L’art en perspective. Sur un tableau d’A. Y. Jackson

• Main Author: Maia Morel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Inst. Patrimoniului Cultural (IPC) 2018-11-01
• Series: Arta
• Subjects: A. Y. Jackson; The Red Maple; museum; nationalism; World War I
• Online Access: http://artjournal.asm.md/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Morel.pdf
• ISSN: 2345-1181; 2537-6136

Museums are not only cultural venues; they also intend to reinforce the identity and image of the communities. This paper examines how the identifying role of the museum ‒ in this case the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa ‒ has influenced the writing of the explanatory information to The Red Maple (1914), an oil painting by A. Y. Jackson. This explanatory note, whose presence is significant, emphasize the nationalist aspects of the picture, made by a founding member of the future Group of Seven at the beginning of World War I. However, this interpretation seems exaggerated. Even if the Group of Seven was intending to found a distinct Canadian art group and it is admitted that World War I marked for Canada an important phase of emancipation, nevertheless, there is no evidence that Jackson was at that time concerned by the war. Nor does he seem to have been in any way sensitive to the political dimension of Canadian participation in the conflict. It is most likely that the writing of the note has been influenced by the paper given to the Museum as a whole, i.e. a nationalist one, and attributed to the work an overestimated symbolic aspect. This shows how important it is that the discourse on art, when conveyed by a museum, strives to avoid as many intuitive elements as possible in order to concentrate on the work itself.