Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "j-e-h-macdonald"
Epistles from the Road: Art in Toronto
Stumbled out of the AGO reeling, after less than two hours, already full. The Henry Moore-Francis Bacon exhibit, so stunning, which works so hard to underscore the (very real) similarities in their work and concerns, but for me even more vividly underscores their differences, Moore's figures always reclining or collapsing, seeking relief or release from suffering, Bacon's almost bursting open--blooming, in a terrifying way--from it.
--Bacon; Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953
The long walk through the Group of Seven rooms with their snowscapes, their shadowed, not-quite-peopleless woods, half-identifying/half-inventing a specific, Canadian somewhere out of the great Canadian nowhere, so much gorgeous work we never get to see Stateside. J.E.H. Macdonald, my god! Hello, J.W. Morrice and your snowlit, Impressionist Quebec, welcome to my permanent collection;
--Morrice; Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, 1897
Tom Thomson, I know those shadows. Or I want to. Emily Carr with your trees winding to heaven. Bacon--crushed, heartbroken, devastated Bacon--said it best, said it on the walls of the AGO exhibit: "Painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation in me which return me to life more violently." Pretty much why I think I'm here. Why I'm anywhere.
--Bacon; Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953
The long walk through the Group of Seven rooms with their snowscapes, their shadowed, not-quite-peopleless woods, half-identifying/half-inventing a specific, Canadian somewhere out of the great Canadian nowhere, so much gorgeous work we never get to see Stateside. J.E.H. Macdonald, my god! Hello, J.W. Morrice and your snowlit, Impressionist Quebec, welcome to my permanent collection;
--Morrice; Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, 1897
Tom Thomson, I know those shadows. Or I want to. Emily Carr with your trees winding to heaven. Bacon--crushed, heartbroken, devastated Bacon--said it best, said it on the walls of the AGO exhibit: "Painting unlocks all kinds of valves of sensation in me which return me to life more violently." Pretty much why I think I'm here. Why I'm anywhere.
