After reading for the umpteenth time (first, second, third) that Renata and Michal Hornstein are donating the rest of their collection to the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, and that the Quebec government was going to pay to build a new building for it, I almost blew a gasket.
First, the news was probably announced during the museum’s AGM. As the museum’s year end is March 31, that probably means sometime in April. Somehow the media failed to pick up on it then. Second, it was the lead item in the latest issue of the museum’s magazine (creatively named “M”) which was mailed to all VIPs at the beginning of May. It didn’t make the news then either. So finally, on the 25th of May, a full month after making the donation the museum released a press release (which for some reason isn’t on their website) and suddenly it was news.
Fourth, while the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal likes to tout that they are a private museum, this is the second building that they have succeeding in convincing the Quebec government to finance. (I do not know about the three previous expansions, as I wasn’t following things all that closely in the 70s and 80s). Man! I wish I could be have a “private” corporation and convince the government to build me a new building every time my crap collection of objects got larger than my place.
Fifth, and this is the one that really gets my goat. Included in every report is that the “new” building will be named after Renata and Michal Hornstein. But they all fail to note that there already is a building named after Renata and Michal Hornstein! So are there going to be two? Are they going to re-rename the Hornstein building after Beniah Gibb? Or some other collector?
And then, sixth and finally, just after this news, the building at 1350 Sherbrooke st. West (right across Bishop street from the museum) put a large banner on its walls after sitting empty for the better part of the past 10 years saying that they were turning it into condos. Coincidence?
Somethings just never change. Yesterday the news “broke” about a painting of Jacob Zuma with, as Lynda Polgreen of the New York Times writes, “his genitals exposed.” Apparently it’s annoying some people.
Over on this side of the border, Openfile (yeah, that’s right, so mainstream that you’re excused if you’ve never heard of them before) and the Kingston Whig-Standard are the only news outlets reporting on a painting of Stephen Harper, as the Whig-Standard puts it, “nude.”
Last month it was The Google Art Project not including any Canadian museums, and the farther back you go the worse it is. I have a bunch of ideas as to why this might be the case. They range from Canadian art is no good, to Canadian museums and galleries don’t know how to “do” global, to no one other than me cares. In Toronto and Vancouver they’re content with contemporary art sales that go bust and here in Quebec they’re content to take the government’s money. But jeez! it’s getting frustrating.
I presume that Metro got permission from the appropriate authorities, but it is still kind of jarring to see Tom Wesselmann’s work being used to shill for a grocery store.
Advertisement in the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal's magazine M
I’m certain you know all about the Îlot Voyageur fiasco. Well what I just discovered is that some bright wag at city hall has attempted to put lipstick on a pig! They’ve decided to put some large plastic printing on the side of the unfinished building in a harebrained scheme to try and make it look like nothing is wrong.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The back of the Îlot Voyageur.The back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
I’m not quite certain what to think. Nor how to think. Do I approach each show separately? Or do I group Valérie Blass, Ghada Amer and Wangechi Mutu all together and do just one review? If I was good, I think I would have preferred to have done separate reviews for each one. But since I’m not, I’m going to group them all together, just like the museum did.
First order of business; did you know that in between January 8, 2006 and November 5, 2008, 1,032 days, or about two months short of three years, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal did not have a single solo exhibition by a woman? I can’t help but thinking that this set of three solo shows by women was somehow organized to make up for that. But then again it has been over three years, maybe it just worked out that they happened to schedule three solo shows by women all at the same time by coincidence.
Second order of business; juxtaposing a Quebecois artist with limited international exposure up against two internationally known artists can and does have a way of biting you in the ass.
Third order of business; I don’t know if it is due to insecurity, incompetence or insomething else. But I would bet dollars to doughnuts with anyone who is interested, that I am the only person writing about art exhibits at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal who is also a member of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s foundation. As a consequence I was quite surprised to find out that I was not invited to neither the press conference nor the vernissage for the latest exhibit they mounted, La Question de l’abstraction. Insecurity, because I get the distinct impression that my series of humorous rhymes about the Triennale went over like a lead balloon. Incompetence, because if you can’t manage to invite the people who give you money without being asked there is something seriously wrong. I will wait with baited breath to see what happens at the end of May for the Zoo exhibit.
But all of that is neither here, nor there when it comes to talking about the art of Valérie Blass, Ghada Amer and Wangechi Mutu. More along the lines of background material, so that you know where my thoughts are coming from as I type this. To get the easy stuff out of the way first. I’ve never been much of a fan of Valérie Blass’ work and I had never heard of Ghada Amer and Wangechi Mutu before seeing their work at the museum. After seeing the shows I still wasn’t much of a fan of Valérie Blass’ work but I now was familiar with the work of Ghada Amer and Wangechi Mutu.
If I were to try and sum up each artist’s work in a line. I’d say that Ghada Amer sews images on to canvas. Wangechi Mutu scares the living bejeezus out of me. And Valérie Blass make three dimensional collages. For what it is worth, it is actually fairly easy to see the common line that links the work of all three artists. It’s spelled C-O-L-L-A-G-E. But you’d figure that the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal wouldn’t be as simplistic to group three artists just because they were women who combined things that they found into new assemblages, would you?
But anytime you juxtapose art, there’s bound to be some joker who tries to link everything, no matter how tenuous that link is. I guess I’m that joker, today. One way to avoid things like that in the future would be to have three separate openings for the three separate shows. Something like one every week or month probably would be sufficient to make each of the shows by the artists separate in the mind of the public. But then again, I could be wrong, and be the only person in the entire universe who was unable to think of the exhibits as being unlinked. Oh well.
So now I think it’s time to get down to brass tacks. So that no one gets their nose out of joint, I’m going to approach each artist’s section of the show separately, before trying to link them together in a more formal and structured manner (if I can) and I’m going to do them in alphabetical order by their first name. Everyone knows that a last name is a social residue left over from when society was not only patriarchal and patrilinear, but also run by jerks and assholes. I’m also not going to give any background on the artists. If you are at all interested in that, there are some mighty fine catalogues that the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal has published which in and around the multisyllabic words give you a good idea of where each of the artists came from. Or you can use Google.
Ghada Amer. The first time I saw Ms. Amer’s work, it looked extremely delicate, not quite lace-like, not quite like cotton candy on canvas, not quite like teased hair. But like the middle section of a Venn diagram of the three. From a distance, it wasn’t easy to tell what materials she was using and for the most part everything seemed pretty abstract.
The second time I saw Ms. Amer’s work, I realized that the first time I had been very wrong and must have obviously been smoking some crack that was stronger than I was used to, in order to have thought her work was delicate. There’s a quote going around the internet that’s being attributed to Betty White, but probably wasn’t said by her, nonetheless it makes a point. “Why do people say “grow some balls”? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding” Ms. Amer’s work is like that vagina, it’s been pounded. Pounded in order to be created, pounded in order to be looked at, and pounded in order to be understood.
Betty White on balls and vaginas.
Let’s start with the easiest first. In order to make her work, I believe that Ms. Amer has either got to be using some kind of super industrial sewing machine, or an awl that could also double as an ice pick. While the holes she punches in the canvases aren’t necessarily large in and of themselves, they are all over the place and way more than it would take to fill the Albert Hall. She then threads some thread (duh!) through the holes.
The reason you need to pound in order to look at her work – and in case you hadn’t figured it out I’m using the word “pound” as a synonym for “work hard” – is that there is an awful lot of threading going on in each individual piece.
Installation shot of Ghada Amer exhibit at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
And you have to work hard when looking at her work, because behind just about every bit of thread is a second set of images, mostly copied from mainstream culture. Giving all sorts of fodder for the Phd’s in the house to go wild over layering and contrast provided by the two very separate images, ideas and thoughts.
There’s also a large egg shaped object made out of some type of plastic called 100 words of love
Ghada Amer, 100 Words of Love, picture courtesy Art Hag
Which basically takes this idea translates it into Arabic and makes it three dimensional. When I saw it for the second time I spent way too long going over it looking for a seam or a seal or something to indicate how it was joined together, but couldn’t find one. Personally, I think that while it’s a pretty enough object and a nice enough sentiment, something got lost in translation (sorry, I couldn’t help myself there).
Wangechi Mutu is apparently known mostly for her collages. But I would never have known it in a million years if I based it on my impressions on what she’s got up at the museum. And while I’m certain that there were some collages on the walls of the museum, somewhere, they got completely wiped from whatever little memory I had of the exhibit because there are five (or six, depending on what you call art) pieces there, that just completely and utterly blow anything and everything else out of the water, blow them out of the way, and blow my mind.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what the heck they are called, because I was left so slack jawed at them, that I completely forgot to take notes and incorrectly presumed that the museum would be responsible enough to make some reference to them in the catalogue. But nope, no such luck there. If all you were to do was to read the catalogue for Ms. Mutu’s show you’d get the idea that there was some completely different type of exhibit that happened. While I recognize that it is a document of and about the exhibit, it’s like an entirely separate universe.
The catalogue is all brightness and light, big on the feminist theories and post colonialism, using two-bit words like they’re going out of style. Whereas the exhibit itself is darkness and brooding, somewhat threatening (I told you it scared the living bejeezus out of me) very spooky and completely (sorry about the two-bit word) visceral. Kind of like having someone throw a bag over your head and then start beating you with a bag of oranges. Not quite, but close enough.
Most of the space for Ms. Mutu’s work has walls that are covered in brown felt, which makes for a very somber environment. Then after walking around I came across what I’m calling The Thrones.
Installation shot from Wangechi Mutu's exhibit at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.
Now that I’m looking at the picture closer, they don’t look half as intimidating as they do in real life. The feet are really pointy, and someone could easily lose an eye if they were careless. They towered over me not like a Goliath, but more like a very angry sasquatch, or Dr Honorious, or Dr. Maximus from the original Planet of the Apes films. I have no idea if they were supposed to make me feel weak, insignificant and beholden, but they did. And even weirder, was the fact that I found it really hard to look at them straight on.
Once I had those kind of emotions running around inside me, there really wasn’t any holding back. Over on the other side of the gallery were a bunch of wine bottles suspended upside down from string over some white plates. But the bottles themselves were full had some sort of contraption over their mouth that if I squinted slightly and used some free associative techniques could be considered to be like a miniature Hannibal Lecter mask.
They hid just enough, and enabled the wine to drip out very slowly. Slowly enough that I have made a note in my agenda to go back to see the show a third time just before it closes so that I can see just how much wine has been spilled.
Now it’s not like each bottle was lined up precisely over each plate, and in case you hadn’t realized it already, the wine was red. So without too too much of a stretch, if I’m already feeling weak, insignificant and beholden due to what I’m calling The Thrones, it wasn’t hard for what I’m calling The Bottles to get me feeling all vulnerable and guilty. What with the wine looking like blood, and the bottles being a replacement for some kind of lynching scene. I’m kind of annoyed with myself that I wasn’t able to get back to the museum before the show closed to see how much wine/blood was on the plates and the floor.
Then again, I could be very wrong and it all could be just some kind of elaborate physics experiment to measure the effects of gravity on colored water and openings a various diameters.
In between what I’m calling The Thrones and what I’m calling The Bottles was what I’m calling The Tinsel. And while it probably would be fairly easy to succumb to some kind of dark thoughts while experiencing it, it left me in wonder and awe, instead. Basically it’s a large cube like space that stretches down from the ceiling that has golden tinsel streamers as it’s walls. As a consequence, it is extremely easy to walk through the streamers and get inside the cube. Kind of like finding a place to stand behind the waterfall, or the latch to the hidden chamber.
On the flip side, it’s also real easy to assume that The Tinsel itself was some kind of wall or barrier. Especially since a lot of the other walls of the museum were covered in felt. And as a consequence not even think to wander into the inner sanctum – probably because of the lack of a creaking door.
There also was some awesome and amazing structure in front of the Moth Girls – the piece that the museum bought that probably was influential in enabling them to get the exhibit – that looked for the life of me like some sort of 150 year-old gnarled tree or something.
I’m not quite what to make of Moth Girls. It definitely is not half as terrifying or scary as what I’m calling The Bottles and what I’m calling The Thrones. Obviously requiring more contemplation than I was willing to give them (it’s tough to bring your pulse down when it’s going like a pneumatic drill) it also didn’t give off that “I found something!” sensation that what I’m calling The Tinsel did. And so while I’m certain that something significant can and will be made of it, I quite like the idea that it was made because Ms. Mutu’s apartment was infested with moths.
There were other pieces by Ms. Mutu in the show, and I’m kind of annoyed with myself that I can’t remember more about (or took a picture of) the piece with the naturalized animal, but the only memories I have of her collages are from the catalogue, and as I said that is a whole ‘nother thing.
Which brings us to Valérie Blass. I wish I could write something really witty cool and nice about her work. Sadly I can’t. And while I could write something witty, sarcastic and mean – which if done well would make for some entertaining reading – I really don’t have that in me either. Ms. Blass’ work not only leaves me “blah” it also makes me sad.
Installation shot of Valerie Blass' exhibit. Image courtesy of Valerie Blass and Facebook.
For the most part I believe down to the marrow of my bones that there are an awful lot of really amazing and super-duper artists here in Quebec (and by extension Canada). But recently the Google Art Project went global. And when it did, there was not a single Canadian Museum included (for comparison there were six in Australia, two in New Zealand, one in South Africa, and, and, and. Since the global launch the AGO has signed on – but still no Quebecois institution.
I can’t help but thinking that it has something to do with the fact that institutions like the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal are promoting and hyping artists like Ms. Blass. The contemporary equivalent of whomever did the copy of the Mona Lisa at the Prado. Significant and important, but only to a point, and not really doing anything original.
Gluing found objects together and then casting them in porcelain is all fine and dandy, and makes for some pretty shiny objects that you can look at while holding your chin and nodding your head slowly (I said I wasn’t going to write something witty, sarcastic and mean, sorry). Pretty and shiny objects, do not, by virtue of being pretty and shiny deserve to be exhibited in a museum.
Dans la pose très singulière qui est la mienne, by Valérie Blass. Image courtesy http://cuisineetc.wordpress.com/
I am 100% convinced that Ms. Blass’ technique is superlative. That her instincts are true, and that she makes really nice things. But if anyone out there can explain to me how Ms. Blass’ work affects them as emotionally as Ms. Amer’s or Ms. Mutu’s work did me, I’m all ears. While Ms. Blass’ pieces didn’t repulse me, they just left me feeling like I was walking through some high-end home furnishing store looking for something that would be perfect in the nook. (OK, I apologize, I obviously wanted to get mean and sarcastic – Ms. Blass, when you read this, it is not intended as a personal attack, it is intended as a way to keep any readers who are left at this point, entertained.)
Déjà donné, by Valérie Blass. Image courtesy http://cuisineetc.wordpress.com/
When I see what I think are the equivalent of home furnishings in a major Canadian museum, I can kind of understand why Canadian (and by extension Quebecois) art doesn’t get the respect it deserves on an international level. Frustrating, yes. Annoying, yeah. But, if they don’t invite me to the press conferences after I write about the art they exhibit and the openings after I give them money to be a member, it’s obvious as the nose on my face that they and I don’t see things the same way. So what am I going to do?
This is almost up at 3,000 words now, I kind of get the impression that if there is still anyone reading this far in, they are a blood relation. So in order to tie everything up (I said I was going to try) and enable my family to get on with other things more important than reading what I write… It’s obvious that there is an extremely limited public who is interested in Quebecois art, and I betcha dollars to doughnuts, unfortunately, that it isn’t likely to change in the near future.
Merely a month late… Apologies, better late than never. Back in March, I got to see Sliding by Lise Vachon with Marielle Morales and Acéphales by Catherine Lavoie-Marcus with Kelly Keenan and Magali Stoll by Tangente. Two short pieces that Dena Davida said in her introduction were “idea based dance.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that statement, as I find it hard to wrap my head around the concept of dance that is not based on an idea. As far as I can tell all dance is “idea based.” It’s the differences in the ideas (some obviously being better than others) that make individual dances, unique.
In the program Sliding was also referred to as a being perceived as a “series of postcards.” A postcard being a “condensed idea of the history of a particular moment in time” Ms. Vachon said. Given that nobody sends postcards anymore, I’m not quite sure what to make of that statement either. But it’s a good thing that the performance itself was made up of different types of statements. Statements that didn’t involve words, because I was fairly confident I knew what to make of that.
As the proverbial curtain lifted (because there wasn’t any curtain) there was some sort of screen above a low riser that was center stage but towards the back. At the front of the stage in either corner was an overhead projector (now that I think about it some, maybe Ms. Vachon just likes things that have become obsolete due to newer technology).
Ms. Vachon and Ms. Morales kind of peek their heads out from the bottom of the screen, not in a cute or coy way like Betty Boop. More in an experimental way of testing what’s out there, kind of how a new born (and blind) animal checks out the world. Eventually the rest of their bodies flop on stage and it becomes a proper dance performance.
Both Ms. Vachon and Ms. Morales were wearing what I at first thought were black unitards and black stockings, but as I was able to get a better look at things, I changed my mind and noted that they were wearing black socks but then realized it was in fact just the shadows, and what I had thought was a unitard was shorts and a top. So while Patricia Eggerickx costume design might not have been the most original, Marc Lhommel’s lighting design was particularly intriguing if it caused me to get confused about the costumes.
There’s nothing particularly striking about the movements both dancers did. But at the same time they weren’t banal either. More like they were movements well done, without any flash or glitz. At one point I wrote down that it looked like it was done in a “Concordia University” style. But I quickly wrote down after that “what is Concordia University style?” As if I would be able to identify and then explain how the dancers and choreographers trained at Concordia moved differently than those at say UQAM or elsewhere. That’s just me being pretentious while hte lights are down.
Although if I were to now make a calculated guess, instead of Concordia University I’d venture a guess that in fact Ms. Vachon’s style is closely related to that of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, seeing as how she studied with and worked for Ms. De Keersmaeker. But then again, that’s just me trying to be pretentious again, because I wouldn’t recognize a piece by ms. De Keersmaeker if it smacked me in the head.
Also, while doing research I discovered that Sliding had been originally performed by Lisbeth Gruwez and Lise Vachon and somewhere along the way lost 15 minutes. I don’t know if Ms. Gruwez was taken by Ms. Morales or if Ms. Vachon switched parts. But after having seen Ms Gruwez perform I am intrigued that she did it and wonder how different it would been and what it would have been like. Tant pis.
Also In the program (and elsewhere) it was written that Sliding was inspired by (or from) Edward Hopper. Now I’m no Hopper specialist, but like the rest of you I know what Nighthawks looks like,
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942 ; Oil on canvas, 30 x 60 in; The Art Institute of Chicago
And I’m also familiar with some other of his paintings, and the closest I can think of is his Rooms by the Sea and the second use of the overhead projector where there are some lines that transform the scene into a bare room and then a yellow gel is placed on to form the ceiling. But Rooms by the Sea has a yellowish floor. But then again, I haven’t seen all of his paintings, so I might be missing something as obvious as the nose on my face.
Rooms by the Sea by Edward Hopper, 1951; Oil on canvas, 29 x 40 inches; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
However before you get the impression that I spent the entire performance scratching my head and questioning things that didn’t make sense to me and as a consequence didn’t like it. I should start to write some positive stuff as well. At the time I quite liked it (well, actually everything but the music, but you can’t win ’em all). The dancing was quite accomplished and well done, there were a bunch of different place in my notes where I wrote things like “really good,” “double checkmark” and “very nicely done.” It’s just that without the benefit of a script, I can’t tell you where. In certain parts they seemed to be moving like six year-old girls pretending to be models, and in other places I noted that they looked like “post-modern cheerleaders” with their arms out spinning and kicking. Then towards the end there’s a nice bit where their shadows kiss.
Although it sounded to me like it received tepid applause at the performance I attended, I thought it was quite accomplished, despite my difficulties making the same connections as Ms. Vachon would have wanted me to.
As you would expect, I had the same sort of opposing reaction to Acéphales. According to my notes, the applause it got was “much warmer.” I have no idea why. (Actually, I do, the dancers, Kelly Keenan and Magali Stoll, along with the choreographer Catherine Marcus-Lavoie are locals who are probably recent graduates from university, and as a consequence the audience was packed with their friends who would be naturally inclined to clap louder). But it still makes no sense to me.
[Edit January 11, 2013: Apparently I am much older than I thought, or dancing makes you look much younger than you are. I just met with Catherine Marcus-Lavoie, and neither she nor Kelly Keenan, nor Magali Stoll have been anywhere near a university in a long time. And Ms. Marcus-Lavoie also informed me that the show I saw didn’t have an awful lot of her friends in the audience.]
Acéphales somehow translates into “without a head” in English, although it isn’t half as poetic sounding. In retrospect it’s kind of easy to see how that idea made its way through the performance. But the performance – I hesitate to use the term “dance” – could have equally been called “Head,”
or “heady,” or “head’s up.” As most of the moving was based around and on the head. Plastic bubble wrap covering a head.
Acéphales by Catherine Lavoie-Marcus with Kelly Keenan, photo by Frédéric Chais courtesy http://dancenews-mtl.weebly.com
Or facepainting, but not like what you see during the Jazz Festival but more like what you would expect children to do if they did the facepainting themselves.
[Edit January 11, 2013: Ms. Lavoie-Marcus also asked me to remove a picture that was taken for a different performance and not Acéphales.]
The stage itself looked vaguely like a minimalist Thomas Hirschhorn installation (if that’s actually possible). A lot of bubble wrap and other plastic, some blenders, paint, you get the idea. Ms. Keenan and Ms. Stoll were both dressed in what could be called plastic smocks. Despite the precautions, everyone did get dirty.
[Edit January 11, 2013: Apparently I also need a stronger prescription for my glasses Ms. Lavoie-Marcus informed me in no uncertain terms that they were wearing regular street clothes street-like clothes.]
There was no real rhyme or reason to the action that I could see, but if I was going to get all technical on you, it looked to me like the two women were possibly in opposition. Why? I don’t know, it was never quite stated.
When the promo video for a performance concentrates on a microphone as much or more so than it does on the performers, and when a significant portion of it is deliberately out of focus, you can understand that the actual movement on stage isn’t exactly of the highest priority. And in this case it didn’t strike me that it was.
Whether it was intended as some sort of commentary on the practice of female mud-wrestling, or was intended as some sort of PoMo female mud-wrestling, or was intended just as a means to muck about with paint on stage, I have no clue. But whatever the intention was, it really didn’t come across as anything more than mucking around.
And if you’re going to muck around, it helps to be two years-old, blonde and outdoors instead of an adult in a block box theatre…
[Edit January 11, 2013: As you might guess Ms. Lavoie-Marcus did not like what I wrote about her piece. She has a view that there are certain things that a reviewer should always do. In conversation with her, I got a sense she wants critics try to keep some sense of objectivity, reporting facts of what happened, and then explaining whether these things that happened were done well or not. I’m probably not doing her point of view any justice for any number of reasons. But it was quite obvious that she really doesn’t like my attempts at new journalism reviews. As a consequence I have offered her a carte blanche to respond as she sees fit. As soon as I have it, I will post it.]
I‘ve been twice to see the show, and might just go a third time before it closes on April 15. If you want the short version, it’s a very nice show. A little small, but a fascinating way to spend 90 minutes or so.
Once there, it kind of becomes obvious as to how and what gets displayed. There are are pictures of trees (lots of pictures of trees, depending on who you believe, trees are either good for your health or bad for your health) ranging from Robert Burley’s photographs of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (good for your health) to Cesare Leonardi’s awesome drawings of trees (bad for your health). There are floor plans for old age homes, plans for a pig apartment building and lots of other cool things that all have some connection between design (more so than architecture) and health.
To get the crotchety stuff out of the way quickly and early. Given that The Canadian Centre for Architecture is in Montreal, I was disappointed that there wasn’t more local content. It’s not like every city in the world can boast that they have park designed by Olmstead. But sadly, there was no picture of Mount Royal and given that there are not one, but two hospitals being built here now, I would have thought that they might have incorporated something from those projects into the exhibit.
There is a preponderance of information in how buildings can be bad for your health – a significant portion of one room given over to asbestos, which is really the only local content, and a whole other section devoted to dust and materials that cause allergies – while at the same time there are also numerous plans of buildings that are supposed to be good for your health (from OMA and SANAA specifically) I would have loved to have seen some information on older medical architecture. Something like how the Royal Victoria Hospital developed, or the evolution of hospital wall colors, or pill design, or, or, or. You get the picture. Something slightly more historical.
I wasn’t obsessive about note-taking but it struck me that for the most part there was nothing prior to 1960 or so. I don’t know if that has anything to do with what actually got archived, and therefore was available, or if there was some executive decision not go further back. Because of the heavy emphasis on contemporary practices and the fact that it wasn’t as large and sprawling as previous exhibits at the CCA, I was left imagining the gaps. What type of stuff could have been there.
The stuff from the 60s was tremendous. There was a section devoted to Sun City, AZ the “first and finest planned retirement community for active seniors.” They had a selection of floor plans
Sun City Model Home Info
and a video on the history of Sun City that I wouldn’t watch there, because they insisted on playing it on an endless loop, which as I have said before (and will say again) makes no sense when the film or video that you’re watching has a beginning, a middle and an end. But was able to find it on YouTube.
The Sun City film was part of the exhibit on aging. The exhibit itself was loosely built around six health related topics: allergies, asthma, cancer, obesity, epidemics, and aging. As an introduction to each section there was a bulletin board with a variety of clippings, reprints from websites and other assorted ephemera. Some worked better than others. I never really ever thought that I would see a page printed from The Globe and Mail’s website as something displayed in an exhibit at the CCA.
While each object in the show was presented in order to raise questions, I think that the allergy room was the least effective. There were samples, under plexiglass of building materials that could potentially cause allergic reactions, and other samples for you to handle that wouldn’t cause allergic reactions. I would guess that they were there in order to facilitate the younger viewers to the exhibition. But I haven’t been young for a while, so as you might expect I found them a tad juvenile.
And speaking of questions, one occurred to me last night. The exhibit comes down fairly hard and strong in it’s condemnation of asbestos, and I’m fairly certain that everyone, myself included, knows that breathing in asbestos fibers will cause cancer. But the reason it was used so much as a building material was because of it’s fire-resistant properties among other things. I wonder how many people would have died in burning buildings if asbestos had not been used, and how would that compare to the number of people who died (or will die) due to asbestosis?
Nerea Calvillo, architect, in collaboration with C+ arquitectos and In the Air. Toxic topography of Budapest, Hungary, 2008. In the Air Exhibition print from digital drawing. Production support from LABoral
One of the prettier, but more obtuse parts was from Ms. Calvillo. He attempts to map the atmosphere are quite nice. But the attendant documentation in the exhibit was somewhat sparse. In doing further research after the fact I came across this article by Javier Arbona that did manage to explain her work in plainer language and also had a link to the website for In the Air.
And that I think is one of the other small faults I would note about the exhibit. It seemed to me that far too much of it was the internet made material. Kind of like the exact opposite of their previous exhibition 404 ERROR The Object is Not Online.
All of this is not say that Imperfect Health: the Medicalization of Architecture at The Canadian Centre for Architecture is flawed or not worth it. As I wrote at the top, “it’s a very nice show. A little small, but a fascinating way to spend 90 minutes or so.” it raises questions, and for the most part I always think that raising questions is a good thing. But like with anything that I am fond of, I always wish there was more. Or that things were slightly more nuanced (or in other cases slightly less nuanced). But you get the idea, there is always something that could be done to take something very good and make it exceptional, or to go from great to amazing.
Your level of enjoyment of the exhibit will be roughly inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend on line looking at and reading about theoretical architecture. Or exponential to the amount of time you spend in the galleries of the CCA taking notes and then entering them into Bing or some other search engine. Given that I don’t do much of the former and a lot of the later, it worked out quite well for me. But as the kids say, “your mileage may vary.“
Recently I noticed that whomever the powers that be are, decided to make President Kennedy in between Clark and Jeanne Mance, one way going west.
The intersection of President Kennedy and Ontario, looking east.
I presume that they did this because of the 80/535 stop in front of the Place des Arts metro. This buses are big and block up a full lane when waiting. There were a couple of time this fall when I saw some cars trying to pass them while going west almost crash into cars going east along President Kennedy.
Close up of the new signage at President Kennedy and Jeanne Mance.
Way back in the dark ages, before the Quartier des Spectacles and the Place des Festivals was a gleam in anyone’s eye. The 80/535 used to trundle down Bleury all the way to Rene Levesque, where they would turn east and then turn north onto Jeanne Mance in order to head back to Parc Ex. But once construction was started on the Quartier des Spectacles and the Place des Festivals the 80/535 stops had to be changed.
So some bright wag decided that the 80/435 (and they also decided to change the number of the route as well) should continue along Rene Levesque until Saint Laurent, turn up Saint Laurent until Ontario, and then stop in front of the new(ish) UQAM buildings.
Which is how there almost was a rash of car accidents on President Kennedy (for the non-locals, Ontario and President Kennedy are the same street, with two different names). But what both the powers that be and the bright wag completely forgot about was that there was another street maybe 50 feet south, that paralleled President Kennedy and was already one way west. It’s called de Maisonneuve.
President Kennedy on the left, de Maisonneuve on the right.
I don’t understand why they didn’t route the 80/435 to turn left on de Maisonneuve thereby enabling them to keep President Kennedy two way. It seems kind of silly to me to have two streets duplicating the same thing not even side-by-side, but practically on top of each other. Especially since it now means that the 125 going east has to detour up to Sherbrooke and the back down Saint Urbain to complete its route.
Then there is some other silliness as well. Clark street is two-way for 50 feet! And de Montigny is also one way going west (and why didn’t they just rename it to become de Maisonneuve? Why the name change for just two, short blocks?
The section of Clark that is two way.
I might be able to understand if these particular intersections were on the Plateau where they deliberately try to make it difficult, if not down right impossible for drivers. But this is downtown, centre-ville Montreal where they still like cars.
