(March
2018) I own a unique and intriguing work of art.
The
painting has a poignant history that touched me personally. It
has been featured in newspapers, magazines, and art exhibitions. It draws vigorous commentary
from everyone who sees it.
But
I am not sure I really get it. Sometimes,
I am not even sure I should like it.
Rene
Price, the artist, gave it to me as a friend and to thank me for participating
in a panel discussion at an Ottawa art gallery six years ago.
The forum launched
an exhibition showcasing some over-the-top paintings, sculptures, and other works that satirized the dullness of bureaucracies.
Gallery 101 invited me at Rene's suggestion to speak because I had just published a parody of Don Quixote, placing the hero within a
federal government office. I was asked to reflect on the
parallels between the Spanish classic’s imaginary world interacting
with ordained truths and life as an employee of the Government of Canada.
I
thought I could do that without much effort.
The
kick-off to the Bureaucracy and Art exhibition included other writers, Rene, and a young
Montreal-based visual artist named Immony Men, who used Post-It notes to create
a wall-sized pale yellow and grey image of an office cubicle. The on-site, painstaking construction of the work,
little-note-by-little-note constituted a kind of complementary performance art and tribute to the tedium being commemorated in the exhibition.
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| Immony Men - Post-It Note Art |
Later
I found out that I also had attraction as a speaker at this event because I worked in
Building M-58, the administrative headquarters at the National Research Council
of Canada (NRC) Campus on Montreal Road in the east end of Ottawa.
Rene
knew art, bureaucracy, and, as it turns out, NRC well.
He
comes from an artistic and culturally sophisticated family. His maternal grandfather Marius Barbeau effectively
founded the field of Canadian anthropology as a renowned champion of Indigenous
and Québecois folk culture.
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| Art Price |
That career included
over thirty years in
government offices where Rene tried to fit his artistic soul into the need for
a steady income by working as an exhibit designer for Parks Canada. It sounds creative and did involve a bit of travel,
but also required a lot of time in government office spaces plagued by politics, protocols, and the dreariness of any bureaucratic environment.
It was ok for Rene most of the time.
But
in the 1990s, the angst magnified under a string of layoffs and budget cuts, and
Rene was impelled to paint works that satirized and skewered it all as an
emotional outlet. This led to the wild collection
put on display at Gallery 101.
Some
of the works disturb people. Others amuse. I particularly liked the self-portrait-style
sculpture Rene labelled an “Inaction Figure.”
I also laughed at his business cards.
But
one work drew more media and public attention than all others combined, and it illustrated
all newspaper and magazine stories as well as publicity for the show: that is the greyish
green painting (shown above) that Rene called “Sleeping Beauty” also “Cinderella,” but mostly “Sleeping
Beauty.” It featured a pudgy, cubicle-confined office worker whose head formed the face of a clock with hands inching toward the end of a work day.
It
exuded monotony and a sad
kind of funniness.
This is the painting now in my possession.
When Rene offered to give me one of his works in the wake of the
panel discussion, I jokingly asked for “Sleeping Beauty,” knowing it to be the prized
piece of the exhibition.
“Well,
actually, it’s kind of hard to find a permanent home for it,” he said. “It’s
pretty big.”
A
week later, he arrived with the oversized painting at the door of my office in that building overlooking his late father's over-sized silver ball.A few of my colleagues kindly gathered for the sort-of unveiling, some donuts, and coffee. An appropriately banal bureaucratic celebration.
Acrylic
on wood, the painting, which measures a few inches over three feet wide and a
few inches under five feet high, weighs a bit and could be considered a little
awkward. Its dimensions do not lend themselves to any kind of standard living
space.
But
it seemed, at least in a physical sense, to fit nicely into my oversized
office. Because of my role then and
later as Secretary General of NRC, my office acted as a meeting room as well as
my cube.
Looking
at it over the years, I mused about its provenance, my personal ties to it, and
the connection to the NRC silver ball.
Most of the time, I smiled.
But
some of my colleagues and visitors took offense, seeing it as something that
mocked public service and suggested we were all lazy.
I
saw it differently. In fact, at that art
gallery event, I found myself using the platform and the Don Quixote allegory to vigorously defend public servants as
uniquely dedicated and heroic. While
there are some who fit the image of slothful clock watchers, these types are an
isolated minority. Most of the people I know are driven and work as hard as or
harder than those I met during many years in private sector business.
They
certainly warrant respect on par with that afforded some of their harshest
critics in the worlds of art and academia. Many work long hours motivated by the
aspiration of contributing to their country and something greater than themselves,
and they do so often burdened and blocked by those processes that seem to exist
for their own sake, by abstract and artificial requirements, and the kind of
bureaucracy Rene and the other artists sought to needle.
For this reason, I looked at the painting and
saw a sad character not lazy, but worn down by it all, crying out in an agony reminiscent of
Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
“It
is a reminder of what I do not want to become,” I told people.
In
fact, many visitors noted that artistic similarities with The Scream: the smooth round face, circles within circles, smooth swirls, the mix of softness and intensity of the colours, and the theme of environment-induced grief.
Others commented further
that Sleeping Beauty echoed the raw
and slightly grotesque figurative paintings of the British painter Francis
Bacon, who not only liked round heads and circular, screaming mouths but also put his subjects in cubes and boxes.
Seeing
the clock-watching confinement of Rene’s painting in this light, we often
referred to it uneasily and jokingly as “the Sparks Street Scream” and “the Cubicle
Cry.” Rene later let me know in an email exchange that he preferred the original
title, notwithstanding the mischievous appeal of association with Munch.
In
any case, the painting’s history now includes years in a government office and
the meeting room of the Secretary General of the National Research Council for a period that included NRC's 100th anniversary year 2016. That silver ball, which still shines outside
M-58, was ironically designed and constructed for NRC’s 50th
anniversary in 1966. Rene’s late father dubbed the silver ball “The Universe is You” to relate to its globular shape, its capacity to reflect the sun’s rays and send bright light in all directions, and its function as a mirror reflection of the viewer. Names mean something.
The
name Price is shining brightly in new ways today. One of Art Price’s other
celebrated installation pieces is an aluminum and bronze collection of stylized geese
called “the Welcoming Birds,” placed many decades ago at the Gander
International Airport in Newfoundland. Recently, Art Price’s “Birds” have been celebrated as emblematic of the story behind the Broadway Musical “Come from Away,” have been featured in media stories, and anchor tours of Gander inspired by the play’s success.
All of these fibres knit together in my mind when I look at "Sleeping Beauty."
I
like the painting, yet because some people I admire take it as a personal critique, I am
not, as I said above, even sure I should.
A painting that solicits different takes and raises questions probably qualifies as a desirable work of art and should be valued. But lately I have wondered whether the painting might find a better home for the long term.This thought has magnified in recent months as I approach retirement and leave behind the large office and bureaucrat’s work space so suitable to the painting’s shape and size. I am not exactly sure where the painting will go, but I will keep looking.
I
know just storing it my basement would be banal, bureaucratic, and a sign of
giving up.
