Storytellers (PDF) - Art Gallery of Alberta

Who doesn’t love a good story? Our entire lives are bound by the relating ofevents: what happened? where did it happen? how did it happen? who didit happen to? how did it end? These are the questions, and it is the answersto these questions, that teach us; that guide our relationships with others;and that form the memories we either cherish...or that haunt us to the endof our days.According to most historians and psychologists storytelling - the conveyingof events in words, images and sounds - is one of the things that defineand bind humanity. Storytelling is a means for sharing and interpretingexperiences and has been used for millennia for entertainment, education,cultural preservation and to instill moral values. Storytelling is found in allhuman cultures and while most stories have been told orally or throughwritten text, they have also been expressed in visual forms for thousands ofyears.The relating of stories visually is called Narrative Art. In such artwork storiescan be told either as a moment in an ongoing story or as a sequence ofevents unfolding over time. Narrative works may depict grand or importantevents or ideas, expressed through the genre of History Paintings, or beconcerned with humble scenes or events from everyday life, articulated inGenre Scenes. Whatever the form of expression such representations containthe literary elements of setting, character, and narrative point of view. Mostimportantly, however, to be considered an actual story or involve narrativea visual art work must possess one crucial element: it must either imply oractually portray action.In 1971 the British musician Rod Stewart released the album EveryPicture Tells a Story and to a large degree he is correct - every picture does,in one way or another, tell a story. With artworks drawn from the collectionof the Alberta Foundation for the Arts the exhibition Storytellers exploresthe narratives related by artists and the various ways they have beenportrayed.The exhibition Storytellers was curated by Shane Golby and organized bythe Art Gallery of Alberta for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts TravellingExhibition Program. The AFA Travelling Exhibition program is supported by theAlberta Foundation for the Arts.Cover Images:Top left image: Gerry Dotto, Speak of the Kettle, 2012, Colour photograph,Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the ArtsTop right image: Bernard Bloom, Ecologically conscious student screaming atHomosexuals, 1994, Silver gelatin print toned on paper, Collection of theAlberta Foundation for the ArtsBottom left image: Jacques Rioux, Newspaper Rock, Utah, 1992, Silvergelatin, selenium toned photograph on paper, Collection of the AlbertaFoundation for the ArtsBottom right image: Harry Savage, Postcard from a Green Trailer, 1972,Silkscreen on paper, Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the ArtsThe Alberta Foundation for the Arts Travelling Exhibition ProgramTravelling Exhibition2013-2016 SeasonsThe Art Gallery of Alberta is pleased to present this travelling exhibitionfor the 2013-2016 season. Currently the Art Gallery of Alberta servesover 60 venues in approximately 35 communities. Exhibitions on tourfrom the Art Gallery of Alberta easily adapt to space requirementsof smaller venues: schools, libraries, museums, health care centresand other community facilities. The exhibitions are organized in sucha manner as to make unpacking, packing, hanging and shipping aseasy as possible. Along with the exhibition, each venue receives anEducational Interpretive Guide. These materials enable teachers touse the exhibition within the school curriculum.The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection is the primary sourceof works featured in the travelling exhibitions. Other sources forexhibitions may include community partners, archives, privatecollections and loans from artists. Each year we welcome new venuesto enrich their community art through the Alberta Foundation for theArts Travelling Exhibition Program.Our ThanksThe Alberta Foundation for the Artsand to the many individuals, organizations and communities whocontribute to the success of the Alberta Foundation for the ArtsTravelling Exhibition Program each year.ContactShane Golby, Manager/CuratorAFA Travelling Exhibition Program Region 2Art Gallery of Alberta/CSF10550-107 StreetEdmonton, AB T5H 2Y6T: 780.428.3830F: 780.421.0479shane.golby@youraga.caThe Alberta Foundation for the ArtsTravelling Exhibition Program...We need stories to provide us with a sense of wonder, to help uslearn courage and compassion, to affirm and connect us to life.George Webber, artist

Jeff BurgessWedding, 1981Oil on watercolour boardCollection of the AlbertaFoundation for the ArtsRoy KiyookaUntitled, Highlights, December 1951,Vol. 5, No. 3, 1951Lithograph on paperCollection of the Alberta Foundationfor the ArtsMark TraficanteAuntie Josephine’s Wedding circa1980, 2012Acrylic on paperCollection of the AlbertaFoundation for the ArtsNarrative Art - art works which portray an actual story or part(s) ofa story - is expressed within two main genre of painting. One focusconcerns Genre Paintings or Genre Scenes. Such works concern pictorialrepresentations in any media that portray scenes or events from everydaylife.Works of art classified as genre paintings focus on the mundane incidentsof everyday life, depicting people the viewer can easily identify withengaged in situations that tell a story. Over the centuries artists haveexplored a number of themes in genre paintings. Work and leisureactivities have been very popular sources of inspiration and such worksoften create a nostalgia for good times remembered or an ideal worldwhere life is less complicated. In the hands of some modern artists,however, such scenes serve as windows on the ‘grittier’ sides of life.Jeff Burgess’s painting Wedding of 1981 is an example of a genre scene,depicting as it does a very common activity; a couple leaving a churchafter their wedding ceremony. While portraying what is usually perceivedas a very happy event, however, Burgess’s style of presentation imbuesthis event with a disturbing air. As expressed by the artist:My work almost always deals with the human figure and portraitureas I feel a need in art to return to the representation of it. I am keenlyinterested in the human anatomy, the shapes and textures of skin andmuscles and how far one can stretch and distort them beyond the actual.The unsettling distortions and use of colour evident in the figuresportrayed in Wedding link Burgess’s style to that of expressionism.Developed during the late 19 th century, expressionism proclaimed thedirect rendering of emotions and feelings as the only true goal of art andthrough colour and linear distortions expressionist artists attempted toexpress the elemental emotions of anxiety, fear, love and hatred. Usingheightened colour and exaggerated modeling in his figures, Burgesstransforms the wedding party and guests from happy revellers intoleering ‘monsters’ or animals and changes a normally celebratory riteof commitment into a rather unpleasant and perhaps even sinisterspectacle.Narrative art is also expressed through the genre of History Paintings whichare defined by subject matter rather than artistic style. From the fifteenthto nineteenth centuries history painting was considered the highest form ofWestern painting, occupying the most prestigious place in the hierarchy ofartistic genres.History painting is not simply the painting of history but includes thedepiction of events that may or may not have happened. Because of this, itcould be more accurately called narrative painting. The term history paintingderives from the Latin historia and essentially means ‘story painting’. Assuch, history paintings are distinct from other kinds of paintings that do nottell a story at all, such as portraiture or still life paintings.From around 1400 artists began to turn to the classical worlds of Greeceand Rome for inspiration. Artists either used classical stories or myths assubjects for their work or artists and patrons chose a theme and then soughtout suitable stories or adapted mythologies to suit their needs.This interest in classicism has survived the centuries and one classicalstory expressed in the exhibition Storytellers is seen in the lithograph byRoy Kiyooka. Kiyooka’s humorous modernist drawing references the Greekmyth of Pygmalion. According to legend Pygmalion was a sculptor in Cypruswho created a statue of a beautiful woman and fell in love with his work.Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Venus where he prayed that hissculpture would be changed into a real woman. When he returned home hekissed the sculpture and found that his wish had been granted: she changedinto a real woman and Pygmalion married his living sculpture with Venus’blessing.In Kiyooka’s print from Highlights the beautiful woman of the Pygmalionstory is changed into an abstract figurative sculpture. In the work sculptorand sculpture toast the artist’s success in bringing the work to life, perhapsspeaking not only to the skill of the artist illustrated in the work, but also tothe ‘birth’ and perceived triumph of modernist abstraction at the time.A classification of art which usually falls within the realm of genre scenesis that of Outsider Art. In the exhibition Storytellers characteristics ofOutsider Art are seen in the painting Auntie Josephine’s Wedding circa1980 by Mark Traficante.The term Outsider Art was developed in 1972 as an English synonym forart brut, a term created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe artcreated by those outside of the established art scene. In Dubuffet’sdefinition, art brut was quite specific in nature and referred to art createdby inmates of mental institutions or by children. The English term‘outsider art’ is often applied quite broadly to include certain self-taughtor nave artists who were never institutionalized. One of the mostcommon terms to describe the work of such artists is Naïve art.Generally speaking the characteristics of nave art are an awkwardrelationship to the formal qualities of painting. Such artists especiallyignore the three rules of perspective which are:1/ a decrease in the size of objects proportionally at the distance2/ a decrease in the vividness of colours with the distance3/ a decrease in the precision of details with the distanceIn ignoring these rules Nave artists often create works where:1/ the effects of perspective are geometrically erroneous2/ there is a strong use of pattern and an unrefined use of colour on allthe planes of the composition3/ equal accuracy is brought to details, including those of thebackground (which should be shaded off and less defined with distance)Mark Traficante, a client at The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts inEdmonton, demonstrates many of the above characteristics of naive artin his painting Aunt Josephine’s Wedding.... While there are tonal changesin colour to create a shallow sense of space in the work, there is anoverall consistency in the accuracy of details between backgroundobjects and the foreground figures, a strong use of patterning, and anawkwardness in proportion in the rendering of the figures. Rather thandetracting from the presentation, however, such an honest treatmentprovides the story being related with a freshness and sense of immediacyand serves as an informative contrast to Jeff Burgess’s interpretation of asimilar celebration.