Realisms: Selections from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery Permanent Collection
Glenn Adams, Ron Bolt, D.P. Brown, Alex Colville, Wally Dion, Tom Forrestall, Carol Hoorn Fraser, Eliza Griffiths, Jack Humphrey, Herzl Kashetsky, Valerie Palmer, Robert Percival, Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt, Glenn Priestley, Fred Ross, and Jeremy Smith
For centuries, painting in the European-influenced world was divided into five genres, ranked in ascending order of importance: still life, landscapes, genre painting, portraits, and history painting. Modernism upended this hierarchy, and redefined painting itself by questioning something that the pre-moderns took for granted: representation.
Once abstraction (or non-representation) became accepted, representation went from being painting’s very essence to an option. Just how revolutionary this was is embedded in language – for centuries, painting’s more common synonym was picture. Realism is no longer simply “painting”, but a genre itself.
Realisms: Selections from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery Permanent Collection presents several realist approaches by Canadian painters: Atlantic Realism, photorealism, surrealism, high realism, and social realism. However described, the realisms on view here are communicative strategies, approaches to making pictures that are rooted in art history and contemporary conversations.
Alex Colville, Embarkation, 1994, acrylic polymer emulsion on panfibre wood particle board, 47.5 × 74.2 cm. Gift of Harrison McCain.
