SPOTLIGHT ON EMILY CARR
Major German exhibition to showcase Canadian artist’s work.
Paintings by Emily Carr are about to receive international attention like never before in one of the biggest and most influential art exhibitions in the world.
In an unprecedented event for a deceased Canadian painter, seven oil- on- canvas paintings by Carr from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection have been included at dOCUMENTA ( 13) in Kassel, Germany.
During its 100- day run starting Saturday, dOCUMENTA will attract more than 750,000 people paying to see works by more than 70 artists from 55 countries.
DOCUMENTA is known for selecting cutting- edge contemporary artists and under- acknowledged historical artists, introducing them to a wider audience.
While dOCUMENTA isn’t a sporting competition, its effect on the art world has been compared to that of the Olympics in sport.
“It’s extraordinarily important for Emily Carr for her work to be seen in this international context,” said Kathleen Bartels, director of the VAG. “In British Columbia, we think she’s ours and not known like she should be. This is an opportunity for the art community and hundreds of thousands of visitors who go to dOCUMENTA to be familiar with Emily Carr.
“The fact that these stellar works are from the Vancouver Art Gallery collection is something we’re extraordinarily proud of.”
For Carr, who battled poverty and obscurity during her lifetime, being included in dOCUMENTA represents a huge acknowledgment of her accomplishments as an artist, 67 years after her death. Although work by painters such as Jean- Paul Riopelle have been included in previous dOCUMENTAs while they were alive, Carr is the first Canadian historical painter to be shown at the exhibition in Kassel. No Group of Seven painter, for example, has ever been included in previous dOCUMENTAs.
In the art world, dOCUMENTA is unique because of the secrecy around revealing participating artists. The exhibition has a history of keeping the full list of artists secret until its big announcement which is expected later today.
The secrecy has extended across the globe to the VAG, according to the gallery’s senior curator Ian Thom.
Only a small group of people in the gallery knew Carr paintings were heading to Europe. All communication was one- to- one phone calls and emails. Until recently, the VAG wasn’t even told of the exhibition’s title, which is the unusual and long The dance was very frenetic, lively, rattling, clanging, rolling, contorted and lasted for a very long time.
The secrecy extended to installing Carr’s paintings in Kassel. Thom spent 19 ½ hours in transit accompanying the Carrs as they were shipped from the VAG and hung in the Neue Galerie. He said he met some Australian art officials who were installing the work of an Australian artist at the gallery. Despite being prodded, Thom wouldn’t name the artist.
Thom has no idea why dOCUMENTA requires such secrecy.
“You’ll have to ask them that,” he said in an interview at the VAG after his return. “I can only assume that it is because dOCUMENTA is an extraordinarily big deal. The reality is that some people’s careers have been made by being in dOCUMENTA.”
In selecting works, artistic director Carolyn Christov- Bakargiev was
helped by a team of curators around the world.
In Canada, it was Kitty Scott, the director of visual arts at The Banff Centre.
Thom said the Carr paintings that dOCUMENTA selected depict both first nations and the forest.
They were all painted after 1927 when Carr met Lawren Harris and the Group of 7 and was included in a major exhibition of native and modern art in the National Gallery in Ottawa. Carr, who had virtually stopped painting for 15 years, became rejuvenated by the encounter with modernist painting and gradually started moving to what Thom called her late, great subject matter — the forest.
“I think what Carolyn Christov- Bakargiev is interested in is in people, particularly women, who were engaging with modernism in some way and were outside of the mainstream — on the periphery of the world,” Thom said. “Emily Carr was clearly one of those people on the periphery of the world.”
Thom said while there have been a number of attempts to get Carr into the international big time like the U. S. artist Georgia O’Keeffe, it hasn’t happened — at least not yet.
“This may be one of the ways she gets introduced to a much larger audience,” he said.
“Certainly the Germans and Austrians have been extraordinarily fascinated by first nations’ culture. I think they will be interested in those pictures and also how she looks at the natural world of B. C.”
Besides Carr, other Canadian artists at dOCUMENTA are Brian Jungen, Geoffrey Farmer, Gareth Moore, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.
Carr paintings being exhibited in Kassel are The Raven, Totem Mother, Kitwancool, Vanquished, Totem and Forest, Forest, British Columbia, Red Cedar and Tree Trunk.