NOW’S THE TIME
Jean- Michel Basquiat at the Art Gallery of Ontario

What makes Basquiat   great is the insight with which he addresses  the question Who Am I?  and by extension, Who Are We? As the artist said himself, he had not seen a black man in  art.  A passionate confrontation with racism  and social injustice informs his virtuoso output. In fact the title of the exhibition is taken from a speech by Martin Luther King.

Basquiat’s works are mostly figurative, combined with idiosyncratic signs, graffiti- like markings and  word lists layered with paint or/ and  collage. His portraits stand out for their vitality,  and passionate honesty.  Untitled, 1981,(above) is large.  Brilliantly hued, complex and revealing, the features and forehead are divided by a line that tries to stitch the divided self back together. Untitled/Self Portrait, 1984, is a medium sized line drawing in oil stick of a vibrant, dread locked Basquiat trapped, like a genie in a bottle.

He pays homage to Picasso in an intimately scaled drawing, Young PICASSO, 1984, oil stick on paper. Like Picasso he combines sensitive contour lines, distorted forms, and breathtaking colour in strong compositions that strike at the heart while engaging the mind.  

In Six Crimee, 1983 a very large work on three Masonite panels, in acrylic and oil stick, a line of six male heads float across the upper third of the work on an impasto background of luminous greens as beautifully transcendent as Munch’s deathbed greens, and the context suggests that this is a memorial to six youths who have died young on the street. The artist has scratched through thick paint to create games of hangman and X’s and O’s which also suggest the city, graffiti and hieroglyphs of a personal kind. Two portraits of his friend Michael Stewart, arrested for spray- painting, then beaten to death by the arresting officers hang nearby. 

Three works from the mid-eighties when Basquiat collaborated with Andy Warhol are displayed in the last of four large galleries.  In the most disturbing, Florida, 1984, Warhol stenciled the name of the state in thick black letters along with a dollar sign and the  number  seventy-nine. Jean –Michel added the outline of a glaring sun, the British word for gas- petrol, and a Pinocchio-like character in a top hat. The work is prescient –the hanging chads of 2000. It’s a strong antidote to vacation brochure Florida which blots out the history of slavery and the reality of oppression, poverty and corruption.

Basquiat sometimes felt forced to give to his dealers works he did not consider finished, the demand for them was so fierce. But EXU, 1988 one of Basquiat’s last works, shows the artist as a warrior/ god. Here he recaptures the intense energy of his earlier works in an explosive burst of paint and oil stick. Another painting entitled, Obnoxious Liberals, 1982 provokes  the uncomfortable feeling that I may be one of them, as I glide from piece to piece in this revealing, hard-hitting exhibition by a great artist of the late twentieth century.
The time is always now for art like this. 

PAINTING HAMILTON

 Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario

 Capturing Memories, Manny Trinh Acrylic and Ink on Canvas. 2013 

The Careful Approach, Manny Trinh. Acrylic and Ink on Canvas.  2013   

Escape, Manny Trinh. Acrylic and Ink on Canvas. 2014

 Manny Trinh (b.1974) is a landscape  painter whose work is inspired by memories of Vietnam. He was born in Saigon and came to Canada at the age of eleven. 

Jennifer Carvalho

Stair, Mid-Low, Jennifer Carvalho. Oil on Canvas. 2013

Jennifer Carvalho (b. 1980) creates charged scenes of nondescript suburban locations. She combines familiarity and inscrutablility to dramatic effect.

Path, Detail. Jennifer Carvalho.Oil on canvas 2012

Mathew Schofield (b.1973)

His relatives' photo albums provide the raw data for  Still-Lives of Snapshots, 2013.
Using oil on Mylar on wood, he creates shimmering surfaces for this collection of home-grown moments.

INTRODUCING SUZY LAKE 

 ART GALLERY |OF |ONTARIO

This is a self portrait  Suzy Lake created

 in 2009 by lying on a flatbed scanner

 for ten minutes.  It's a confrontation

 with mortality. It's like confronting

your own mortality. It's sad because 

it makes me think of lost youth.

  It's hard to reconcile myself to age

 and in this image she is uncompromising.

Imitations of  Myself #1   1973

1973! Suzy Lake is a groundbreaking photographer/artist.

Morrice and Lyman in the Company of Matisse

This is  excellent show is  at the McMichael Gallery until. The curator has assembled over 100 paintings by these three artists.James Wilson Morrice became friends with Matisse after leaving Canada for Paris. John Lyman studied with Matisse and subsequently spearheaded the Modernism in Montreal, where he was born. 

Included in the exhibition is Matisse's, "Nude on a Yellow Sofa",1928.  The yellow of the  sofa is the sun itself streaming in from the right. The woman's gaze is directed toward the light which illuminates and models her face with brilliant intensity.  

 A flowered screen behind her is patterned with leaves drawn in with thick lines. these contrast with the delicate contours outlining the model's limbs and torso. It's worth  to driving  to Kleinberg for this painting alone. ( Its usual home is the National Gallery of Canada.) 

The influence of Matisse can be appreciated in the work of his student John Lyman, who, like J.W. Morrice, left Canada to work in Paris and North Africa.

"Indolent youth"by John Lyman. Oil on Canvas.( c.1928)

 I thought Lyman's approach to the  male nude  unusual  and daring for the time. The graphic outline and expressive colours are typical of Lyman's work.

J.W.Morrice, Rainy Evening, Paris. c.1900. Oil on canvas

Unfortunately the restaurant at McMichael has been replaced by a not very efficient cafe. This woman dining there alone is reminiscent of Degas.

          J.W. Morrice is a master of  colour tonalitites. Matisse said of him that "in composition he saw the art of arranging in a complex manner the diverse elements at a painter's command to express his feelings."