Since I was in Ottawa for business, I decided to visit our National Art Gallery. I had been there before, but it was quite some time ago. Emily Carr was the featured show and having, on the west coast, seen more Emily Carr than I would like, I chose only to purchase my ticket for the permanent collection.
I do love art
and our National Gallery does have quite a collection. Perhaps it pales in comparison to some of the more famous galleries in the world, but as far as galleries go, we deserve to be proud of our collection. We have, for example, a nice smattering of the more famous French Impressionists. Perhaps, just enough to wet the appetite for more. But were I the curator, I'm sure I'd be satisfied with the foreign content. There is just enough to provide a great opportunity to compare our own artists with those more globally noticed. For nothing in the gallery is as luminous and stunning as Tom Thompson's The Jack Pine. Such an ordinary Ontarian view. The sort that every cottager has seen time and again. And yet, on his canvas, through his visionary eyes, it is simply awesome. While working your way through the adjacent room, if you are fortunate enough to glance in the direction of this scene, it will arrest you in your tracks. It leaps from the wall. It is simple and gorgeous and no electronic image may do it justice. Next to it sits a second masterpiece: Tom Thompson's Northern River. More subtle and sedate, it draws you in with it's complexity. The intertwined branches parting slightly to reveal a bend in the river. I would be hard pressed to choose a favourite.I was still bubbling with enthusiasm, still feeling great about art itself, when I stumbled into the more contemporary artists. While balancing a piece of steel on its end is impressive, I struggle to see the art in it. Nor can I justify an entire room for a video of a man pumping a p
plastic bottle full of air until it shoots into the air. I want my art to be made by artisans. I want technical excellence. I want an image that captivates through beauty, or horror, or well something. Instead I found myself in front of the Voice of Fire. What a grotesque waste of money. I understand that the work has appreciated since we the taxpayer shelled out 1.8 million for it. But appreciated in whose eyes? Who are these lunatics who would pay more for three stripes? It hangs in a room littered with nonsensical pretentious crap. A big black painting with a yellow stripe down the side. A white canvas with a few stripes. But it dominates the room, not the way The Jack Pine dominates the room. Not by transporting you to a distant place. No, it dominates by sheer size alone. Eighteen feet of stripes. It is not a "modern masterpiece, a mythical work for a secular age" and having stood before it, I for one cannot attest to the notion that it "floods our consciousness with a sublime sense of awe and tranquility". Just when I was feeling down about the direction of art. About the ever widening gap between people and so called artists creating art for a self declared elite as if the world didn't matter. I saw this face sitting amongst so many bits of the emperors new art. To give you a perspective, this baby and I, we stood eye to eye. The detail was consuming. The face massive. It forced you to stare. It forces us to say, "we can do better than a great big stripe."
