Guilt by Association

Deanna Bowen’s photographic collage The Black Canadians (after Cooke) is to be installed on the façade of the National Gallery of Canada in July. Whether its presentation is self-flagellation on the Gallery’s part, or a parting shot from the ancien regime to the new Director upon his arrival, is not clear.

Acquired by the National Gallery in 2022, Bowen’s anti-racist work The Black Canadians (after Cooke) consists of greatly enlarged photographs, printed as positive or negative images, largely drawn from Bowen’s previous projects and rearranged somewhat chronologically from the late eighteenth century to 1943, the date of Bowen’s mother’s birth.

The initial proposal for installation of the work on the façade appeared in an elegant monograph on the artist’s career published by Scotiabank that same year. The title refers to a history of Black Canadians and Americans, including members of her family, before and after the publication of a racist article opposing Black immigration to Canada. Written by Britton B. Cooke, it was published in MacLean’s Magazine in November 1911. The central figure in Bowen’s installation is a negative image of a Black youth illustrated on the first page of the MacLean’s article. The frontispiece on the page adjacent to the first page of Cooke’s article reproduced a drawing of construction in downtown Toronto by future Group of Seven member Lawren Harris. In her 2022 proposal Bowen stated that Harris illustrated Cooke’s article when, in fact, the drawing has nothing to do with that article but relates to an article by Augustus Bridle contrasting Canadian cities, with the Toronto images being drawn by Harris. That article was published in the December 1911 issue of MacLean’s. Thus begins the guilt by association.

On the right side of The Black Canadians (after Cooke) is a photo of the National Gallery’s first director, Eric Brown, juxtaposed with a photo of members of a Vancouver branch of the Ku Klux Klan. In December 1927 Brown penned the introduction in the catalogue of the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art Native and Modern. That exhibition, largely organized by Marius Barbeau, ethnologist at the National Museum, then housed in the same building as the National Gallery, brought together approximately 315 art works by West Coast Indigenous artists, presenting them as art and not as ethnological artifacts. The “Modern” section was largely composed of works by non-Indigenous artists, including Emily Carr, inspired by West Coast Indigenous culture and its landscapes. It is because of the relegation of “Native” art to the past and the appropriation of Indigenous culture by the “Moderns” that Bowen associates Brown, and the playwright Carroll Aikins and Vincent Massey, both included in The Black Canadians (after Cooke), as well as the National Gallery of Canada, with the KKK.

On the right side of Eric Brown is a 1943 photo of A.Y. Jackson and Arthur Goss’ 1920 photo of future members of the Group of Seven. Between these two images is a photo of Mackenzie King at a German sports event in Berlin in 1937. Printed as a negative image, Mackenzie King disappears, but the swastika on the adjacent officer’s armband is clearly evident. In Bowen’s work the members of the Group of Seven are not only associated with Nazis but also with Barker Fairley who sits with the artists in the 1920 photo. In her earlier projects Bowen revealed that shortly after arriving to teach German at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Fairley signed a petition in 1911 against black immigration to Canada. Four years later he took up a position at the University of Toronto, replacing a German-born professor, and became associated with the future group members. He was a key figure in the establishment of The Canadian Forum in 1920 and in 1939 published “Canadian Art: Man vs. Landscape,” criticizing Canadian artists’ continuing obsession with landscape and their failure to depict the human faces of Canada. But for Bowen, Barker Fairley never outlived his sin of 1911 and, by association, Fairley’s sin becomes those of his artist friends.

Bowen has stated, “I never want to make a work that white people can consume and walk away from.” No visitor will be able to walk away from this screed without asking numerous questions.

Charles C. Hill
Retired Senior Curator of Canadian Art, National Gallery of Canada