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Surrealism in British Columbia
SURREALISM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
by Jose Pierre
Excerpts from
Bulletin Of Connection No 13
CCP No 402 of CNRS
Center National Scientific Research
Seek co-operative on program (CCP no.402)
Associated has the University François-Rabelais de Tours
Reviews And Leaflets Surrealist and Of the Surrealist Horizon
in France and In the World
Transcience
Tempera one panel by Ladislav Guderna
"The toilets whirls the leaf along
to the island of stone
where the bone is has man
and the man is has flame
and the flame is has flower
and the flower is has tree
and the tree is has snake
and the snake is has rod
and the rod is has fish
and the fish divine so deep
that the island is drowned
and the leaf is lost
wih the coils that it brought
and the field that it bought
and the bird that it caught
all lost
lost lost lost "(77),
This overflight of Surrealism in British Columbia must begin a poet, Michael Bullock (born in Great Britain in 1918), which does not hide to be a surrealist poet, and, who better is, proposed, in its course of "creative writing" with 1' Université of Vancouver, of Vancouver, to not discover with students the possibilities of the surrealist writing in a school way, but by making so that they are discovered themselves by discovering surrealist poetry. Bullock indeed does not hide that there remained deeply marked by 1' International exhibition of the Surrealism of London, in 1936 - that he visited at the age of ten - eight years Michael Bullock writes not only poems, but also of the tales, not impregnated same atmosphere oneiric or animated very metamorphoses as its poetry. He is also a painter, or rather draughtsman, and the little which we know of his graphic work would be to let to us believe that the fundamental figure of this one is a kind of mandrake - this root of anthropomorphic pace cue the legend equips with mysterious capacities (78)
Egol
ink drawing by Michael Bullock
In any case, it is not surprising only Bullock appears in the number of the founders of West Coast Surrealist Group with Ted Kingan, Robert Davidson and Gregg Simpson, nor that with those it took part in the first exposure of the group, opened on March 18, 1977 in Move Gallery of Vancouver. The foundation of this group had ete preceded by an activity which one could already say surrealist, but in any case very directed coast of the occultism. The person in charge for this activity as of its orienetation Gregg Simpson etait (born in 1947), which one owes the publication of Splendor Solis (1970), the foundation of a kind of maconnic cabin, the Divine Order of the Lodge, and the edition of the three numbers of the review Lodgistiks (no.1, October 1972; no.2, May 1974; No January 3, 1975), emanation of this cabin to laugh - but not only to laugh, it seems -, as well as the organization of the exposure The Metaphysical Landscape (Canadian West Coast Hermetics) to which it already referred (1973). Let us recall on this subject cue the mystical concerns of any species are thing connnune on the coast of the Pacific, as well in British Columbia in California. An aspect of this mysticism is the sensitivity to the religions of 1' Extrème-0rient, conrme it was the case in the United States for painters like Morris Graves and Tobey Mark. However that which to Vancouver one readily gives for during Canadian of Tobey, it is Jack Wise (born in the United States in 1928), which one finds among the participants in the exposure of 1973, in company of another artist even more carried to the mystical speculations since, since then, it A gives up painting to be joined the sect Hare Krichna! We want to speak about Gilles Foisy, an Inhabitant of Quebec however born Montreal into 1948)...
Gilles Foisy, 1970
Photograph: Gregg Simpson
Jack Wise was undoubtedly threatened less of a conversion of this kind, since in its work the mandala Tibetan does good housework with the Celtic cross and Zen, which would encourage us to put all that on the account of certain wave religiosity hippie. (Let us note in the passing that of the Queen Charlotte, at two hours of flight of Vancouver, where certain mushroom hallucinogen is in abundance and where one can gather it and the consormner in very which study, feels become a kind of paradise for the hippies - after having been the Holy Land of Haida!) This said, let us be appropriate that when its paintings are not weighed down too many mystical references and do not remember too either the "white writings" of Tobey, Jack Wise proposes fort to us beautiful examples of surrealist "automatism" (White Fern Song, 1963; Myth Machine, 1966;
Moon Writing Rock'n'roll,1970). Among the other participants in the exposure of 1973, beside Gregg Simpson and of ED Varney - that we will further find - also Gary Lee Nova and David uu appeared, who refuses the capital letters.
Gary Lee Nova (born in 1943) occupies a very singular situation with the crossroads of Pop Art, Surrealism and influence of 1' Extrème·- the East (Pacific Great Eastern, 1967), that it is difficult for us of apprecier more exactly, for lack of a sufficient documentation. It goes from there about in the same way for David uu (born in 1946), of which it would seem that the eclecticism even references contained in its "joinings" militates in favour of a kind of religious syncretism. Still let us note that both take part in the international demonstrations of concrete poetry, where it acts most of the time of interferences between the photographic image and the text. Edwin Varney, which is presented readily in the form of "Big Dada", indeed preserved of Dadaisme this taste of the permanent provocation which, at this excellent graphic designer, revêt in particular the shape of the Mall Art: manufacture of stamps exploiting for example the name of the country ("Nada Post" or "Canadada"), or comprising sentences such as "Hobby-horse is everywhere", "Hobby-horse I coils you" or, simultaneously: "poetry died! Viva poesia MODERNA. Nobody will ever know "(79). But its major artistic activity remains the photographic "joining", in which it reaches a great poetic quality due to a refined direction of the reports/ratios of forms and colors ( Egyptian Vacation; Artic Discovery; Knight Inlet Monument), which EM does not fish humour to find its account there, of course (David one the Moon; Appearance; The Watcher).
Untitled joining by Edwin Varney
Gregg Simpson is not only the tireless organizer of the West coast, the tireless one touch-A-all, but, that goes from oneself, the tireless experimenter. To enumerate its various attivities since 1965 would fill several pages with this report of mission: we will be satisfied to say that, of the percussions to the video like painting with the théatre and the dance, nothing of what can be undertaken today in a radically new spirit him is not foreign - and not like simple listener or spect·ator, but each time like organizer and professional. For us to hold some with the field of the visual arts - what is already restrictive compared to our matter, because is to hold for nothing the poet Luminous Desires (Derwyddon Press, 1977) -, Simpson lengthily experimenté, so far, all the processes or almost of l"automatiqme" says "mechanical": "' Frottages' ' according to max Emst widened to the video one, " transfers "such as the pérconise Oscar Dominguez (Venusian Delights, 1971) prolonged until àcertains rather disconcerting effects of matter (Picnic, 1971), by adding to it the references to the symbolic system masonry or alchemical (Phostose, 1971; Talisman, 1971 -) and also the recourse to "joining" (Secret The Age, 1972). But, as astonishing as that can paraitre, the best of 1' work of this fanatic of the laboratories of creation, it is in absolutely frozen images and of an almost insupportable precision that they should be sought: The Adept; 1971; Picnic in Hell, 1972; Wanderers,1973; The Genagual, 1975. With what it should be added the fabrics which its admiration for Maurice Ravel inspired to him - of which it is convinced that max Emst and Magritte were impassioned by its music: The Tomb from Ravel and Alborada del Gracioso, both of 1971. In any case, it is more than desirable that the immense talent of Gregg Simpson finally finds to appear in more followed and more coherent way, even if it were to discover its own way apart from Surrealism...
Alborada del Gracioso
oilon canvas, 3' X 4', 1971, by Gregg Simpson
With wrong way of the always recommendée search of Simpson, that of Ted Kingan (born in 1927 in Great Britain) continues with a quasi somnambulic sûrete. Very early, before even of knowing what it was that the Surrealism, Kingan was brought to draw and to paint surrealist manner, provision which the meeting reinforced that it made people like Desmond Morris, with leguel he exposed to Swindon before to have completed its military service. But it is well after its installation with North Vancouyer (1959) that the life will enable him to develop in a followed way its personal work: at the bottom, ten years ago hardly that this work is rébellement started. On the other hand, it since then made only thriving according to a perfectly natural slope, as if it awaited only the occasion certainly to affirm a peaceful but irrepressible virtuality. Its gestation even could be put on the account of slow a "automatism", comparable with the growth of végbétaux - and opposite consequently of the crispations and décrispations of the school of Borduas. With a very spontaneous blossoming succeeds a progressive maturation, until - the light showing the reality of the forms-the balance is reached between the interior push which gave rise to the table and the aesthetic requirement which devotes the existence of it. It is what undoubtedly makes that the painting of ' Ted Kingan - this feels gouaches and rare drawings, always of modest size reaches today with a poetic intensity in its sobriety to which nobody could claim among all the painters who, in Canada, near or by far, maintain some relationship to Surrealism: purely interior quality to which, before him,
only undoubtedly a Tanguy had been able to reach...
Among the founders of West Coast Surrealist Group, Robert J Davidson (born in Scotland in 1949) did not hide - just like Kingan and Simpson, of elsewhere-its predilection for max Ernst among the famous surrealist painters. This reference encouraged at Davidson a propensity with the fantastic visions asset terrifying, tooth the spectacular aspect - not easily identifiable monstrous beings, which hold of the bird, the insect and the plant - èloignerait rather of what Surrealism always sought, namely a more assured plenitude to be it which, instead of refusing in him the hidden share, accepts it. With our opinion, it is in its paintings with two dimensions seen as in hedgehopping of luxuriant unknown vegetations - that this artist with shown best so far the extent of its resources: it is only to continue the deciphering of this new world...
Born as Slovakia in 1921, Ladislav Guderna belonged to the group Avangarda 38 which continued under the occupation Nazi to maintain activities surrealist. Also, when at the following day of the "Soviet" aggression against Czechoslovakia, en1968, it takes refuge in Canada, it arrives there with a spiritual and artistic "luggage" considerable - that thirty years of Surrealism! Its personal poetic universe, although already marked, of not less one unquestionable enrichment and cormne a deepening in Canadian territory, as if it discovered an encouragement with being there fully itself and to continue until the end as well the blooming of its phantasms as their formal achievement. That of which bring the proof some masterpieces such as Dialogue (1972), Red Evening (1974), Night Visitor I (1976), Monday (1976), Nocturno (1978) and Studio (1980) as regards paintings, for which it is advisable to add astonishing it assembly entitled Mona LISA expecting Leonardo (1979) and, among the drawings and les"collages" - - or the "joinings" mixed with the drawing -, C you Remember? (1970), Shakespeare At Home (1970), House No 16 (1977), Air Circulation (1978) and Marquis de Sade (1979). What is perhaps more striking in painting of Ladislav Guderna, it is the extraordinary formal density which procurre with its universe fantasmatic a hardness and a force little cormnunes - exactly as if the artist had discovered the secrecy to protect them from any aggression coming from outside and to make them indestructibles. Of oû this species of sérénit which is released some, particuliérement perhaps striking in a work like Monday, oû the marvellous one faces us with the quietest insurance...
Gathie Falk (nee in 1928) and Glenn Lewis (born in 1935), ceramists one and the other, relevent rather of this movement baroque of a great imagination, Funk Art, which started to develop on the Californian dimension there are about fifteen years. Here, generally, it is the humour which carries it and taste of a freedom which does not seek too much has to be discovered antecedents, that it is in Surrealism or elsewhere. Nevertheless, Surrealism cannot miss being implied in the terra cotta shoes of Gathie Falk, in its hordes of cutting out of horses or in its picnic, dead natures strange where pendulums and egg cups are convened simultaneously, or fish noubs of ribbons. With David Mayrs (born in 1935), it is in very an other state of mind that we deal: us sonrmes close to this painting with claims "criticize" which at one time made in France the beautiful days of the Living room of the Young Painting and where it is a question much more of flushing out, behind the incongruity of certain images or meetings of images - for example, the Large Pyramids in the medium of a snow-covered Canadian forest or the assistants all identical to the Funeral of Kafka (1976) a certain disorder of the company and its visual repertory that the spirit in hillock with frightening problems.
In addition, sufficient information misses to us to come to a conclusion about the case of artists like Eugene C Beck Jr. (born in the United States in 1937), James Gordaneer (born in 1933), Grauer Sherry or Francis Thenard (born in France). But we should say a word of the disciples of Michael Bullock such as Hosea Hirata, Bill McKinlay, Rose-Marie Tremblay and Dorothy Varney which all, like their professor of "creative writing", were represented by a text in the invitation with the last exposure of West Coast Surrealist Group (80) - convergence which is in our eyes of good omen. And we will finish this review of surrealist Vancouver by this short coloured poem of Bullock:
Yellow Sound
A yellow sound rings in my ear
high-pitched and sharp-edge
distant but piercing
When it fades
everything is trembling (81)"
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