GROUP EXHIBITION: Rising to the Occasion: The Long 18th Century

This exhibition opens discussions of the legacies of the 18^th century—enlightenment, empiricism, revolution and innovation. It includes major works by both 18^th century artists Houdon, Gainsborough, Romney, Verelst and Taillasson; and senior contemporary Canadian artists Rebecca Belmore, Angela Grauerholz, Tony Scherman, John Massey, and Jiri Ladocha.

Public Reception:Thursday September 15, 6 – 8 pm
Artist’s Talk by Tony Scherman: Thursday September 29 at 6 pm

Rising to the Occasion: The Long 18th Century is the governing title for exhibition-episodes that explore facets of culture and society in the 18^th century—ideas, rather than attempts to tell the story of art as history. But art has a value in a historical reckoning—it does rise to the occasion, and allows both a mirror and lens perspective.

The choice of exhibition works interweaves the historical and the contemporary in order to open up different discussions—the legacies of the 18^th century—enlightenment, empiricism, revolution and innovation and the instability of these ideas, as they speak to our unstable time. The keynote episode is borrowed directly from the title of Rebecca Belmore’s Rising to the Occasion. The original occasion was Belmore’s response to the Duke and Duchess of York’s official visit to Canada in 1987; she cobbled together and wore a hybrid-material dress in the manner and style of the 19^th century. The new context is the inclusion of John Verelst’s so-described Four Indian Kings, paintings which were commissioned by Queen Anne in 1710. The now disembodied Belmore dress as object-artifact has a resonance with Jean-Antoine Houdon’s 1767 life-sized plaster flayed figure—sculpted to show the body muscles—and in turn George Romney’s portrait with an écorché figure.

Paintings by Jean-Joseph Taillasson and Angelica Kauffmann, draw their subject matter from the classical world to send messages to their “18th century present.” Taillasson’s audience was the new social order of post-Revolutionary France; for Kauffmann, a subject that could appeal to the heroic—in the wake of the first “global” Seven Years War—and her metatext on the role of women. A contemporary counterpoint is Tony Scherman’s monumental Napoleon painting, from his About 1789 series, which Scherman describes as a forensic portrait. Likewise, John Massey’s 1985 photo-collage serigraph Versailles is another forensic moment and constructed embodiment; an arm of collaged gold that cannot rise, gripped by the arm of the artist. Angela Grauerholz’s black and white photograph Voltaire’s Study (Voltaire was one of the great writer and humanists of the 18^th century) has a subtle counterpoint in Taillasson’s painting, as Jiri Ladocha’s suite of Voltaire portraits have with the Houdon figure. Ladocha worked with a mould from Houdon’s Voltaire portrait bust, reconstructed as if it were a Cubist vision—the deep past, the historical modern, and the present.

Rising to the Occasion is mounted in conjunction with and as a complement to the McMaster University John Douglas Taylor Conference “The Immaterial Eighteenth Century,” October 27-29, 2011.

List of Works in Exhibition:

Thomas Gainsborough (English 1727-1788)
Ignatius Sancho, 1768
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada
Purchased 1907

Jean-Antoine Houdon (French 1741-1828)
L’Écorché (Flayed Man), 1767
plaster
Art Gallery of Hamilton
The Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Collection, 2002

Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss 1741-1807)
The Return of Telemachus, c.1770-1780
oil on canvas
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College
Amherst, Massachusetts. Museum Purchase

Rebecca Belmore (Anishinabe b.1960)
Rising to the Occasion, 1987-1991
mixed media
Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Gift from the Junior Volunteer Committee, 1995

Tony Scherman (Canadian b. 1950)
Napoleon, 2007-2010
From the series About 1789
encaustic on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Georgia Scherman Projects

Angela Grauerholz (Canadian b. Germany 1952)
Voltaire’s Study, 2004
black and white digital print, ed. 1/3
Courtesy of the artist and ART 45 Inc.

John Massey (Canadian b.1950)
Versailles, 1985
serigraph in black and colour photo-serigraph on wove paper
Collection of James Lahey and Pym Buitenhuis

Jiri Ladocha (Canadian b. Bohemia, Czechoslovakia 1942)
Voltaire, 1993
five plaster busts mounted on wood
Courtesy of the artist

Jean-Joseph Taillasson (French 1745-1809)
Rhadamistes and Zenobia, c.1805
oil on canvas
McMaster Museum of Art, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1995

George Romney (English 1727-1788)
Robert, 9th Baron Petre, Demonstrating the Use

of an Écorché Figure to His Son, Robert Edward, 1775-76
oil on canvas
McMaster Museum of Art, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1994

Nathaniel Dance (English 1735-1811)
Portrait of Miss Woodhouse, later Mrs. Holbech nd (prior to 1782)
oil on canvas
Private collection

William Woollett (English 1735-1785)
The Death of General Wolfe [after Benjamin West] 1776
coloured engraving
McMaster Museum of Art
Gift of Dr. Ronald P. Graham 1990

John Verelst — The Four Kings

Onigoheriago (baptized John). Named Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row, King of the Generethgarich
John Verelst
Oil on canvas
1710
Library and Archives Canada, 1977-35-3, Copy # c092416-17k, c093416-17k
Acquired with a special grant from the Canadian Government in 1977

Onigoheriago (baptized John). Named Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row, King of the Generethgarich
John Verelst
huile sur toile
1710
Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 1977-35-3, No de copie: c092416-17k, c093416-17k
Acquis en 1977 grâce à une subvention spéciale du gouvernement du Canada

Etowaucum (baptized Nicholas). Named Etow Oh Koam, King of the River Nation
John Verelst
Oil on canvas
1710
Library and Archives Canada, 1977-35-1, Copy #: c092420-21k
Acquired with a special grant from the Canadian Government in 1977

Etowaucum (baptized Nicholas). Named Etow Oh Koam, King of the River Nation
John Verelst
huile sur toile
1710
Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 1977-35-1, No de copie: c092420-21k
Acquis en 1977 grâce à une subvention spéciale du gouvernement du Canada

Sagayenkwaraton (baptized Brant). Named Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas (Mohawk)
John Verelst
Oil on canvas
1710
Library and Archives Canada, 1977-35-2, Copy # c092418-19k
Acquired with a special grant from the Canadian Government in 1977

Sagayenkwaraton (baptized Brant). Named Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas (Mohawk)
John Verelst
huile sur toile
1710
Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 1977-35-2, c092418-19k
Acquis en 1977 grâce à une subvention spéciale du gouvernement du Canada

Tejonihokarawa (baptized Hendrick). Named Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperor of the Six Nations
John Verelst
Oil on canvas
1710
Library and Archives Canada, 1977-35-4, Copy # c092414-15k
Acquired with a special grant from the Canadian Government in 1977

Tejonihokarawa (baptized Hendrick). Named Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperor of the Six Nations
John Verelst
huile sur toile
1710
Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, 1977-35-4, No de copie: c092414-15k
Acquis en 1977 grâce à une subvention spéciale du gouvernement du Canada