2 February 2024 – The predicted torrents of rain didn’t take place, but it has been very drizzly. And very, very grey. Not the luminous grey that I so often celebrate, but a flat-matte grey that sucks contrast and depth from the scene.
Since it is double-digit mild as well as merely-moist-not-wet, I opt for a walk all along the Seawall from Devonian Harbour Park, at the edge of Stanley Park, to Canada Place downtown.
I am indeed “here,” right where it says I am, there at the lower left, and I set off.
But… how shall I put this… it is not very uplifting. Just a whole world of flat grey, merge-purging itself in blurry confusion out to the horizon. Our grand panoramic views are not at all grand, at the moment.
Well, sod the panoramic views. I shall instead look for details. Small, very bright details. In the red family, by preference.
And so I notice a bright orange bumper ring tucked around this boat in Bayshore West Marina…
a pair of red & mustard houseboats, punching through the polite blue & white of the Coal Harbour Marina…
a brazen life ring, admiring itself in the waters off Coal Harbour Quay…
a red & white seaplane, growling itself to life for its next run from the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre out to the Gulf Islands…
a long view from the Convention Centre, on east past Canada Place to orange cranes in the Port beyond, poised over a cargo freighter…
and Douglas Coupland’s Digital Orca, right here at the edge of Jack Poole Plaza, dancing the pixillated dance that has been its signature since 2009.
29 January 2024 – 7:35:15 a.m.; right here at 49.2827° N 123.1207° W; this very morning.
The calm before the anticipated next series of storms: “Heavy rain will persist into the first half of the week as a stubborn atmospheric river lingers over British Columbia.”
17 January 2024 – Both at the Vancouver Art Gallery, fortunately not in the same exhibit.
Even so, each affected us in much the same way. We emerged stimulated, better informed, and hopeful about the kind of future trends that each show seems to suggest. What a happy way to spend a cold afternoon early in the new year!
— First up, the fibres —
Rooted Here: Woven From the Land
As the VAG website description explains, “This exhibition makes clear the vital integration of weaving throughout traditional and contemporary Salish cultures…” It features the work of four renowned Coast Salish artists (Angela George, Chief Janice George, Willard (Buddy) Joseph and Debra Sparrow) and includes both hangings…
with explanations…
and an installation of videos and draped mannequins.
Beautiful work, enriched by trends — trends that are now carrying the “integration” cited by that VAG intro beyond the Coast Salish peoples and bringing it into the larger context shared by us all.
In 2018, Debra Sparrow, Angela George and Willard (Buddy) George began collaborating with the Vancouver Mural Festival in a continuing project called Blanketing the City. , — a project through which they are bringing these design motifs into the city’s found architecture.
Now all four artists have moved beyond existing street structures to bespoke design for a $400-million new build. In collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, they have designed the copper cladding…
for the future home of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Some project material is included in the exhibit; I came home and promptly looked for more, especially in the detailed presentation on the architects’ own project design pages.
— And now for the fraud —
J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden
Do please pay attention to that question mark.
We have here an entire exhibition, a detailed exhibition, devoted to ten sketches that were received with triumph in 2015 and are now acknowledged to be forgeries. That is to say:
Not ten sketches, by Group of Seven co-founder J.E.H. MacDonald, for a subsequent oil painting in each case.
Instead, ten sketches by Anonymous, after an authenticated oil painting in each case.
As with the exhibition’s question mark, so with its careful use of prepositions.
What an extraordinary show! A whole show built around a major institution saying, “We got that wrong. What looked right, was wrong.” And then documenting the almost nine years of investigation that produced the final verdict.
Appropriately, the lead image for this entangled story is the sketch after (not for!) MacDonald’s painting, The Tangled Garden.
What they’re still not telling us is whether the Toronto dealer and the Toronto art collectors who offered these works were themselves duped or part of the duplicity. What we do know is that very soon after the VAG trumpeted its exciting acquisition, the larger art community began to ask questions.
As best I understand it, the VAG initially responded in the well-established global tradition for handling such moments. It stone-walled.
But then, with a new CEO and the courageous example of Ian Thom (the then-Senior Curator who had brought in the acquisition), the VAG decided instead to conduct a thorough investigation, and share what they learned. Art historians, art experts at other institutions (e.g. National Gallery of Canada) and forensic scientists (e.g. the Canadian Conservation Institute of the federal Dept. of Canadian Heritage) all took part. As Ian Thom said, in the excellent video documenting all this work, “I thought this one of the great experiences of my life. Then it just got worse and worse.”
But for us out here, it just got better and better. A major institution, willing to acknowledge it had been conned? Willing to do the investigation, and then not quietly shelve it, and deep-six the works, but build an entire exhibition around those discoveries? Willing to acknowledge that fraud is as much part of the art scene as art itself? Willing to reveal its own stories, and educate the rest of us?
How wonderful it would be, if this trend caught on.
Come see the show, if you can manage to be in Vancouver any time before May 12. It includes some of the well-authenticated Group of Seven works in the VAG collection, but hits stride once it zeroes in on the investigation: the people, the skills, the tenacity, that led to the final results.
And if you can’t make it to town, dive into this story of art + forensics in various sources online: everybody from Stir to The Art Newspaper, to Galleries West, to the VAG itself. And more.
12 January 2024 – But first, an acknowledgment. It is merely -11C as I write this, not (for e.g.) the -33C of Calgary nor the NWT temps that Lynette is recalling in her Baby It’s Cold post.
But still, for Vancouver, -11C is nippy. Yesterday, as Polar Vortex warnings hit our media and temperatures dropped to -3 or so, I decided I had to prove to myself that six years of Vancouver life had not rendered me incapable of going for a sub-zero walk.
Down to False Creek.
Snow-promising skies beginning to build, up there behind the World of Science dome…
and, by mid-afternoon, snow clouds massed even more dramatically all along the Coast Range Mountains.
It did snow.
Just a skiffle, nothing deep, but — given the temperatures — it has stayed on the ground.
Today, over those same Coast Range Mountains, the sunshine that comes with greater cold.
I bundle up once again. I am still not a wimp!
I decide I don’t need to go far: I can satisfy honour with a quick loop around Dude Chilling Park, and a respectful salute to The Dude himself en passant.
Other bundled-up people along the way (and some bundled-up dogs).
I reach the park. There’s The Dude.
With … what… something white… in the crook of his shoulder. Please don’t let it be litter, I murmur to myself. I’ve enjoyed, taken confidence from, the respect people show The Dude. Please let that continue.
Well of course it’s not litter.
It is the world’s smallest snowman, lovingly shaped and lovingly placed, cuddled up with The Dude.
Behind my face-scarf, I am all scrunched up with delight.
And then I take my tingling fingers back home, and wrap them around some hot chocolate.
2 January 2024 – The challenge is: how many icons can I jam into my first post of the new year? Icons that say, “Vancouver in winter,” but also speak to my own obsessions.
Off I go.
Start with: alley + street art + H-frame hydro poles + distant mountains fading into the misty drizzle.
Add: False Creek + Science World dome + Aquabus ferry + orange Port of Vancouver “giraffes” + (audio only, take my word for it) the 12-noon Gastown Steam Clock rendition of O Canada.
Add: a dance of lines & spaces.
Add: a surprise. If your eyes are open, there is always a surprise. (Though not always as dramatic, or unfortunate, as this one east of the Cambie bridge.)
Add: the gleam of rust in the rain. (Here, the sewer-pipe “train engine” over a Hinge Park creek.)
Add: winter tree trunk moss, garnished with fernlets.
As I walk back south on Ontario Street, I think: It lacks only a crow.
And then, just north of East 5th, there he is!
Yes, yes, I know. He is white, and painted, and riding a skateboard. But I say he is a crow, and it’s my blog.
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 