A rich subject, carrier, unifier, the artist’s studio fascinates. Haven’t workshop visits always been successful? One can imagine the importance that an exhibition around this creative space represents for the establishment that hosts it.
At the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ), the impression is diluted. The exhibition The workshop as creation. Stories of artists’ studios in Quebec has everything to delight: the variety (periods and genres combined), the number (about sixty works or… workshops), the thematic approach (portraits, exteriors, functions…) and the meticulous gaze of its curator (art historian Laurier Lacroix).
The latter almost holds your hand throughout the visit. Each work (each!) has its short text, both descriptive and explanatory. It is not rare to even read there the civic address of the workshop represented. A real work of historian which it would be crazy to do without.
The MAJ does not hesitate to do so, of course. On the other hand, we would have expected that such a rich and unifying project be given the scale it deserves – in this case, all the rooms on the ground floor. Gold, The workshop as creation seems to have been amputated by half of its space.
Meaningful
Laurier Lacroix’s words carry meaning in several respects. Without mentioning the crisis of recent years (the gentrification of neighborhoods which dispossess artists of affordable studios), the exhibition makes concrete the need for a space to work there.
The “Workshop Functions” section expresses this explicitly. The workshop serves as a room for exhibitions, even posthumous. This is the case for that of Alfred Laliberté, haunted by a crowd of bodies, which Sam Tata photographed five years after the sculptor’s death. It also has, among other functions, that of a space of fraternity, as can be seen by seeing the Sullivans, Barbeaus and Mousseaus in a 1948 photo by Maurice Perron.
The slightly cubist oil self-portrait of Jean Dallaire, from 1938, the painting Windows Studio (1957), by Ghitta Caiserman-Roth, another oil multiplying the points of view, or four examples of The dark room (2005-2010), a series of photos by Michel Campeau, show the creative tricks that are simmering in the studio over time. “The studio as a place of research”, says the curator in one of his cartels.
Whether through the eyes of a colleague (photographer, above all) or through his own eyes, the artist reveals himself, reveals himself there. In complete privacy, literally, as in Portrait of the Nude Artist (1930) by Ernst Neumann — “the palette of colors modestly placed on her sex”, mentions the ex-professor Lacroix. In action, too, as in Workshop scene, the radiant man (1989), painting by Ulysse Comtois, which is magnified in cast shadow. Or even in meditation, like what Angela Grauerholz synthesizes in the image of a blouse placed on an easel facing the window, a source of light.
Reflecting the personality of its owner, or his practice — Michel Goulet, as photographed by Richard-Max Tremblay, appears seated in front of a pile of material to be recycled — the studio is most often the subject of the work. It can also be the work itself. The border is thin, but clear, between the pencil drawing Studio 5 (2001) by Michael Merrill and the installation Darboral (2000-2005) by Massimo Guerrera. The first is contemplated, the second is inhabited. This was the scene of encounters (performative actions held by the artist and his guests), of which it bears traces today, including food scraps.
assert oneself
In another world (or museum), Darboral would have occupied a space on its own, so many are the elements that make it up. Of course, the smallness of the room and the promiscuity with the other works speak with aplomb of the rarity of studios with appropriate dimensions and locations. Was it intentional? We would rather tend to see it as an involuntary gesture.
This work, which closes the journey, offers a distant echo of the one that began it: the silver albumen print of 1891 representing the painter Eugène Hamel and his family in front of their opulent house and a large building housing the space of work. Here, writes Laurier Lacroix, it is “the workshop as a place of affirmation of social status”. In his own way, Massimo Guerrera also affirms his status.
Despite the limited space, despite the confusion between certain sections (the themes are porous, the works interchangeable), the curator manages to achieve happy neighborhoods. Its opening in four works would have benefited from being better highlighted, but an attentive eye will note the diversity of the program: the prestige of some compared to the daily routine of others (women, especially), what Simone Mary Bouchard in the painting The family at work (1937).
Too big for its place of exhibition, the subject of the workshop will take other forms, always under the hand of Laurier Lacroix, or under his voice. The researcher will deliver a lecture to the MAJ on March 7 and is preparing a book, developed upstream and independently of the museum’s exhibition.