Oil Cloth Lunch, and other reasons to be cheerful

Collection favourites and significant works never before displayed at McMaster are presented in Oil cloth lunch, and other reasons to be cheerful, the newest exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art. The proposition of this exhibition is to examine how artists learn from the past and yet distance themselves from it in order to “advance” a visual language for themselves.

“The advancement of a visual language can go in any direction,” says Senior Curator Ihor Holubizky. “As the history of modern art was being chronicled, fifty/sixty years ago, one might imagine that abstraction was the highest form of development. It was not true then; it is not today.”

The exhibition’s starting point is Oil cloth lunch, a 1977 painting by Canadian artist Tony Scherman. In discussing this work, Scherman spoke of the historical “burden” of painting. In order to find a place for himself, and radically shift his painting language, he began using an encaustic medium and a flat overview pictorial space. Through that process he learned and later returned to painting’s history. In a similar vein, Eric Atkinson responded to the question why he began using sandpaper as a support in the mid-1940s, with, “Why not?” Instead of attempting to paint sand, it was his radical solution to a historical problem.

These conversations lead to an approach for reinstalling collection works in the Levy Gallery, to position the shifts in a dramatic way but still present the dialogue that living artists have with the past. Formed around subject-themes, historical works by Willem Claesz. Heda, Philips Breughel, Utagawa Hiroshige and others are interjected with the modern—such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Gustave Courbet—and with contemporary works by Scherman, Atkinson, Richard Hamilton and Rick Pottruff.

The subtitle is a 1979 song title by Ian Dury and the Blockheads; a listing more than the conventions of lyrics, which includes a “ploughman’s lunch” as Scherman’s painting is that of a cheap and cheerful lunch, and like the song, bearing witness to life

List of Works in Exhibition by Subject/Theme:

flower group

Henri Fantin-Latour (French 1836-1904)

Still Life with Anemones, (indistinctly dated; possibly 1882)
oil on canvas
On loan from a private collection

David Burliuk (born Riabushki, Ukraine, 1882 ? died USA, 1967)

Yellow Irises, nd c. 1948-49
oil on canvas
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

Josef Herman (British b. Poland 1911-2000)
Flowers, c.1959-60
oil on masonite
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

Don Jean-Louis (Canadian b. 1937)
Synthetic Flower, 1966, 
vacuum-formed uvex and paint
Gift of the Ontario Centennial Art Collection, 1968

table and food group

Tony Scherman (Canadian b. 1950)
Oil cloth lunch, 1977,
encaustic on canvas
Promised gift of the artist

Philips Breughel (Netherlandish 1635 – unknown)
Still life with pike, barbel and vegetables, nd, 17th c
oil on linen
Levy Bequest Purchase, 1995

Willem Claesz. Heda (Netherlandish 1594 – c.1680)
Still life with oysters, c.1603
oil on panel
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch 1853-1890)
Still Life with Ginger jar and onions, 1885
oil on canvas
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

bridge group

Claude Monet (French 1840-1926)
Waterloo Bridge, 1903
oil on canvas
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

Hugh Mackenzie (Canadian b. 1928)
Expressway Ramp and Building, 1978
soft ground etching  with drypoint
Gift of Joan Murray, 1990

Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese 1797-1858)
Ohashi Bridge, 1857
woodblock print
Levy Bequest Purchase, 1995

Utagawa Hiroshige
Nihonbashi Bridge, 1840-42
From ‘famous Bridges of Edo’
woodblock print
Gift of Mr. Robert McNairn, 1991

Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese 1760-1849)
Kameido Tenjin taiko-bashi, (drum bridge at the Kameido Tenjin Shrine, Settsu Province), c. 1827-1830
from ‘Views of Famous Bridges in all the Provinces’
woodblock print
Gift of Mr. Robert McNairn, 1991

landscape group

Eric Atkinson (Canadian b. England 1928)
Indian Head, 1986
sand and acrylic on canvas
Gift of Sean Atkinson, 2009

Eric Atkinson (Canadian b. England 1928)
Silvergrey Shoreline, 1997
sand and acrylic on canvas
Gift of the artist, 2009

Raoul Dufy (French 1873-1953)
Les arbes verts et l’estaque, 1908
oil on canvas
Levy Bequest Purchase 1996

Gustave Courbet, (French 1819-1877)
Landscape at Ornans, 1874
oil on canvas
Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E., 1984

John Hartman (Canadian b. 1950)
Above Lake S., 1980
acrylic on linen
Purchase, 1981

house & interior group

Richard Hamilton (British b.1922)
Northend 1, 1990
oil on cibachrome on canvas
Levy Bequest Purchase, 1995

Rick Pottruff (Canadian b. 1945)
Untitled (house), c.1981-82
graphite and watercolour on card
Gift of Miriam Shiell, 1988

Eric Freifeld (Canadian 1919-1984)
The MacNeil Place, c.1964-77
watercolour and graphite on paper
Hatch Bequest Purchase with the assistance of Wintario, 1978

David Haughton (British 1924-1991)
Backyard, nd, (late 1950s, no later than 1961)
Etching