Art History Prof. curates exhibition on 1920s modernism in Montreal.
Brian Foss, Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture and Professor of Art History, has spent the bulk of the last decade researching an unsung, but instrumental collective of Canadian artists known as the Beaver Hall Group.
Professor Foss’s tenacious research culminates this fall in an exhibition for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts titled 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group ,which will contain nearly 200 items. The exhibition will feature many paintings, sculptures, drawings and miscellaneous objects, borrowed from approximately 75 institutional and private collectors scattered across the country. Foss followed the lead of the primary curator of the show, Jacques Des Rochers, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Québec and Canadian Art.
The Beaver Hall Group was a diverse assortment of like-minded Montreal-based artists, many of whom shared a studio and exhibition space on the city’s Beaver Hall Hill in the early 1920’s. Similar to Toronto’s celebrated Group of Seven, the Beaver Hall Group offered a creative portrayal of life in Canada; but they did so in a very different way. “Unlike the Group of Seven’s vast interpretations of Canada’s natural, unblemished backdrops, Beaver Hall Group art featured portraits of contemporary Canadian individuals, rural life and urbanized, populated cityscapes,” explains Foss.
Formed in 1920, the group disbanded in 1923. The consortium of members and associates included the likes of such Canadian art icons as A.Y. Jackson (The Group’s first president), Mabel May, Lilias Torrance Newton, Randolph Hewton, Edwin Holgate, Mabel Lockerby, Anne Savage, Emily Coonan, Adrien Hébert, Henri Hébert, and Prudence Heward, and was based more on friendship, peer support and a dedication to modernist approaches to colour, draftsmanship and composition, than on a rigorously defined membership or firm commitment to a single subject matter or nationalist view. Aside from their exceptional work, what made the Beaver Hall Group particularly remarkable was the inclusion of female artists when to be a fully professional artist in Montreal often meant being a man.
’The Beaver Hall Group was thus a broadly inclusive collection of artists,” said Foss. “Unlike the Group of Seven, they encouraged women artists as members of their network. This support was a source of validation. The group also featured both Francophone and Anglophone artist, which helped bridge a divided Montreal scene.”
The resounding uniqueness and obscurity of the Group made it an alluring research subject; but this also presented Foss and Des Rochers with some formidable obstacles.
“It could get frustrating. Almost no documentation survived, and what did was difficult to locate. There were no membership lists or constitutions so we had to spend a lot of time in the archives, and needed to really analyze and dissect interviews that earlier researchers had conducted with the members,” said Foss.
Though the research was arduous, Foss and Des Rochers understood the importance of this undertaking. These artists tell a story about Canada that hasn’t been conveyed in any other place. “The Beaver Hall Group offers an alternative, progressive vision what Canadian modern art can be,” said Foss. “It contrasted the Group of Seven by offering a distinctly Montreal type of modernism.”
So why wasn’t the Group able to carve out an enduring niche in the Canadian consciousness?
“They didn’t have clear message or narrative to send, unlike the Group of Seven” responds Foss. “They fell victims to their own diverse nature. They stood together as a supportive group of modernists, but beyond that the art was varied, and as a result, they aren’t recollected as a group.”
“It didn’t help they seem to have held only a few exhibitions during their existence and had only one real spokesperson in A.Y. Jackson. They possessed no political interest in becoming famous. It’s up to us to remember them for the accomplished, progressive artists they were.”
Foss hopes the exhibition 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group helps viewers to understand the complexity and quality of this often misunderstood group. “I hope to cultivate a new appreciation for the Beaver Hall Group, and for people to walk away from the exhibition knowing that there was a thriving modernist art scene in Montreal during the 1920s that was representative of a broad totality of the city’s artists; that Canadian modernist art of this era was more complicated and multi-faceted than it is often thought to have been.”
1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group opens October 24th, 2015 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts where it will run until January 31, 2016. The exhibition will then travel to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Glenbow Museum (Calgary).
Learn more at the Montreal Museum for Fine Arts Website
The 352-page catalogue includes six substantial essays dealing with the social and artistic contexts within which the Group was formed (Jacques Des Rochers), the ways in which the Group was later incorrectly interpreted as being a collection of women artists only (Des Rochers). the influence of the members’ artistic training (Hélène Sicotte), Montreal’s rich art, theatre, music, film and dance scene during the Beaver Hall years (Brian Foss), the ways in which the artists explored modernist concerns in their choices of subjects and styles (Esther Trépanier), and the complex roles occupied by women artists in the Beaver Hall Group and in the larger Canadian art world (Kristina Huneault).
Read more about the Beaver Hall Group exhibition in Le Devoir’s piece, Montréal et la modernité: Une exposition nous fait découvrir le Groupe de Beaver Hall, in the Montreal Gazette article, Portrait of the Beaver Hall Group emerges at MMFA exhibition, and in La Presse’s Groupe de Beaver Hall: Montréal jazz