Alex Wright

emily carr, curmudgeon of the north

March 31, 2002

last weekend we took in the emily carr retrospective at the royal museum of british columbia. inexplicably, the museum has since taken down the exhibition's Web site (possibly because the physical exhibit ended? if so, i find this flummoxing).

carr was a brilliant and eccentric artist (and renowned curmudgeon), whose provocative renditions of the British Columbia landscape and native peoples left a lasting imprint on the canadian artistic psyche. i was particularly taken with her moving yet determinedly unsentimental sketches of british columbia "first nation" people (canadian for "native americans"), which reminded me of the great old west painter charles m russell, whose similarly humanistic renditions of native americans stood in direct apposition to the "cowboys-and-injuns" ethos of his more famous contemporary frederick remington.

i also liked carr's almost cubist paintings of native totem poles, weaving faithful renditions of native artwork against abstracted landscapes bursting with broad strokes of primary colors: a remarkable balancing act of faithful historical documentarism set against a modernist backdrop.

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