His letters as beautiful as paintings
The Show: Where the Universe Sings: The Spiritual Journey of Lawren Harris The Moment: The letter to Emily
As we see in this documentary by Nancy Lang and Peter Raymont, the Canadian painters Lawren Harris and Emily Carr met in 1927, and began exchanging letters.
She praised his “world shorn of fretting details, purged and purified.” He encouraged her, “Stay with your own way. Use the feeling that the stuff is awful to make the next thing less awful. I’ve learned to keep right on, despite the recurring sureness that my stuff is pretty damn sad.” A more succinct summary of the artistic mindset you cannot find.
Harris didn’t leave us only paintings. He also gave us reams about why he painted; why he needed to. “I’m in great need of losing my littleness,” he wrote in 1930, on his first trip to the Arctic, where he’d make some of his most definitive work. “I’m hoping to get freed from my inhibitions and move into exaltation.”
This doc makes liberal use of Harris’s prose. Sometimes we hear it in voice-over (from Colm Feore) while an actor pretends to paint. This is hokey but forgivable. Much better are the times when his words wash over us while the camera lingers on his art.
In these moments, the spiritual journey promised by the title comes most alive.
I’m truly worried for future biographers and filmmakers, who will have to explain their subjects without the gift of correspondence.
You don’t find a phrase like, “Art is a bridge between the great moral harmony of the universe and our own souls” in an email. Where the Universe Sings airs Saturday at 9 p.m. on TVO, with repeats Sunday at 11 p.m. and on June 30 at 9 p.m. and mid- night. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on popculture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.