PART FIVEHIGH ART & FOLK ART,
SNOBBERY, COLONIALISM, ROOTS, NATIONALISM & CANADA. Betty Soarre: John Bentley Mays of the Globe and Mail, in a review of your 1984 exhibition at the Inc, said that both the promise and the problem with your work was that it ran more to "folk" art than "high" art. He felt the promise of your work was that it could be read as a critical counterstatement to modern abstract stack and series art, and the problem was that it could also be read as being merely decorative. What do you think of that assessment? Robert Yates: Am I a "folk" artist or a "high" artist? Am I Pete Seeger or Pavarotti? Can I, like Saint Paul, be all things to all people? I've experienced both acceptance and rejection. I prefer one over the other, but I do what I do and I cannot dictate your response to it. The important thing is you. How do you take it? B.S.: Would you rather be thought of as a high artist or a folk artist? R.Y.: I have an aversion to snobbery. I recently heard a talk on the origins of abstract painting. This account placed it early in the twentieth century with the high art of Kandinsky, Picasso and Braque, the latter two retreating from what they had found. I immediately thought of some Upper Canadian quilts I had seen, made in the nineteenth century by homesteader women. Some were composed of squares of colour, "modern" abstractions full of surprise and light in darkness -- beautiful, balanced, well-considered, with the essential visual impact of certain Paul Klee paintings. But they were made far earlier by mere folk artists who were women to boot. No pun intended. But they had two strikes against them as far as their place in our culture's history is concerned. Actually three strikes against them -- they were women, they were folk artists, and they were from Canada, not Europe. Art commentators have a tradition of their own and they can be blind to what is in front of them. Maybe the women's movement, as they rewrite art history, will correct some of the blatant inaccuracies that are perpetrated on us -- the ones that ask us to deny the evidence of our eyeballs. I hope so. We don't want theories, we want to see what is in front of us. B.S.: Do you believe there should be no distinction between serious artists and primitives or craftspeople? R.Y.: The work itself will provide any distinctions that are necessary. Forget the definition. Does a painting suggest an awning, an advertisement for soup or soap, or the hard-edge lines of a hockey rink? Or do you think it is a pastiche of other paintings you have seen? Or is it a thing unto itself? Does Picasso's pastiche of African art blind you to African art? At home we have a little wooden doll that is an incense burner. It is a gendarme smoking a pipe. His pants are blue with a thick red stripe running down them. When I light him up I say, "Burn, you Voice of Fire, burn!" The National Gallery's Barnett Newman acquisition can be seen as the gendarme's military pants in Mount Rushmorian proportions. For me, they have the same message visually. B.S.: So you are one of the ones who think the tax payers' money was unwisely spent on that painting? R.Y.: There is a snobbery in the art world that is like a chronic tension in the neck and jaws. We must relax. "High" art versus "folk" art? Is the wisdom of a common carpenter any less valid than a distinguished and learned doctor of laws? It is you we are talking about. You are the one who has to look at these things. You don't have to justify them or explain them. They will either speak to you or they won't. Forget the experts, the artists and the critics. See for yourself. As far as the money spent on the Voice of Fire is concerned, that was one way of spending it, but there are other ways it could have been spent. With those millions, for example, an acquisition trust fund of some sort could have been set up. A series of ten Canadian artists, a different ten each year, could have received a living wage for a year in perpetuity in exchange for one painting from each. Even if only one in ten paintings was really any good, the Canadian people would be acquiring a good painting a year. After a hundred years you would surely have a few masterpieces. B.S.: You have mentioned Canadian art and suggested an opposition to European art. Our traditions come largely from Europe. Surely we must know our roots . . . R.Y.: Canada is a country made up largely of people who feel their spiritual and cultural roots are elsewhere. Up to now, this has been for the most part European, but it is increasingly Asian, African. . . I don't know how many generations it takes before there is a profound identification with the land people live in. Europeans have undeniably made their influence felt on the world, but Europe is not the only place art has been made. And it is not necessarily even the best standard by which all human activity is measured. B.S.: But in Canadian culture and higher education, the history of European art and its spill over into the United States, is all important. But you believe this keeps Canada in a second class, colonial position? R.Y.: It is probably a human characteristic that each of us believes our own roots are best, and probably each of us is right. Our own roots are best for us because they are ours. They are what is, and we can't change that. So, if each of us is to have the best of all possible worlds, we must accept and love where we began. For one group of people to say, "Our roots are better than yours so you should adopt ours," is childishness. When cultural purse strings and positions of power are dominated by one group, less influential cultures can feel threatened. I don't want to be ungrateful, or to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if we value, as I do, the idea of a culturally sovereign Canada -- which is necessarily a grab-bag mixture hard to define, but not subservient or colonial -- it's probably not out of place to question the motives behind actions that are intended to "benefit" Canadian institutions. For example: Herman Levy generously left his priceless collection of European art to McMaster University, and on top of that a bequest of $14 million to purchase art. But there was a noose in the string attached: It couldn't be Canadian art. Why that stipulation? Why? Years ago, when McMaster was to hire a full-time painting instructor, it was decided that the needs of Canadian students would best be served by bringing a painter over from Great Britain, someone trained in the established old world ways, instead of finding a Canadian whose training at institutions like McMaster was presumably of doubtful value. I don't know . . . I really have nothing against any of the individuals involved, but I object to what is condescendingly believed to be culturally the best thing for the deprived inhabitants of this area of the world. I smell snobbery at work. I don't believe in nationalism, which I think is the driving force behind European claims to authority in the art world. I reject it. Not to be replaced by a nationalistic Canadian authority, which would be just as bad, but just for us to open our eyes to what is before us. I'm not suggesting there is a conscious cultural genocide taking place here. I would suggest, however, that there is an ignorance of things Canadian and what those things need to flower and grow and serve the people who think of here as home. B.S.: You obviously think of yourself as a Canadian. R.Y.: Sure I do, but not an exclusionary nationalist. I welcome the idea of neighbours from other cultures, but it would be best if rabid and patronizing nationalism was a fond and distant memory to all Canadians, old and new. By now I recognize I am as far removed from most of my boyhood haunts as any immigrant to this country is from his or hers. The ravines where I played are now paved, hills and woods are now leveled and developed into plazas and subdivisions. The last working farm in my family closed down with the death of Uncle Andrew in the early seventies. The madness of material greed, which is foreign to my up-bringing, is transforming the world in its image. I think it's a shame that Canada has been known primarily as a land where poor immigrants can become fabulously rich and materially fulfilled. I would rather the promise of fulfillment was more spiritual. Why should there be a conflict between a person's private rights and desires, and the general public good? Private and public gain should be one and the same thing. B.S.: You feel no ties to Britain or Europe? R.Y.: I am North American and Canadian. I was raised on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. Long before I had ever heard of Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Renoir, I knew A.Y. Jackson, Lawren Harris and Varley. In my teens, I became familiar with Harold Town's work before Picasso's. Initially my interest was visual, not chronological, so I had no idea who had influenced whom. The ones that spoke to me I liked and I feasted on their paintings or drawings whenever I had a chance, usually reproductions in books or magazines. Canada is a wonderfully diverse country, and we are open to influences from all over, not just in our art and food but also genetically. Of course influences come from Europe. And elsewhere. There is no reason they can't blend with what is already here. My children, for example, are a cross between an Eastern European immigrant who is a pure-bred Lithuanian (my wife), and (me) a mongrel old Canadian. Their lives are the mixture that is Canada's. Though anyone a mongrel mates with, the off-spring is always mongrel. There are different traditions at work. European traditions seem to be nationalistic with an emphatic remembering of some noble collective past. This can be charming and entertaining but I can see that sense of identity is an illusion. B.S.: But there is something appealing and rooted in ancient traditions. R.Y.: As a Canadian I feel I'm part of the most ancient of all traditions. B.S.: Now that's strange. One usually thinks of Canada as not having much in the way of tradition and culture since it is so new, yet you say as a Canadian you feel you are part of the most ancient tradition? R.Y.: Yes, going right back to the beginning of the world -- a tradition that does not give itself up to the past, but is rooted in the present. It has no need for nationalistic feelings and memories and dogma. In a very real way, I do feel in touch with my ancestors and can sense what they were about — not as a nation or a race but as a series of individuals who are my direct blood line. This is another of my influences because it is responsible for my physical being -- me and my coming to be. All of us have blood lines as pure and ancient as the Queen and her Royal blue bloods. Your ancestors go as far back as hers. You may not know them but they were just as alive in their time as you are in yours. And you would not have come to be without them. B.S.: I noticed in a magazine article a few years ago that you proposed changing the name of "King Street" to "Sovereign Citizen". I think I can see where you're coming from. For an old Canadian, you're certainly not very monarchistic. R.Y.: The classical comic archetype of the madman is someone strutting around believing he is Napoleon. When you feel one with the world and fundamentally democratic, equal with all your fellow creatures, then individuals who believe they are royal, or simply far more important than their fellow earthlings, can be viewed with the same sympathy and concern as institutionalized Napoleonic characters with white-coated attendants who see to their every whim. |
PART ONE
Making Art; For Whom & Why PART TWO The Artist, Childhood Influence, Family & Other Artists. PART THREE Education, Relationship to Nature, Artistic Making, Trail Signs. PART FOUR Further Influences & Education, Signatures & Definition Problems. PART FIVE High Art & Folk Art, Snobbery, Colonialism, Roots, Nationalism, Canada. PART SIX Culture, Tradition, Ancestry, The Importance of Art. PART SEVEN The Art World, Hierarchies, Comparisons, Juried Shows & Fashions. PART EIGHT Perception & Conception, Critics, Words & Seeing. PART NINE Art, Beauty, Meaning, Opinions, Judgement. YATES "Homage to Sophia Weaver"
19th Century Upper Canadian Quilt-Maker |