Heritage society to document Norval Morrisseau's art

Rick Garrick — Wawatay News
Find more:

• Arts & Entertainment

Places:

• Thunder Bay

Top referrers:

• feeds.feedburner.com
• genuinemorrisseau.blogspot.ca
• genuinemorrisseau.blogspot.ca

The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society is looking to research and document Norval Morrisseau’s artwork in a catalogue raisonné.

“We are trying to produce a catalogue raisonné, a document or book that has everything he has produced,” said Dr. Elizabeth McLuhan, one of the directors with the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society and an independent writer/curator who worked with Morrisseau in the 1970s and 1980s when she was curator of the Thunder Bay National Exhibition Centre and Centre for Indian Art (Thunder Bay Art Gallery). “The ultimate catalogue – this is a huge job.”

McLuhan spoke about Morrissaeu’s work during her presentation, The Shaman’s Garden: Anishnaabe Traditions and the Roots of Morrisseau’s Global Vision, which she delivered at Lakehead University on the evening of April 17.

“He (Morrisseau) believed the Anishinabe culture had a great deal to say to the world,” McLuhan said. “From the beginning, he worked in both worlds.”

McLuhan said Morrisseau had a “landmark exhibit” at the Pollock Gallery in Toronto in 1962.

“It was an overnight success,” McLuhan said. “He was declared a genius by the local papers in Toronto.”

“Five years later, he had a solo exhibition in France. There were 12,000 people who attended, including Picasso and Chagall.”

McLuhan said Governor General Michaëlle Jean was so taken by Morrisseau’s painting Androgyny that she currently has it hanging in her residence in Ottawa.

“Androgyny is Norval’s masterpiece,” McLuhan said. “It represents his understanding of Ojibwe cosmology. The title represents the Anishinabe world view that we are all male and female.”

McLuhan said there were virtually no other Aboriginal artists in Canada when Morrisseau began his career; contemporary native artists were expected to meet western expectations.

Morrisseau used his art to record the oral traditions of the Anishinabe at a time when those traditions seemed to be disappearing, bridging the gap between ancient tradition and contemporary art and Aboriginal and non-aboriginal cultures.

“It was an urgent task to undertake,” McLuhan said. “Norval was an active student – he would go and find the pictograph sites.”

McLuhan described Morrisseau’s images, from figures contained by solid lines and even sometimes secondary lines to connecting lifelines to ovoids.

“The divided ovoids are in fact life sources,” McLuhan said. “Before Norval, we had these nineteenth century representations.”

Teresa Magiskan, Anishinawbe Mushkiki’s traditional co-ordinator who worked with McLuhan 27 years ago at the Thunder Bay National Exhibition Centre, said Morrisseau’s focus on the oral traditions brought about a renewal of Anishinabe heritage.

“Norval captured the traditions of our people,” Magiskan said. “That is how our culture was renewed. You can still see the renaissance of our culture in our communities.”

The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society began preparation for the catalogue raisonné in 2006 by compiling a comprehensive registry of all the known works attributed to Morrisseau. Over 1,960 works have been registered to date, from over 70 museums and galleries and over 1,600 private collectors in Canada, the United States and around the world.

Catalogue raisonnés are usually completed for artists of exceptional calibre and significance, such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and David Milne; the Norval Morrisseau catalogue raisonné will be the first completed for an Aboriginal artist in Canada.