Revel in the Delight of One of Canada’s Greatest Painters

Last week at the Vancouver Art Gallery, I watched a small child sit in front of a painting by Canadian artist Jean Paul Riopelle for a good 30 minutes. Even as I was circling about the gallery, he was still there, looking carefully at the work.

On the centenary anniversary of the famed painter’s birth, the National Gallery of Canada tapped curator Sylvie Lacerte to assemble a travelling exhibition that would encompass Riopelle’s enormous oeuvre and speak to the time and places in which it was created. The result is an explosion of energy, inventiveness and a playful spirit that comes barreling out like it’s on fire.

It’s little wonder that kid was mesmerized.

Covering five decades of Riopelle’s creative output that spanned mediums that ranged from painting, drawing, etching, sculpture and collage, Riopelle: Crossroads in Time also includes work from the artist’s contemporaries. There is work by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti and Riopelle’s long-time partner, the American painter Joan Mitchell.

Like the title suggests, Crossroads in Time is organized chronologically, beginning with the cheekiness of the artist as a young man. Born in Montreal in 1932, the wee Riopelle came early to art, taking lessons from Henri Bisson.

One of the artist’s earliest works in the show is a still-life from 1942, painted when Riopelle was a teenager. An arrangement of a skull, drapery, a trumpet, a half-empty glass of wine with the title Very Still Life (Nature bien morte) provide a good indicator not only of the painter’s facility, but also his character: irreverent, funny and willing to take risks.

It wasn’t long before Riopelle left figurative painting behind and embraced the movements of the day. As a member of the Automatistes, a group of young firebrand artists active in Quebec in 1940s and 50s, the man found his community.

Riopelle contributed a cover image for the group’s manifesto Refus global, a cri de coeur that helped to establish a new era in the province’s history called the Quiet Revolution, a time defined by its profound social, political and cultural split with the past. Nowhere was this break more apparent than in the generation of young artists giving traditional forms the boot and embracing the energy and innovation embodied in the work of emerging international art movements like surrealism.

A trip to Paris cemented young Riopelle’s commitment to challenging convention. He was soon installed in the French artmaking world. He contributed a cover illustration for Andre Breton’s literary work, hung out with the cognoscenti and smoked up a storm.

In Paris, enthralled by the large-scale works of French impressionists, Riopelle found his métier, giving up paint brushes for a palette knife. The work became thick, dense, heavy with colour and pattern, so much so that it’s easy to feel that if you look long enough, you might just fall in headfirst.

Despite the length and breadth of the work in the exhibition, it is still these large-scale mosaics that command the most attention. Majestic and romping in equal measure, they bristle with muscularity and the bravado of an artist at the height of his power. While the mosaic paintings belong to a certain era, time and subsequent developments in the art world have done nothing to diminish their magnificence.

Vallée, painted in 1949 and 1950, is emblematic of this period with thick, dense, impasto paint, almost overwhelming in its complexity. It demands to be looked at, inviting the eye to revel in the delight that is colour and form.

There is something almost delectable about these paintings, but please refrain from licking them if you can; the VAG frowns upon such activities.

Drawn from diverse collections across Canada both public and private, the exhibition includes many of Riopelle’s works that have not been previously seen. What emerges is not only the artist’s dedication to continual creative evolution, but also a genuine love and curiosity about all kinds of worldly experiences.

We see the influence of other creative disciplines in Riopelle’s work, such as dance, literature and more prosaic activities like hunting, fishing and smoking in works that range from large-scale oils to spray paint.

Riopelle’s reputation as something of a holy terror came about from incidents like the painter burning his work when he didn’t have fuel to heat his Paris apartment, as well as his taste for cool cars, motorcycles and an ever-present cigarette.

The painter’s chain smoking was so emblematic that a sculpture of him from French artist Roseline Granet features Riopelle, leaning forward, rumpled and commanding with a cigarette in hand. In another sculptural manifestation, he is stretching back in an armchair, arms crossed behind his head. The immediacy and humanity of these works summon Riopelle’s bold spirit as directly as invocation.

The rest of the exhibition is something of a comedown from the large-scale mosaic paintings, although there is still plenty of free-flying inspiration from the painter’s trips around the globe.

Place was a major influence on Riopelle’s work, whether in the form of a pared-back palette used to create images drawn from Greenland. In works like Le Roi de Thulé, the spare and commanding quality of northern landscapes is well in evidence.

The last major retrospective of Riopelle’s work was organized by the National Gallery in 1963. He is far better known in Quebec, where sculptures of the painter figure large in downtown Montreal.

It is wonderful, then, to see much of the painter’s late work here in B.C.

Some of the works created in the last years of the artist’s life are a revelation. Riopelle died in 2002, but even as old age and personal loss took a toll — his long-time partner Joan Mitchell died in 1992 from lung cancer — he continued to create extraordinary things.

The multi-paneled work Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg (L’Hommage à Rosa Luxemburg) was created in honour of Mitchell. The moniker Rosa, given by Riopelle to Mitchell to denote her moods and expressions, speaks not only to the enduring legacy of their relationship, but also allows for a window of intimacy and a peek into the complex, often volatile nature of their creative intertwining.

Riopelle’s legacy as one of Canada’s greatest painters is well assured. Any time spent with the major works makes clear that their power, strong as a tractor beam in drawing the eye, has not diminished. The painting and sculptures demand that one slow down, take time and really see the richness and bounty embodied therein.

That kid might still be sitting there at the Vancouver Art Gallery, taking in the painting.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

‘Riopelle: Crossroads in Time’ is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery until Sept. 1.

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