Cross courts controversy 40 years later
INSTALLATION WOULD LIE TOO CLOSE TO CONVENT, MONTREAL MAYOR SAYS
Pierre Ayot’s sculpture La croix du Mont-Royal stood for just a few days in 1976 before the mayor of the day, Jean Drapeau, ordered it and the rest of the Corridart exhibit along Sherbrooke Street destroyed on the eve of the Olympics.
“Too many works exhibited in Corridart presented unfavourable images of the city, its population, its education,” Justice Ignace Deslauriers would later write in rejecting the artists’ lawsuit against the city. “Art should not insult people.”
Forty years after Drapeau’s notorious assault on art, a project to temporarily remount Ayot’s work depicting the Mount Royal cross leaning on its side has hit a lastminute roadblock because the current mayor, Denis Coderre, is worried people might take offence.
The proposed location in an open space at the foot of Mount Royal is beside a historic convent, whose residents say they do not want an “overturned cross” outside their property.
The cross was scheduled to be installed from Thursday through Nov. 27 at the corner of Pine and Park avenues, in a field beside the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph convent. The project had received a $10,000 grant from the city and been issued permits by the province and the local borough.
But when Coderre learned of the project last Friday, he put his foot down. Spokesman Marc-André Gosselin said the mayor was concerned there had not been adequate consultation of the religious order. Gosselin said the mayor supports the project but not next to a convent.
“We are working on determining the place where it will be installed, where it will be the most respectful of the history of Montreal and the religious communities who participated in its foundation,” he said.
The recreation of La croix du Mont-Royal is part of a major retrospective this fall focusing on the work of Ayot, who died in a car accident in 1995 at the age of 51.
His longtime partner, Madeleine Forcier, said Ayot was devastated by the destruction of Corridart, which had city crews using cranes and dump trucks moving in overnight to dismantle the open-air exhibition stretching kilometres. Ayot was a leader in the court battle seeking compensation from the city for the damage.
“He put a lot of energy into it, because it was really an affront to freedom of expression, and now 40 years later it’s incredible that it feels like history is repeating itself,” Forcier said.
She said Ayot did not intend the work as affront to the church but rather as a commentary on Quebec society.
“It was in the 1970s, after the Quiet Revolution, which had really called into question religious power versus political power,” she said.
“Clearly it was a way to reflect on what was being experienced in terms of religion, but it was not at all his idea to insult religion or the Catholic religion. It was just a way to get people to reflect on their society, which was building itself from different foundations.” Marie-Thérèse Laliberté, the convent’s superior general, said to her the “overturned cross” represents protest. “At this time, as Religious Hospitallers whose congregation is tied to the foundation of this city, we would be very uncomfortable to see this work installed near us, partially blocking buildings that speak to Montreal’s cultural and religious history,” she said in a written statement.
The original work, built from rented construction material, was erected in front of McGill University, with Mount Royal and its illuminated cross visible in the background. The sculpture was destroyed and thrown away, Forcier said, leaving the people behind the current exhibition to work from a photograph to recreate it.
Forcier, who remains director of an art gallery she co-founded with Ayot, said she thinks the location rejected by Coderre would have been ideal.
“It would have been as if the cross had come down on its own from Mount Royal and after the trip was having a rest on its side,” she said. “I don’t understand what the motivation is for changing the place. How do we know that the new location won’t offend people?”
Gosselin would not say what alternate locations are being considered.
40 YEARS LATER IT’S INCREDIBLE THAT IT FEELS LIKE HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF.