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Retrospective aims for deeper understanding of an abstract master
Had he lived longer, might painter Jock Macdonald have become a cultural superstar like Lawren Harris or Emily Carr?
"I think so, absolutely Jock gets overlooked," said Michelle Jacques, chief curator of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She has co assembled a major retrospective of Macdonald's work (and the gallery's largest show of the year), which opens Saturday.
With 80 plus works, Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form is the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work in 30 plus years. Jacques, who wrote an essay for the accompanying 207 page catalogue, says she hopes this show will lead to a deeper understanding and perhaps a reappraisal of Macdonald's artistic contributions.
Although admired as an artist and teacher, Scottish born Macdonald (who died in 1960 at age 63) never became a household name like some of his peers. Jacques believes that's because he didn't come fully into his own artistically until the final few years of his life. During that period, the late blooming Macdonald painted such abstract masterworks as Fleeting Breath (1959), Clarion Call (1958) and Drifting Forms (1959).
These paintings mark the achievement of Macdonald's lifelong artistic quest; that is, to combine the natural and spiritual worlds in a powerful, cohesive manner.
Victoria artist Henri van Bentum, a former student of Macdonald's, agrees with the notion that his mentor truly found himself toward the end of his life.
"His canvases become softer and more spiritual in quality. You only have to look at his later work how confident, strong and mature they are. He had found himself a 'handwriting' style for all to see, only to be taken away by going over the horizon at the height of his career," van Bentum said.
Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form arrives in Victoria after a stop at the Vancouver Art Gallery last year and then at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. It traces his artistic development, including early landscape paintings (including some from Nootka Sound, where he lived for a time), so called "automatics" (paintings intended to reflect the unconscious mind) and Macdonald's evolution to pure abstractionism.
A designer by trade, he immigrated to Vancouver in 1926 to teach at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts. It was artist Frederick Varley, who also taught there, who encouraged Macdonald to become a painter.
Creating art from a spiritual perspective was important to Macdonald. In this regard, he was influenced by another new friend, Lawren Harris. Macdonald was also deeply influenced by surrealist artist/psychiatrist Dr. Grace Pailthorpe and her partner Reuben Mednikoff, also a painter. An eccentric and sometimes controversial twosome (Britain's Telegraph newspaper once dubbed them the "creepiest couple in art"), they encouraged Macdonald to pursue automatism, a surrealist technique in which works are produced during a state of visual free association.
Macdonald eventually settled in Toronto, where he was an influential and popular teacher at the Ontario College of Art. He also belonged to Painters Eleven, a group of abstract artists.
At that time, in the 1950s, most people's notion of Canadian art was the representational landscapes produced by the Group of Seven. Jacques says Macdonald's influence as a teacher and painter were "the two big motivators for changing people's tastes in Toronto towards van cleef stud earrings imitation abstract art."
In the summer of 1952, Macdonald was artist in residence at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, where he exhibited his automatic paintings and taught art classes. Another Vancouver Island connection was his one year sojourn at Nootka Sound off the Island's isolated west coast.
Macdonald, who moved to Nootka Sound with his wife, child and three colleagues, wanted to immerse himself in nature. He appears to have had a vague ambition of starting a utopian artists' community, something that ultimately didn't pan out.
The harsh reality of living at Nootka Sound is captured in Macdonald's diary about the experience, published for the first time in the exhibition catalogue.
In one entry, dated June 1 to June 15, 1936, the artist complains about the back injury that ultimately forced him to return to Vancouver. He adds: "Our position is worse than ever. I have only sold sweet alhambra earrings imitation a $30 sketch since February, we have no money, no means of leaving here, no sign of money in the near future."
In a May 1936 entry, an almost penniless Macdonald writes gratefully of his friend John giving him a present: "his largest cigarette end, which he had saved. So this is our plight birthday presents are marvellous, even when it is only a cigarette butt."
He was to become a successful artist. Macdonald's accomplishments include having a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery and a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario). The latter was the only solo show offered to a living artist who was not in the Group of Seven.
Macdonald's latter day success was captured by critic Robert Fulford, who reviewed Macdonald's 1957 exhibition at Toronto's Hart House. He deemed Macdonald "the best young abstract or non objective painting in Canada, even though 61 years old."
Jacques thinks Macdonald's achievements are downplayed in some quarters because the majority of his imitation vintage alhambra earrings work reflects the struggle of an artist searching for himself. "By the time he gets to full resolution, it's four years before he dies."
Had he lived longer, might painter Jock Macdonald have become a cultural superstar like Lawren Harris or Emily Carr?
"I think so, absolutely Jock gets overlooked," said Michelle Jacques, chief curator of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She has co assembled a major retrospective of Macdonald's work (and the gallery's largest show of the year), which opens Saturday.
With 80 plus works, Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form is the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work in 30 plus years. Jacques, who wrote an essay for the accompanying 207 page catalogue, says she hopes this show will lead to a deeper understanding and perhaps a reappraisal of Macdonald's artistic contributions.
Although admired as an artist and teacher, Scottish born Macdonald (who died in 1960 at age 63) never became a household name like some of his peers. Jacques believes that's because he didn't come fully into his own artistically until the final few years of his life. During that period, the late blooming Macdonald painted such abstract masterworks as Fleeting Breath (1959), Clarion Call (1958) and Drifting Forms (1959).
These paintings mark the achievement of Macdonald's lifelong artistic quest; that is, to combine the natural and spiritual worlds in a powerful, cohesive manner.
Victoria artist Henri van Bentum, a former student of Macdonald's, agrees with the notion that his mentor truly found himself toward the end of his life.
"His canvases become softer and more spiritual in quality. You only have to look at his later work how confident, strong and mature they are. He had found himself a 'handwriting' style for all to see, only to be taken away by going over the horizon at the height of his career," van Bentum said.
Jock Macdonald: Evolving Form arrives in Victoria after a stop at the Vancouver Art Gallery last year and then at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. It traces his artistic development, including early landscape paintings (including some from Nootka Sound, where he lived for a time), so called "automatics" (paintings intended to reflect the unconscious mind) and Macdonald's evolution to pure abstractionism.
A designer by trade, he immigrated to Vancouver in 1926 to teach at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts. It was artist Frederick Varley, who also taught there, who encouraged Macdonald to become a painter.
Creating art from a spiritual perspective was important to Macdonald. In this regard, he was influenced by another new friend, Lawren Harris. Macdonald was also deeply influenced by surrealist artist/psychiatrist Dr. Grace Pailthorpe and her partner Reuben Mednikoff, also a painter. An eccentric and sometimes controversial twosome (Britain's Telegraph newspaper once dubbed them the "creepiest couple in art"), they encouraged Macdonald to pursue automatism, a surrealist technique in which works are produced during a state of visual free association.
Macdonald eventually settled in Toronto, where he was an influential and popular teacher at the Ontario College of Art. He also belonged to Painters Eleven, a group of abstract artists.
At that time, in the 1950s, most people's notion of Canadian art was the representational landscapes produced by the Group of Seven. Jacques says Macdonald's influence as a teacher and painter were "the two big motivators for changing people's tastes in Toronto towards van cleef stud earrings imitation abstract art."
In the summer of 1952, Macdonald was artist in residence at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, where he exhibited his automatic paintings and taught art classes. Another Vancouver Island connection was his one year sojourn at Nootka Sound off the Island's isolated west coast.
Macdonald, who moved to Nootka Sound with his wife, child and three colleagues, wanted to immerse himself in nature. He appears to have had a vague ambition of starting a utopian artists' community, something that ultimately didn't pan out.
The harsh reality of living at Nootka Sound is captured in Macdonald's diary about the experience, published for the first time in the exhibition catalogue.
In one entry, dated June 1 to June 15, 1936, the artist complains about the back injury that ultimately forced him to return to Vancouver. He adds: "Our position is worse than ever. I have only sold sweet alhambra earrings imitation a $30 sketch since February, we have no money, no means of leaving here, no sign of money in the near future."
In a May 1936 entry, an almost penniless Macdonald writes gratefully of his friend John giving him a present: "his largest cigarette end, which he had saved. So this is our plight birthday presents are marvellous, even when it is only a cigarette butt."
He was to become a successful artist. Macdonald's accomplishments include having a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery and a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario). The latter was the only solo show offered to a living artist who was not in the Group of Seven.
Macdonald's latter day success was captured by critic Robert Fulford, who reviewed Macdonald's 1957 exhibition at Toronto's Hart House. He deemed Macdonald "the best young abstract or non objective painting in Canada, even though 61 years old."
Jacques thinks Macdonald's achievements are downplayed in some quarters because the majority of his imitation vintage alhambra earrings work reflects the struggle of an artist searching for himself. "By the time he gets to full resolution, it's four years before he dies."
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