FOUR WAYS BACK INTO ART
From portraits to video, MMFA'S fall program focuses on connection
It has been a long haul.
For Montreal Museum of Fine Arts director Stéphane Aquin, four shows debuting this month mark the museum's first conventional openings since he took his position in the autumn of 2020.
“It's a very good feeling,” Aquin said last week, looking around as his team worked on various preparatory touches for the shows. All of the exhibits have been readied, under Covid-constrained conditions, in concentrated spans that put everyone involved to the test. Aquin's pride — and his sense of relief at a significant step toward something like normalcy — was palpable.
How Long Does It Take for One Voice to Reach Another?
(continuing through Feb. 13) achieves a counterintuitive coup by taking what might appear to be a sonic concept and making a compelling visual — and, yes, auditory — show of it. The title, inspired by a quote from poet Carolyn Forché that has been inscribed since 1991 on the museum's Jean-noël Desmarais Pavilion Promenade, speaks to ideas of separation and connection that have grown especially poignant over the past 18 months.
“It's not just about what we hear,” curator Mary-dailey Desmarais said of the show's concept. “It's about the symbolic dimension of what a voice is. And it's about creative human expression, which is what art is.”
The theme is explored in multiple media by a stellar lineup of contemporary artists: Rebecca Belmore, whose 1991 sound installation Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother is a striking symbol of cross-generational cultural reclamation; Nick Cave (the American visual artist, not the Australian musician), whose Soundsuit is part of his acclaimed, sui generis series of wearable sculptures on musical themes; Janet Cardiff, whose The Forty-part Motet: Voices in Unison is an immersive highlight; Haitian-born Montrealer Stanley Février, represented by a powerful Black Lives Matter-themed piece; and many others. Adding considerable heft to the lineup is the presence of Old Masters from the collection, among them no less than Rembrandt and Rodin.
The World of Yousuf Karsh: A Private Essence
(Sept. 22 to Jan. 30) looks beyond the iconic images of Canada's great portrait photographer — indeed, probably the greatest portrait photographer of the 20th century — to give a rounded account of his unique talent and sensibility. Which is not to say the icons aren't well represented. “The image of Churchill is what people will see as they enter the show,” said Hilliard Goldfarb, MMFA senior curator of collections.
Escaping the Armenian genocide at the time of the Ottoman Empire, Karsh's parents sent him to Quebec in 1923, when he was 15. He took up photography via an interest in theatre, and after apprenticing in various cities chose Ottawa over Montreal as his base because, in Goldfarb's words, “he thought it would be a place where interesting international subjects would come through.”
He was right. An entrée with the governor general led to a session with Prime Minister Mackenzie King and then, in 1941, to The Roaring Lion, the definitive study of Winston Churchill as a wartime leader. Done under trying circumstances — the British PM was strapped for time and in an obstreperous mood — the resulting shot nonetheless demonstrates Karsh's uncanny gift for putting subjects at ease, or at least appearing to, achieving a perfect melding of the posed and the spontaneous.
“There's an idealization, but there's also the catching of a moment that reveals something of the person,” said Goldfarb.
The description is borne out not only in studies of world leaders and celebrities — Peter Lorre, Albert Einstein, Katharine Hepburn, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela — but of ordinary Canadians, for whom Karsh's obvious compassion was underpinned by his immigrant experience.
The selection of 111 pictures was negotiated by Goldfarb in close consultation with Karsh's widow, Estrellita, who lives in Boston. The photographs, Goldfarb emphasizes, are not taken from negatives: they are the original vintage prints, executed in the darkroom by Karsh himself and affording the rare opportunity of a close-up examination of that aspect of his genius.
With Ragnar Kjartansson, Sumarnótt: Death Is Elsewhere
(Sept. 28 to Jan. 2), a country that has long punched above its weight in terms of international cultural impact is in the spotlight again. Icelandic video and performance artist Kjartansson has devised a 77-minute video graphic installation in which two sets of twin musicians — Kristín Anna and Gyða Valtýsdóttir of the Icelandic band Múm and Aaron and Bryce Dessner of American indie stars the National — criss-cross a sonic field across a seven-part backdrop, filmed during midnight sun season, of the country's Laki volcano. Opportunities for symbolic interpretation — the challenges of communication, mortality, human isolation and community, nature in its glory but also under threat — are seemingly limitless. Or visitors can simply let the multi-sensory work take them where it may.
It's hardly surprising that a workplace dedicated to art should attract employees who are artists themselves. Outside the Frame: Works by Artists Among Us (continuing through Feb. 13) is an eloquent example, presenting works by nearly every MMFA staffer.
“We were in the middle of the pandemic, working from home and missing each other, when (Mary-dailey Desmarais) had the idea to make everyone on the staff feel part of a team,” said curator Iris Amizlev. “I see it as a continuation of our concept of inclusion.”
All staffers were invited to contribute; the result is a tribute to people whose efforts are usually felt but not seen. Their art, in many forms, requires no apology in this setting.
“Even as a curator, I found myself discovering my colleagues in a new way,” Amizlev said. The link the exhibition provides is not only between the employees, but between the museum and the broader community.