Page 29 - Studio International - December 1968

A Canadian scene: 3

In the final article of his series based on a recent visit to Canada, David Thompson describes
the work of five leading Canadian artists

David Thompson

• Canadianism' in Canadian art is still a ghost that hasn't quite been activity, but in terms of achievement one still tends to see Canadian
laid. The old provincial image of it may have been shattered, but art at present mainly as an aggregate of particular leading talents,
there remains a strong compulsion to find something to take its place, none of which is necessarily very relevant to another. Some of these
some feeling of national identity, if that can be done without pre- have been discussed in the course of my previous two articles, but
judicing or contradicting what are now international habits of the five discussed here are considered individually, solely because
thought. This compulsion gives the Canadian scene much of its any generalizations about anything so complex and various as the
exhilarating drive and sense of ferment. One feels a recognition of art of a whole country must boil down ultimately to individual
solidarity as the boundaries of distance and isolation across the examples. 'Canadianism', whatever it is, depends on what particular
country get to mean less and less. But is there, or can there be, a artists are doing and how they do it.
`national identity' in terms of Canadian art itself? It is a question
perhaps easiest approached by negatives. Canadian art is not, for Guido Molinari
example, like American art, even when it seems most influenced by, `Les Plasticiens' is the only post-war movement in Canadian paint-
or dependent upon, American example. At the same time, its in- ing which can really be said to have been both self-generated and, in
dividuality is not so distinct that it can be identified stylistically, any significant way, self-generating. Out of its Mondrian- and
with the single exception of painting in Montreal. The main centres Malevich-orientated emphasis on hard-edge relational painting has
of activity are not settled enough, have not had time enough, to grown the high-keyed, taut over-all surface and optical-colour bias
develop a corporate, as distinct from an arbitrarily collective, of the present Montreal 'school', which is, for better or worse, the most
character. One can trace patterns of interest, even areas of group- readily identifiable symbol of modern Canadian art outside Canada

Guido Molinari Seriel Orange-vert 1968, acrylic on canvas. 80 x 144 in., Coll : the artist