The Left Atrium ˇ De l'Oreille Gauche

Lifeworks
Marrying the coats

Until Jan. 16, 2000, the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum in Charlottetown showcases traditional and modern designs and techniques in rug hooking, sometimes called North America's "one indigenous folk art." The Marrying of the Coats features the work of rug hookers from across Prince Edward Island, including 80-year-old Anna MacLeod, who in her 60 years of rug hooking has carried on the tradition of "the marrying of the coats," a process in which torn-up coats are dyed to provide a consistent background colour for large rugs. Joe Smith and the Spectacular Brennan Rug features arguably one of the most impressive rugs ever created on the Island. In Bricàbra Nancy Edell of Nova Scotia combines rug hooking with other media, including painting and animation. For more information on these and other exhibits, visit the gallery's Web site (www.confederationcentre.com/exhibs.html).

Anna MacLeod, Colour Wheel, 1997. Hooked rug; wool. Each edge measures 40.6 cm

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In Halifax, The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia remembers two artists who exerted a presence in the visual arts in the province both through their work and through their influence on younger artists. Born in Halifax' north end, John Cook (1918­1984) was a prolific and unsentimental painter of Nova Scotia's rural and urban landscapes and an energetic teacher who cared little for the established institutions of art. Born in New Brunswick, Donald Cameron Mackay (1906­1979) worked as war artist, illustrator, printmaker and painter over a career that spanned 50 years. Principal of the Nova Scotia College of Art from 1945 until 1971, he was by his own admission of an "ultra conservative" stamp. The parallel and yet disparate careers of Cook and Mackay largely defined the horizon for serious artists in Nova Scotia until the 1970s. John Cook: Artist & Teacher and Donald Cameron Mackay: Artist & Teacher continue at the gallery (www.agns.ednet.ns.ca) until Jan. 16, 2000.

John Cook, The Little Boats of Indian Harbour, 1967. Oil on masonite, 50.5 × 76.0 cm	Donald Cameron Mackay, Landscape, Herring Cove, c. 1950. Oil on canvas, 61.1 × 76.1 cm

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Audubon's Wilderness Palette: The Birds of Canada is the first major Canadian exhibition of the work of artist and naturalist John James Audubon (1785­1851). At Fredericton's Beaverbrook Art Gallery (www.beaverbrookartgallery.org) until Jan. 15, 2000, the exhibition comprises 100 hand-coloured, life-sized plates from the famed four-volume "double elephant" folio edition of Birds of America (1827­1839), a set of 435 prints based on Audubon's watercolours and prepared over 12 painstaking years by the English engraver Robert Havell, Jr. Only 100 complete sets are still in existence; this one, from the Toronto Reference Library's collection, is one of five held in Canada. Highlighted are extinct species such as the Eskimo curlew and the Great Auk, as well as birds now considered threatened, endangered or vulnerable. "Audubon's approach to bird portraiture revolutionized the way we see nature," says David Lank, curator of the exhibition. "Besides being the first to place birds in their natural habitat and paint them life-size, he had an extraordinary artistic ability and a scientific accuracy which pre-dates the invention of photography." The exhibition's next stop will be the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Feb. 13 to April 2).

John James Audubon, Whooping Crane. Hand-coloured engraving, 73 × 99 cm. Collection of Metro Toronto Reference Library

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The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts marvels at Triumphs of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe, 1600­1750 until April 9, 2000 (www.mmfa.ca). Thirty large-scale original period models, 20 paintings and 75 drawings and prints convey the grandeur of architectural projects undertaken during turbulent times in which Catholic Europe was shaken by the Reformation, the political order was challenged by the rise of the middle class and states were brought to the brink of ruin by war. Arising in Italy, the baroque style was adopted throughout Europe by church, state and aristocracy as a reaffirmation of power and prestige. Arranged by type of project — royal and private architecture, public architecture and religious architecture — the exhibition illustrates how in public buildings a visual rhetoric of splendour and munificence often transcended national boundaries, while residential architecture tended to take on a national style. It also shows how baroque architecture, despite the weighty nature of its materials, was motivated by a gravity-defying urge to create illusions of infinite possibility.

Antonio Rinaldi, Model for the Cathedral of St. Isaac, St. Petersburg, c. 1768. Wood, 310 × 245 × 208 cm. Research Museum of Academy of Arts of Russia, St. Petersburg

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Continuing at the National Gallery of Canada (national.gallery.ca) until Jan. 2, Baltic Light: Early Open Air Painting in Denmark and North Germany is the only North American presentation of this luminous exhibition of early 19th-century plein air painting by artists centred in Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. Inspired by discoveries in botany, geology and meteorology, and influenced by the longstanding Roman tradition of painting outdoors, these artists left the studio behind in favour of the direct observation of natural phenomena. Despite their fresh approach to composition and their preoccupation with light as a legitimate subject for painting, the reputation of these painters was largely eclipsed by the Impressionists. However, like Impressionism, northern European painting exerted an influence on our own Group of Seven. Returning from an exhibition of Scandinavian art in 1913, J.E.H. MacDonald remarked that the works he had seen "began with nature rather than art," and that "This is what we want to do with Canada."

Martinus Rørbye, Vester Egede Church with Gisselfeld Convent in the Background, 1832. Oil on canvas. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

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Until Feb. 6, 2000, the Art Gallery of Windsor (www.mnsi.net/~agw) features Le Détroit, a new film installation and exhibition of photographs by Canadian multimedia artist Stan Douglas. Drawing on years of research in the Detroit area, Douglas examines the social conditions that give rise to the decay of modern cities, of which Detroit is an extreme example. His colour photographs expose the processes by which historical memory is overwritten by social change and the encroachment of nature upon the urban landscape. Inspired by the city's long-standing association with machines and industry, the film installation is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House and Marie Hamlin's 1883 chronicle, Legends of Le Détroit, a compilation of oral histories that circulated among people of aboriginal and European descent living in the region between the mid-17th and early 19th centuries. Douglas reinterprets the conventions of popular media — in this case, horror movies and electronic music — to explore the impact of technology on the social imagination.

Stan Douglas, Michigan Theatre, 1997/98. C-print, 45.7 × 55.9 cm

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Assembling Sounds: the Drawings and Illustrations of Bertram Brooker is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (www.wag.mb.ca) until Jan. 2, 2000. Brooker (1888­1955) played a significant role as an artist, musician, writer and champion of the arts in Canada between the two World Wars and has been described as the country's first abstract painter. His move away from representational art toward abstraction stemmed from his desire to express spiritual ideas and to unify painting with other arts such as poetry and music — interests he shared with his friend Lawren Harris, unofficial leader of the Group of Seven. Presented in tandem with an exploration of his painting and writing in Sounds Assembling: Bertram Brooker in Winnipeg Collections, this exhibition of graphic work features 70 abstract drawings, nature studies and illustrations — work that Brooker considered as important as his painting. Sounds Assembling, his most famous piece, represents a spiritual journal through time, space and sound.

Bertram Brooker, Sounds Assembling, 1928. Oil on canvas, 112.3 × 91.7 cm

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Little known until recent years, Claude Cahun (1894­1954) is currently the focus of a great deal of international attention. The first Canadian solo exhibition of her astonishing self-portraits, Don't Kiss Me: Disruptions of the Self in the Work of Claude Cahun, is at the Sherwood Village Branch of the Dunlop Art Gallery (www.dunlopartgallery.org) in Regina from Dec. 17 to Jan. 30, 2000. Born Lucy Schwob, Cahun was a poet, actress, sculptor, photomonteur and sometime-associate of the French surrealists who gained some notoriety as a political and sexual revolutionary. Like Cindy Sherman and other contemporary artists some 50 years later, Cahun explored how the body is read according to cultural codes. Using costumes, masks and theatrical make-up to challenge normative views of women, she postulated a new concept of identity that left room for ambiguity and the unknown. During World War II she was arrested by the Nazis for openly resisting their occupation of the Isle of Jersey. Much of her work was destroyed and she was sentenced to death. Fortunately, the war ended before her scheduled execution.

Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. 1927. Black and white photograph Courtesy of Jersey Museums Service and Presentation House Gallery

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To mark the millennium, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (home.uleth.ca/~saag) invited Toronto photographer Geoffrey James to create a photographic portrait of the city of Lethbridge. James made four visits to the Lethbridge area over a 12-month period and produced more than 250 images. His large-format black and white photographs of the city's rural and urban landscape record what curator Joan Stebbins describes as the "uneasy alliances" between culture and nature. She writes: "His photographs document a specific moment in time, but hold within them an acute awareness of the meaning of that moment — an interval caught between the past and the present. In the Lethbridge photographs, James shows us something entirely new about our place; something that we can't see until he shows us, because it is too familiar." The Lethbridge Project exhibition continues until Jan. 15, 2000.

Geoffrey James, Chinese National League, 1998. Silver gelatin print. 40.6 × 50.8 cm. Collection of the artist

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As e-technologies revolutionize our habits of communication, we might forget the important role that diverse and often ephemeral print media have played in defining the 20th century as the age of mass communication. Until Jan. 3, 2000, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (aggv.bc.ca) presents Propaganda, Advertising & Graphic Arts in 20th Century China, an intriguing collection of graphic materials produced in China during the 20th century. The exhibition includes woodblock prints, propaganda posters, advertisements, firework labels, joss paper, decorative wrapping and luck-bestowing New Year's Eve prints from private collections and the gallery's own holdings. The woodblock prints bear the imprint of Soviet-style socialist realism; the advertising posters flog products ranging from perfume and cosmetics to alcohol and cigarettes. While cultural and historical markers give these artifacts an intrinsic interest, they may also lead viewers to pay more attention to the aesthetic appeal and persuasive power of the print media that surround us today.

	Fabric advertisement, 1920s

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A sense of place infused with a sense of mystery inspires two exhibitions on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery (www.vanartgallery.bc.ca). Until Jan. 23, 2000, Visions of Paradise: Varley in British Columbia presents for the first time in more than 40 years the major works created by Group of Seven founding member Frederick Horsman Varley during his Vancouver years (1926 to 1936). The portraits and landscapes from this period reflect not only the nationalist and anti-classicist motivations of the Group of Seven but Varley's growing interest in theosophy, Eastern mysticism and the psychological interpretation of colour. Continuing until Feb. 13, 2000, The Rhetoric of Utopia: John Vanderpant and his Contemporaries explores another anti-establishment strain in the development of Canadian art. Like many of his contemporaries on the West Coast, painter and photographer John Vanderpant rejected the colonial aesthetics that dominated the art scene in the 1920s and 30s in favour of a modernist aesthetic. His strikingly optimistic work asserted the beauty of both natural and architectural forms and thus the potential for the harmonious coexistence of nature and technology.

Frederick Varley, The Cloud, Red Mountain, 1927­28. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of Ontario, Bequest of Charles S. Band, Toronto, 1970. © Estate of Kathleen G. McKay	John Vanderpant, Lilies, 1935. Silver bromide print. Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund

© 1999 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors