Gauvreau (10)


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Source: WTL© photograph of Gauvreau painting (1999) in Pierre Gauvreau; Passeur de modernité. Québec: Musée de la civilization, 2014, p. 122.
Image: Janine Carreau-Pierre Gauvreau, "La jeunesse est en nous et nous sommes la jeunesse" [Youth is in us and we are youth] (2002). Cadavre exquis, mixed media on canvas.
Comments
: Suggested approach to studying this painting, which is my usual approach to discovering works in an art museum: (a) first I look at the work globally, from some distance; (b) then I quickly look for the placard next to it with the name of the artist, the title, and the date; if there's a curator's statement about it I may read it at this stage or later; (c) I step back and start looking at details, seeing them in themselves and how they fit in the overall work; color, angles, lines, juxtapositions, recognizable shapes or objects--or not--; (d) then I ask myself (quietly, of course) questions about details or the whole. Now, I invite you to focus on the scribbly black lines; what do they remind you of outside this canvas? Well, late in his life, Gauvreau, who spent a lifetime experimenting, breaking taboos, pushing ever forward, appreciating art of all kinds and wherever he found it, in the 1990s and into the 21st century discovered and defended the rebellious, popular, youthful, defiant art of grafitti everywhere he found it from Montreal to Vancouver. Now, return to the meaning of the title recalling that Pierre was 80 years old when he painted this canvas jointly with Janine, who was 54 years old in 2002.
Humanities Question: Using ideas expressed in the "Comments" above, write you own evaluation of this painting.

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