A quick, and very selective, look at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), focusing on two exhibits, “Light Years, the Phil Lind Gift” and “Moments in Modernism”.
below: Rodney Graham, “Media Studies ’77” . This large installation (lit from behind) will bring back memories if you are of a certain age!
below: Welcome to Vancouver
below: A series of images by General Idea (There are actually 4 pieces in this series). General Idea was a group of 3 Canadian artists, Felix Partz (aka Ronald Gabe), Jorge Zontal (aka Slobodan Saia-Levy) and AA Bronson (aka Michael Tims). The three men met in Toronto in the late 1960s; their collaborative work then continued until the mid 1990s. They were pioneers in the field of conceptual photography.
below: William Kentridge, “Drawing for Another Country, Flooded Street”, 1994. Kentridge was born in South Africa in 1955)
below: “River Road” by Canadian photographer Jeff Wall. The photo was taken along the Fraser River in Richmond BC and was taken in 1994. It is shown here as a transparency over a lightbox so that it is lit from behind.
The “Moments in Modernism” exhibit is a re-working of artworks owned by the AGO. Some of you may have seen one or two pieces before.
below: “Delta Tau” by Morris Louis, 1960.
below: “Abstraktes Bild”, 1986, by Gerhard Richter (b. Dresden Germany 1932).
below: I have seen this before (and possibly shown it here?) and I like it as much as ever. It takes a certain amount of audacity or gumption to create a painting like this. Robert Motherwell painted this – title: “Open No.37A: in Orange”, 1971, charcoal and acrylic.
below: Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), mixed media on panel, 1964 (only part of it is shown). Rauschenberg made pieces like these that he called ‘combines’ and they were for stage decorations for performances by an experimental dance group (Merce Cunninham Dance Group). In 1963 they did a world tour called “Story”where they made a different ‘combine’ for each performance. This particular piece was made onstage at London’s Phoenix Theatre in August, 1964.
The modernism exhibit is more extensive than I have made it seem. I didn’t take many pictures of pieces that I had seen before which may or may not have been the right call. Andy Warhol’s large silkscreen image of the 4 identical Elvis Presley’s holding a gun ready to shoot is on display – the one where two Elvis’s are in bright colours and the other two are in black and white. You can also see Alex Colville’s “Woman in a Bathtub” if you want (I think that it is the worst of Colville’s otherwise wonderful paintings). In addition, there are works by Canadian artist Rita Letendre and Norval Morisseau, plus others.
Light Years continues until November 2025,
while Modernism continues until March 2026 (another year)
as I walk Toronto 