PLAYING
WITH FIRE
Armand Vaillancourt; Social Sculptor by John K. Grande
We live in an era that is simultaneously pluralist and conformist. As a writer whose family founded a town that is now a heritage site called Kinnear's Mills, not at all far from where Armand Vaillancourt was born, I found myself naturally interested in Armand Vaillancourt's attitudes to art and society. Indeed, one might say that Vaillancourt's populist expression is part of not only his, but my own heritage. Vaillancourt recounted to me on one of our numerous meetings in the making of this book that his father Donat and his sons would turn up at political meetings and burn hay, beep their car horns in protest if they did not like a politician until he was forced to leave the podium. His father has often told him that one must take action on political issues of concern because if you did not, someone much less capable than you will make the decisions for you. What was once called populism is now called to as radical behaviour and has a social stigma, so estranged from a notion of collectivity have our social norms become. The irony in all this is that my roots are non-francophone and Vaillancourt's francophone, yet despite this we see eye to eye on many issues regarding the public role of art in society. I believe this is precisely because both of us have roots that stretch back in the history of Quebec and Canada
When I first encountered Armand Vaillancourt at his studio on Esplanade St. in Montreal, with its view of the mountain, I could see a large, as yet uncarved imported African tree trunk . Not far away sitting behind some old oil barrels three metal pieces had the words JUSTICE carved into them. They sat in quiet solitude, like sculptor's talismans intended to guard his studio. The building itself has a roof that itself is theatrical and slightly comical like a grenadier's hat with a pointed spire on top. Entering into Vaillancourt's studio the first things I noticed were his sculpting tools that he had just taken out of his station wagon: the large mallet covered in duct tape, the adzes and chisels in a large bucket, the vast array of materials, styrofoam, wood, metal and paper prints from his Manhole series. Looking around I could see a fascinating and diverse array of his works, including his exquisite small bronzes cast in the lost wax technique, some paintings, a maquette for the controversial "Je me souviens" intended for High Park in Toronto but I will tell you about that fiasco later in Playing with Fire... There was even a child's swing Vaillancourt had designed, on which Vaillancourt sat while talking, somewhat bemused...
Sitting on a shelf in one corner of this studio, I was surpirsed to find a tiny set of Shakespeare's works. They were so small as to be almost ludicrous, for the words in them are great and so I already had a clue to this amazing aspect of scale in Vaillancourt's sculpture. And wasn't it Shakespeare who wrote in Twelfth Night "This is an art which does mend nature: change it rather; but the art itself is nature."
Yet another clue to Vaillancourt is the sense of drama. It's everywhere. Vaillancourt's life and art have a theatrical flair. The paradoxes that persist in his work stem from his incurable curiosity and spontaneity. He is a child of the 1960s, but one who had already made a name for himself in the 1950s with the Tree of Durocher St. There is a contradiction between the public Vaillancourt, the Don Quixote of Quebec's arts scene and the quiet poetic soul that is at the heart of his art and of which we know very little about. Vaillancourt recently had full colour pictures of himself not as sculptor but as the model in a magazine called WALLPAPER that has as its credo "The stuff that surrounds you"! for Tristan & America. Imagine a creator turning full circle on himself to become ... the model. But then he turns full circle again to become social activist! At the the Montreal's Musée d'art contemporain's recent conference for the déclics: art et société show (Quebec art of the 1960s and 1970s) that included works Vaillancourt himself had made decades ago in the show, Vaillancourt protested a major cigarette manufacturer's sponsorship of the show, claiming they were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in North Americans annually. After contesting this, he made a cross sign with his arms and then walked out of the museum. Some audience members cheered, others booed. During the 9th edition of the Présences autochtones native arts festival in Montreal in May 1999, Vaillancourt again became the subject of artmaking. this time his body was wrapped in canvas (an allusion to the body as art?). His hair and "clothing" were then painted by native participants in a gesture of cultural solidarity and acceptance. .
CONTINUED
Armand Vaillancourt; Social Sculptor by John K. Grande
We live in an era that is simultaneously pluralist and conformist. As a writer whose family founded a town that is now a heritage site called Kinnear's Mills, not at all far from where Armand Vaillancourt was born, I found myself naturally interested in Armand Vaillancourt's attitudes to art and society. Indeed, one might say that Vaillancourt's populist expression is part of not only his, but my own heritage. Vaillancourt recounted to me on one of our numerous meetings in the making of this book that his father Donat and his sons would turn up at political meetings and burn hay, beep their car horns in protest if they did not like a politician until he was forced to leave the podium. His father has often told him that one must take action on political issues of concern because if you did not, someone much less capable than you will make the decisions for you. What was once called populism is now called to as radical behaviour and has a social stigma, so estranged from a notion of collectivity have our social norms become. The irony in all this is that my roots are non-francophone and Vaillancourt's francophone, yet despite this we see eye to eye on many issues regarding the public role of art in society. I believe this is precisely because both of us have roots that stretch back in the history of Quebec and Canada
When I first encountered Armand Vaillancourt at his studio on Esplanade St. in Montreal, with its view of the mountain, I could see a large, as yet uncarved imported African tree trunk . Not far away sitting behind some old oil barrels three metal pieces had the words JUSTICE carved into them. They sat in quiet solitude, like sculptor's talismans intended to guard his studio. The building itself has a roof that itself is theatrical and slightly comical like a grenadier's hat with a pointed spire on top. Entering into Vaillancourt's studio the first things I noticed were his sculpting tools that he had just taken out of his station wagon: the large mallet covered in duct tape, the adzes and chisels in a large bucket, the vast array of materials, styrofoam, wood, metal and paper prints from his Manhole series. Looking around I could see a fascinating and diverse array of his works, including his exquisite small bronzes cast in the lost wax technique, some paintings, a maquette for the controversial "Je me souviens" intended for High Park in Toronto but I will tell you about that fiasco later in Playing with Fire... There was even a child's swing Vaillancourt had designed, on which Vaillancourt sat while talking, somewhat bemused...
Sitting on a shelf in one corner of this studio, I was surpirsed to find a tiny set of Shakespeare's works. They were so small as to be almost ludicrous, for the words in them are great and so I already had a clue to this amazing aspect of scale in Vaillancourt's sculpture. And wasn't it Shakespeare who wrote in Twelfth Night "This is an art which does mend nature: change it rather; but the art itself is nature."
Yet another clue to Vaillancourt is the sense of drama. It's everywhere. Vaillancourt's life and art have a theatrical flair. The paradoxes that persist in his work stem from his incurable curiosity and spontaneity. He is a child of the 1960s, but one who had already made a name for himself in the 1950s with the Tree of Durocher St. There is a contradiction between the public Vaillancourt, the Don Quixote of Quebec's arts scene and the quiet poetic soul that is at the heart of his art and of which we know very little about. Vaillancourt recently had full colour pictures of himself not as sculptor but as the model in a magazine called WALLPAPER that has as its credo "The stuff that surrounds you"! for Tristan & America. Imagine a creator turning full circle on himself to become ... the model. But then he turns full circle again to become social activist! At the the Montreal's Musée d'art contemporain's recent conference for the déclics: art et société show (Quebec art of the 1960s and 1970s) that included works Vaillancourt himself had made decades ago in the show, Vaillancourt protested a major cigarette manufacturer's sponsorship of the show, claiming they were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in North Americans annually. After contesting this, he made a cross sign with his arms and then walked out of the museum. Some audience members cheered, others booed. During the 9th edition of the Présences autochtones native arts festival in Montreal in May 1999, Vaillancourt again became the subject of artmaking. this time his body was wrapped in canvas (an allusion to the body as art?). His hair and "clothing" were then painted by native participants in a gesture of cultural solidarity and acceptance. .
CONTINUED
