Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive

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Unknown Photographer, "Natalie Brettschneider and unknown pianist, Banff Centre for the Arts," c. 1951

archival inkjet print from original negative. Natalie Brettschneider Archive. Acquired with the assistance of Sarah Fuller, Banff Centre, 2012.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive is an ongoing series of photographs, texts, music recitals, that together reconstruct the life and work of a genre-blurring historical performance artist. Brettschneider is fictional, but her story is laced with references to real people and places. The archive starts with her childhood in British Columbia, continues through her participation in the Parisian avant-garde between the wars, and includes evidence of her eccentric music and art-making practice in large and small communities across Canada after her return from Europe in the late 1930’s.

This project is a feminist critique of art historical narrative conventions: it aims to illuminate what gets left out of these stories, and the ways in which photographs are used to support cultural assumptions about gender, age, authorship, and art-making. Brettschneider is a stand-in for all of the female artists who have slipped through the gaps of history only to languish in obscurity, gain notoriety as models or muses of more famous male artists, or perhaps, like Claude Cahun, be “rediscovered.” The archive disrupts photographic hierarchies by mixing snapshots and studio portraits, tiny fragments and advertising paste-ups, fine art and fashion. It is stylistically eclectic, provocative and funny.

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive has been exhibited in galleries across Canada. A monograph on the project was published in 2020, as a collaborative project by the Carleton University Art Gallery in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Koffler Gallery. Featuring articles by Erin Silver, Assistant Professor at UBC’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, as well as writings by Heather Anderson, Curator at CUAG and lead organizer of the book’s production; Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator at the AGGV; Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator at the VAG; and Mona Filip, Director/Curator at the Koffler Gallery. The book is designed by Judith Steedman, Creative Director of Steedman Design.