in Toronto, in January 1960. He followed his usual custom of titling it just before it went on show. In the biographical sketch he wrote for the gallery, he stated: “An artist must seek to discover new forms of beauty. If not an arrestment occurs and art becomes a superfluous aestheticism.”1  True artists, he felt, can find themselves at one with the cosmic order of nature.

Edna Tacon ( 1905 - 1980 ) 
In 1927 Tacon graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Music. Taçon traveled to New York to study at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting where she worked with Wassily Kandinsky in 1941. 

Edna Taçon " Gaiety" 1946 
Black and grey blue painting, water colour with red , yellow and blue lines in curvature. 

Edna Taçon " Fleeting" 1946 
Water colour and geometric form through natural organic form. 

OSCAR CAHÉN. ( 1916 - 1956 ) 
Cahen was born in 1916 in Copenhagen Denmark. He attended the State Academy for Applied Arts in 1932 inDresden Germany. Worked mainly as an illustrator and painter. 

OSCAR CAHÉN " The Adoration" 1949 

“My ambition is to show people through my work that the fundamental thing is to have faith,” said Cahén.1  The Adoration, first shown at the Exhibition of Contemporary Canadian Arts, 1950, and marked “Not for Sale,” was Oscar Cahén’s most ambitious work made prior to his turn to abstract painting. It depicts a traditional baby Jesus attended by Mary, Magi, and animals (and some untraditional others, such as the foreground figure bearing a lantern). However, the ethnically half-Jewish Cahén’s actual religious identity remains enigmatic. A friend recalled, “He wished he could believe in God because he wanted so much to know the peace from believing. He made a thorough study of almost every religion in the world and had the uncomfortable habit of suddenly saying, ‘Tell me, why do you believe in God?’”2

Later, Cahén was to say his abstract paintings were in part a search for faith;3  perhaps figuration could not sufficiently address his spiritual questions. We might therefore think of The Adoration and other works with Christian subjects as allegories of universal themes rather than worshipful biblical illustrations. The prominent hanukkiyah (nine-candle menorah used during Hanukkah) in the lower left suggests that, as in the paintings of crucifixions by Marc Chagall (1887–1985), Cahén’s depictions of Jesus’s suffering might function as oblique comments on the persecution of Jews in general.4

The Adoration brings Cahén’s interest in the work of Georges Rouault (1871–1958) and Gothic-period German art together with Cubism. The planes and edges of The Adoration’s figures are hidden and revealed by a mosaic of interlocking, angular shapes. Bright colours, more than narrative, direct the viewer’s eye from the yellow Star of Bethlehem to the picture’s focal point, Jesus in Mary’s hands. But the focal point is overwhelmed by the blinding whiteness of Mary’s near-rectangular apron, signifying her purity. The resulting surface pattern and visual dominance of the relatively secondary status of the apron to the story anticipates Cahén’s impending exploration of abstraction rather than illustration.

OSCAR CAHÉN "Ascend" 1952 
Oscar Cahén had been experimenting with abstraction since at least 1949, but it was not until 1952 that he entered a completely abstract work, Ascend, into an Ontario Society of Artists (OSA) show. This was also the first of his exhibited pieces to adopt a verb for a title, inviting (or commanding) the viewer to engage with the painting as an experience rather than a thing. Ascend, coming on the heels of Cahén’s exploration of Christian themes and just as he was entering a period of intense creative activity, conveys a powerful sense of rebirth. 

The painterly drawing hints at upward movement with hard-edged vertical lines and shafts, the imperfectly rounded forms trapped in or escaping geometric confines. Contrasts of dark and light and illusions of transparency give an atmospheric impression of sun penetrating a gloomy place. The composition tautly suspends its shapes and lines in relation to the corners and sides of the canvas, each and every part vital to the balance and dynamism of the whole. This concern with design over the entirety is a departure from Cahén’s prior tendency to use the edges of a work to 
merely frame a centred object. High contrast. 

OSCAR CAHÉN " Growing For" 1953

By 1953 Oscar Cahén was confidently painting many large abstracts in oil. He participated in ten exhibitions that year alone and eleven more in 1954. Growing Form was included in his first solo show, held at Hart House in Toronto in October 1954 at the invitation of the art committee there.Conservative critic Hugh Thomson ridiculed the show, calling the paintings “vague” and “screw-ball,” similar to “the work we used to do in kindergarten.”Growing Form—from its provenance of forms jabbing, seizing, fighting, and crying out—is more than a tree or flower or simple stick and crescent. Rendered in intense reds with complementary teal and defiant black strokes, its florid, virile “growth” surges up like a fist, conveying a sense of challenge, a call to battle, and a recognition that transformation and flourishing growth accompany pain and suffering—that there is no rose without thorns.

OSCAR CAHEN " Untitled ( 384 )" 1956 

By 1956 Painters Eleven members were well aware of the New York Abstract Expressionists. Oscar Cahén’s Untitled (384), 1956, is kin to the foreboding masses of Robert Motherwell (1915–1991), the abstracted symbols of Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974), and the draftsmanly constructions by Franz Kline (1910–1962). Like theirs, Cahén’s painting retains a calligraphic flair, its hasty-looking yet deliberate black swashes resembling hieroglyphs. But Cahén chose to work at a more intimate size than the grandiose formats made for soaring white wall space favoured by the New Yorkers. Less than a metre wide, Cahén’s painting is scaled for the average home or office, where it would provide a focal point among furniture, windows, books, and ashtrays. Such a setting would invite long, frequent contemplation by its owner, allowing him or her to form a personal relationship with the artwork. Its hieroglyphic touches supply the “escape from loneliness through communication” that Cahén intended his abstract painting to perform. The dry brush marks are telltale painterly spoor, indices to precisely how the artist’s hand moved and at what speed. The viewer, hunting for meaning, responds viscerally, vicariously experiencing the touching of brush to canvas, the springy push-back of the stretched cotton, the rough nap grabbing the pigment, the simultaneous slipperiness and stickiness of the oil.The composition’s tripartite patterns are like drumbeats: three dashes in black; three dashes in pink; three rounded forms floating one above the other; three slashes in black, red, and blue. It recalls deconstructed musical notation reminiscent of the jazz Cahén loved. 

** Quiz next week : five slides to study from. 

Paul Emile Borduas ( 1905- 1960)

“Abstraction Verte (Green Abstraction)” 1941 PAUL EMILE BORUDAS 

“Abstraction No. 25 - Tête cheval ou Fleur-âne” 1942 PAUL EMIL BORDUAS
“Le Bateau Fantasque” 1942 PAUL EMILE BRODUAS 

“Automatisme 1.47 Sous le vent de l’île” 1947 PAUL EMILE BOURDAS

“La Passe Circulaire au Nid D'Avions” 1950 PAUL EMILE BORDUAS 

“L’Étoile Noire (Black Star)” 1957 PAUL EMILEBORDUAS

“Chatoiement” 1956  PAUL EMILE BORDUAS

Francoise Sullivan (1925) 

Danse Dans La Neige” 1948 FRANCOISE SULLIVAN 

“Chute Concentrique” n.d  FRANSCOISE SULLIVAN

Colour Painting, No.2” 2005 FRANSCOISE SULLIVAN

Colour Painting, No.6” 2011 FRASCOISE SULLIVAN

Jean - Paul Riopelle (1923 - 2002)

Untitled (Verso)” 1946  JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE 

“Pavane” 1954 JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE 

Perspectives” 1956 JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE 

“La Joute” 1969-1970 JEAN PAUL RIOPELLE 

Fernand Leduc ( 1916 -2014 )  

“La Derniere Campagne de Napoléon” 1946 FERNAND LEDUC

Portes rouges” 1955 FERNAND LEDUC

 “Jaune” 1962 FERNAND LEDUC

Marcelle Ferron ( 1924-2001) 

Lascive” 1959 MARCELLE FERRON 

Les barrens” 1961 MARCELLE FERRON

Les grandes formes qui dansent” 1968 Champ de Mars Station, Montreal MARCELLE FERRON

Bertram Brooker ( 1888 - 1955 )  

Sounds Assembling” 1928  BERTRAM BROOKER 

Ascending Forms” 1924-34 BEERTRAM BROOKER

Caledon Hills” 1935 BERTRAM BROOKER

White Movement” 1936 BERTRAM BROOKER

Quebec Impression” 1942 BERTRAM BROOKER

Ovalescence” 1954 BERTRAM BROOKER

Marian Scott (1906 – 1993) 

Forest Stairway (Cliff Path)” 1930 MARIAN SCOTT 

“Seated Woman” 1946  MARIAN SCOTT

“Skunk Cabbage” 1948  MARIAN SCOTT

“Untitled” 1972  M,ARIOAN SCOTT

Painters Eleven (1953-1960) 

Tom Hodgson

Alexandra Luke, Harold Town

Kazuo Nakamura,

Jock Macdonald

 Walter Yarwood

Hortense Gordon

 Jack Bush, and 

Ray Mead

 Two canvases represent Oscar Cahen. Canvas turned to wall represents William Ronald. 

Jock MacDonald ( 1897- 1960) 

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald (1897-1960) 

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “Indian Burial, Nootka” 1937 MCDOANLD

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “Drying Herring Roe” 1937 MCDONALD 

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “Fall (Modality 16)” 1937 MCDONALD 

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “Fall (Modality 16)” 1937 MCDONALD 

J.W.G. “Jock” Macdonald “The Ram” 1946 

“Jock” Macdonald “The Witch” 1948 

Macdonald “The Bearer of Gifts” 1948 

Macdonald “Fleeting Breath” 1959 

Macdonald “Far Off Drums” 1960 

Edna Taçon (1905 - 1980 ) 

Edna Taçon (1905 – 1980) 

Edna Taçon “Gaiety” 1946 

Fleeing” 1946 

Oscar Cahén ( 1916-1956 ) 

“The Adoration” 1949 

“Ascend” 1952 

“Growing Form” 1953 

“Untitled (384)” 1956