“Who’s Afraid of Purple, Orange and Green?”

“It’s not what you put in, it is what you leave out,” the prominent New York critic Clement Greenberg once told artists at the Emma Lake Workshop in northern Saskatchewan in 1962. “Why not edit our statement and let the colour come through?” If the reviewer finds red, yellow and blue a puritanical colour scheme, the secondary colours are a giving, pleasant alternative. Created from blending the primary colours, purple, orange and green work well with each other and with others. The colours also tend to be less pronounced, tend to step back from the visual plane. Emphasizing the secondary portion of the colour wheel, “Who’s Afraid of Purple, Orange and Green?” shows that an edited statement is of primary concern, and that what is omitted matters greatly.

The exhibition’s title is a play on Barnett Newman’s series “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?” executed from 1966 to 1970 as a confrontation to artists such as Piet Mondrian, who worked only in primary colours. By posing its variation of Newman’s question, the exhibition draws attention to the central tenet of mid-century Modernism—of material as carrier of intent, but also political maneuver. Composed almost entirely of contemporary female artists (one man is included as part of a collective), the exhibition investigates the aftershocks of post-painterly abstraction, Formalism, and Modernism, but reaches as well to the readymade, to Pop Art, and to minimalism.

This exhibition seeks a contemporary antidote to the masculine overtone of visual culture from the early to mid-1900s. The light shines on a select period and region—Emma Lake, a series of workshops and lectures which had a motivating effect upon the painters who later became the Regina Five: Ronald Bloore, Ted Godwin, Kenneth Lochhead, Arthur McKay and Douglas Morton, and to many others as well. Barnett Newman’s visit in 1959, and Greenberg’s in 1962, introduced chromatic abstraction first-hand. Greenberg’s involvement became particularly significant, and he praised the region’s geographical isolation as a catalyst for originality and inventiveness. Although short-lived and contentious, the legacy of modernist abstraction in the Canadian Prairies is undeniable.

Collected as a generalized response to this period in the province’s history, the artists are tied to the modernist movement through mimicry more than as homage. To mimic is to resemble something else while being independent, to protect oneself from predators by imitating those more powerful. This extends here to art historical reference; Arabella Campbell’s tarps are easily reminiscent of Betty Goodwin and the black canvasses of Ad Reinhardt, for example. It also involves a simulant use of material. Jennifer Rose Sciarrino’s Folded Facet 2 (Bronze) are geometric shapes where the surface has been scraped, the artist drawing into steel to create texture. Sasha Pierce’s works appear to be woven, but are actually tiny drops of paint applied through sandwich bags, producing a vibrant optical quality.

The artists provide a counterbalance presented in the realm of irony, a nudge at the bland result of modernist art now subsumed into the backdrops of corporate offices. Calling on Greenberg once more, from his 1965 essay “Modernist Painting” (Art and Literature, spring 1965), “The essence of Modernism lies…in the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in areas of competence.” The resurgence of Modernism is easily conflated with marketable austerity and a subtractive economy. It is arguably based in a contemporary culture informed by who’s willing to purchase. It could be argued that modern art is the aesthetic of the rich, enjoyed by intellectuals, feeding into power structures rather than challenging them. Yet here we find a sly politic, a subtle critique of the aesthetic, of the utopian Bauhaus office space, and a gentle elevation of outmoded commercial culture.

At the entrance of the gallery, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins’s Pavilion of the Blind presents multicoloured office blinds moving in response to the presence of the viewer. Celia Perrin Sidarous’s photographic images evoke interior design, as she has arranged shapes thoughtfully and recorded the result. Krista Buecking’s sculpture WE THING (leverage island) is an instructive presence. A red pyramid is located on a platform covered in beige carpeting, accompanied by a fake plant, next to a presentation-style whiteboard that reads: “POSTULATE 1: TIME IS MONEY. POSTULATE 2: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.” While the former is a quote from Benjamin Franklin and the latter primarily attributed to Francis Bacon, each phrase is so well worn as to be pulled away from meaning and origin. Sarah Nasby’s Once More With Feeling presents the grid as a commercial magazine rack straight from the ’80s, its vintage-inspired shapes representing movement in flattened space. The refined kitsch aesthetic extends to Marie Lannoo’s works, whose arrangements evoke the popular ’60s toy Lite-Brite.

By lovingly highlighting the failures of the modernist stance, competence is sought in clarifying the movement’s essential language. The exhibition questions the lineage of masculine terminology throughout modernist art history, although its own language lacks clarification. Modernism is a slippery, changeable term, as is Formalism; it is necessary to tread with intention. This is a particular consideration in a public gallery where many are likely uninitiated in the glossary. The lack of context extends to the more comprehensive history of the major figures the exhibition seeks to correct, and there is some lost precision. For example, although Greenberg had an undeniable interest in post-painterly abstraction, he also supported landscape painting. A notable result was celebrated Saskatchewan painter Dorothy Knowles, who attributes to Greenberg a boost in her career, his supportive voice acting as the impetus to her dropping her married name as a gesture of independence. It is important to argue using concrete examples rather than a generalized bias.

“Women tend to ask more questions than men, and tend to articulate as questions, what should be statement of fact,” writes Dunlop Director/Curator Jennifer Matotek. While her curatorial approach may veer into the realm of agenda, “Who’s Afraid of Purple, Orange and Green?” proves that the act of questioning is a necessary one. ❚

“Who’s Afraid of Purple, Orange and Green?” was exhibited at Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, from April 25 to June 20, 2014.

Mireille Eagan is a curator based in St. John’s, NL.