Emily Carr New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon at Vancouver Art Gallery - A Retrospective Exhibition

Emily Carr

New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon

Vancouver Art Gallery

October 7, 2006 — January 7, 2007

The Vancouver Art Gallery presents a fresh look at the life and art of EMILY CARR (1871-1945) in the first national touring retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work in more than thirty year. Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon examines the painter through the lens of her exhibition history and extraordinary life to reveal a complex woman of extreme talent and conviction. Beginning with a partial recreation of the first exhibition of Carr’s work on the national stage, the exhibition also examines the artist as a modernist painter and explores how her persona and her work have been portrayed and interpreted over time. Jointly organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, the exhibition features nearly 200 objects by Emily Carr and others, including paintings, drawings, watercolours, caricatures, ceramics, sculpture, hooked rugs, books, maps and photographs. Nearly 150 works of art from the National Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery and other major institutions are included, along with works from private collections.

“Emily Carr is a vital part of Canadian and British Columbian history, and we are proud to pay homage to her with this sweeping exhibition during the Gallery’s 75th anniversary year,” said Kathleen Bartels, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “As the holder of the world’s most significant collection of Carr’s work, the Gallery has a long tradition of exhibiting her art and contributing to the scholarship surrounding it. With this touring exhibition and the accompanying book, our visitors have the opportunity to better know the woman behind the stunning canvases.”

Emily Carr began serious study of art in her late teens after leaving home in Victoria, British Columbia to attend the California School of Design in San Francisco. Returning for a brief time, Emily Carr soon left Victoria again to attend the Westminster School of Art and study in the studios of a number of British artists. But, it was her year in France between 1910 and 1911 studying Post-Impressionist art that Emily Carr found most inspiring. In 1911, she returned to Vancouver with a commitment to document the First Nations cultures of British Columbia, a project she began in 1907, and produced a great number of watercolours and corresponding canvases in her new French style. These works met with mixed reception until 1927, when her paintings were included in the National Gallery’s Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art Native and Modern, where they were embraced by members of the famed Canadian painters, the Group of Seven. She returned to British Columbia to begin the most productive period of her career, venturing out into remote parts of coastal British Columbia and creating the inspired, powerful canvases for which she is best known.

Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon begins with a reconstruction of the seminal Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art Native and Modern, which introduced Carr’s work to the Canadian art establishment. This remounting of the landmark exhibition is presented in its original spirit, with contemporary works of the time mixed with historical objects of First Nations heritage. Carr’s early paintings intermingle with Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakwaka’wakw masks, house posts, carvings and textiles, as well as a selection of works by artists Anne Savage, Paul Kane, Langdon Kihn, and Group of Seven members Edwin Holgate and A.Y. Jackson.

The next section of the exhibition considers Carr as a modernist painter, drawing inspiration from the 1945 Emily Carr Memorial Exhibition presented the year of her death at the Art Gallery of Toronto. Gathering a selection of Carr’s finest works dating from 1910 to 1942, this section illustrates the artist’s skillful use of colour and form, inviting viewers to explore her unique and expressive style. Abandoning her attempts to create straightforward portrayals of First Nations life and art, the exhibition reveals Carr’s exquisite endeavour to describe the fundamental nature of her subject. It is here that Carr’s interests in primitivism and spirituality shine through in her paintings of First Nations sculpture and the dramatic landscape of coastal British Columbia.

The final section of Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon provides a unique perspective on the artist from a postmodern viewpoint. It introduces the many voices that have been brought to bear on Carr and her work, and examines Carr’s self-construction through her caricatures, self-portraits and writings. This section also evaluates her relationship to the landscape and considers her role in the development of cultural tourism on the northwest coast.

Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon was on display at the National Gallery until September 4, 2006. After showing in Vancouver, the exhibition will travel to Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario from February 24 to May 20, 2007, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from June 21 to September 23, 2007 and Calgary's Glenbow Museum from October 25, 2007 to January 26, 2008.

The exhibition is curated by Vancouver Art Gallery senior curator, Ian Thom, National Gallery curator of Canadian art Charles Hill, and Johanne Lamoureux of the Université de Montréal. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a major full-colour book, including essays by all three curators and several notable historians and critics, published with Douglas & McIntyre.

VANCOUVER ART GALLERY

750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6Z 2H7

www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

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Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo: Places of Their Own, Vancouver Art Gallery, June 15 - September 15, 2002

Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo: Places of Their Own at Vancouver Art Gallery

Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo: 

Places of Their Own

Vancouver Art Gallery

June 15 - September 15, 2002

For the first time in western Canada, this exhibition brings together the work of Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, three extraordinary artists widely acknowledged as outstanding 20th century painters in their respective countries - Canada, the United States and Mexico. Their art reveals a singleness of spirit and a shared fascination with themes of nature, culture and self.

The Vancouver Art Gallery retains one of the most significant Emily Carr collections in the world and is justifiably proud to present this outstanding exhibition. Comprising 56 paintings, the exhibition was inspired by Dr. Sharyn Udall’s book of the same name and curated by Dr. Udall for the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The works are hanging according to artist, inviting an intimate study of individual style yet enabling comparison of common themes.

“The Vancouver Art Gallery is honoured to present the work of three women artists who have become cultural icons of their nation. This exhibition reveals individual creative vision and the shared spirit of courage, passion and integrity”, said Kathleen Bartels, Director, Vancouver Art Gallery. “This is the last remaining opportunity to view the work of Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo under one roof. It broke previous attendance levels when shown in both Ontario and Santa Fe and we anticipate it will be a huge success in Vancouver.”

Each artist felt a connectedness to nature and their work reinvented traditional imagery relating to the natural landscape. With stunning clarity their paintings convey a sense of the landscape as female, from Carr’s symbolic forests to O’Keeffe’s anthropomorphic plant forms and Kahlo’s earth-mother self portraits.

The exhibition also brings to light aspects of the shared histories and cultural differences between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo interpreted and expressed the essential character of their region. They defined, for the period, a distinct Canadian, American and Mexican experience. Collectively, their work can be seen to play a critical role in defining the art of North America by linking region and nationality.

Emily Carr (1871-1945) was born in British Columbia, painted for most of her life and began a writing career only a few years before her death. Her interest in the lives and rituals of indigenous Canadians is reflected in the totemic animals and mythic females of her paintings. Carr also depicted the vast natural beauty of the Pacific northwest, going beyond the presiding misty landscapes of the day by creating a unique visual idiom. Few Canadians have achieved the legendary stature of Emily Carr.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was an American painter who found most of her inspiration in nature. O’Keeffe’s animal skulls and desert landscapes are famous icons of modernism and her anthropomorphic plant forms distinguish her highly personalized style. Her work is characterized by sensually smooth forms and stunning use of colour. O’Keeffe, married to photographer Alfred Stieglitz, lived between New York and New Mexico, eventually moving permanently to New Mexico after her husband’s death where she painted some of her best work.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was an influential Mexican painter known for her harsh, revealing self-portraits. Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, southwest Mexico City. She lived in constant pain after being seriously injured in a bus accident when a metal rod pierced her body. Through the use of jarring colour and odd spatial relationships her self-portraits reflect her long-term physical and emotional suffering. Kahlo’s stormy marriage to famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera is well documented. The intensity of Kahlo’s work and her strong creative legacy resonate beyond her brief, turbulent life.

Carr, O’Keeffe and Kahlo: Places of Their Own opened in Canada at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in June 2001 prior to touring to the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts and the National Museum of Women in Art, Washington. Co-ordinated by Ian Thom, Senior Curator, Historical, Vancouver Art Gallery. Organized and circulated by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. This exhibition is presented by The Audain Foundation.

VANCOUVER ART GALLERY

750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6Z 2H7

www.vanartgallery.bc.ca