Leonard and Reva Brooks: Artists in Exile in San Miguel de Allende by John Virtue (review)

524 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Buckler at the >crossroads= between >nineteenth-century cultural stances= (Platonic, Renaissance, and Romantic >phenomenological and ontological concerns=) and >modernist= aesthetic philosophies, even anticipating >postmodern discursive techniques.= But I do not think this critical volume of philosophy and rhetoric, that never devotes more than a few pages at a time to a story or novel, and only excerpts them as illustrations of theoretical principles (often ignoring or distorting the thematic meaning of the literary texts) will send any Canadian reader back to Buckler=s works for rediscovery or reassessment. (BARBARA PELL) John Virtue. Leonard and Reva Brooks: Artists in Exile in San Miguel de Allende McGill-Queen=s University Press. xx, 396. $45.00 John Virtue=s double biography piqued my interest for its potential to examine the lives and works of an artistic couple B one a painter, the other a photographer B who have not figured in standard Canadian art-historical texts, and to evaluate their contribution, probing the possible reasons for this neglect. It could answer a number of questions, such as the extent to which it was possible for Canadian artists to attain critical and/or commercial success if they steered clear of the nationalist idiom (indigenous landscape painting) during the period covered in this book (mid-1930s to the end of the century), or chose to live abroad. It was certainly not the easy route, as the careers of David Milne and Jack Bush have demonstrated. Why was Leonard Brooks=s work not embraced by the Canadian art establishment B a source of disappointment and bitterness in his life? The couple=s experience is also an interesting case study of expatriation in the pursuit of creative freedom B surely >exile= is too strong a word in this context, considering the scores of artists and writers around the world currently facing real persecution, and being forced out of their homelands. Virtue describes both the stifling atmosphere of Toronto society in the 1940s and 1950s which they left behind, and the attractions of the small town of San Miguel de Allende which was their destination in Mexico. While San Miguel has long been known as a destination for Canadian artists, the author fleshes out the details of daily life there, at least those aspects that involved Leonard and Reva Brooks, who are described as central to its activities in the early years. But John Virtue also points out how freedom came at a price B Leonard Brooks=s prolonged absence cost him dearly in terms of public recognition and marketability in Canada. While the book does provide background for a neglected period in Toronto=s cultural and social life, and a view into the expatriate experience in Mexico, it is disappointing for a number of reasons. The author, who has made a career in the field of print journalism, and has been personally humanities 525 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 acquainted with the artists for a number of years, states from the outset that he is neither an art historian nor a critic, and that the book is intended simply as biography. Even so, it is so laden with trivialities and diversions that fail to advance the narrative that the reader is left with no sense of the place that Leonard and Reva Brooks occupy in the history of Canadian visual culture, which would seem to be the reason for telling their particular story. The tone is chatty and anecdotal, often reading like a radio script. Sources are cited, but they are often inadequately footnoted by academic standards (this is a fair criticism, considering that the publisher is an academic press), and the uncritical use of press reviews renders them of little historical use. Husband and wife receive unequal treatment; whereas Leonard is lionized, his affairs and juvenile antics celebrated, Reva is treated much less sympathetically, the traumas of her early adulthood skimmed over, and much of her behaviour explained by her inability to bear children. Some unsympathetic comments from acquaintances, like Earle Birney or Miriam Waddington, were perhaps better left out of print. The author...