Paul-Emile Borduas by François-Marc Gagnon (review)

HUMANITIES 237 All of the texts are presented with their 'final' versions intact except for spelling and punctuation corrections, with variant wordings from other states painstakingly set out in the annotation, or, in the case of long variant passages, in appendices at the back of the book. With the 1943 article 'Manieres de gotHer une oeuvre d'art,' the editors found it particularly inappropriate to view the final text as an absolute, and thus included, in addition to the usual annotation and appendices, two full, previously unpublished versions which are strikingly different from the well-known one that appeared in Amerique franraise. One could criticize the book's organization for offering the reader only inadequate direction through all this complex textual material; but the criticism is a minor one given the importance of its accomplishments. The volume's annotation also supports the writings and the editors' presentation texts, through the inclusion of material such as relevant biographical details and references to closely related primary sources and other publications. Especially enriching are the many brief (five to thirty lines), tightly focused biographies of people mentioned in Borduas's texts or otherwise essential to them. Both Bourassa and Fisette have published work on Automatiste literature before; most notably, there is Bourassa's Surrealisme et litterature quebecoise (rev ed, Herbes rouges 1986), itself a monumental book. Ecrits I takes its place as the fruit of much distinguished scholarship in Quebec, theirs and others.' As part of the 'Bibliotheque du Nouveau Monde,' a collection of critical editions ofwritings basic to Quebec's cultural history, it makes a great contribution to that history. (LORA SENECHAL CARNEY) Fran<;ois-Marc Gagnon. Paul-Emile Borduas Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 486. $79.95 Fran~ois-Marc Gagnon's monumental catalogue for the 1988 Borduas retrospective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is the first large-scale study of the artist to become available in the English language. It is therefore both timely and welcome. It contains handsome, full-page colour plates of all 147 works in the exhibition, and will make evidence of Borduas's achievement as a painter generally accessible. Although colour plates are always only an approximation to paintings, the sumptuousness of this volume is a fitting parallel to the experience of the exhibition. How are the paintings of Borduas framed by the exhibition and by the catalogue text? The curator, Fran~ois-Marc Gagnon, is already author of a monumental 'critical biography and analysis of the work' of Borduas. He has chosen not to duplicate this material here, and has rejected also the usual presentation of an artist's retrospective in terms of formal development , with emphasis on stylistic phases and influences. Instead, Gagnon 238 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 presents an exhibition with a thesis: the reconstruction of the artist's public exhibition career. The selection and grouping of paintings thus focuses on 'works exhibited by Borduas during his lifetime and the reception they received at the time.' Methodologically, this has interesting payoffs. As Gagnon points out, it 'throws light on the artist's own perception of his work,' on his assessment of the art scene, and on his strategies of self-presentation. At the same time it gives us a concrete picture of the possibilities for reaching and communicating with an audience that Borduas found in each of the four main centres where he worked - Saint-Hilaire, Montreal, New York, and Paris. (Indeed for Gagnon it is a question of Borduas's seeking 'his audience,' which is assumed to be a universal one.) Certainly each of these centres was characterized by very different conditions for the making and the dissemination of art, as emerges from the exhibition history and the critical reactions which Gagnon documents. The trajectory of Borduas's life, which took him from the small, conservative Roman Catholic community of Saint-Hilaire to ever larger and more cosmopolitan centres, reflected the artist's quest for a universal understanding of the contemporary human condition. In abstract, experimental, avant-garde art Borduas first found a means of challenging the repressively traditional social and cultural conditions of Quebec. His 'exile' in New York and Paris was not necessary only in order to earn his living as an artist after he had been scapegoated by the Quebec government for the publication of Refus global. It was al~o a means of testing his hypothesis - born in the struggles with provincial isolation and conservatism - that an abstract art based on spontaneity and on attunement with deep human passions and instinctive drives was a path to the regeneraton of humanistic values in an irreversibly secular and overly rationalized world. Hence Borduas's desire to test his art in the conditions of life and of art-making in the great world centres - New York, Paris, and Tokyo (the latter still on his agenda at the time of his death). Gagnon refers briefly to Borduas's stated goals, and to the artist's reflections on the 'ever broadening circles' of his experience, in the introductions to each section of the catalogue. His narrative, however, is not biographical. Nor does it offer interpretations of Borduas's work by juxtaposingitwith the rhetoric with whichthe artist himself so eloquently clothed it. Such explorations are important, but are available elsewhere. Gagnon's text addresses specifically the practical constraints of art dissemination (or diffusion, to use Gagnon's favoured term) under which Borduas worked. This focus does offer many interesting insights. We witness, for instance, the emergence of an increasingly sophisticated art discourse in Montreal, as a younger generation of critics (many of them artists and HUMANITIES 239 associates ofBorduas) speak of his paintings from a position of familiarity with his ideas and his visual language. We find that Borduas's participationin the Automatiste group exhibitions was only a very marginal part of his exhibition activity in Montreal. In New York his shows were reviewed by the American art press, but the notices were short, and assimilated him to American abstract expressionism without noting what was different in his work. Gagnon shows that during his periods in New York and Paris, Borduas's most perceptive critical reception and exhibiting opportunities remained predominantly in Montreal. The evidence Gagnon presents therefore leads one to question whether Borduas's desire to '''possess'' the whole world' was indeed fulfilled or frustrated by the realities of art reception. What I missed in the catalogue text was some discussion of how Gagnon had decided that the 'diffusion' of visual art works should be defined and intepreted. What is the distinction between 'diffusion' and 'reception' (a concept which has been much emphasized in recentliterary studies that examine the contributions of the reader and of the historical contextto the shiftingmeanings oftexts)? Do different parameters have to . be taken into account for literature and for the visual arts? Since the catalogue text is concerned with Borduas's exhibitions and their press reviews, Gagnon is concerned with reception, but in a strangely limited way. Paintings are unique objects, and an artist's sales significantly affect both the public dissemination of the work and the willingness of gallery owners to show it. But Gagnon does not include discussion of the sales made at the exhibitions he chronicles, despite the fact that his biography was relatively rich in such information. This made it clear that when Borduas was in exile, he became in a sense Canada's representative in the New Yorkand Paris art worlds. His work soldvery well to Canadians, as a Canadian productwhich was part ofthe currently dominantinternational aesthetic. Is not this an aspect of his 'diffusion'? Gagnon distinguishes between exhibitions where Borduas controlled what was shown and those where the content was out ofhis hands. Since his chief interest is in Borduas's self-presentation (Borduas as 'author'?), he gives little attention to the latter category. But these exhibitions were important for the growth of the artist's reputation. One would therefore like to know more about the persistent promotion of Borduas, in national and international exhibitions of Canadian art, by the National Gallery of Canada. A book such as Serge Guilbaut's How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art argues that forces outside the direct control of th~ Abstract Expressionists had a decisive influence on the diffusion of their work. Can the diffusion of art still be discussed in terms hermetically sealed from discussion of the social and political environment? The catalogue offers us a wealth of documentary quotation. We learn what almost every contemporary reviewer said about Borduas's exhibited 240 LETTERS IN CANADA 1988 work. But who were these reviewers? Gagnon seldom tells us anything about the background of the writers or the political or social stripe of the newspapers in which they were publishing. F.-M. Gagnon is himself the son ofMaurice Gagnon, who was one of Borduas's colleagues at the Ecole du Meuble and one of the artist's earliest champions; Montreal writers and newspapers are household words to him. Not so for readers outside Quebec, or even for a younger generation of Montrealers. I had to search through the index ofthe Ecrits and of Gagnon's 1978 biographyin order to ascertain which of the reviewers were Borduas's students, which his colleagues, and which members of the Catholic establishment. The political positions of the newspapers (again something the reader has to find from other sources) often correlated interestingly with the positions of their art reviewers toward Borduas. A short Who's Who, or footnotes in the catalogue, could have made the reviews quoted much more comprehensible . Another problem which emerged for me was Gagnon's commentary on the reviewers' discussions of the meaning of Borduas's work. Rather than accepting that the reviewers were revealing their ideological positions, Gagnon tends to commend or reprimand them for what they say. In the event, Gagnon's desire to let Borduas's career emerge cumulatively , through a process of documentation with the minimum of interpretation, raises a host of questions - questions of which the text often seems unaware. While the catalogue will be a useful reference book, it should also unleash debate on the implications of Borduas's position as a modernist artist, and of his reputation on the Canadian and the international scenes. (GERTA MORAY) John R. Porter and Jean Belisle. La Sculpture ancienne au Quebec: Trois siecles d'art religieux et profane Editions de l'Homme 1986. 503 plus indices. $34.95 Porter's and Belisle's La Sculpture ancienne au Quebec constitutes not only an excellent synthesis of the early history of Quebec sculpture but also a major contribution to Canadian art history, both in terms of subject matter and methodology. Recognizing the special character of the development of sculpture in Canada, the authors do not bind themselves by the habitual format of art history synthesis, namely proceeding by style evolution and artists' careers. Instead, they chose to present sculpture within the context of early Quebec society and everyday life. This approach allows them to capture the unique nature and development of Quebec sculpture with remarkable complexity and clarity. The authors first define the socio-cultural setting in which Quebec sculpture developed and the way the natural and social environment ...