She crossed the century dancing, strolling, creating installations, painting. She danced in the snow, walked among oil refineries, learned welding and built public art sculptures. On the eve of her 100th birthday, artist Françoise Sullivan, a member of the Automatiste group, still seems convinced of the power of art. And every day, in her studio, she paints.
“Life can be beautiful. Life is beautiful no matter what,” she said simply, fresh, light, joyful, in her black dress, at the time of the launch of the exhibition. an imaginary line at the Galerie de l’UQAM, on his work from the 1970s. “I paint, I see friends. My children take care of me and I take care of them,” she says.
She loved to paint from childhood. “I’ve always been into art,” she says. But it was with a text on dance, entitled “La danse et l’espoir”, that she signed the manifesto in 1948 Global denialwith the group of Automatist artists directed by Paul-Émile Borduas.
At the time, Françoise Sullivan was studying dance in New York, at the same time as Louise Renaud and Mimi Lalonde, wife of Jean Gascon. “I was avant-garde, I wanted to do the equivalent of painting in dance,” she recalls in an interview. In New York, she rubs shoulders with the New Dance Group, with Mary Anthony. She’s going to Harlem to listen to jazz. “I was going to explore everywhere and I met the dancer Franziska Boas. At the time, Franziska Boas combined artistic production and social activism. She is the daughter of Franz Boas, considered the father of modern American anthropology.
It was in the New York studio of Franziska Boas that Françoise Sullivan organized in 1946 the exhibition The Borduas Group, one of “four landmark exhibitions that were to raise awareness of Automatist artists and define the Automatist aesthetic in painting”, according to art historian Rose-Marie Arbour. Françoise Sullivan does not participate as a painter, but is the organizer.
When Françoise Sullivan talks about Global denial, it is of an entire movement, and not only of a document, that she speaks. She insists on this: “We built this movement by our thought. I didn’t suddenly decide to sign the manifesto. We made the move. We built it, by our thoughts, by what we read, by what we said,” she says.
It must also be said that painting, then considered the ultimate form of art, was at that time mainly reserved for men in the Automatiste group, where only Marcelle Ferron devoted herself to it full-time as a woman.
“They kind of acted like that. They were proud of their importance. But, in my opinion, it could be equal, dancing and painting. The Ballets Russes, what they were doing, it was very advanced,” she says.
Close to its historic moment
Today, all of Françoise Sullivan’s work is shot through with a reflection on art. She was at the forefront of the great artistic currents of the last century: from automatism to conceptual art, from Italian Arte povera to the return to painting. And in what she does, thought is never far from form. It was already present in his text “La danse et l’espoir »registered in Dwas global.
“Art flourishes only on issues relevant to the times, always directed towards the unknown. Hence the marvelous,” she wrote in 1948. “Françoise Sullivan is very close to her historical moment, to our moment,” says art historian Louise Déry, who has written several books and produced several exhibitions on the work of the artist.
In her large studio in Griffintown, where she painted for forty years before having to leave with regret, Françoise Sullivan continued to create choreographies. “It was the romantic studio, all white,” she recalls. Today, she sees that dance is very much alive in Quebec, while in the painting world, “it’s not very strong at the moment,” she adds. He still happens, says the artist, to dance in his kitchen, listening to jazz.
For Françoise Sullivan, art was a “destiny”, rather than a career, even if she distinguished herself throughout her life. When she decided to enroll in the School of Fine Arts, her parents saw no objection, considering that the career that awaited her was above all a life as a mother. “I was a mother,” she says, laughing. “That’s when I signed the manifesto Global denial that it was difficult [avec sa famille] “, she confides.
However, she loves to remember the poems of Pierre de Ronsard that her father declaimed to her, when she was still very small and she held his hand during their holidays in Bellevue. Later, with the group of automatists, she learned about Rimbaud and Baudelaire. It was first with Pierre Gauvreau that she became friends, when she attended the École des beaux-arts like him. Noticed by Paul-Émile Borduas, the latter invites his group to his master to engage in discussions. “Françoise knew Pierre Gauvreau and Bruno Cormier since the age of 11,” recalls Patricia Smart, author of the book. The women of the Global Refusal.
Dance and see yourself dance
At the time of the Automatiste movement, Françoise Sullivan imagined choreographies anchored in the territory, to be performed outside. In 1948, she performed Dance in the snow (illustration on front page) in front of Mont Saint-Hilaire. Jean Paul Riopelle films it, but the film is lost, like the film of the choreography of the previous summer that Françoise Sullivan had conceived and danced at Les Escoumins, in front of her mother’s 16 mm camera.
“Not only was she performing her performance, but she knew how it had to come out in the picture. She is a pioneer of contemporary dance, but she is also a pioneer in the way of showing it,” continues Louise Déry. In 2007, Françoise Sullivan will reproduce the four choreographies she had thought up for the four seasons, and have them performed by four dancers of different ages.
La condition de femme by Françoise Sullivan, married to the painter Paterson Ewen and mother of four children, determined at a certain time his choices as an artist. This is what she explained to Patricia Smart when she met her for the writing of her book The women of Refus global.
“It was not possible [de continuer à danser] because, when you dance, you have to be absent for classes, rehearsals, television shows, she said. That’s when I stopped. In the beginning, I remember, I had plenty of time. I was playing housewife. But after a while, I felt like I had lost my identity, and I panicked. I felt the need to return to a job, but it had to be a job that didn’t take me away from home, that would leave me free to decide how to use my time. I didn’t want to go back to painting because my husband was a painter and this art belonged to him. So I started doing sculpture. »
Françoise Sullivan then took welding lessons. “I was the only woman among the workers,” she recalls in an interview. Then, she continued this training at the Beaux-Arts.
In her garage, she designs sculptures that evoke movement, including Concentric fall (1962) which earned him the Prix du Québec, and also, notably, Callooh Callay, commissioned for Expo 67. The title, inspired by the book Alice in Wonderlandby Lewis Carroll, expresses joy.
This joy, she still seems to emanate from Françoise Sullivan, despite the pain experienced at the time of the death of one of her sons, in 2019. When asked how she feels to become a centenarian, she simply recounts the excitement of enter a new century with a smile on your face.
“Françoise Sullivan is confident, summarizes Patricia Smart. She dares to do things that no one else would have done, but always with a little sense of humor, always with her little smile. Inspiration always follows her.