BRINGING PAINTING BACK
The Vancouver Art Gallery puts the modern Canadian scene on display
The Vancouver Art Gallery is about to open an exhibition about contemporary painting. Some people might be tempted to say, “It’s about time.” To art world insiders, the exhibition signals a big change in the ideology around painting.
Not too long ago, painting was considered dead, finished, forever left in the dustbin of history. Its official demise was announced by the influential art journal October when it published the now-famous essay The End of Painting in 1981.
But, of course, there was dissent. As many artists and curators focused their attention on other mediums such as photography, video and installation, various rearguard actions formed.
One of the new approaches started as a result of what was going on in art schools such as the Nova Scotia College of Art in Halifax.
In the 1970s, David MacWilliam was among 300 art students at NSCAD when the school became an international centre for a new approach to art that favoured the idea over materials. It was called conceptual art.
At the time, MacWilliam was among a generation of artists who felt painting had become decorative and beautiful. They wanted to make paintings that looked different and, in a sense, more scientific so that the gesture of the artist wasn’t so visible and apparent.
If the art world had taken a turn toward conceptual art, they reasoned, then why can’t painting be conceptual too?
“What if we consider painting as a concept or model or proposition and began to look critically at the process of making a painting?” MacWilliam said.
MacWilliam is an artist and, until his retirement this past summer, taught painting at Emily Carr University of Art and Design for 30 years. For the past two years, MacWilliam and a group of artists who teach painting at local universities have met every couple of months to look at a painting by one of the artists in the group and talk about it.
They thought it would be interesting to organize a symposium around painting. They approached the VAG and asked senior curator Bruce Grenville if the gallery wanted to be involved. He said yes before coming back with a counter proposal: What about being part of an exhibition?
The result is Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting.
“This exhibition starts at that post-conceptual moment when painting was being re-imagined and sort of moves forward from there,” MacWilliam said.
In an interview, Grenville recalled similar days as an art student in the 1970s when painting was considered finished as a serious art form.
“It’s true,” he said. “I remember being a student at the time. Painting was dead. It was all over. Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting
Opens Saturday, continues to Jan. 1 Vancouver Art Gallery
Nobody wanted to think or talk about it.”
When he was approached by MacWilliam about an exhibition on contemporary conceptual painting, Grenville knew he wanted to take an expanded look at the medium. He was interested in another approach to painting called performative that foregrounded materials over ideas, doing and making over conceiving.
“I was interested in a group of painters who weren’t working with ideas, but with materials,” he said.
“Their work was based on an apprehension or a perception of materials. The makers treated the materials as a defining principle of making painting.”
Entangled tells the story of contemporary painting through these two approaches: conceptual and performative. It features the work of 31 artists, some historical, most contemporary. They range from Claude Tousignant, Joyce Wieland and Garry Neill Kennedy to Ron Terada, Stephanie Aitken and Julie Trudel.
Grenville admitted it was a bit unusual for the VAG to mount a show of contemporary painting.
“This is David’s point: Nobody is talking about this,” Grenville said.
In other cities, a discourse has developed around contemporary painting. That’s largely been absent in Vancouver.
“This is a moment to focus on and celebrate painting,” Grenville said.
Grenville agreed the subtitle “two views” on contemporary Canadian painting suggests that there could be other views.
“It was never meant to be a survey of Canadian painting,” he said.
“It was more about these two ideas that seem to have a strength that came out of the same moment in contemporary art. They really do emerge from the ’70s. They do have a direct and rich connection with the past but very much of the contemporary moment. You see parallel conversations around the world.
“But they are two distinct views. They do tell us a lot about the present moment. Are they the only views on contemporary painting? No, I assure you not.”
MacWilliam said he wanted to stress the importance of being able to see actual art works in an exhibition such as Entangled rather than digital versions online.
“It’s important for people to see art objects,” he said.
“They’re expensive to bring them here. I think it’s incredibly amazing that we brought all this work from Quebec, Toronto, Prairies and the Maritimes. Literally, the VAG is the only institution that could afford to mount such an exhibition.”