Lot 12: Charles Gagnon 1934 - 2003 Canadian oil on

Charles Gagnon 1934 - 2003 Canadian oil on aluminum on board The Sound 32 x 32 inches 81.3 x 81.3 centimeters on verso signed, titled on the gallery label, dated 1966 and inscribed ""Montreal"" Literature:Gilles Godmer, Charles Gagnon, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, 2001, reproduced page 83 Tiffany Bell et al, Light in Architecture and Art: The Work of Dan Flavin, The Chinati Foundation, 2002, essay by Dave Hickey, "The Luminous Body: Sourceless Illumination as a Metaphor for Grace", pages 147 - 148 and 153 - 154 Provenance:Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal Estate of Andrée Lavigne-Trudeau, Montreal Exhibited:Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Charles Gagnon, February 8 - April 29, 2001, catalogue #58 Charles Gagnon was one of the most highly respected and influential Canadian artists of that remarkable generation born in Quebec in the 1930s. Revered for his expressive abstract paintings and also for his expertise in photography, assemblage and film, Gagnon and his work remain unique. In 2002, his achievements were recognized by a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Gagnon lived in New York City for a full five years, from 1955 to 1960. There he took in the range of experimental work - dance, film, photography and, of course, Abstract Expressionism in painting - and returned to Montreal to disseminate this legacy. The Sound boldly yet lyrically exemplifies not only his knowledge of the art centre's most advanced practices in the 1950s but also his up-to-the-minute awareness of ongoing experimentation in and around painting. This work's unusual medium - oil on aluminum - is tellingly of its mid-1960s moment yet remains contemporary in its sensibilities. The American art critic Dave Hickey - writing on Dan Flavin and Donald Judd particularly - describes the typically American fascination and play with ".....technologies of incarnation: epoxies, plastics.....all this glowing, hard stuff, the translucency of colour film, the embodiment of images" of that time. Aluminum, both as a support and a pigment, was one of these luminous experimental mediums, used in the United States most memorably by Andy Warhol and in Canada by Les Levine and Jack Chambers. Gagnon's The Sound was first shown at the Galerie Agnès Lefort in Montreal, which promoted progressive and often abstract work. In the following year, Chambers exhibited his "silver" paintings there. The feathered, shiny surface of The Sound stands in luminescent contrast to the central form, a perfectly but not mechanically incised black square. This assertive geometrical form sits precisely within the larger square of the painting as a whole and seems to pose questions to us. On the formal level, it asks how this hard-edged element relates to the fleeting, almost cloud-like swirl of pigment in which it sits. Is it flat - a barrier - or is it a darkened portal? Because Gagnon uses an aluminum support that changes with the light as we move by it, the black square or void seems stationary, a fixed point in a contrasting universe. Yet these realms are linked, not least by the black pigment distributed across the silvery surface. Do these strands fly out from or return to the black void, aided by what appears to be the impression of a hand in the upper right of the painting? With a highly informed artist such as Gagnon, it is fruitful to reflect historically as well as optically. The central black square is reminiscent of the Suprematist compositions of Kazimir Malevich from the early twentieth century, paintings that drew on mystical sources to assert new social relationships. More proximate is the allusion to - we might better say the harmonization with - American Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman. The connection follows not only from Newman's use of geometrical form but from the sound in works such as The Voice, 1950, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gagnon's The Sound likewise builds its effects through synesthesia, the combination of sight, touch and sound. We thank Mark Cheetham, Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, for contributing the above essay. Andrée Lavigne-Trudeau was married to Charles Elliott Trudeau, brother of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Charles was a Harvard-trained architect, and was one of the partners responsible for designing Ottawa City Hall in 1958. Gagnon's family was friends with the couple, and they attended cultural events together.