Page 20 - Studio International - January 1965

Gallery going in Toronto

by Dennis Young

Summer or winter the sky is monotonous blue. You1 fourth year running, a ticket to 'the Gardens' (collar and
astro-jet circles over super highways and gleaming tie de rigueur) has more cachet than one to the Toronto
high-rise apartments; you take in water-front sky­ Symphony. But Toronto does have a symphony
scrapers with eyes squinted against the dazzle of the orchestra (under Walter Susskind); and its achieve­
lake, and sweep down to the continent's newest airport ments multiply, from heavyweight George Chuvalo and
over an ever growing ring of landscaped and pastel­ last year's winner of the Kentucky Derby to its remark­
shaded suburbs. Not seventy minutes from New York able taverns where you can hear the best jazz on the
by 727, you are landing in one of the great boom towns continent (Earl Hines and Oscar Peterson are performing
of the Commonwealth. in two of them as I write). It has a fine arts radio and a
Only some twenty years ago. Wyndham Lewis could new French language radio which interviewed Man

characterize Toronto as a sanctimonious ice box; and Ray in its first week; it runs two TV networks and three
yet today Tor onto sparkles-and spends per capita twice 18 oz. newspapers; and, outdoing almost every other
as much on construction as any other city of North city on the continent it has thirty-five art galleries, a
America. Two million Torontonians have hit the big third of which rank with the best in New York or
time; this last bastion of Calvin has fallen, you might London.
say, to the trumpets of conspicuous consumption, and Although there are indications that the graph may
in a brief ten years the arts, obedient to The Theory of soon level out this impressive number is still growing:
Michael Snow the Leisure Classes. have risen to claim their own. in the commercial sector, no doubt from the attraction
Venus Simuhaneous. 1962 Of course, the supreme art remains ice hockey, and, of profits-for. even if the market is at some points
118 X 79 X 8 1n.
The Art Gallery of Toronto with the Maple Leafs likely world champions for the slow, profits there have certainly been, and the room
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