The National Gallery of Canada has intriguing looks at two 19th-Century icons of modern culture, the artist Paul Gauguin and writer-philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Gauguin is one of the world’s best-known artists, so it’s incredible that any aspect of his work has not been studied, studied and restudied. Yet Gauguin: Portraits is the first exhibition anywhere dedicated to portraiture by the French master.
Gauguin challenged the rules of portraiture in the 19th Century, says Cornelia Homburg, an international expert on late 19th-Century art, who is co-curator of the exhibition with Christopher Riopelle of the National Gallery in England.
“Gauguin was very much part of his time, but he was one of the free thinkers in that way,” Homburg says. “He broke that open completely. With him, the idea of portraiture is much broader and also goes in a very different direction.”
The “portrait” that inspired the exhibition is Gauguin’s sculpture of his friend, Dutch artist Meijer de Haan. The portrait is roughly hewn from a block of wood that had been salvaged from a fire. The standards of the day said that the purpose of a portrait was to project the fine social status of the subject, but Gauguin dispensed with any such considerations and did portraits of ordinary people, even peasants. His own self-portraits were also different — he put himself in traditional garments of people who had not typically been seen in portraiture, for example.
This new direction cost him financially, says Elizabeth Childs, a professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis. “Gauguin was among the higher-valued of those living avant-garde artists whose work came up the most for auction in Paris in the 1890s,” Childs says in the exhibit’s catalogue. “Nevertheless, his portraits did not generally sell at his highest price range.”
Gauguin: Portraits includes paintings, drawings and sculptures from collections around the world. It continues to Sept. 8.
Meanwhile, the exhibition Friedrich Nietzsche and the Artists of the New Weimar revolves around Max Klinger’s bronze bust of Nietzsche. It also includes work by Edward Munch, Henry van de Velde and others who were fascinated by Nietzsche’s work, and by his sad story of melancholy and decline. It continues to Aug. 25 and is part of the gallery’s Masterpiece in Focus series. gallery.ca
da Vinci’s scientific side
The impact that Leonardo da Vinci had on art and science almost beggars belief, and it’s all on display at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.
Titled Leonardo da Vinci: 500 Years of Genius, the exhibition includes many models built from the designs of machines he invented or greatly improved. For purposes of this column, the focus is on the art side, and it is glorious. The paintings are reproductions, but they leave no doubt about da Vinci’s mastery of the medium.
His most famous painting — indeed, art’s most famous painting — is the Mona Lisa, and here an entire large space is set aside to analyze it like never before. Rest assured that no matter how much you’ve looked upon the Mona Lisa, you’ve never seen it like this — taken apart layer by layer, by ear and by eye and by lip, to reveal many secrets.
The exhibition continues to Sept. 2. ingeniumcanada.org/scitech
SAW Gallery’s transformation
When SAW Gallery officially reopens (scheduled for July 19), it’ll be bigger, better equipped and as provocative as ever. The inaugural exhibition is titled Sex Life, with a global look at homoeroticism in drawings.
Sex Life will include artists from Canada and around the world and, judging by the gallery’s past exhibitions, it won’t flinch from making sharp comment on the homophobic policies in some nations or regions.
SAW is the final part of the Arts Court development project to open. What was a fusty, 19th-Century building has been transformed into a hotel, condos and a greatly expanded and improved Ottawa Art Gallery. The entire project is a major public space in the city as it’s never been before.
![Annette Hegel and Deborah Margo have created a space that examines the bee’s world [using] organic materials such as beeswax and sedum plants, along with sound recordings of bee activity and shifting light. It will remain at the City Hall Gallery until Sept. 29. (Photo: photos Courtesy of the galleries)](https://diplomatonline.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/MASSIVE1_2019-07-01_0071-300x251.png "New views of 19th-Century icons 3")
The new SAW also includes a Nordic Lab (“a circumpolar artistic research space”) and enhanced versions of Club SAW and the SAW Courtyard. Both of those spaces have improved audio, video and staging for live performances (67 Nicholas St.) saw-centre.com
Favell at the OAG
Upstairs from SAW in the Ottawa Art Gallery, Rosalie Favell’s Wrapped in Culture is a heartwarming demonstration of international Indigenous culture and history.
Favell, the Ottawa photographer, recruited 10 Indigenous artists from Canada and Australia to create contemporary versions of a Blackfoot robe and an Aboriginal cloak, the former made of buffalo hide and the latter from possum skins.
Individual artists decorated panels on the cloak or robe, and each artist was photographed wrapped in the two garments. The photographs are mounted on the walls around the room, and the cloak and robe hang in the centre. This allows a close-up inspection from all sides, to fully appreciate the designs, the handiwork, the textures. The temptation to wrap oneself in their warmth and love and history is tremendous.
The exhibition continues to Sept. 15. oaggao.ca/wrapped-culture
For the love of bees
By the bee, a site-specific installation by Annette Hegel and Deborah Margo, will turn City Hall Art Gallery into a bee’s world.
“Hegel and Margo continue to disrupt the idea that nature takes place outside the city, which is fitting given that a recent British study found that bumblebees fare better in urban environments,” writes Michaela Rife in the exhibition catalogue. “[They] have created a space for human visitors to imagine the bee’s world [using] organic materials like beeswax and sedum plants, joined by sound recordings of bee activity and shifting light, to simulate a pollinator’s environment in the midst of the Ottawa City.”
It continues to Sept. 29. Search for the gallery at ottawa.ca.
Other shows
Leslie Hossack: Freud, Sept. 5 to Oct. 13 at Studio Sixty Six, 858 Bank St. A selection of photographs from Leslie Hossack’s book, Freud. Vernissage 6 to 9 p.m., Sept. 6. studiosixtysix.ca
John F. Marok: The Muse, Sept. 25 to Oct. 13 at Orange Gallery, 290 City Centre Ave. New works from Wakefield, Que., painter John F. Marok. Vernissage 6 to 10 p.m., Sept. 26. orangeartgallery.ca
Benjamin Rodger: Tu peux encore changer le monde, Sept. 19 to Nov. 11 at Karsh-Masson Gallery in City Hall. These new works from Gatineau painter Benjamin Rodger, who has long been fascinated by textures and patterns, were completed during an artist residency in Leipzig, Germany.
benjaminrodger.com
Karen Kulyk: Sept. 19 to Oct. 3 at Wallack Gallery, 225 Bank St. New impressionistic paintings from Toronto-born Karen Kulyk, who has painted and exhibited around the world. wallackgalleries.com
16th Annual National Student Jewelry Competition: July 27 to Aug. 16, L.A. Pai Gallery, 13 Murray St. Pieces designed by finalists for the competition.
lapaigallery.com
Gayle Kells and Catherine Gutsche: Reverie, Aug. 23 to Oct. 6 at Sivarulrasa Gallery, 34 Mill St., Almonte. Kells will be showing works on paper while Gutsche will present paintings and mixed media work. Vernissage 3 to 6 p.m., Sept 7.
sivarulrasa.com
Kai McCall: Sept. 19 to Oct. 8 at Galerie St. Laurent + Hill, 293 Dalhousie St. New works from Montreal’s Kai McCall, who merges classical tropes of portraiture with modern visuals, to subtly surreal effect. galeriestlaurentplushill.com
Peter Simpson is an Ottawa writer and regular contributor to ArtsFile.
