Before the Group of Seven arrived on the Canadian art scene in the 1920s, landscape paintings often showed bucolic scenes of wilderness tamed. People were placed in the painting and while they were small in proportion to the land around them, they were also deliberately present. Nature, on its own, had little value.
Lawren Harris and the other six members of the Group of Seven were initially vilified for painting scenes that to many Canadians had no value aesthetically or culturally — the mountains of Lake Superior, the sometimes bleak forests of Northern Ontario, the strange beauty of the Arctic. Why paint places — ugly ones at that — that did not evoke a sense of man’s dominion over the land?
Two floors above the Vancouver Art Gallery’s marvellous Lawren Harris: Canadian Visionary exhibit is an equally compelling exhibition of photos by Edward Burtynsky, A Terrible Beauty. Although it’s not a deliberate pairing, the two exhibits, taken together, force us to examine our complex relationship with what can loosely be called “nature.” When do we value it for its own sake and when are we willing to sacrifice it for our own benefit — especially if we don’t have to see the impact of our choices?
Harris’s evolution as an artist was entwined with his interest in theosophy which, as the exhibit guide says, believed that “materialism had separated humanity from reality.” Its goal was to “reconstitute lost truths.”
What truths would Harris — who died in 1970 — find if he were exposed to the scenes that Burtynsky chronicles with absolute clarity and an observer’s detached passion?
Burtynsky puts humans back into the landscape, and how. Man’s dominion over the land? It’s there, in spades. But what gives his photographs their punch is that he manages to judge what he captures through his lens — simply by choosing that scene — while providing a seemingly dispassionate commentary. The photos have such serene grace that we are like materialistic moths to the consumer flame, all while saying we want to protect the nature that is destroyed to produce the goods we want to buy.
“He chooses things which clearly need our attention,” says senior curator Bruce Grenfell. “If you stop and look at them, you can’t be comfortable with what you’re seeing.”
Comfortable, no. Entranced, yes.
On March 18 at 7pm, Bruce Grenville leads a public tour of A Terrible Beauty: Edward Burtynsky and Emily Carr: Scorned. Vancouver-based painter Eli Bornowsky will discuss the Lawren Harris exhibit on April 1 at 7pm. They are free for members or with gallery admission.
