Aboriginal Art
The oldest artistic tradition is to be found in Canada's numerous rock art sites. In these ritual sites of communion between humans and spirits, petroglyphs - engraved incisions - share the walls with pictographs, painted on the rock. Aboriginal peoples have also been practicing traditional art since time immemorial. But artists have been able to renew traditional art by employing other materials and new artistic processes, while continuing to draw inspiration from their cultural heritage, inventing a new language in the tradition of the shamans. Today, we are witnessing the emergence of avant-garde Amerindian art, which can be admired at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and at the Biennale d'art contemporain autochtone.
At the origin of Quebec art
The complex of buildings known as the "Habitation de Québec" was founded in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain (c. 1567-1635) on a site frequented by First Nations people for some 3,000 years. A symbolic site, it was the first permanent French settlement in North America, and the first foundation of what would become Quebec City. Rather than embarking on innovative architectural projects, the first settlers attempted to reproduce the European architectural environment, implementing a system of fortifications that had been used in Europe since the Middle Ages.
In the last third of the 17th century, the paintings found in New France were mainly intended for religious buildings. While the style inherited from the Baroque, these paintings were mainly imports from Europe. It wasn't until 1670 and the arrival of Claude François (1614-1685), also known by his religious name "Frère Luc", that activity began to flourish. His fifteen-month stay in New France resulted in numerous religious achievements, including the plans for the Séminaire de Québec, a complex of buildings dedicated to the training of future priests. On his return to Paris, Frère Luc assisted Nicolas Poussin in decorating the Louvre, earning the title of "Peintre du roi" (King's Painter).
The English conquest of the colony of Canada in 1760 damaged many buildings, but their reconstruction showed little change from an architectural point of view. Painting, on the other hand, made definite progress, as English officers became enthusiastic about the vast Canadian landscapes. The work of Thomas Davies (1737-1812), a soldier, naturalist and talented painter, is particularly noteworthy in this context. As well as being responsible for surveying the new British territory, he left behind some of the finest watercolours of Quebec.
Quebec Renaissance
Perceived as a golden age, the turn of the century saw an intensification of exchanges of culture and know-how between Europe and Quebec. European artists settled in Canada, bringing with them objets d'art, engravings and paintings, while merchants, soldiers and clergymen had their portraits taken.
Still influenced by European conventions, Canadian painting did not evolve significantly until 1840. Cornelius Krieghoff (1815-1872) painted domestic scenes that upset the French bourgeoisie, who saw in his compositions a caricature of the life of the people. He was supported by English Canadians.
Photography was not to be outdone. William Notman, from Scotland, settled in Montreal in 1856 and opened his photographic studio. He gained international recognition for his portrait photography, which was very much in vogue. Above all, he contributed to the development of the photographic medium with the establishment of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, which he documented throughout. Two years later, Queen Victoria, impressed by his photographs, appointed him as her personal photographer.
In 1880, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was founded in Ottawa to promote the visual arts. Its first president, Lucius Richard O'Brien (1832-1899), travelled the length and breadth of Canada, painting majestic landscapes, including Sunrise on the Saguenay (1880): the bright dawn on the Saquenay River below Quebec City seemed to promise a bright future for Canadian painting. In the same year, the National Gallery of Canada was founded in Ottawa.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the influence of the École de Paris continued to be felt by Impressionist-inspired Quebec painters such as Suzor-Côté (1869-1937), author of beautiful still lifes, fauvist James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924) and pointillist Ozias Leduc (1864-1955), a native of Mont-Saint-Hilaire (the Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire promotes his legacy as well as that of Jordi Bonet and Paul-Émile Borduas, all from the region). Ozias Leduc is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable painters in Quebec history. He began by decorating churches in order to survive, notablySaint-Hilaire between 1894 and 1899, which is one of his greatest achievements. In another context, he produced numerous intimate portraits, still lifes and rural landscapes that remained at odds with their time.
As a counterpoint to the famous Group of Seven, made up of Toronto landscape painters (Harris, Jackson, Macdonald, Carmichael, Lismer, Varley, Johnston and the forerunner Tom Thomson), who saw themselves as the sole representatives of truly Canadian art, Montreal artists gathered around Marc-Aurèle Fortin (1888-1970) to create a school of purely Quebec landscape art, completely free of European influence. Fortin painted his native Quebec, in particular the St. Lawrence River and the province's flora and fauna, in a personal style influenced by Art Deco. An important collection of Fortin's work is on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
A new era for the arts
The creation of Le Nigog magazine was crucial to the development of Canadian art. Founded in Montreal in January 1918 by Fernand Préfontaine, Robert de Roquebrune and Léo-Pol Morin, the magazine sought to renew the artistic preoccupations of the time, drawing inspiration from Parisian trends and opening up to modern art. More specifically, Le Nigog defended the autonomy of art from politics and religion, and the predominance of form over content. The debates raised by the magazine have gone beyond its scope, for while it rejects any form of political recuperation, its objective has nonetheless been to restore French Canada's titles of nobility through art. The magazine ceased publication after 12 issues, in December of that year.
A group of artists, the Automatistes, gathered around Paul-Émile Borduas (1905-1960), was created in 1942. It included creators from a variety of disciplines, painters of course, but also writers, dancers and designers. The movement drew on surrealist foundations and psychoanalytical tools. Unlike Surrealism, however, it was more experimental and less formal. The Automatist manifesto Refus global was published in 1948. It challenged the traditional values of Quebec society, particularly its relationship with religion, and called for the development of individual freedoms. Around 1954, the Automatistes gradually disbanded, each developing his or her own activities without being radically separated from the group. The group was dissolved in 1956.
The Plasticiens movement, whose first manifesto dates from 1955, set out to return to more assertive visual research. Defending geometric abstraction, the Plasticiens considered notions of balance, construction and arrangement in their formal research. The movement became more radical under the impetus of Guido Molinari (1933-2004) and Claude Toussignant (b. 1932) in the late 1950s. This was a milestone in the history of Quebec painting.
From the "Great Darkness" to street art
The "Grande Noirceur" refers to a period covering the second mandate of Maurice Duplessis (1890-1959), Premier of Quebec between 1944 and 1959. It corresponds to an era of profound change, with social and religious conservatism having to face up to demands defended by new generations of intellectuals, as already hinted at in the 1948 text Refus Global by the Automatistes. The "Quiet Revolution" of the following period, corresponding to the change of mandate in 1960, was highly reformist, as was the role of artists in this great upheaval.
The 1970s were marked by well-structured acquisition programs backed by coherent budgets. This enabled institutions to bring together a significant number of works, which also enabled them to produce a synthesis of the artistic movements of the preceding decades. Not content with simply consolidating the history of recent art, institutions also aspire to support art in the making, for example by developing numerous public commissions. It is in this context that artistic approaches are being renewed, becoming multidisciplinary with the introduction of photography, installations or multimedia practices, so as to resonate with international artistic concerns. Prominent Quebec artists at the time included Serge Lemoyne, Micheline Beauchemin, Carole Simard-Laflamme, Louis Archambault and Richard Purdy.
The Mural festival, dedicated to international urban art, was created in Montreal in 2013. Quebec urban art, which is particularly prominent, is increasingly taking over public spaces, as illustrated by this gigantic mural of Leonard Cohen on the facade of a 21-storey building. Created by Gene Pendon and El Ma, the work is sponsored by the MU organization, which stands for "Musée à ciel ouvert" (open-air museum), with the aim of linking art to citizens and paying tribute to Montreal's cultural builders. Numerous other events are also taking place, such as "Voix Insoumises: Convergence Anticolonialiste d'Artistes de Rue", a biennial event devoted to Aboriginal women artists and artists of color (3 editions - 2014, 2015 and 2017). These various initiatives testify to the desire never to wipe the slate clean of past cultures, and they also invite us to take our time exploring urban space, particularly that of Montreal.
