REFRAME ART FIASCO
Many art patrons remember the gasps that greeted the National Gallery of Canada’s 1989 purchase of Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire. Yes, for a cool $1.8 million, the gallery had just acquired a 5.4-metre canvas composed of three vertical stripes.
Indignation! Shock! Why, a five-year-old could have painted that, blared more than a few dismayed taxpayers. Art cognoscenti sniffed back about metaphysics and colour palettes and the like. The war or words went on for months.
Yet the controversy drew customers. Love or hate Voice of Fire, people showed up to see it. Some even stayed long enough to notice a few other creations, such as works by Jackson Pollock and Lawren Harris.
That moment in fine-art history, we hope, won’t be lost on the board of directors of the National Gallery, who this week cancelled the controversial auction of Marc Chagall’s The Eiffel Tower, which the gallery had decided to put on the block in order to raise money quickly. For the millions it believed the Chagall would reap at auction, the gallery wanted to purchase an 18th-century work by JacquesLouis David that it said was in danger of leaving the country for another buyer.
But the Chagall-for-David rescue plan blew up — in no small part due to the instinctive secrecy and lack of communication that so often backstop the actions of publicly funded institutions. Quebec galleries wanted to keep the David from leaving, too, and tried, unsuccessfully, to discuss sharing it with their Ottawa-based counterpart. The tussle ended with the Quebec government simply declaring the David a treasure that could not leave the province.
The Chagall sale was no longer necessary, but, stubbornly, the National Gallery insisted for days that it would still go ahead, before issuing a short “open letter” Thursday night acknowledging that the work had been withdrawn from auction. What penalty the auction house might apply wasn’t discussed.
So the gallery’s planning palette is a mess. Still, this crisis can end in opportunity. The Chagall was long in storage; now would be the perfect time to display it publicly and proudly. Canadians who want to know what the fuss is about will flock to Canada’s foremost art institution, either to scratch their heads over a blurry picture of Paris, or to admire the artist’s whimsical style.
They’ll pay their admission, debate the art deal that wasn’t, and hang around to see some other famous works. Maybe they’ll like Newman’s Voice of Fire.