Veteran Saskatoon artist Eli Bornstein found himself in the Nunavut hamlet of Resolute Bay on July 25, 1986, preparing to board a Twin Otter en route to Otto Fiord on the western shore of Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic.
“Why did I ever leave the comfort of my home?” Bornstein asked himself. The answer, uncertain yet daring, was another question: “To get closer to God?”
Judging by the journals Bornstein kept during that 10-day Arctic visit in 1986 and a three-week return journey the next year, the prominent artist and long-time art professor at the University of Saskatchewan did, indeed, have a religious experience. There were also new understandings of the forces of nature and “the possibilities” of art.
Hans Dommasch, “Eli Painting, Ellesmere Island,” 1986
Bornstein’s story is told in the newly published book Eli Bornstein: Arctic Journals 1986 and 1987 (Figure 1 Publishing). A veritable buffet of delights, it provides insight into Bornstein’s nature-inspired artistic process and Structurist art, which has its roots in early 20th-century geometric abstraction. The book is illustrated with images of his relief works and related watercolours created during, or shortly after, the trips. There are also 20 poems inspired by his Arctic adventures. It is being published in time for Bornstein’s 100th birthday on Dec. 28.
Eight days after arriving in Otto Fiord with its spectacular icebergs, Bornstein and his travelling companion, the late Hans Dommasch, a photographer who taught at the University of Saskatchewan, flew on to Eureka, a small research station on Ellesmere Island. Bornstein wept upon leaving.
“When we flew over our fjord it occurred to me that probably all the churches and cathedrals man has ever built to the glory of God would fit onto Otto Fjord, which is only a small part of Ellesmere Island, which is only a portion of the Arctic,” he wrote in a journal entry dated Aug. 1, 1986. “This land and its great unspoiled beauty is at times terrifying and at other times, makes you cry. I feel that I have just returned from the greatest church on earth. It is truly a humbling and yet uplifting experience of the spirit.”
Eli Bornstein, “Hexaplane Structurist Relief No. 2 (Arctic Series),” 1995-1998
acrylic enamel on aluminum and Plexiglas, 26” x 72” x 6” (homage to Murray Adaskin; University of Saskatchewan Art Collection, gift of Dorothea Adaskin; courtesy the artist; photo by Troy Mamer)
Bornstein found the icebergs at Otto Fiord particularly inspiring for his Structurist relief work: “These towering icebergs reflected in the water where the reflection is even clearer than the actual berg suggest many new possibilities for reliefs, using white Plexiglass, possibly transparent and translucent colour Plexiglass and painted colour parts.”
Bornstein was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1922, and was educated at various institutions in the state. In 1950, he started teaching at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he was instrumental in building the department of art and art history. He remained on campus until 1990, influencing generations of Saskatchewan artists.
During the mid-1950s, he became a leading practitioner of Structurist art. Public commissions of his Structurist reliefs can be found in several Canadian cities. In 1960, Bornstein founded the international periodical The Structurist, which published for some 50 years.
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Eli Bornstein, “Arctic Study No. 34,” 1987
watercolour on rag board, 10” x 8” (private collection, courtesy the artist)
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Eli Bornstein, “Arctic Study No. 10,” 1986
watercolour on paper, 7” x 5” (private collection, courtesy the artist)
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Eli Bornstein, “Arctic Study No. 14,” 1986
watercolour on rag board, 10” x 12” (courtesy the artist)
“Although he builds his Structurist reliefs using the abstract language of colour and three-dimensional geometric form, they are dedicated to the study of nature and its biological processes,” says Roald Nasgaard, a former chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario, who contributed a scholarly introduction to the book. Nasgaard is working on an e-book about Bornstein for the Art Canada Institute in Toronto.
Nasgaard describes the niche Bornstein occupies in Canadian art, favourably comparing his Structurist relief works with the stark iceberg paintings of Lawren Harris. Bornstein’s non-representational work, Nasgaard intimates, meets the ideal of 19th-century French critic and poet Stéphane Mallarmé: “Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces.”
Eli Bornstein, “Multiplane Structurist Relief IV, No. 1 (Arctic Series),” 1986-1987
enamel on aluminum and Plexiglas, 15” x 15” x 3” (Beaverbrook Art Gallery Collection, gift of Eli Bornstein; courtesy the artist)
Bornstein’s 1986 diary entries are poetic and spiritual. But the ones from 1987 are more down to earth and peppered with frustrations about intrusions by curious Mounties, scientists and filmmakers. He says of the film crew: “What should be a religious and deeply humbling experience becomes mere material for entertainment.”
The poems synthesize what Bornstein learned in the Arctic. “Creating a poem has an equivalence to creating abstract art,” he writes. Linked by recurring imagery of the sandhill cranes and blue herons that stop by Bornstein’s home near the South Saskatchewan River while migrating to and from the Arctic, the poems reflect on human mortality and art’s relationship to nature.
Here is an excerpt from Bornstein’s Bountiful Creation in Art and Science, which likens artists and animals:
Like rejection of unappreciated painting, sculpture or architecture,
Interference, disruptions, disturbances
Prevail for insects, animals and artists.
Butterflies and elephants like poets and playwrights
Encounter recurrent barriers
Against sufficient resources for creativity or survival. ■
Eli Bornstein: Arctic Journals 1986 and 1987, by Eli Bornstein and Roald Nasgaard: Figure 1 Publishing, 2022.
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