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Paul-Émile Borduas
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Paul-Émile Borduas

A Critical Biography
By François-Marc Gagnon, Translated by Peter Feldstein
Art/Photography/Design: Canadian, Biography/Autobiography/Life Writing, History: Canada: Quebec, History: Art & Architecture, Quebec Studies
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9780773541894

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An in-depth investigation of one of the most important Canadian painters of the twentieth century.


From his beginnings as a rural church decorator, to his role as catalyst of the social and artistic manifesto the Refus global, to a career as Canada's pre-eminent practitioner of radical abstraction abroad, Paul-Émile Borduas's short life encompassed the reversals and contradictions of the modern condition.

Drawing on a lifetime of published research, François-Marc Gagnon's comprehensive biography is a far-reaching exploration of a Quebec cultural figure renowned for both his art and his thought. Gagnon details each period of Borduas's dynamic career - his apprenticeship with Ozias Leduc, his teaching in Montreal and the role within the Automatiste group, his move to New York at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and then, against the current of the times, to Paris, where he created the iconic images of his "cosmic" period. Borduas's relentless search for an authentic art often put him at odds with his surroundings. As an avant-garde artist in a Montreal art world bound by tradition, his most important work had to be exhibited in makeshift venues; as a surrealist-influenced francophone in New York, he recognized the importance of the major figures of Abstract Expressionism but maintained an independent style and method. A full appreciation of Borduas's radical stance - an artistic and intellectual orientation that was always towards the universal - transforms a Canadian cultural landscape where the narrative of artistic modernism centres on figurative landscape art.

An original and rigorously researched work, Paul-Émile Borduas: A Critical Biography provides an English-language readership with a much-needed understanding of a seminal modernist, an exemplary figure in Canadian art, and the origins of modern art in North America.
Details

Part of the McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Series (number 12 in series)

596 Pages, 8.25 x 10

201 illustrations, full colour

ISBN 9780773541894

November 2013

Formats: Cloth

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"François-Marc Gagnon is the foremost scholar of Borduas and of the Automatiste movement. This first comprehensive treatment of Borduas's life and work is the product of thorough and impeccable scholarship and is unsurpassed in its comprehensiveness and detail. It will be fundamental to ongoing and future work on the artist and his historical context." Roald Nasgaard, professor emeritus, Florida State University and the author of Abstract Painting in Canada, The Automatiste Revolution and The Plasticiens and Beyond
"…the recent translation of François-Marc Gagnon’s biography of the celebrated modernist painter Paul-Émile Borduas offers a rich art-historical resource to a potentially global audience of English speaking readers." Montreal Review of Books
“This handsome, massive volume is the product of long devotion to Borduas by Francois-Marc Gagnon … An important book about an outstanding artist.” Border Crossings
François-Marc Gagnon is founding director and distinguished research fellow of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art and a member of the Order of Canada. Most recently he is editor, with Nancy Senior and Réal Ouellet, of the critically acclaimed The Codex Canadensis and the Writings of Louis Nicolas: The Natural History of the New World, Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales.
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 3

Part I: The Figurative Period
1 Leduc’s Apprentice 11
2 At the Ateliers d’art sacré (1928-30) 31
3 The Drawing Teacher (1930-37) 49
4 Professor at the École du meuble (1935-38) 68
5 Vice-President of the Contemporary Arts Society (1939-40) 82
6 Borduas, Independent Painter (1941) 96

Part II: The Automatiste Period
Section I: Painting 115
7 Surrealist Paintings (1942) 136
8 Automatist Oils (1942-43) 156
9 A Return to Figuration? (1944-45)

Section II: Painting and Social Action
10 Borduas and His Group (1945-46) 175
11 The Automatiste Offensive (1946-47) 189
12 Just before the Refus global (1947-48) 209
13 The Surrational Manifesto 230
14 Consequences of Refus global (1948-49) 255

Section III: Painting and Sculpture
15 Watercolours (1950) 269
16 Sculpture and Painting (1951-53) 285

Part III: The New York Period
17 Provincetown (1953) 303
18 “La matière chante” (1954) 322
19 En Route (1954) 345
20 São Paulo (1955) 365

Part IV: The Parisian Period
21 The Simplifying Leap (1955-56) 383
22 The Cosmic Canvases (1957) 406
23 European Success? (1958) 427
24 Expectancy (1959-60) 444

Epilogue 466
Exhibition History 471
List of Illustrations and Credits 499
Notes 509
Bibliography 553
Index 561
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Finalist
Melva Dwyer Award shortlist
(2014)
Winner
Governor General's Literary Award for Translation
(2014)
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