Rose Millman (1890-1960), born in Bukovina, an English-speaking Jew who emigrated to Quebec in her early twenties, was the first woman to found and manage an art gallery on her own in Montreal, in 1941. And so it was a whole, since it was the Dominion gallery, then sold to the famous Max Stern who made it the most important of post-war Canada.
The cultural trade was based on what was then called Canadian “living art”, often that of French-speaking artists, under the influence of art historian Maurice Gagnon, father of professor François-Marc Gagnon (1935 -2019), specialist in automatists and biographer of Paul-Émile Borduas. The Dominion gallery presented a work by Françoise Sullivan in April 1943, just 80 years ago, in an exhibition by the group Les Sagittaires.
“Galleries founded by women will show more modern art, and artists from Quebec will have a significant circulation thanks to these women gallery owners”, summarizes Geneviève Lafleur, unique and valuable specialist in the subject.
The ignition spark for the pioneering work that has occupied the researcher for years came from a simple remark overheard in an art history class. The lecturer then mentioned that women had played a real but unrecognized role in the dissemination of modern art in Quebec. The baccalaureate Geneviève Lafleur had noted the remark in the margin of her notebook, specifying that there was a subject to explore.
Considering it was already good. Carrying out the project was infinitely better.
Invisible women
Mme Lafleur delved for her master’s degree into the subject of women-run art galleries in Montreal in the 1940s, then broadened the spectrum to Quebec in the 1950s for her doctorate, to include art centers. The diptych offers a kind of feminist sociology of the founders of places for the dissemination of modern visual arts from the Second World War to the Quiet Revolution.
“I wanted to clear a moment in the history of art in Quebec, she says, a story that I could reconstruct by reading periodicals or newspapers, but that we did not see in the history of the official art. I was surprised to always discover more women involved in this period and that several of them had had a career as artists before branching off into the management of cultural organizations. I think these places compensated for a stalled artistic career. »
The thesis, defended at the turn of the decade in the Department of Art History at UQAM, is entitled The role of cultural entrepreneurs in the development of the visual arts in Quebec (1949-1960). The scholarly investigation exposes the major contribution of certain women during the reference decade while analyzing the reasons for their invisibility in the collective memory, including in the more specialized sphere of art history, her discipline.
The PhD demonstration focuses on five pioneers: Denyse Delrue, Suzanne Guité, Agnès Lefort, Pauline Rochon and Eugenie Sharp Lee. The starting year of the study refers to the founding of the Center d’art de Sainte-Adèle by Pauline Rochon in 1949. Suzanne Guité created the Center d’art de Percé with her husband. These two places of cultural animation favored amateur practice while providing an introduction to modern aesthetics.
Agnès Lefort’s gallery offered another model, downright professional. Mme Lefort, herself an artist, offered her works and especially those of avant-garde creators.
feminist criticism
You have to grasp the reality of the time to understand the important role played by these venues relaying modern art. The state was involved relatively little in cultural institutions. The few galleries, concentrated in Montreal around the Museum of Fine Arts, mainly offered traditional works. Until 1964, the legal status of married women meant that they had to have their husband’s authorization to start a business. Single people (like Agnès Lefort and Pauline Rochon) had fewer constraints.
“They defended themselves from favoring women artists, but when we compare their programming with that of galleries founded by men, we see a greater representation of women,” notes the art historian. For example, the Cowansville Art Center, founded by Eugenie Sharp Lee, presented twelve solo exhibitions during the period studied, eight of which were by women artists. At the Lefort gallery, the ratio establishes 22 solos by women artists for 78 listed exhibitions.
The grand synthesis ties in with a feminist critique of the usual perspectives of art history. Studies carried out over the past few decades recall the women artists occulted by the historiography concentrated on men. The exhibition Uninvited on view at the National Gallery of Canada pays tribute to a whole generation of female painters, photographers and sculptors of the past century. Women as the subject of works are also of increasing interest to historians.
Mme Lafleur offers something else in her art history perspective by focusing on female cultural entrepreneurs, an even more neglected subject. “At first, an important feminist response was to focus on women artists. It’s still relevant. There are now other factors that also deserve to be studied to understand a little more about past situations. »
Mme Lafleur, in his thirties, does not live off the fruits of his long studies in art history. In the sense that she is neither a professor nor a researcher attached to a university. She returned to her primary profession of graphic design. “My studies greatly influence my work,” she says. When I make aesthetic choices, I know how to base them on a trend in art, for example. I would say that it is more my feminist position that is influenced by my studies. I work for a communications agency that works with organizations that help women. »