Page 66 - Studio International - November 1970

and understanding throughout society, any community to which the message is addressed, of their time.' The redirecting was inevitable :
attempt to achieve higher stand�rds will be one is excluded. Also, as a populist movement, success involved liberation from European
meaningless.' 0 advertised to bring art to all the people styles. Nevertheless the paintings are not neg­
ANDREW HIGGENS regardless of elites and academies, its aims are ligible. Mr Reid, in recording the 'regular
distinguished from those of modern art move­ excursions in search of inspiring landscape' -
Canadian home- rown ments with which we are familiar in Europe. a tiresome habit we have to accept about
g
Moreover the members of the Group were Turner also-emphasizes 'the creativity in
their own popularizers and positively invited discovering it' rather than in the product and
Le Groupe des Sept. The Group of Seven by
Dennis Reid. 248 pp with 224 monochrome do-it-yourself participators, all over the would like to explain away the dependence
country-how many honorary housewife­
on lapdscape, unique and significant as he
illustrations. The National Gallery of Canada, members of the Group of Seven there must acknowledges this to be, in terms of the socio­
Ottawa. $8.00 hardcover; $5.00 paper. have been. Perhaps it is in this non-establish­ logy of a 'need for a confrontation with
The first exhibition of the Group of Seven was ment temper that they come closest to the fundamentals in the face of the increasing
held in May 1920. The fiftieth anniversary is present moment. arbitrariness of a complex technological
the occasion of an important exhibition In addition- the Group of Seven has to be society ... they ( of the Group) substituted the
organized by Mr Dennis Reid, for the reckoned _as a 'modern art' movement for, ,problems of depicting the Canadian shield for
National Gallery of Canada, which presents despite the old-fashioned insistence that art is cubist concern with pictorial and real space'.
their work frorri the period in which their more about something else than about art, We are not easily tuned to evaluating an art
aspirations developed coherency and their circumstances jostled them into the battle for so obsessively hooked on a subject matter in
programme was formulated to the time, 1931, modern art even though they preferred to all its visual, and symboli.c connotations. Mr
when they dissolved the Group into a wider fight on the other grounds. Somewhat earlier Reid perhaps makes too many excuse�.
association of Canadian artists. The volume initiatives by Canadian artists, by temper:'1- For, if the myth, the heroes and totems
under review is a fully documented catalogue, ment more internationalist, had little impact. remain with Canada, it is the paintings that
in French and English,- reproducing all the Morrice in any case, in 1911, had said 'I have stay for the rest of us. If Mr Reid persuades us
exhibits, accompanied by a chronological not the slightest desire to improve the taste of that the 'nature' of the work� contributed little
narrative by Mr Reid of the activities of the the Canadian public'* and naturally had not to the cultural force exerted we can still ask a
members of the Group during the same period. done so. John Lyman who tried, had been few questions. Isn't the stance of the Group
If the exhibition of 1920 was a milestone in rebuffed. The Group of Seven exposed to formally incorporated into the works? Into
the history of Canadian art, as it undoubtedly Toronto what was an outrageous new art. We their directness, their simplifications and
was, Dennis Reid's book matches it as a con-, can't be too snooty either. Their early rhythms? Isn't this ultimately their creat�ve
tribution to the study of this history. exhibitions, before the Group was formally merit even if other developments were imped­
'We ,must understand,' he writes, 'what established, coincided with the emergence ed thereby? And then the landscape thing.
happened during those twenty years from in England of the Camden Town Group and Aren't the best works more than enthusiastic
1911 to 1931 which established the Group of the Vortfcists and the first years of the records and reflections. of Canadian land­
Seven as the exclusive proponents of "advan­ London Group. Doing a similar job was one_ scape, Rather, statements peculiarly impreg­
ced" art in Canada, and culminated in what part of their achievement. Their background nated by its qualities? Anyonenotknowingthe
almost amounted to their canonization.' He was not so dissimilar. Two of the members Canadian landscape would hardly guess how
goes on to report comprehensively and to . came from Sheffield School of Art, others had disturbing of expectation it ea� be; for
review with scrupulous judgement their pro­ trained in Paris and Berlin. To the second­ instance, how distorting of one's accepted
gress to this 'almost mythical status'. His con­ generation Impressionism of the schools they distance scaling. It is easy to dismiss many of
clusions are all the more interesting as coming added the influence of Scandinavian Post­ the paintings as marvellous poster designs, the
from a scholar too young to have been Impressionism, of Jugendstil, in colour, of members of the Group as hardly painters at
involved in the passions and arguments that Fauvism. A. Y.Jackson objectt;d to their being all, colouring designs not painting in colour.
surrounded the Group for so long, young called 'provincial' and in terms of the English- This has all been said and ·an English critic
enough to have )mown only a Canada whose speaking art world of the time he was justified. could confidently rate Varley as the 'artist',
artists had accepted internationalism, how� Considering what they achieved in this un­ precisely because he was least committed to
ever pervasive the Group and its works. re­ popular stage of their campaign it is hard not the stance of the Group, the one who most
mained as a fact of common culture. This is to dissent, with due hesitation, from Dennis retained the touch and the nuances of
his summing up: 'The phenomenon which is Reid's view that the phenomenon 'has very European sensibility. The Group of Seven
known as the Group of Seven has very little to little to do with the nature of the artists' were campaigners, never for commercial or
do with the nature of the artist's paintings, paintings'. That must count a-little more in the fashionable success, in the interest of con­
and a great deal to do with their stance and balance than he allows. victions that had a secure emotional hold.
their struggle to gain acceptance of that Beyond the success, consider the 'incredible These were conveyed to the public and lasted,
stance. They seldom expressed interest in staying power'. Mr Reid understands very but they lasted also for the artists and sus­
artistic theories but cons.tantly trumpeted the well all the reasons other than artistic ones tained long productive careers." Although I
ideal of a Canadian art for Canadians, under­ that underpinned this. In turn I understand find much of the work indigestible I have the
lying which was a profound belief in the how it may irk him, as it would irk me were I feeling that the programmed intentions were
necessity of engaging.a large segment of the a Canadian of his.generation, that 'their re­ formative to the work in a way that streng­
population in an active relationship with a · directing or even avoidance, of the issues thens and comes through as a virtue. The
living art of their own making.' inherent in the mainstream of modern art best paintings in short are better than one
So, as a nationalist movement, this is a rarity ultimately retarded such concerns in Canada would expect from the artists' own recorded
in the course of twentieth-century art, nearer to such an extent that it was not until the mid­ comments on their art. Say, the MacDonald's
in spirit to various European movements of fifties . . . that English speaking Canadian of 1919-20 or the Lawren Harris's of 1922-24.
the nineteenth. Aesthetic judgement from the artists first successfully approached the prob­ Despite their complete concordance with
outside is compromised. It's �ike listening to lems presented by the most advan�ed painting those aims of the Group which could rebut
Smetana's Vltava or Sibeliu.s' Karelia Suite. * Quoted by J. Russell Harper, Painting in Canada. A one's approaches, there is something left over,
From the sources of inspiration as from the History, 1966. in the 'nature' of these works, which surely
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