Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven by Ross King

Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven Reviews

• 
  Czarny Pies

  For someone like myself who has been making an annual pilgrimage to the paintings of the Group of Seven at the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art in Kleinburg north of Toronto, Ross King's Defiant Spirits is an unadulterated joy bringing back great memories of the moments that I have passed before the works of these great artists. I am not sure if someone knowing nothing about painting or the history of Canadian art would experience the same pleasure reading King's book as I did which is clearly aimed at the general Canadian public.
  
  King's descriptions of the trips of the Group members to Go Home Bay, Algonquin Park and the Algoma district are exquisite. He is similarly brilliant in recreating the cultural debates and atmosphere of Toronto during the first three decades of the 20th Century.
  
  Possibly because of my ignorance I also found Ross King's basic thesis that the "Hot Mush" style of the Group of Seven was in fact a skillful synthesis of the dominant trends in European art that was created in order to represent the landscapes of the Canada's Precambrian shield and to found a Canadian school of art. Like most Canadians I had always considered the Group of Seven to be vaguely derivative of the French Impressionists. By documenting the travels of the various members of the Group, King shows that in addition to the Impressionists. that the Group was heavily influenced by Scandinavian (Fjaested, Much), the Post-Impressionists (Gaugin, Van Gogh), Art Nouveau (Emile Gallé, Victor Guimard), Cubism (Picasso), and Fauvism (Dérain, Matisse). What truly surprised me was that King was able to show that the Italian Futurists (Boccioni, Marinetti) and the Vorticists (Lewis, Nevinson) also influenced the group.
• 
  Ian Mathers

  What gets this book its fifth star is that King consistently not only tells us what the Group of Seven thought of themselves and their work and what their critics and patrons thought of same, but he then goes to the historical record and other contextual accounts. So on the one hand we do get critics sniffing at work that now just seems lovely about it being so colourful it nauseated them, but on the other when one of the painters says something outright inaccurate about their own novelty or pre-eminence King isn't afraid to call them on it (actually others had painted that area before, and so on).
  
  I mostly read this one sitting in a waiting room during a recent series of trips to the walk in clinic and it made very good company. The next time I went to the AGO, I felt for the first time like I had some sense of the Group of Seven and their work beyond just well, there's the Tom Thompson stuff and there's Lawren Harris and the rest kind of blended together. I came away liking A.Y. Jackson the most, even though (or maybe because) he probably says the most ridiculous things in the book. And I had a sense growing up that the Group of Seven were a big part of the (white, British) Canadian identity but until I read this book I didn't really get why. As with any sufficiently indepth artistic history, you get a good chunk of the social history as well; I definitely feel like I have a better sense of early to mid 20th Century Canada than I did before.
• 
  Wendy Caron

  I rarely read non-fiction and was a little intimidated at first by the heft and detail of the book but I was soon thoroughly engaged and absorbed. I loved learning about the Group of Seven and King artfully puts their work into a historical, chronological, and cultural perspective. I found I was limited in fully enjoying the book by my lack of knowledge of the art world and painters; I would have appreciated more plates of cited paintings in the book. Having my laptop handy was a great resource. The book inspired me to visit the Tom Thompson Gallery in Owen Sound and a (re) visit to McMichael is definitely in order. For me, the book concluded on a sad note with the observation that currently the Group of Seven is relatively unknown among our population. King observes that the Group is no longer iconic or representative of our Canadian identity to the masses. The works of Thompson, Harris, Jackson and Casson in particular will always and forever resonate in this Canadian girl's heart and bring me 'home'. As an aside, I'm currently drinking my morning coffee from a White Pine (Casson) coffee mug, drinking in a landscape worthy of a Tom Thompson wood panel.
• 
  Jose

  After reading "The Judgement of Paris" by Ross King, I leapt to the bookstore when I found out he had published this book about the famous 'Group of Seven' painters. A bunch of artists who broke away from European convention and launched an uniquely Canadian voice into the art world. Ross King is himself Canadian so I was certain of top-notch research and care. I wasn't disappointed even though I still think "Judgement" was a more interesting read. Ross King has made a career of writing and 'novelizing' art History. In the "Judgement of Paris" he wisely created narrative tension bey placing Meissioner, the successful has-been, against Manet, the failed harbinger of everything new and exciting. The backdrop of revolutionary Paris, the Commune, the Paris siege and , especially, the Annual Salon at the Academie made for a gasp-inducing read.
  
  In "Defiant Spirits', the pace is a bit more sedate. King manages to create new tensions: who will come up with the distinctly Canadian masterpiece? How will provincial Ontario break loose from European tastes? How will artists overcome the accusation of effeminacy and unpatriotism? How will they blend in or stick out from regionalism, jingoism, elitism or democratic impulses in society? These threads tie together a great narrative that propels this 420 page volume, even when some passages become a bit tiresome.
  
  May be the more interesting bit of the book relates to the genesis of the actual Group which, in its inception was a Lawren Harris' brainchild. Harris, a very wealthy heir of the Masey-Harris fortune, set out to create art instead of collecting it -which is what most rich folk did back then. In the process, he conceived of a movement that would make artists feel at home in their own country through uniquely northern landscapes. He gathered a group of artists that he thought could help give shape to this project. For the name of the group, Harris took a cue from the numerous groups around the Western world who coalesced around associations defined by their number, the "Group o Eleven" in Germany or the "Group of Eight" in Norway. The number Seven might have also been inspired by his deep involvement in Theosophy. Regardless of the very fluctuating numbers, teh group had as many as ten members at one point, they all shared Harris vision of a rugged and spiritual Canadian art -to a certain extent. Paradoxically, the Group of Seven- in its core a deeply bourgeois group of urban dwellers with day jobs- portrayed themselves as men at home in the wild and aiming for a quasi-spiritual communion with the land. But I am getting a little ahead. The Group wasn't labeled until 1920.
  
  Many events took place before the birth of the group as an entitity and Ross does a great job of showing all the currents and undercurrents that contributed to -and undermined- the appearance of the group and Modernism in general. The foes: The provincial backwater mindset; the dismissiveness towards Canada that both the U.S. and the U.K. showed in all matters artistic and cultural; the perceived and real elitism of art pursuits.... A lot of that would change after the First World War. In the meantime, some original artists showed the first signs of a fresh approach free from the Dutch mists , English cottages and French aspirations of the Barbizon school. Among them, Tom Thomson, a man that died young in circumstances surrounded by legend but that managed to pave the way with bold strides and some artwork that has become iconic. He would become the invisible patron saint of the Group of Seven. Harris and J. MacDonald found the road map to their efforts in Scandinavian art of all places - a large exhibition of Scandinavian art had taken place in Buffalo, NY and it really made an impact on both artists. Thompson plunged himself head first in the landscapes of Algonquin Park and Georgian Bay and exemplified the way Harris wanted to brand this movement. According to him, Canada required a group of macho outdoorsMEN able to explore the expansive wilderness of the country. The shadow of the artists-as-effete poseur loomed large and countering it required an exaggerated macho posturing and definitely no women. Fortunately, the male domination was more short lived than in other countries. The new artists also needed to proselytize the cause of financial support by collectors, galleries, critics and people of influence and walked a thin line between wanting praise and wanting outrage. Being Canada, they got none of those things in large doses. To further their aim, a Studio Building was constructed in Toronto at a huge price tag and financed by Harris himself and an early supporter: Dr. McCallum. At some point or another, most artists lived there. The details I leave to the book, as well as their distinct but sometimes eerily similar personalities.
  
  Canada lost 60,000 men in a war that tore Europe and, to a certain extent, aggravated the inner bi-national turmoil within and its search for identity by further exposing the differing allegiance to the UK of the British Canadians and the Quebecois as conscription became a reality. Some of the artists Harris had enrolled in his vision witnessed war first hand, most notably A.Y. Jackson and Fred Varley. Lord Beaverbrook emerges in this pages as a colorful character and unwitting promoter of the arts . His interest in furthering Canadian protagonism seemed as insistent as it was casual. When picking artists to become war artists he really didn't give the matter much thought at all and thus enlisted quite a variety with fascinating results. If someone was expecting heroic pictures of Vimy Ridge, they would have to look elsewhere. Fred Varley arguably reached his pinnacle with his "For What?" painting.
  
  The war is a central event and propelled artists further away from "pretty" pictures. Artists embraced new quests for meaning beyond the surface of technique and gloss and took to new explorations. Many in government feared the violent shapes and abstract daubs would detract from Canadas' immigration policy. Yes, at some point, Canada was trying to attract immigrants with pictures of bucolic farmsteads and brooks. One thing they all seem to have tacitly agreed at this point is that indigenous peoples had no place on the canvas or the exhibits themselves. The Group of Seven paintings are mostly unpopulated landscapes with few exceptions. Harris seems to have had a keen interest in portraying the poorest parts of Toronto's tenement houses inspired , may be, by a religious fervor towards human betterment. In many ways he wanted to be the 'Canadian van Gogh'. They finally put together their first show in 1920 to mixed reviews. A few other shows would follow. While busy trying to court the most entrenched critics at home, their art was now readily accepted in other countries that had already experienced their own art revolutions, most notably the UK during the Wembley Imperial exhibition.
  
  With time, they went from outcasts to mainstream . The last chapter points out how they themselves became a symbol of the old as the country started to move away from being defined by its landscape and towards a more urban and inclusive experience, of women, immigrants and indigenous people. At some point, a certain exhaustion settled in. While the criticisms aimed at the group today reek of academic political correctness, once they make their valid points, they still can't tumble the enormous value of these pioneers of modern art to the art world in general and Canada, in particular.
  
  Two notes: It needs more plates. I had to use my Ipad constantly to look at the painters and paintings so vividly mentioned.
  
  The fact that every artist does not get a whole bio must be a deliberate decision. the book is long as it is already.
• 
  John

  . . . I don’t know when I first encountered the works of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. In my memory, Tom has always been floating face down in Canoe Lake surrounded by solitary windswept pines and interlaced forests against paint blob skies and the other seven or eight or nine actual members have been blended together, except for Lawren Harris, who’s throbbingly glowing smooth mountains and icebergs have always stood apart, somewhere on the West Coast, wondering where Emily Carr might be. And looking down on Carr and Harris have been the masks and poles of the Haida, and on the Seven and Thomson have gazed Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier and earliest of all, Inuit soapstone carvings. These, the artistic vocabulary of the Pacific Coast, of the Arctic, of the Woodlands, both First Nations and Thomson and the Seven are my mother tongue of design. Later I gained the school learning of European art (I love [and am sometimes embarrassed by] the Impressionists) and on my own I lovingly came to know a bit of Maya iconography. And Alex Janvier was always mumbling around, and Jane Ash Poitras kept shouting at me, and they spoke so well!
  
  As a child I lived in the natural world Morriseau, Thomson and the Seven painted, and later, in the political world in which Tecumseh and Pontiac and Brock fought. Today I live in Janvier’s and Poitras’ and Dumont’s and Riel’s world. But the child is in me still: I am a child of the Shield. And so, at the end of the longest preamble to a book review in history, Ross King’s Defiant Spirits speaks to me very passionately (but with appropriate Georgian restraint). . .
  
  Read the rest of my defiantly quirky thoughts on Defiant Spirits at:
  http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...
• 
  Joanne-in-Canada

  As a keen fan of the Group of Seven, I was looking forward to this group biography of the iconic and nationalistic Canadian painters. I have read biographies of a few of the individual members, and was looking forward to an integrated picture of their relationships and accomplishments. Some of the book dealt with these themes, but large sections were devoted to placing the Group in their social and artistic context: their influences, their mentors, their critics and their supporters. The names, places, dates and exhibits began to blur after a while.
  
  I was hoping there would be more personal detail, more description of their quirks, their inclinations, their families. Individual members of the Group disappeared from the narrative for long periods of time.
  
  With 44 pages of end notes, the author obviously did an astounding amount of research. Unfortunately, the resulting style is rather dry and academic and not accessible for the reader with a mild interest in Canadian art.
• 
  Debbie

  A phenomenal book about The Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian artists known for painting modern landscapes of the Canadian North. As a Canadian and art lover, Defiant Spirits was a must-read. It did not disappoint. King’s research is meticulous, he delves into the lives of the Group of Seven artists and others including Tom Thompson, who died in 1917 under mysterious circumstances before the group formed in the early 1920s. King also explores history of the arts in Ontario prior to the group’s formation, which was not robust in comparison to Montreal, the cultural hub of Canada at the time. Granted there was the Ontario Group of Artists, founded in 1872, which held an exhibition each year promoting paintings of local Ontario artists.
  
  But there was an active bunch of painters in Toronto who would eventually transform Canadian art. They met at Toronto’s Arts and Letter Club to share their works, ideas and discuss painting techniques. The group included Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Tom Thomson, J. E. H. MacDonald and Arthur Lismer who were all in some way or another, experimenting with new techniques and ways of depicting Canadian scenes. They were a restless bunch—looking to develop a new form of painting, a new way of expressing their unique perspectives. They ambitiously experimented with colour, form and subject matter.
  
  Much of the artistic output of young artists’, at least initially, was not well received. In one exhibition in 1913 featuring Jackson’s works, a journalist wrote a cutting review of the exhibition for the Toronto Star. He titled it ‘The Hot Mush School’. Most disconcerting is that the journalist wasn’t an arts writer, but a parliamentary reporter. Nevertheless he wrote how he couldn’t understand the paintings which consisted of bright, unrealistic colours, flat planes and unnatural-looking landscapes. He described the works as looking more like “a gob of porridge than a work of art” and wrote that “these “Hot Mushers” were under the influence of opiates” (p 107). This reminds me of how Henri Matisse and his colleagues were labeled the Wild Bests, or Fauves, by an art critic in a Paris exhibition in 1905 when the critic viewed the bright, abstract works for the first time. The fauves were painting around the same time as Jackson and his colleagues—the beginning of the era of modernism. The Canadians were right there on the cutting edge.
  
  The visionary for the The Group of Seven was A.Y. Jackson; he established the cohesive collective that aimed to capture Canada’s identity. Interesting parallel to Canadian identity forming was how the group’s inception coincided with the era of post-WW I when Canada had made significant strides in establishing her own identity as a country—unique from Britain. There was a sense of nationalism and pride which likely contributed to painters seeking a unique expression for landscape painting distinctly Canadian.
  
  Yet for all The Group of Seven notoriety, and their contributions to building a national identity for Canada with their landscapes of Canada’s North, it was Emily Carr who made CBC’s list of the 100 most influential Canadians, a list nominated by the public. She was the only artist in the category of painting who made the list. Not one from the The Group of Seven. Yet this doesn't take away from the spectacular works of the Group of Seven that are uniquely Canadian. Their paintings can be seen in the spectacular McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, The Art Gallery of Toronto, and the National Gallery of Canada.
  
• 
  Brenda

  Outstanding book on the history of the group of seven ; biographies, trials and tribulations, inspirations, and a conspiracy theory. Though much of their artwork doesn't appeal to me, I have a greater understanding of their motivation. And why art, at essence, is about creativity.
• 
  Leanne

  Super interesting
  Learned so much about Tom Thompson, the group of 7 as well as history of Toronto and the university of Toronto. This was a library book I had to return. Will likely pick it up again in the future
• 
  Colin Bruce Anthes

  A great deal about fishing. Well done.
• 
  Margaret

  I wanted to like this book more than I did. I liked the author's book about Monet better
  Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies. Too many rabbit holes that the author jumped into, some of it was interesting and some was a bit too detailed. I liked reading about the sociological history of Canada and the world at the time but then sometimes it wasn't organized for easier reading. I didn't realize how much the Group of Seven artists were not understood or appreciated by their countrymen. Their paintings were often ridiculed and it took many, many years to have people truly value their work.
• 
  Kapil

  Great read for fans of Canadian art history. Full of fascinating details. It doesn't start off with a bang as his other books tend to, but really picks up in the body of the text.
• 
  Carrie Marcotte

  I would have given this book a 3.5 if I had an option to do so. I delayed reading this book because I have a Kobo, and given the referrals back to works of art throughout this work of non-fiction, I wanted to refer back to each painting/sketch the text talks about. You can't do that on a Kobo, and I guess this book doesn't actually provide the pictures required anyway. Hard to do when the read becomes so enriching when you can do so. So I chose to read this on my laptop with constant references to the works thanks to Google. This added greatly to my enjoyment of this book. The story is great - I learnt a lot about the backgrounds of the artists and the paintings. The author also adds to the whole story about 'painting in' the setting of this time in Canadian history. Very interesting read.
• 
  Rick Pozeg

  An absolutely wonderful history about the group of seven. They are a cultural milestone in Canadian history that is often forgotten. Each of these men have lived a league of lives and have compelling stories to tell. What speaks most to me is that in the turbulence of war and loss, trials and tribulations they never gave up on their passion of art and trying to represent Canada's national identity. In the face of adversity, much like the meaning of Thomson's "The Jack Pine", they weathered the storms. They continued to find solace in their compositions and in the great landscapes of our country. I hope that all Canadians living in this country never take for granted the beautiful land we we're given and the men who fought to keep it that way.
• 
  Len

  As an artist and Canadian myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this book for putting all of the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson within a historical and chronological perspective. Having only read and heard bits and pieces about each artist in the past, this was a refreshing read. I learned so much more about what influenced each of the artists, their origins, their influences and gave me a deeper appreciation for their creative energies. As an artist all of this is fascinating and inspiring. Well worth a read if you enjoy any of the Group of Seven or Tom Thompson. I plan re-read this book in the future.
• 
  Gordon

  as with all other Ross King books, this was a very readable and quick read. this time King tackles the world of Canadian art in the early 20th century as seen through the palette of the Group of Seven. straight-forward (he leaves much of the "who killed Tom Thomson?" out of the text) examination of this most Canadian of cultural movements and the legacy (good and bad) that they've left on not only visual arts, but music, literature and drama.
• 
  Patricia

  Loved this book on the formative years of members of the Group of Seven Painters. I picked up a lot of information I was unaware of. The style of writing was a pleasure to read. I wish there had been more photo's of works discussed but fortunately I have some books at home containing their art that was referenced but not shown. Highly recommend this book.
• 
  Marcia

  I learned alot about the Canadian 7 and their companions, but compared to the other books I have read by this author (Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo's Ceiling), this book was a disappointment. Too much detail and not enough of the connections between these individuals. i actually considered abandoning it, but I am glad I didn't.
• 
  Raimo Wirkkala

  A wonderful group bio of the Group of Seven painters and their place in Canadian history. A minor quibble would be that, as many wonderful colour plates as there are, a few important works that the author writes about are not included. A fascinating history all the same.
• 
  Heather Roche

  Wonderful book, fascinating to read, integrates world history, builds constant connections between these artists and those in Europe... a perfect history!
• 
  Mona

  excellent book, very well-written and researched, not boring