The Logic of Ecstasy: Canadian Mystical Painting, 1920-1940 9781442681668

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE. From Conventional Religion to Mysticism
CHAPTER TWO. Whitman and Transcendentalism
CHAPTER THREE. Theosophy and the Fourth Dimension
CHAPTER FOUR. Nature, Space, and Movement
Notes
Illustrations
Photo credits
Index

Citation preview

THE LOGIC OF ECSTASY C A N A D I A N M Y S T I C A L P A I N T I N G 1920-1940

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ANN DAVIS

The Logic of Ecstasy Canadian Mystical Painting 1920-1940

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1992 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-5916-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-6861-8 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Davis, Ann The logic of ecstasy Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-5916-3 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-6861-8 (pbk.) 1. Painting, Modern - 2oth century - Canada. 2. Painting, Canadian. 3. Mysticism and art Canada. I. Title. ND245. D38 1992

759.11 092-094411-6

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To Mum and Dad

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Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xix CHAPTER ONE From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 3 CHAPTER TWO Whitman and Transcendentalism 42 CHAPTER THREE Theosophy and the Fourth Dimension 95 CHAPTER FOUR Nature, Space, and Movement 162 Notes 171 List of Illustrations 199 Photo Credits 209 Index 211 COLOUR PLATES following page 60

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Preface

This book developed out of work I did preparing a large exhibition, The Logic of Ecstasy. The genesis for this exhibition was Lawren Harris's arresting canvas From the North Shore, Lake Superior, 1923. In this monumental work, owned by the London Regional Art and Historical Museums, we can see features and concerns common, in varying degrees, with the other paintings exhibited in the resulting show. Here is nature used to depict both natural phenomena and other-worldly interests; here is space and movement used in new ways to underline a higher concern with the soul. Both the real and the ideal are apparent. Intuition, emotion, and intellect are all called upon. From the North Shore, Lake Superior, like El Greco's The Burial of Count Orgaz, divides reality into three dimensions. In the first, in front of the picture plane, the beholder stands self-consciously outside the scene. In the second, the lower half of the picture, the northern Ontario landscape is presented as a cold and vast expanse of space, only partially delineated by headlands or the occasional island. In marked contrast to El Greco's contemporary, peopled scene, Harris presents primal, empty wilderness. Above the horizon line occurs the higher level of reality, analogous to El Greco's vision of celestial glory, in which the Count's soul is carried to heaven. In Harris's painting, as in El Greco's the upper half is painted very differently from the lower: every form takes part in the sweeping movement towards the distant, central light. In From the North Shore, Lake Superior, the careful paint application evident below the horizon is gradually changed so that the paint on the brown cloud-like forms at the upper edge is loosely scrubbed in. The warmth, the light emanates from this level; it is heavenly, not earthly, light. On this high plane the painter is working from his imagination towards nature; below it is reversed, with the painter working from nature towards imagination. In its mystical nature, From the North Shore, Lake Superior is different from much of the painting being produced by many of Harris's contemporaries. Our understanding of twentieth-century art is largely based on an

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aesthetic tradition initiated by the Impressionists, Cezanne, and the Cubists. However, mystically rather than aesthetically realized painting cannot be examined within this tradition. We need a new context. We need to probe the mystical experience and teachings that motivate this different artistic approach. We need to examine the spiritually oriented context both within Canada and beyond for the work of Harris and other important visionary Canadian painters. This book examines the ways in which Emily Carr, Fred Varley, Bertram Brooker, and Jock Macdonald, as well as Lawren Harris, used mystical form rather than aesthetically invented or initiated form, in their painting. These mystical forms are attained through contemplative openness to a hidden spiritual dimension of reality that pervades both nature and oneself. In 1924, in reviewing two mystical books for the Canadian Bookman, Ouspensky's Tertium Organum and Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, Harris explained that 'art is the beginning of vision, that there is a logic of ecstasy, and that this higher logic is the only one worthy of consideration, that it contains complete corroboration of all the loftiest aspirations of men ... [A]rt is the beginning of vision into the realm of eternal life.'1 In addressing the lack of study of mystically based art, this book concen-

LAWREN s. HARRIS From the North Shore, Lake Superior

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trates on five important Canadian painters whose work has, in part, an underlying metaphysical basis. It is important to understand that none of them was solely motivated by mystical concerns; that each of them also painted works that were of a secular or non-spiritual nature. None the less, they were all deeply interested in and concerned about matters mystical. Each, in his or her own way, wanted to capture that logic of ecstasy. Their achievements were outward manifestations of intuitions and intimations of the ineffable and the divine; their art was not so much a feast for the eye or an arena for the emotions as it was a launching pad for the spirit, and a point of departure for certain ideas and truths wishing to make themselves known;

EL GRECO The Burial of Count Orgaz

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their works were not derived as much from direct personal experience as they were conjured up through contemplation and self-surrender. The heavy demands of such methodology show: failures were as frequent as successes. At the same time, the successes were often spectacular: many of the best works produced by these five dominant painters were of a decidedly mystical nature. Selecting boundaries for this type of project is always problematic. As I worked with the material, with the exhibition in mind, I discovered I would have to make some hard choices about number of artists, time frame, and content of the show. The Los Angeles exhibition The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890—1985 dramatically demonstrated that the potential scope for this topic is vast. Allowed to run wild, such a show could enmesh viewers in a web of unfamiliar ideals, unknown philosophies, and unapprehended visions. These problems must be avoided. To do so I decided to select a rich, closely defined exhibition and, eventually, book. My first consideration was the number of painters. The more I probed the more Canadian painters I found who were motivated by mystical ideas. It was tempting, in fact, to present work done by a whole range of Canadian artists - not just painters - but such a broad selection would, inevitably, start to become unfocused and fractured. The Los Angeles exhibition, which opened in October 1985, suffered, particularly in its latter sections, from an overabundance of contributors. After much thought I decided to concentrate on five Canadian artists, all well-known or very well-known, and to show their work ranging through a variety of themes, styles, and periods. In this way I would attempt to put major works by major painters into new contexts, so that they could be seen in a revealing mystical way. My aim, then, would not be primarily to present new paintings, but to show familiar paintings in a new way. Another question of limits involved time span. What period should be covered? Should it encompass the full career of each artist involved? This approach presented a number of problems. Lawren Harris lived until 1970 and produced powerful, mystical paintings during the last decade of his life. Yet his philosophic interests and artistic methodologies changed very much between the 1930s and 1960s. Furthermore Harris's productive career was much longer than any of the other four. Jock Macdonald also underwent a vast development, but in his case works produced after about 1940 were based more on aesthetic than mystical goals. After due consideration I decided to concentrate the show on the 1920 to 1940 period. During this time span each of the five, exploring individual mystical concerns, produced arresting, difficult, and innovative canvases. Their solutions opened the way for other similarly minded creators.

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A third question of limits involved content. Should this show concentrate, as had the Los Angeles one, on abstraction, or should it take a broader sweep ? Since I had been rather rigorous in imposing limits in terms of the number of artists represented and time period covered, here I decided to be more expansive. The show would cover not simply abstract but also figurative painting. Apart from a personal desire not to be too rigidly reductionist, too pettily picayune, I am convinced that the strength of much of Canadian mystical painting lies not simply in abstraction, as might be the case in many other countries, but also in figurative work. How and why this should be is part of the concern addressed in this book, which, accordingly, will not be an attempt to provide an overview of each artist's work. That has already been done. Rather it will explore one aspect of the work the mystical, recognizing that mysticism was not necessarily the sole aspect of each painter's philosophy. For some, like Harris and Varley, mysticism was a major, lifelong belief; for some, like Carr, it assumed mounting importance; finally, for Brooker and Macdonald, it was one sustaining beam in the erection of a philosophy. But their mystical beliefs often differed in source, kind, and expression. Each of the five was a fiercely individualistic producer. That they shared so much is the wonder. What these artists really shared was a deep interest in developing knowledge through a new kind of consciousness. This new consciousness was a mixture of Western and Eastern thought. Western culture, as Descartes explained in the seventeenth century, distinguishes between res extensa, matter extended in space, and res cogitans, the conscious mind standing over and observing the world outside itself. Using this dualistic thinking, our Western culture has tended to concentrate on the outward and active. Primarily through the use of reason Western people have tried to discover the meaning of the universe. They have been greatly interested in the phenomena of the material world, believing that its nature and laws could be discovered through observation, experimentation, and logical thought. With this knowledge the individual has tried to use nature, to bend it to his will. History has meaning as the story of the human conquest of nature through reason and science. The culture of the East - to simplify things greatly - is opposite to that of the West in many respects. In the East emphasis tends to be much more on the inner and the passive. The real truth, it is believed, is not to be found in analytic observation of material phenomena, but rather in spiritual intuition, passivity, and contemplation. History is of little or no significance. This bare delineation of differences between Eastern and Western culture does not, perforce, take into account the cross-fertilizations, variations, and balances that have occurred between and within different cultures. Rather, the differ-

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ences are identified here to emphasize that we are conditioned by our Western cultural history. Our Western attitude of mind should not be seen as better or more realistic, but recognized simply as a different kind of perception, a different attitude towards life.2 In Canada, during the two decades under consideration, many creative people were questioning the validity of analysis and logic as the only tools of knowledge. Artists, like scientists, were suggesting that intuition and feeling were also appropriate tools - an attitude that was, of course, regarded with considerable suspicion. Creative people, good questioning individuals, were attempting to determine, if intuition could be a valid, even a primary tool of knowledge, just how that tool was to be used. What was the methodology? What evolved was a synthesis: intuition had to be used with logic, its discoveries developed by means of logic. Intuition had to stand before the bar of reason to be judged. Adherents to this synthetic belief, or synthetic methodology, saw here a very positive movement, an exciting direction for evolution. Thinkers as diverse as theosophist Madame Blavatsky and Catholic theologian Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin believed that there will emerge in mankind an ever higher type of consciousness and awareness, an expanding interiorization and spiritualization. Aspects of the universe will become visible that are as yet hidden or only faintly glimpsed. This opening will be led by those in whom interiorization and spirituality have been most highly developed - the artists, poets, musicians, seers, and mystics.3 This book and the earlier exhibition explore that interiorization and spirituality as seen in five Canadian painters. The book is organized according to the principal basis of mystical influence. These divisions -broadly conventional religion, transcendentalism, and theosophy - are not mutually exclusive. Theosophy, for example, is an inclusive, not an exclusive, system that incorporates much Christian and transcendental thinking; twentieth-century Christianity, severely challenged, has renewed its erstwhile accommodation of mystical approaches and preaches tenets common to transcendentalism and theosophy. This interrelationship and overlapping is also apparent in the paintings under consideration here in that the distinction between the three categories can be both subjective and problematic. This is to be expected as the philosophy is, by definition, intuitive and personal. Yet there is a logic and a general developmental thrust that will be explored. The book is organized in four sections. The first looks at the broad topic of mysticism and discusses Christianity and nature as points of departure for the five artists. In the second section I examine how transcendentalism in general and Walt Whitman in particular affected the ideas of these five. The penultimate chapter explores theosophy and the fourth dimension as

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influential theories. The final section draws some conclusions about nature and nation, space and movement, as demonstrated by the work of Carr, Brooker, Harris, Varley, and Macdonald. Throughout, three aspects emerge with noteworthy regularity: the centrality of nature, the importance of space, and the prominence of movement. Each painter discussed here was raised within a Christian church of a more or less conventional stripe. Some, like Carr and Macdonald, were exposed to the rigours of strict Victorian Presbyterianism; others, like Harris and Varley, were introduced, respectively, to Christian Science and Congregationalism. Many contemporary religious movements, such as Christian Science, emphasized the primacy of the Bible and the necessity of rejecting overlying layers of dogma to retrieve the basic core of belief. Particularly popular, Christian Science promulgated the unreality of matter and the infinity of the mind. Neoplatonism thrived. This mixture of Plato's beliefs and Oriental mysticism propounded the hierarchical nature of reality, the material world as an organic whole animated by a World Soul, and the soul's ability to ascend the levels of reality back to the One. Popular were Rosicrucianism, theosophy, and anthroposophy, Neoplatonic systems of teaching that led the individual, by occult modes of cognition, to personal, empirical knowledge of metaphysical truths. It is in this climate that the five painters rejected more traditional Christian beliefs to embrace mysticism. We will examine the beginnings of their searches in mysticism and will study how these appeared in paint. For Canadians a very important way to approach the ineffable was suggested by nineteenth-century American transcendentalists. Transcendentalism, especially that form propounded by Whitman, was particularly influential in Canada. Three Canadians were exceptionally important in promoting Whitman's beliefs: R.M. Bucke, the London (Ontario) author of Cosmic Consciousness, J.E.H. MacDonald, Group of Seven painter and poet, and F.B. Housser, author of the first book on the Group of Seven. From these three writers, as well as directly from Whitman, the five painters being studied here drew support for a belief in close contact with nature, in intuitive wisdom, in individual freedom, and in cosmic optimism. The essentially literary nature of their sources is apparent. The final form of mysticism to have a major impact on the five was theosophy and theories of the fourth dimension. These had particular appeal to creators interested in transcendentalism, for the transcendental belief that nature is the outward manifestation of ultimate reality is parallel to theosophical doctrine, which maintains that the terrestrial and celestial realms are corresponding and continuous. Both theosophy and transcendentalism grew out of the larger philosophic tradition that attempts to break down the barrier

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between fact and value and see the underlying connectedness of all things. Both too were predicated on individual freedom rather than institutional conformity. The Theosophical Society, created in 1875 in New York by Madame Blavatsky, was an effort to unify numerous religious and philosophic tenets. Both Eastern and Western ideas and ideals were incorporated into this rather amorphous organization to produce a synthesis of the idea of evolution with religious concepts taken chiefly from Hinduism and Buddhism. Distinguishing features of theosophy include a divine plan in which the individual is slowly returning to God, a hierarchy of masters working to fulfil the plan, and the doctrines of reincarnation and karma. Akin to theosophy, and practised coincidentally by many, was a belief in the fourth dimension. Like the other mystical philosophies we are examining, this hyperspace philosophy put great store in the unity, the oneness, of all. All five artists looked at theosophy and the fourth dimension, but Lawren Harris was the one who studied them most assiduously. Each of these three mystical approaches - Christianity, transcendentalism, and theosophy and the fourth dimension - was based on a set of very similar tenets. Where they differed was in emphasis or in one particular aspect of a particular belief. Each was predicated on the centrality of intuition as an inclusive but not exclusive tool, and on an individual, emotive approach to divinity. This divinity was immanent, indwelling, permanently pervading the universe. Central to each approach was the belief that science and spirit - that the entire world - could and would be harmonized, and that a new whole world would result. This viewpoint was the metaphysics of integration. In each of the three approaches there was a fundamental belief in the possibility of such integration, but there was also the conviction that long, hard work was necessary to achieve oneness with the spirit. Such oneness was possible to all who undertook this voyage. Apprehension was not based on cast, or baptism, or unthinking adherence to doctrine. Rather the task had to be approached with great dedication, perseverance, and planning. The possibility of a more intense life, a wider, sharper consciousness, a more profound understanding, was recognized. To conclude, I examine how all the strands of mysticism practised by these five Canadian painters affected their art and their beliefs. One result was their heavy concentration on nature. This was caused by a combination of factors, including, on the one hand, international spiritual and mystical movements such as Christianity, transcendentalism, theosophy, and the fourth dimension, and, on the other hand, particularly Canadian elements that encouraged much of their mysticism to be rooted firmly in nature, in a way that was foreign to the international, and especially the Asian and European, movements. Another important aspect of mystical painting is seen

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in new approaches to space. Space took on a different, yet central, meaning now. Along with space, mysticism affected these painters' views on movement. This, in turn, had distinct influences on their work. Nature, space, and movement, then, are the touchstones of the new Canadian mystical theory of art.

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Acknowledgments

This project originated as an exhibition and a catalogue done for the London Regional Art and Historical Museums. I am grateful to Nancy Poole, Director, for supporting this endeavour and for agreeing to its extended life as a book. When the exhibition was initiated Paddy O'Brien was assistant director and chief curator. She worked long and tirelessly, for which I thank her most warmly. Without her dedication, support, and encouragement, I doubt that this book would have appeared. For permission to use material for which they hold copyright I sincerely thank Mrs William Davenport, Mr Lawren P. Harris, Mrs Margaret H. Knox, Mrs Phyllis Brooker Smith, the Art Gallery of Ontario for F.H. Varley, and The Theosophical Publishing House (Adyar, Madras). A great many people have been most helpful in making material available to me. Among these I acknowledge, with a great deal of thanks, MaiaMari Sutnik for exceptional photographic work; Charlie Hill for all sorts of invaluable things; Sheryl Salloum for help with the Vanderpant material; the Vanderpant family for permission to consult the Vanderpant Papers held in the National Archives of Canada; Betty Burrell who did important preliminary bibliographic work; the students of my 1987 University of Western Ontario seminar course; the staff of various archival resources, including the National Gallery of Canada, the National Archives of Canada, the Special Collections of the University of Manitoba, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Special Collections of the University of British Columbia, and the Provincial Archives of the Province of British Columbia. I am particularly grateful to Professor Don Evans for steering me through the mysteries of mysticism, for sensitive attention to the material, and for well-timed encouragement. Other people helped in other important ways. This book would not have appeared without the persistence and dedication of my editor, Joan Bulger, and the hard work of John St James, the copy-editor. Thank you both very

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much. In addition I particularly thank Jim and Lou for the blissful peace and space of your charming cottage in Muskoka, at which the final polishing was accomplished; Shirley Savage for being such a fine proofreader; my daughter and son for their understanding and patience; my parents for their everlasting support. ANN DAVIS

THE LOGIC OF ECSTASY

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CHAPTER ONE

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism

That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, the length, and depth, and height. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, 3:17-18

I

Mysticism is a slippery concept. We all have a general idea what it means, but are hard put to define it precisely. Yet, whether we as individuals have had mystical experiences, believe in the possibility of such experiences, or relegate mysticism to the box of fantastical fabrications does not change the fact that Brooker, Carr, Harris, Macdonald, and Varley were all deeply interested in and more than a little influenced by mysticism. To understand their work we must understand the literature and art that influenced them; we must understand mysticism in Canada in the 19203 and 19303. I want to state immediately that mysticism as I mean it is not astrology, fortune-telling, clairvoyance, or spiritualism. It is not mental telepathy or anything that commonly goes by the name of extrasensory perception. It is not visions, auditions, locutions, or raptures. In short, it is not something superstitious or supernatural in the sense of the occult, although many contemporaries of the five painters were interested in such things.1 This list of what mysticism is not still does not say what it is. This is a difficult problem, for there are many diverse lands of mysticism and many competing attempts to define it.2 To find a definition of mysticism useful to our purposes I have relied heavily on the work of Evelyn Underhill, and especially on her book Practical Mysticism? This book seems to be particularly appropriate. It is clearly written and well thought-out; it is contemporary with the period under consideration, having been first published in 1914;

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and it concentrates to a considerable extent on the artist as mystic. Although there is no firm indication that any of the five Canadians studied here read Underbill, it is quite possible and even probable that some, if not all, were familiar with her work. For example, Underbill is mentioned in a book Carr admired and read assiduously, The Sadhu.^ Underbill defines mysticism as 'the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims to and believes in such attainments/5 This definition does not seem very illuminating to the practical person, who is immediately tempted to ask 'What is Reality?' Unfortunately only a mystic can answer that. So, following Underbill, I will attempt to summarize the process of attaining mystical union in the hope that a discussion of the process will give clues about mysticism. The first consideration is the word 'union.' The mystic seeks enlightenment by actively assimilating a thing, by interpreting it and ourselves, by full communion. An intenser life and a sharper consciousness can result from such assimilation. Walt Whitman was a mystic because of his passionate communion with deeper levels of life than those with which we usually deal. Blake, Plotinus, Joan of Arc, and John of the Cross all achieved such union and exhibit the working of the contemplative consciousness. The first step in achieving the mystical sense is self-simplification. The active, intellectual self is to move 'from the various and the analytic to the simple and the synthetic/ Mystical contemplation is, in essence, union with the flux of life and with the Whole. In the education of every contemplative there are two phases: the purification of the senses and the purification of the will. Some people have a crisis, a 'conversion/ and are seized by some power stronger than themselves and thus look out upon a new heaven and a new earth. These need not take the slower, plodding route of purification. But many have to work diligently to purify the senses and the will, to release the senses from egocentric judgments, and to discern the stages of the road towards harmony with the Real. But this 'Real' seems to have two contradictory orders. Metaphysicians call these great pairs of opposites Being and Becoming, Eternity and Time, Unity and Multiplicity; others speak of the spiritual and the natural worlds as the two extreme forms under which the universe can be realized. Those whose consciousness is extended full span can live in both, be aware of both. The polarity is broken by introducing a third component. The disharmonies between the part and the whole are resolved in the third order, Ultimate Reality, Divinity. Correspondence is then possible with three levels of existence: the Natural, the Spiritual, and the Divine. Artists of all kinds, according to Underbill, are especially adept at communion with the 'thing/ for artists, she feels, have highly developed intui-

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 5

tions. Rather than be fettered by the mind, artists 'reach out beyond the conceptual image to intuitive contact with the Thing/7 This is primacy of emotion and intuition over reason, what St Augustine called 'the light that never changes, above the eye of the soul, above the intelligence/ This experience might be called in essence "absolute sensation." It is a pure feeling-state; in which the fragmentary contacts with Reality achieved through the senses are merged in a wholeness of communion which feels and knows all at once, yet in a way which the reason can never understand, that Totality of which fragments are known by the lover, the musician, and the artist/8 In reply to the rhetorical question 'What distinguishes the outlook of artists from the subjectivism of common sense/ Underhill replies innocence and humility. She sees the attitude of artists to the universe as analogous to that of children, to some extent; and to that extent they participate in the Heaven of Reality. She feels artists emphasize sensation rather than thought and therefore share in that ideal state of pure receptivity, of perfect correspondence with the essence of things. For her, The greater the artist is, the wider and deeper is the range of this pure sensation: the more sharply he is aware of the torrent of life and loveliness, the rich profusion of possible beauties and shapes. He always wants to press deeper and deeper, to let the span of his perception spread wider and wider; til he unites with the whole of that Reality which he feels all about him of which his own life is a part. He is always tending, in fact, to pass over from the artistic to the mystical state.9 Not everyone agrees with Underbill's definition of artistic creativity. Certainly some art is highly intellectual, involving a concerted filtering out of the intuitive and emotional. But it is not this branch that is of prime interest here; rather, it is the art based on emotion and intuition. While Underhill sees artists as imbued with contemplative intuition, others feel imagination has a major role to play; while Underhill feels artists see a new, real world and have the ability to portray it, others suggest that the artistic activity itself creates a real world.10 Whether creativity is intuitive or imaginative, many artists have sought that mystical union with reality. The most renowned is surely William Blake, but he was certainly not alone. Along with writers Walt Whitman, Aldous Huxley, and Arthur Koestler are the Symbolist painters and writers of the late nineteenth century, Edvard Munch, the European pioneers of abstraction Wassily Kandinsky, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, and Kaszimir Malevich, and the Italian Futurists, just to name some of the most prominent early proponents of mysticism. Over the last hundred years there has been a steady

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interest on the part of creative people in mystical and occult sources. Franz Marc, for example, wanted to create works that have a 'mystical inner construction/11 Jean Arp wrote that 'the starting-point for my work is from the inexplicable, the divine/12 Marcel Duchamp, at times, was also involved with the occult. In the United States Albert Pinkham Ryder is followed by the likes of Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe. In Taos, New Mexico, the interest in the spiritual prompted the formation of the Transcendental Painting Group, of which Lawren Harris was a member. In Canada, at about the turn of the century a leader in mystical thinking and painting was Ozias Leduc. The next generation included our five painters, as well as Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald and John Vanderpant. They, in turn, were followed by Jack Chambers and Charles Gagnon. The Abstract Expressionists Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Adolph Gottlieb riled against a strictly formalist interpretation of their work and contended that they were concerned with 'penetration into the world mystery/13 Pollock was equally succinct in delineating his belief in the ultimate non-sensuous unity of all things. In his famous reply to Hans Hofmann, Pollock simply stated, T am nature/14 Here then is a very direct example of a painter attempting to make his art mystical, a living, active union with the One. These people had a long list of sources on which to draw for their antimaterialistic philosophies. Mystical and occult thinking, of course, antedates its wider reception among many in the nineteenth century. Right from antiquity, beginning with Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus, writers attempted to define an occult cosmogony. Jakob Bohme, the seventeenth-century German mystic, contended that 'the eternal center and the Birth of Life ... are everywhere. Trace a circle no larger than a dot, the whole birth of Eternal Nature is therein contained/15 In the eighteenth century the Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg was a leader, while in the first half of the nineteenth century Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Charles Baudelaire were central in exploring mysticaloccult ideas. These writings, in turn, spawned, in the nineteenth century, a considerable body of literature of which Helena Blavatsky's volumes on theosophy - encyclopaedias of world religions - are only one prominent example. Yet writing on twentieth-century art in general and Canadian art in particular has not tended to reflect the mystical or metaphysical ideas that influenced so many visual artists over the last hundred years. Analysts of art have concentrated more on purely aesthetic interests and practised formalist criticism. Prominent among these are Alfred Barr and Clement Greenberg. In Canada Robert Hubbard and J. Russell Harper initiated this phase, followed by Dennis Reid with his biographically organized Concise History of Canadian Painting. By the early 19705 things began to change. A more conceptual

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 7

approach examining the connections of art to occult and mystical belief systems was initiated by Sixten Ringbom, writing on Kandinsky, and Robert Rosenblum in his pioneering book Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition (1975). In Canada Roald Nasgaard's 1984 exhibition and accompanying book, The Mystic North: Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America 1890-1940, led the way, to be complemented by studies of L.L. FitzGerald, Lawren Harris, and Charles Gagnon.1 Internationally, the most important recent study has been the large 1986 exhibition and catalogue organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985, The subject of this book is the mystical writings that influenced the world-views of five Canadian visionary painters and the various mystical experiences with which they had some personal acquaintance. Both the influences and the personal experiences can help us to appreciate their art. Let us first consider some of their experiences.

II Emily Carr first saw the work of the Group of Seven on a trip to Toronto in 1927. The quality of her experience here was special. In her diary of Thursday November 17 her language was radical. She wrote: Oh, God, what have I seen? Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this world. Chords way down in my being have been touched. Dumb notes have struck chords of wonderful tone. Something has called out of somewhere. Something in me is trying to answer. It is surging through my whole being, the wonder of it all, like a great river rushing on, dark and turbulent, and rushing and irresisting, carrying me away on its wild swirl like a helpless little bundle of wreckage. Where, where? ... What language do they speak, those silent, awe-filled spaces? I do not know. Wait and listen; you shall hear by and by. I long to hear and yet I'm half afraid. I think perhaps I shall find God here, the God I've longed and hunted for and failed to find. Always he's seemed nearer out in the big spaces, sometimes almost within reach but never quite. Perhaps in this newer, wider, spacefilled vision I shall find him.17 Carr's mystical experience was so strong, so powerful that it affected the rest of her life. It affected the way she felt and saw, and it particularly affected the way she painted. Here, in this diary entry, she was using terms and concepts familiar to mystics. Her 'great river' analogy is especially poignant mystically. Underbill, for example, talks about the plain person's muddled, self-centred life

8 The Logic of Ecstasy

EMILY CARR

in which that person makes a 'wretched little whirlpool in the mighty River of Becoming.' Through the mystical search for self-knowledge one can resolve 'the turbulent whirlpools and currents of your own conflicting passions, interests, desires ... which create the fundamental opposition between your interior and exterior life/1 Discussing contemplation and the new fraternal link with all living things that a mystic experiences, Underbill writes: 'this down-sinking of your arrogant personality into the great generous stream of life ... marks an important stage in your apprehension of that Science of Love which contemplation is to teach. You are not to confuse it with petty fancies about nature, such as all imaginative persons enjoy; still less, with a self-conscious and deliberate humanitarianism. It is a veritable condition of awareness; a direct perception, not an opinion or an idea/19 A more personal approach to unity is Carr's 'big spaces/ her 'newer, wider, space-filled vision/ Here, surely, the canvases she saw in Toronto were a dominant influence. Yet, as will be seen, this interest in space was to be of lasting, central importance. What the exact nature of Carr's Toronto experience was we will never know. That it was inextricably attached to seeing the paintings of the Group of Seven in general and of Lawren Harris in particular she made very clear. On Sunday December 11 she spent the evening with the Harrises. While Mrs Harris curled up on the sofa and sewed, Lawren showed the shy,fifty-five-year-oldwoman - she turnedfifty-sixthe next day - his paintings and his treasures. Then they listened to a long symphony on the record-player, for Harris was very keen on music. Carr was enraptured, especially by the space. In her diary she recorded:

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 9

To sit in front of those pictures and hear that music was just about heaven. I have never felt anything like the power of those canvases. They seem to have called to me from some other world, sort of an answer to a great longing. As I came through the mountains I longed so to cast off my earthly body and float away through the great pure spaces between the peaks, up the quiet green ravines into the high, pure, clean air. Mr. Harris has painted those very spaces, and my spirit seems able to leave my body and roam among them. They make me so happy.20

Two days later she visited Harris in his studio, the one he and Dr MacCallum had built - the Studio Building. Here Carr watched Harris at work on a large Lake Superior canvas, and they talked technique as well as philosophy. Carr concluded that Harris 'has come up to where he is now by diligent, intelligent grinding and wrestling and digging things out; that he couldn't do what he is doing now without doing what he has already done; that his religion, whatever it is, and his paintings are one and the same/21 Carr was deeply moved. She was also invigorated to try for herself. T long to return to it/ she told her newly started diary, 'and wrestle something out for myself, to look for things I did not know of before, and to feel and strive and earnestly try to be true and sincere to the country and to myself/ 22 What was the nature of her struggle to be? Based on this eastern experience and her own immediate analysis of what had happened to her, she was to seek a new understanding of herself, a new religious enlightenment by which she would find God in those silent, awe-filled spaces. She "had reached a higher level of consciousness than she had had when she left Victoria, but she was acutely aware that she had many more mountains to climb to reach the intuitive mystical perception she assiduously sought. Her search was based partly on her own religious background and partly on new material provided, in the main, by Lawren Harris. Emily Carr was brought up in a household where religion was much in evidence, although many members exhibited little religious conviction. Her father, Richard Carr, was obsessed with the Sunday public ritual of religion, in an effort, Paula Blanchard suggests to ensure the family's good standing in conservative Victoria.23 Richard Carr conducted family prayers every morning at seven forty-five, and every Sunday morning, marched his unwilling brood to the First Presbyterian Church. In the afternoon the children were sent to Mrs Cridge's for Sunday school.24 Religious observances were not yet finished; in the evening Emily's mother often went to her own church, the Church of Our Lord, a Reformed Episcopal church.25 The children might accompany her before the evening ritual of Bible-reading and hymn-singing at home. Years later, when Emily had become adept at seeing her past the way she wanted to remember it, she wrote in The Book of Small that her

io The Logic of Ecstasy

father's religion was 'grim and stern/ while her mother's was 'gentle.'2 Yet each parent worshipped at a distinctly evangelical church, one where Bible study and rigorous self-examination were the norm. When Emily Carr talked about finding God, she fully expected this God to be a Christian one. Between 1927 and 1934 Carr was diligent in religious practice, though frequently downhearted. She ranged wide in her search and exploration. Under the tutelage of Lawren Harris and others, she probed theosophy and transcendentalism, as will be seen in detail later. However, she never entirely gave up on Christianity. Her paintings, her diary, and her correspondence with Lawren Harris all attest to her deep desire to find the soul, to find herself, and to be comfortable with some form of philosophy, some religion, for artists. She departed from the strict practice of Christianity, and, eventually, came full circle to embrace a personal version of it again. Along the way there were great, lonely traumas. Her diary recorded: Once I heard it stated and now I believed it to be true that there is no true art without religion. The artist himself may not think he is religious but if he is sincere his sincerity in itself is religion. If something other than the material did not speak to him, and if he did not have faith in that something and also in himself, he would not try to express it. Every artist I meet these days seems to me to leak out the fact that somewhere inside him he is groping religiously for something, some in one way, some in another, tip-toeing, stretching up, longing for something beyond what he sees or can reach.27 Carr, convinced she was an artist, sought religion. Underbill tackled this problem from the other end. She posited that artists, by being artists, were searchers after union, were mystics, were even religious in a sense that Carr would understand. For Underbill there can be no art without religion, to use Carr's terms, while there can be religion without art. Using poetry to denote all art, Underbill explained that the life of pure sensation is the meat and drink of poetry, and one of the most accessible avenues to that union with Reality which the mystic declares to us as the very object of life. But the poet must take that living stuff direct from the field and river, without sophistication, without criticism, as the life of the soul is taken direct from the altar; with an awe that admits not of analysis. He must not subject it to the cooking, filtering process of the brain. It is because he knows how to elude this dreadful sophistication of Reality, because his attitude to the universe is governed by the supreme artistic virtues of humility and love, that poetry is what it is: and I include in the sweep of poetic art the coloured poetry of the painter, and the wordless poetry of the musician and the dancer too.28

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 11

Initially, Carr's search was for God, an other-worldly power, an overlord. Her definition was vague and general. At one point she defined a picture as 'a glimpse of God interpreted by the soul/29 Her Superior Being had traits comparable with Christian ones but did not possess those that would disqualify him from being at the head of any monotheistic religion. During this period she wrote that the aim of art was to 'rise above the external and temporary to the real of the eternal reality, to express the "I am," of God, in all life, in all growth, for there is nothing but God.' Many mystics have expressed similar experiences. Julian of Norwich, gazing upon something small, the quality of a hazelnut, found in it the epitome of all. Despite being so small and helpless it was a direct outbirth of the Energy of Divine Love. Marvelling at its fortitude, she exclaimed: 'It lastesth, and ever shall, for that God loveth it. And so All thing hath the being by the love of God.' Florence Nightingale, a thoroughly balanced contemplative, decided 'I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats.'30 In the same diary entry where Carr defined a picture as a 'glimpse of God interpreted by the soul' she put her beliefs into verse: Artist, Poet, Singer, where are you going today? Searching, struggling, striving to find the way. Artist, Poet, Singer, tell me your goal? By listing [sic], learning, expressing, to find the soul. Artist, Poet, Singer, what are you after today Blindly, dimly, dumbly trying to say? Aye, Artist, Poet Singer, that is your job, Learning the soul's language, trying to express your God.31

She learned, the hard way, that her conception of God, and of good painting, was not one that religious professionals necessarily shared or appreciated. One evening in October 1933 she invited a parson to diner and to see her paintings. Apparently 'he enjoyed his supper very much and the pictures not at all.'32 While she was exploring the nature of God and the methods of capturing that nature in paint, Carr produced Indian Church in 1929 (see colour plate i).33 Here is the facade of a very simple, white Indian Christian church emerging from an impenetrable wall of verdant forest. The flat front of the building and the geometric crispness of its shape contrast markedly with the organic volume of the tree boughs and the shallow recession into the forest. Yet somehow there is accommodation between nature's house and God's house. Neither one entirely overpowers or dominates the other. There is a

12 The Logic of Ecstasy

symbiosis, even if its nature is mysterious, awe-inspiring, almost forbidding. For a while Lawren Harris owned this painting, being convinced it was one of Carr's most demanding. Jock Macdonald also painted the same church. In this work Carr has achieved a new integration; she has tied the idea and the picture together in a new and convincing way. Her unity was created through opposites: the stillness of the church compared to the movement of the forest; the high value of the building compared to the low value of the woods. These extremes come together to suggest a timelessness, a stopping of time, and, by so doing, suggest that time, as measured by humans, is totally unimportant. Carr understood the importance of unity, yet also recognized that there can be unity in diversity as long as there is one overriding principle, what she called soul: I think we miss our goal very often because we only regards parts, overlooking the ensemble, painting the trees and forgetting the forest. Not one part can be forgotten. A main movement must run through the picture. The transitions must be easy, not jerky. None must be out of step in the march. On, on, deeper and deeper, with the soul of the thing burrowing into its depths and intensity till that thing is a reality to us and speaks one grand inaudible word God. The movement and direction of lines and planes shall express some attribute of God - power, peace, strength, serenity, joy. The movement shall be so great the picture will rock and sway together, carrying the artist and after him the looker with it, catching up with the soul of the thing and marching on together.34

Here, surely, Carr was struggling with the Natural World of Becoming, the first level of mystical reality, the first form of contemplation, the 'discovery of God in His creatures/ She understood that movement was an integral part, that all is 'flowing, growing, changing, making perpetual unexpected patterns within the evolving melody/ as Underbill explained it. Carr was seeking, as mystics do, a relationship far more intimate than anything she had previously imagined between herself and her surroundings. She recognized that 'all adventurous endeavours, all splendour of pain and beauty of play ... all these will be seen and felt by you at last as full of glory, full of meaning; for you will see them with innocent, attentive, disinterested eyes, feel them as infinitely significant and adorable parts of the Transcendent Whole in which you also are immersed/35 While in this phase of her spiritual and artistic search Carr drew solace and guidance from Lawren Harris. Their correspondence, as it exists today, is a sensitive, fascinating, and very personal glimpse into the minds and spirits of these two creators. Unfortunately the full correspondence does not exist. There is only one of Carr's letters to her mentor extant, and not all of Harris's letters back. However, those that survive show that Harris, in his turn, could

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 13

gently advise, counsel, and encourage his western friend, for his own current system of belief was inclusive and it embraced Christianity. Harris strove for unification, not separation. He preached a way of life, not just a Sunday religion. In an early letter Harris wrote to Carr - he was still addressing her as Miss Carr, later he called her T'Other Emily - he started a long and stimulating exploration of his philosophy. Always gentle, always supportive, Harris tried to nudge Carr into an acceptance and an understanding of mystical creative life. Upon receipt of two of her canvases for the March 1929 Ontario Society of Artists exhibition, one of which was Kitwancool Totems, and upon receipt of a letter too, he replied, in part: It is as if your ideas, vision, feelings were coming to precise expression, yet nowhere are the works mechanical, laboured or obvious. For goodness sake don't let temporary depression or isolation or any other feeling interfere with your work. Just keep on working, and do just what you feel like doing most. Try and remember when discouraged that there is a rhythm of elation and dejection and that we stimulate it by creative endeavour, by an acceleration of vision or work - we stir up life, essential life, and if we permit it it will take toll of us and at times we may wish we were humdrum, lethargic, dull and normal - anything to escape the see-saw of real living that must somehow temper us, deepen us, expand us. The only way it seems to me is to go ahead, deep, deep within calmly with conviction. The only way again, it seems to me, to disclose that deep, inner shining conviction that every creative individual has known, lived for and suffered for is to will to suffer, live, grow, move, lose the whipped-by-life little self by permitting it to be tortured by now this, now that. There is no escape, the process of whip-saving must go on perhaps increase - don't struggle against it - accept it - glory in it, if possible - it is the only maker to true greatness - and in the process, in the storm, a great divine calm is sometimes glimpsed. Isn't it true that only those who [have] been through the mill, know. Have become in the highest part of their being an indissoluble part of supreme, everlasting conviction which transcends, as it must do, the seethe and storm of creative life.3 Harris's advice is what mystics call 'purgation/ a formidable name for the disciplining and simplifying of the affections and will. It is the second stage in what for Underhill is the training of the human consciousness for participation in Reality. The path to this stage or state is by innumerable renunciations. Underhill declared:

He must kill out the smaller centres of interest, in order that his whole will, love, and attention may pour itself out towards, seize upon, unite with, that special manifestation of the beauty and significance of the universe to which

14 The Logic of Ecstasy

he is drawn. So, too, a deliberate self-simplification, a 'purgation' of the heart and will, is demanded of those who would develop the form of consciousness called 'mystical/ All your power, all your resolution is needed if you are to succeed in this adventure.37

In encouraging Carr to accept her state, but to get on with her creativity none the less, Harris was urging her to try to 'begin to see the supreme logic behind the inner struggle' [emphasis mine].3 This is an important point: Harris believed implicitly that there was logic, that there were universal laws that could and should be intellectually as well as intuitively understood by woman and man, and that these laws were established by the higher power. Carr had little trouble integrating these thoughts into her own Christian background. The Carr-Harris correspondence continued. Carr acknowledged that they 'were the first real exchanges of thought in regard to work I have ever experienced. They helped wonderfully/ However, on her second trip east in the spring of 1930 Carr discovered that Harris had shown some of her letters to others and she was deeply upset, finding herself unable to write as freely as before. Harris understood and promised henceforth to keep these letters to himself. Although Carr trusted him, she did reduce the number of letters she sent to him and used her diary more.39 In November 1933 Carr again went to Toronto and discussed creativity and theosophy with her friends. She was still struggling, still trying to find a philosophy with which she could concur wholeheartedly. We discussed theosophy. They are all theosophists. I know there is something in this teaching for me, something in their attitude towards God, something that opens up a way for the artist to find himself an approach. We discussed prayer and Christ and God. I didn't sleep well and woke at 5 o'clock the next morning with a black awfulness upon me. It seemed as if they had torn at the roots of my being, as if they were trying to rob me of everything - no God, no Christ, no prayer. How can I ever bear it? I ached with the awfulness of everything and cried out bitterly ... [Then she talked again to Fred Housser and Lawren Harris.] Between the two of them I saw clearer and the black passed over. Yes, there is something there for me and my work. They do not banish God but make him bigger. They do not seek him as an outsider but within their very selves. Prayer is communion with that divinity. They escape into a bigger realm and lose themselves in the divine whole. To make God personal is to make him little, finite not infinite. I want the big God.4°

Early in the new year, in January 1934, Carr suddenly found the way, prompted by her presence at eight lectures given by Raja Singh, a Christian

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 15

Hindu and associate of Mahatma Ghandi. Carr admired Singh's 'child-like, simple faith - no sect, no creed, no bonds, but just God and Christ/41 After Singh's departure she wrote in ecstasy, 'My whole outlook has all changed. Things seem silly that used to seem smart. I have decided to take my stand on Christ's side, to let go of philosophers and substitute Christ.' Lonely, emotional Carr rediscovered the comfort of a live, personal, familiar Christ. To her diary she wrote: Oh, this [Christianity] is live, vital religion. The theosophy God and philosophy are beautiful but cold and remote and mysterious. You circle round and round and rise up a little way so that your feet are loose but there is beyond and beyond and beyond that you never could reach. God is absolute law and justice. But here a live Christ leads you to God, and the majestic awfulness is less awful... I have written to La wren and told him about things ... I think he will hardly understand my attitude for I have been trying these ... years to see a way through theosophy. Now I turn my back on it all and go back sixty years to where I started, but it is good to feel a real God, not the distant, mechanical, theosophical one. I am wonderfully happy and peaceful.42

But Harris surprised Carr. On 10 February 1934 he wrote her a warm, loving, supportive letter, expressing his delight that she had found her own way and an answer to her own particular need.43 Despite her putative rejection of theosophy, the year before she had acknowledged that 'the substance [of theosophy] is the same as my less complicated beliefs: God in all. Always looking for the face of God, always listening for the voice of God in Nature. Nature is God revealing himself, expressing his wonders and his love./44 From then on Carr pursued her own, non-dogmatic, version of Christianity, a personal, mystical one that had expression in some of her freest and strongest paintings. Carr's paintings from now on had what Doris Shadbolt calls 'a new integration.'45 In them Carr fused her erstwhile formal interests, her growing awareness of nature, her new oil-on-paper technique, and her Christian philosophy. Now she rejected Harris's 'vague' and 'vapid' theosophical beliefs, though not some of the concepts, including painterly ones, she had gained along the way.4 More than even before her work was based on intuition; Shadbolt has defined it tellingly as form following feeling.47 Yet this feeling, it seems to me, is consistently defined in spiritual terms. In a 22 October 1935 talk to the Normal School, Carr rejected the modernist 'use of design,' the idea of art being 'to please the eye alone.' Rather, she emotionally and forcefully exclaimed that 'we must go on because our soul cries out for more.'48 Carr based her lecture on Ralph Pearson's book How to See Modern

16 The Logic of Ecstasy

Pictures.49 Persisting with her self-analysis, in January 1936, Carr recorded in her diary: Over and over one must ask oneself the question, 'What do I want to express ? What is the thought behind the saying? What is my ideal, what my objective? What? Why? Why? What?' The subject means little. The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth, light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or all of these fills the bill. There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things.50

In these last four lines we have a very mystical statement, one that suggests Carr's belief that people can, little by little, unite the scattered worlds of love and thought and action into one. Here certainly we have a firm statement of a larger, intenser life, a total consecration to the Real. Heart, will, and mind work together within the rhythms of the Divine. In Edge of the Forest Carr depicts the 'oneness of all things' in a way that includes that newer, wider, spaced-filled vision that she dreamed of in 1927. She also introduced a new component of that vision: a poignant combination of verdant mountain and line of uncut trees, the first tree of which was animated by a vibrating aura, dynamically uniting the now-active sky with the powerful growth below. Seen by those with extended vision, an aura is a luminous cloud of greater or lesser brilliance, of varying colours, surrounding a body. Carr wrote about souls entering the second heaven, the waiting room for the third and final heaven. In this second heaven souls are with Christ but they do not actually see Christ. They 'feel His influence as if waves of light were proceeding from Him/51 Carr found sympathetic instruction about the mystic's understanding of nature and vibration in The Sadhu, a book about the Christian mystic from Punjab, Sadhu Sunder Singh (1889-1929), from which Carr copied eighteen pages of notes.52 This book, published in 1921 and written by B.H. Streeter, from Oxford University, and A.J. Appasamy, was important to Carr partly because here she found open discussion of the teachings of a specifically non-denominational Christian mystic. In The Sadhu she found the statement: 'the greatest source of illumination, solace and physical refreshment is the recurrent state of ecstasy in which he feels himself caught up into what he believes to be the place alluded to by St. Paul as the third heaven/53 In this quotation Singh 'speaks of ... a single movement of the soul, combining in ineffable harmony a calm, profound and indisturbable, which he names "Peace," and a radiant fullness of life and light which he calls "Joy," and which is to him not only the evidence, but the actuality, of personal union with Christ/54 This joy is recaptured in Sunshine and Tumult, a work probably done in

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 17

EMILY CARR Edge of the Forest

1938 or 1939 (see colour plate 2). Surprisingly similar to Edge of the Forest in subject-matter, Sunshine and Tumult differs in important compositional ways. The forest-mountain that anchored the left-hand side of the earlier painting has been moved to the centre so that the vanishing point is now

i8 The Logic of Ecstasy

blocked. Rather, our eye is directed upwards, along the spindly tree trunks and the undulations of the mountain greenery to the great swirl of freedom above. In the earlier work the power of earth and sky balances; in the later piece all is directed upwards. The best-known example of this upward thrust is surely Carr's momentous Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky. The vibrancy of this achievement is analogous to the activity suggested by Singh in The Sadhu when he describes the difference between this world and the state of ecstasy: 'In this world I see flowers and other beautiful things I admire, but they are passive. But in the spiritual world which I visit in Ecstasy it is the other way around. They are active, I am passive/55 The rising of energies beyond nature evident in Sunshine and Tumult is different from a radiance of energies from within nature seen in Edge of the Forest. In the latter work energies seem to come from the objects depicted, from the mountain and the first tree. In the former work everything is energy; all sways and swirls to the sounds of a heavenly band. This distinction between emanations from and emanations beyond nature appears in The Sadhu. In Carr's notes she copied: 'The Sadhu loves Nature not so much because he feels God in Nature, but because God made nature and Nature is to him an open book speaking in parables about the things of God/5 Singh is quoted as saying: 'I was told that the waves of light which I saw were the Holy Spirit. Just as the moon seems to be straight overhead wherever we stand, so the glorious Christ with the waves coming out of Him was seen here, there and everywhere/57 While many of Carr's late paintings sing of joy in great open spaces, not all do. She also found her stride among the forest clearings, those special, private spaces she so loved. She defined the important in a painting as 'the hole you put the thing into, the space that wraps it round, and the God in the thing that counts above everything.'5 In a canvas such as Roots she has transcended the distinction between self and non-self to pull the viewer directly into the pathos of nature, without recourse to sentimentality. The gnarled, venerable root in the foreground is animated by the almost mysterious light behind it. The whole forest floor sings and sways. The logic of the movement of life is evident and palpable, for we participate in it. This mystical shift from self-separation to self-involvement is described by Gabriel Marcel in terms of a contrast between having and being. Having is an egocentric relationship with objects outside ourselves in which we have no deep involvement and which we use for our own purposes. We try to own these objects, to acquire power over theme. Such objects may be material things, people, and even ideas. Yet such acquisition will never be thoroughly satisfactory. In being the sharp distinction between self and what is not self is transcended. The attitude of narrow egocentricity gives way to one of reciprocity.59 This reciprocity characterizes Roofs.

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 19

EMILY CARR Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky

20 The Logic of Ecstasy

EMILY CARR Roots

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 21

III

The mystical beliefs of all five artists affected their convictions and their discernments. These, in turn, affected the art they produced. The artists, however, differed both in the extent to which mystical beliefs can be fully and clearly documented (Harris having explicitly discussed these more fully, intellectually, and analytically than the others) and in the extent to which Christian elements entered into their mystical beliefs. All five began their lives in conventional Christian settings, but only Carr ended up with a predominantly Christian mysticism. For the others, nevertheless, Christianity retained some influence. Harris accepted Christianity as part of his system of belief, part of the great spiritual whole, but Christianity was not central to his belief. The same might be said of Macdonald. Brooker certainly was interested in Christian beliefs, and read widely therein. Always a seeker, he would pick up any philosophy that seemed to help and was never dogmatic or slavish in following a narrow path. Varley, finally, is surely the hardest to pin solidly to any one system of belief. Yet his images show signs that have distinct Christian messages, that evoke Christian meaning, even if he was not consciously seeking to communicate such specifically Christian ideas.

LAWREN S. HARRIS

Lawren Harris was brought up in the more militant side of the Christian denominations. His was an early and thorough introduction. His grandfather, Stewart Harris, had come from England as a young Presbyterian minister; one uncle was pastor of the Walmer Road Baptist Church in Toronto, while another was minister of the Bloor Street Presbyterian Church. His mother,

22 The Logic of Ecstasy

meanwhile, was a dedicated Christian Scientist and, when living in Toronto, an active member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, on St George Street. ° Such a background emphasized the primacy of the Bible and necessity of undercutting the incrustations of dogma and tradition in the medieval church to return to a faith based solely on the Bible and the practices of the early church. * As Charles Hill remarks, similar concepts - the belief in the importance of changes in human thought patterns - pervaded much contemporary Neoplatonic thought and creativity. Furthermore Christian Science, pervasive in the Group of Seven milieu, promulgated the unreality of matter and the infinity of mind.62 Harris's interest in religion and philosophy was expanded during his studies in Germany, which probably occurred between 1904 and 1907. He spent part of the summer of 1907 with his teacher Adolf Schlabitz, who had a house in Dinkelsbuhl, Bavaria. Here Harris met Paul Thiem, a landscape painter and a thinker. It was Thiem who introduced the young Canadian to religious 'unorthodoxy/ something he found 'shocking and stirring/ 3 This unorthodoxy was probably theosophy, although it is not known for sure. At any rate, in Germany Harris was certainly moving towards such thinking, for his great enthusiasms were the writings of William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4 Once back in Canada, Harris concentrated on painting cityscapes and landscapes. Yet, in the 19205, he undertook a series of portraits, of which that of Dr Salem Bland is the most arresting. That Harris, by now deeply imbued with theosophy (he had already joined both the international and the Canadian Theosophical Lodges), should be attracted to Bland is hardly surprising. Salem Goldworth Bland (1859-1950) was a leading Toronto popularizer of liberal theology and the social gospel. Working his way gradually from Methodist orthodoxy, he eventually became a United Church minister. In Toronto he was not only a very popular preacher, especially with the young, but also a regular columnist in the Toronto Star under the byline The Observer/ Bland mixed temperance, Sabbath observance, and church-union advocacy with moderate socialist views. He was also considerably interested in spiritualism, attending at least one seance in which there were attempts made to communicate with the dead. His reaction was telling: he showed full belief in 'the appearance or manifestation of the departed dead/ but questioned 'whether such manifestations could be, or should be sought at will/ 5 Harris could respect all these ideas and was more than a little interested himself in many of them. Bland, in turn, was interested in Harris. From Bland's recorded reading lists in the United Church Archives we know that the minister read Harris's 1922 book of poetry, Contrasts, in 1925, the year he sat for his portrait.66

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 23

Bland was also interested in painting, reviewing the Group of Seven's 1925 exhibition, the fourth Group show, in his column in the Toronto Star of 31 January 1925. In this article, entitled The Group of Seven and the Canadian Soul/ Bland gives the paintings a mystical reading. 'I felt/ he wrote, 'as if the Canadian soul was unveiling to me something secret and high and beautiful which I had never guessed; a strength and self-reliance, depth and mysticism I had not suspected/ Harris's portrait Dr. Salem Bland is daring and direct. Without dissembling, Harris focuses candidly on Bland the mystic. The bold symmetry and full frontality of the pose accentuate the straight-ahead gaze of Bland's

LAWREN s. HARRIS Dr. Salem Bland

24 The Logic of Ecstasy

unblinking eyes. Sitting still and relaxed in a simple wooden armchair, the minister is very alive, very vital. He looks not at us, but rather through us. He sees not the petty and inconsequential but the light. He shines with his illumination. Perhaps the most important element of this work is the control and precision with which it is created: here is the formal logic of Harris working in consort with the mystical moral instructions of Bland. The minister's sombre, dark clothes are relieved only by touches of white at the wrists and throat and the faint blue sheen of his velvet jacket. A background of mid values sets off the high values of the face, eyes surrounded by a halo of white hair and precisely trimmed white beard. A secondary, supporting centre of interest is the relaxed hands, folded unselfconsciously on his knee. It is a masterful achievement. IV

Another painter who used a similar control and frontality to convey a thoroughly mystical feeling was Bertram Brooker in his 1931 canvas The St. Lawrence. Brooker too, as will be seen, was not solely or at times primarily interested in Christianity. Even more than Harris, he wandered freely in literature, stopping where his intuition and considerable interests took him. 7 He too had had an iEumination or conversion, as he admitted frankly in print.68

BERTRAM BROOKER

It happened in July 1923, at the small town of Dwight on Lake of Bays in northern Ontario. Brooker was in the little church there, a church presided over by Reverend Stewart. Suddenly, one sunny morning, he felt inexplicably drawn to a grove by a brook and, hardly knowing what he was doing, left the

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 25

church and made his way to the water. There, as Brooker explained in an unpublished novel, 'A Candle in the Sunshine/ 'everything became one; everything in the universe, in the world was one/ 9 Brooker expanded upon this idea of unity as seen through 'illumination' or 'conversion/ borrowing Havelock Ellis's word for his own experience/0 In a 1930 book review of John Middleton Murry's An Introduction to the Science of Metabiology in The Canadian Forum, Brooker lauded the author's linking of biological unity, unity within an individual, with metabiological unity, unity in the universe. But he then became more critical, contending that 'unity' is not just intellectual, or just intuitional. Rather, Brooker suggested, unity 'is not possible to "experience" ... unless the intellectual, the intuitional, the emotional, and the sensual modes are all fused.' And, he goes on, The subjective fusion of all modes of experience, so that a man feels himself a whole man 'inside' as well as out, is the basis of the mystical experience. When a man feels this; when he feels that he is a unified whole instead of a bundle of functioning parts, he immediately senses, in addition, a wholeness or unity in the universe. Instead of regarding himself as a 'part' in a universe, with a God conceived as another part of it, separated from it and managing it (which is precisely the picture his mind gives him of himself - a body observed and directed by a detached intellect); instead of this he sees and recognizes that the universe must be like himself, a unity, otherwise he would not know it. He sees that unity cannot be something that characterizes him alone the mere unity of a part. Unity must be the 'condition' of the whole of life, and he immediately recognizes this greater unity, responds to it, merges himself in it and becomes one with it/1

That Brooker had been personally seeking this unity for a long time is revealed in his diary of 29 February 1924. On that day, inspired by a book on Albrecht Diirer written by Sturge Moore, he determined to 'order my life, so that what I am, not less than what I hope to do, may be to the glory of God.' Brooker was not sure what God was. He noted: 'And though I know not yet who God is, nor his attributes, nor parts, nor the place of his sojourning, I am determined from this time hence to call Him by that name which I have hesitated these many years to mouth or inscribe.'72 Brooker was somewhat mystified about the cause of this new direction in his life. He wondered if his recent behaviour, a talk on rhythm to Atkinson's studio club and attempts at orderliness, may have cultivated the soil in his mind to receive 'this mysterious seed from Diirer.' Both rhythm and orderliness are tenets central to much mystical practice, including theosophy. He noted that he had learned much from P.D. Ouspensky, Havelock Ellis, and Middleton Murry. He determined to set aside time to paint 'a work of great beauty, chiefly of proportion, and connected in some way with the Madonna. And this is to be

26 The Logic of Ecstasy

somehow worked out mathematically and rhythmically/ He felt happy and concluded that I must rule myself under God's will; and I must leave, as Durer [sic] did, imperishable work to His glory. But lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shah make me to understand wisdom secretly.73 Within the next few weeks he repeatedly attended service at Holy Trinity Church, Toronto, and was struck with the richness and poignancy of the Bible. Now love took on a new importance; heretofore he had always striven for truth, but now he began to recognize that truth is nothing unless there is love. He recorded how impressed he was with these words: 'But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away ... For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known/74 Commenting on this famous quotation, he noted: This hint at a higher dimension, or whatever one cares to call it, in which "the perfect shall come," is particularly striking. And it has its roots, this perfection, in love. Ouspensky, of course, quotes Ephesians 3-18 - "That ye, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height." /75 What emerges then, is Brooker's need to organize his life, his perceptions. 'I must purify my life so that the plan will come into me from above/7 It is this organization, especially the organization of space and movement, the breadth and length and depth and height and time, that was to fascinate Brooker throughout his productive life. First he produced a series of misunderstood abstract canvases, which will be examined later. Then, increasingly conscious of the process of painting, the mechanics of the trade, he taught himself to draw and paint realistic objects. Yet, as is so apparent in looking at Brooker's later paintings, he was not primarily concerned with visual truth, with painting what he saw. Rather, by his own admission, he sought 'to master some of the secrets of form and space/ He was attempting 'to search out the organization of any living thing/ Stimulated and greatly influenced by the work of the Manitoban recluse77 Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, Brooker recorded that he 'was searching for the means of conveying the recession of objects in space - the movement of curves swinging around out of reach of the eye - and of the spatial relations between the objects in the composition/7 It was with these purposes in mind, particularly these spatial purposes, that Brooker painted The St. Lawrence in 1931. He was probing his 'inner thoughts and feelings' about the 'moods and rhythms of nature/ something

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 27

BERTRAM BROOKER The St. Lawrence

he felt many modern artists, including the Group of Seven, were attempting.79 That this probe was still a mystical one is clearly stated in a poem Brooker wrote, a poem that must relate to this canvas: silence he stands still in the shadow of three silver birches looking out over the perfectly placid bay out to the smooth meeting of the hills at the other side of the whitening water and the dim massed shell-pink hummocks of cloud the wind has dropped and standing there hushed by the hot downpouring serenity of the expansive sky and glare of unmoving water he can imagine anything happening

28 The Logic of Ecstasy

a terrific trump from on high rending the air's held breath but not angels and archangels it is Olympian rather this blue gaiety of the air and fresh greenness of skipping hills and naive trees waiting waiting for the sound of elfin pipes a mythical morning °

This poem presents a state of awareness that has not been seen hitherto in Brooker. What is new and distinct is the state of stillness, a stillness both within oneself and within nature, each reflecting one another. Furthermore, in nature, the still water reflects the still sky. What is the stillness awaiting? Not what one might imagine from the Book of Revelation, but rather a paradisal-pagan beginning of innocent movement and sound. V

Fred Varley would not have objected to these sentiments. He was always sensitive to mythical and mystical mornings. Insatiably curious, constantly probing, Varley was never content to stop, to rest. Such constant motion mitigated against conclusive theories or consistent styles, factors that must be viewed with sympathy in examining the range and vicissitudes of his creativity. Varley was passionate and positive. On his death in 1969, an old friend, Dave Brock, wrote of Varley as he knew him in Vancouver in 1936. Under the title 'A Fire in the Belly/ Brock said: 'Varley's ideas, on all kinds of topics, had strength and beauty. He made you interested and proud to inhabit this planet... Linked with the size and quality and abundance of his ideas there was a kind of ageless energy, an indestructibility, about his mind and body, his works and his words/ * Varley's iconoclasm started young. Although brought up in a family of religious non-conformists - members of the Congregational church, where young Fred sang in the choir - he was not satisfied with restrictions he found there and soon probed various religious sects that flourished in Sheffield, England, where he was born. One such local group was the Eclectics, a theosophical society befriended by Edward Carpenter. Carpenter had written a book called The Art of Creation in 1904 that found a considerable contemporary audience. At the local Unitarian church, Hindu and Chinese students

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 29

FREDERICK H. VARLEY

of the faith spoke, one of them discussing the new pronouncements of Tagore. In addition, Annie Besant, the British head of the Theosophical Society, lectured in this industrial midlands city. 2 Whether Varley was present at these events is not known. However, his friend Arthur Lismer certainly attended, so it is possible that Varley did too, and he was familiar enough with Tagore to buy a copy of his Song Offerings in i9i8.83 Years later Varley remembered another religious experience he had had: I went up with three devout friends to Stannage Edge, a high bleak moor ten miles from Sheffield. The top was covered with snow and the view of industrial lights below was beautiful. All of a sudden the four of us knelt to pray. We emptied ourselves. We knew than that God does not belong to this church or that. And afterwards we felt so exhilarated and exultant that we laughed and wrestled and snowballed each other for half an hour before walking down to Sheffield.84

By this time Varley had isolated some of the characteristics that were to permeate his religious beliefs. He had recognized the basic unity of spirituality and God, rejecting denominational divisiveness. He understood that he wanted to experience faith directly, without the intervention of dogma or institution. A few years after the Stannage Edge experience, in 1902, while in art school in Antwerp, at the Academic Royale des Beaux-Arts, Varley wrote a revealing letter to his sister Ethel, that furthered these views. He discussed his conviction that man communicates directly with God, that the Bible is a

30 The Logic of Ecstasy

deep and glorious piece of literature, and that Christianity and Buddhism have much in common. He started by asking Ethel to pray for his success, not so much for himself but because it would please their father. Then he continued: I don't know why - but it often seems as strange that it should be written 'Where two or three are gathered together' etc and in that part it doesn't mention one - although we know that one is surely enough for Christ does pray always for His - 'And I will pray the Father.' Lately I have been reading Corinthians and never felt more grandeur than in these writings - what depth and largeness there is just in a few words. It struck me that it was very similar in part to Buddhism in the 'Light of Asia' - and while I mention that - will you as a great favour if you are not using or shall have need of it yourself lend to me that splendid book 'Light of Asia.' It did me so much good at Xmas & I would like if it be possible to keep studying it. I have often wished for it here & would be very very thankful if you can send it.85 The First World War gave Varley his first real chance to probe these feelings of immediacy and unity through paint. In January 1918, along with three other Canadian painters, C.W. Simpson, J.W. Beatty, and Maurice Cullen, Varley was commissioned as a war artist to go to France and 'paint war pictures/ He was elated. 7 After what seemed to the impatient artist to be an interminable wait, he arrived in France and soon found himself in the thick of the fighting. There he made dozens of 'notes/ quick pencil sketches, some with watercolour washes, to be worked up once back in his London studio. The result of one such note was his huge canvas Some Day the People Will Return. In comments Varley prepared about this canvas when it was shown in Burlington House, London, in 1919 in the Canadian War Memorials Exhibition, he said: 'Some day the people will return to their village which is not; they will look for their little church which is not; and they will go to the cemetery and look for their own dear dead, and even they are not - in a land pounded and churned and poisoned, that was once fertile and rich with golden grain and good things for the welfare of the race/ 9 Varley's war-wrecked cemetery resembles a junk yard more than a cemetery. Gravestones have been overturned; caskets have been wrenched open; corpses have been dismembered. Not even the dead, incapable of participating in the war, have been spared its savagery and destruction. Executed with a restricted range of values and hues, the painting is redolent of depression, senseless destruction, pointless disorder. A gravestone, clearly marked with a cross, lies toppled over the churned earth. Bones, bits of coffins, and odd bits of wire lie helter-skelter. Only a slight hint of blue sky at the horizon, a blue reflected in some bits of coffin wood, suggests the possibility of relief. While he was working on this monumental piece, Varley wrote to his

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 31

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Some Day the People Will Return

wife Maud, after seeing the movie Thais, a piece he described as 'a Christian play': 'Lord. I'm a pagan - a whole hearted "not a Christian". Of all the tomfools - why Christianity's as dead as the graveyard I'm painting.'90 As Chris Varley perceptively remarks, Varley here is railing against convention, against the stultifying nature of the structure of the church.91 His remarks notwithstanding, Varley seems to have rejected the institutions and trappings of Christianity, but not its tenets. For the first time in his life, while under the aegis of the Canadian War Records, Varley had been free to paint. Better still, he had even been paid to do so. Having tasted this freedom, Varley was loath to let it go. In fact he still chafed: he wanted more freedom, not less. Also, he was ambitious. He had great intellectual aspirations. To faithful Maud, waiting back in Canada with four young children, he explained: I just can't be nailed down any more -1 must swim on my own - They might try to catch me with their bait, but I'm thinking if they landed me, I should pine for breath in their net. I wonder what waters I shall frequent. I shall not

32 The Logic of Ecstasy

be the fish. I'd be transmigrated into the fisherman. I know I'll have to bait my hook, but I yet wonder what the bait will be. I have desires to catch big fish. I have lived among minnows and fed on minnows. They are not sufficiently nourishing for my family or my brain. But there, I've hit it - my brain ... My emotional side I likened to the waves flung up from your deep waters last time I wrote. I think my brain is rather overrun with weeds. Rather stupid to keep it enmeshed like that. I must attend to it and clear it. Then I shall find the secret perhaps.92

It was with this attitude, then, that Varley painted his Self-Portrait (colour plate 3) upon his return to Canada. A wonderful piece, as rich in internal questioning as in impasto, it is carefully, intellectually structured. He placed himself to fill the picture, with his head almost touching the top framing edge, his arms pressing against the sides. Then he ordered the light so that he was divided in half, with one side in strong light and the other in deep shadow. Behind he reversed it so that his right side, the one in shadow, would be backlit by a bright ground, and his lit side, the left, would be seen against a dark ground. The stance, full face, eyes straight ahead, rather serious expression, gives the impression that this was a truly introspective piece; one that exposes his duality, one in which he worked just for himself. Surely here Varley was aiming to fulfil his expressed goal 'to put down sincerely on canvas what is restless and waking - way back in the lap of the gods/93 This same strength through introspection is evident in a painting done almost twenty years later. Mirror of Thought is also a self-portrait. Here we see Varley, or Varley's face, reflected in his shaving mirror hung on the crossbars of a window. Beyond, through the window, we glimpse the autumnal landscape of Lynn Valley in British Columbia and the adjacent mountains looming. A winding road crosses a bridge on which two lovers stand. As Joyce Zemans has remarked, the positioning of the shaving mirror suggests the artist as Christ on the cross.94 Now feeling has been added to intellect, something Varley always sought. As early as 1914, bemoaning the 'unbearable' 'waiting,' the 'money work' that was commercial art, he commented that 'a painter, evert if only he once expressed in a great burst of passion a simple truth that lived in him, he has given something which, belonging to the eternal, must always be, as long as pigment lasts.'95 In a 1924 lecture at the University in Edmonton Varley defined art very simply as 'the expression of feeling towards life which is organized by the intellect.'9 A few years later he expanded on this for his students in the School of Decorative and Applied Arts in Vancouver, where he was teaching. He wrote: ' "Feeling" avails nothing without organization and restraint. Add "intellect" and "will" to emotion and you possess the three great qualities necessary for all aesthetic expression. Emotion senses the

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 33

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Mirror of Thought

motif, Intellect the constructive, and Will the power to organize. Art is not merely recording surface life - incidents, emotions. The Artist divines the causes beneath which create the outward result/97 Here Varley, like Lawren Harris, and Emily Carr and Bertram Brooker, believed that intellect, intuition, and will had to be combined in order to be truly creative. The supreme logic of the inner struggle presents itself once again. Perhaps the clearest example of Varley's struggle was a large painting, or, more accurately, two paintings, both called Liberation. The first one was initiated in Ottawa in 1936-7, in a 'studio' in the National Gallery of Canada. The second, much smaller version, completed in 1943, was also done in Ottawa, this time in the Naval Art Services, where the impoverished painter was hoping to pick up some wartime commissions.98 It is the first, larger version that is illustrated here. The two works are, however, very comparable in intent if not completely alike in style. Liberation shows a male figure emerging from a tomb. 'It is really my Christ/ Varley explained to Maclean's

34 The Logic of Ecstasy

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Liberation

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 35

Magazine in 1959. 'I don't know yet whether I believe in the Divinity of Christ, so instead of the Resurrection I call it the Liberation/99 If Varley was uncertain about the nature of Christ, he was much more certain about the power of his canvas. While working on the initial version, he wrote to his son John: 'I really have something & all my other work appears very tame in comparison/100 A few days later he expanded on this to his great friend Vera: 'My big canvas almost scares me, it looks so unreal - not canvas or paint but something in a phosphorescent light. Everything else I do looks stupid. The remarkable thing is that all who see it, artists or laymen understand the meaning of it & yet say it is different to anything else they've seen/101 A contemporary description attest to just now accurate Varley was in noting its difference: 'We drank brandy neat and looked at LIBERATION an iridescent representation of the Christ emerging through the solid walls of the tomb more spirit than flesh. The canvas is a veritable western sunset of radiating light and colour, the juxtaposition of rich greens and blues and purples being most impressive, the figure uncanny, unearthly, fascinating/102 The end result is certainly redolent of Christian symbolism. The Christ figure emerges from a strong yellow-green light, a light that he created himself, for it also radiates from the hole in his extended right hand. Striding purposefully forward, he seems to be becoming, to be transformed in front of our very eyes from spirit to man and back again. This is achieved partly by the daring juxtaposition of colours, by the vibrant brush strokes, and by the vaporous nature of his left leg. Even in applying his paint Varley seemed to be seeking new freedom. First he soaked or stained his canvas; then he applied rapid strokes with a dry brush. He left the whole unvarnished, matt. But, as Emily Carr reminded her 1935 Normal School audience, it was not just design or arrangement or colour that made a work of art. Rather there had to be something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, an inner unity of one's spirit with Spirit. Varley too was after that unity, that new mystic reality. For Varley in Liberation the unity was with Christ as victor. It seems that he had 'transmigrated into the fisherman' as he had intimated he might do. Perhaps, as Chris Varley suggests, he also identified himself with the Christ who was ostracized and condemned for refusing to accept society's restrictions.103 Unfortunately, the jury of the Royal Academy in London, where he submitted Liberation for exhibition in April 1937, did not reverberate with Varley. They rej ected his canvas, much to the Canadian's disgust and disappointment. Varley's faith in his own eccentric Christianity seemed to strengthen as he got older. In a January 1956 letter to his sisters Ethel and Lil, he clearly enunciated his mystical Christian beliefs, as well as noting his trials experienced along the way: T want you to know that I went through vicissitude but

36 The Logic of Ecstasy

came out free and fearless. I want you to know I have an unshakable belief in that mysterious power that illumined the clay and gave me the golden privilege of living. I have no control over what will inevitably be, and care not so long as I live to the utmost of my being remembering always & giving thanks to the Creator/104 As he had more than fifty years before, Varley wrote to Ethel of his belief in the 'one/ in the possibility of emotive and intellectual unity achieved by dint of will, the assertion of intuition that transcends temporal categories of understanding - in other words, the mystical. VI

Jock Macdonald was also imbued with mysticism. Whether he first approached mysticism through Christianity or not is hard to tell. Having been brought up in a strict Presbyterian church - Very strict and straight laced and Victorian family pew, only "good" books could be read on Sunday, etc/ was how his daughter described it - Macdonald did as he pleased as soon as he was out from under the family influence.105 Like Varley, from whom he learned much, Macdonald had a firm belief in intuition as a way of seeing beyond restricted, tangible reality. Like Varley too, he left us no record of a personal illumination, a single revelation.

JOCK MACDONALD

He was probably introduced to mysticism and to landscape painting simultaneously by Fred Varley. Born in Scotland, and trained at the Edinburgh College of Art in commercial design, Macdonald came to Vancouver in 1926 to teach in the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts. He was to be head of design and instructor of commercial advertising. Also newly arrived from the east, from Toronto, was Fred Varley. He, and possibly Macdonald, soon met Carr in ipi/.10 Varley was to teach drawing and painting in the same school as Macdonald. Soon the two instructors would

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 37

spend weekends together painting in the mountains, expeditions that Macdonald remembered as epitomizing the height of his energy and enthusiasm.107 Alone in the mountains, they got to know each other, nature, and themselves in a new way. Macdonald explained that 'the more [they] camped the more [they] became part of day and night and the diversified weather/10 Macdonald amplified these ideas in a lecture entitled 'Art in Relation to Nature/ first delivered in February 1940. Discussing art as 'appealing to the senses and achieving values beyond the material,' he explains: In viewing the sunrise we feel the birth of a new day, the awakening warmth of life, the enduring and everlasting power of creation & the spirit of God. The interpretation of the world, in art, through the sense perceptions becomes expressions [sic] of our inner consciousness - our subjective thoughts - manifested through objective observations. Art now reaches the plane where it becomes the expression of ideals and spiritual aspirations. The artist no longer strives to imitate [sic] the exact appearance of nature, but rather to express her spirit therein.109

Another relative newcomer to Vancouver was John Vanderpant. He was a successful commercial portrait photographer who, together with Harold Mortimer-Lamb, opened the Vanderpant Galleries at 1216 Robson Street in 1926. The Galleries incorporated a photographic studio, an art gallery, and an antique shop. But Vanderpant's aesthetic interests did not stop there. There was also a specially designed music room where friends and students could hear selections from a large record collection.110 John Varley, Fred's youngest son, remembers how Vanderpant used to collect the Varley family in his Moon car on Thursday nights to take them back to Robson Street for music and discussions.111 Jock Macdonald was another frequent guest. Vanderpant's daughter Anna remembered their discussions about art and commented: 'what I liked about Varley and Macdonald was that to them art was a means to convey their love of life and their gratitude to nature and God for what we have.'112 Another acquaintance was Emily Carr.113 Carr and Vanderpant shared a sense of humour, an enjoyment of modern music, and especially artistic aims, for they both sought to convey the 'inner essence' of their subjects and to 'do ordinary things with intensity/114 Vanderpant also knew Bertram Brooker, who admired not only his photography but also his lecture style.115 Among Vanderpant and these painters good talk was a common bond. Their discussions did more than touch on the mystical. The Vanderpant sisters remember that Fred Varley 'was intrigued with Buddhism and its application to life ... Through Fred's interest in Eastern philosophies our families had thoughtful, sincere discussions about the Eastern faiths/11 Vito

38 The Logic of Ecstasy

Cianci, a young student who spent some time in the company of Varley and Vanderpant, recalled that his two seniors 'had a lot of ideas in common, especially when it came to ... the arts ... the forms of music ... the spiritual quality of art... In Kipling's Kim, the Llama speaks of reaching out and trying to reach or touch the Great Spirit, the Great Soul. Well, that is what Vanderpant, Varley, and Macdonald all worked towards, all were working up to consciously. It was apparent from their work/117 By 1928 Vanderpant expressed, in rather convoluted phrasing, his belief in the ineffable, the one great principle governing all creation: The infinite qualities of art cannot be explained by starting on a material base, but matter may be dematerialized by accepting infinite axioms ... If one has established through reason and analysis firm contact of one's individual mentality with the infinite laws of life, one has created the correct attitude essential to artistic self-expression in the material appearance of fine arts.'11 Vanderpant clearly was a firm believer in 'the infinite laws of life.' On another occasion he explained that 'art is the consciousness of life expressed in aesthetic form[,] balance, rhythm and relationship ... aesthetically the expression of the consciousness of all inclusiveness, for art is the echo of the absolute.'119 Another mystical term that Vanderpant frequently used is 'vibration.' In a 1929 article for Camera Craft he wrote that art, to be art, 'must have that underlying vibration to which you and I respond and which makes it part and parcel of our inner intellectual lives.'120 The year before he had noted that the artist used his 'inner values to reflect not Nature, but the response to Nature in his vibrating mood.'121 In notes written somewhat later, he suggested that the artist, as creator, is merely a means by which these laws were expressed. 'The artist is not an independent creator but a channel through which the law of art is made manifest. The artist must learn obedience to this law and must keep himself clear and clean.'122 This ideas of artist as vessel for a greater power was one Emily Carr also considered,123 as did Harris,124 and Brooker.125 Kandinsky expressed similar views. In 1932 another influential creator and thinker, Harry Timber, blew into Vancouver, arriving, according to Jack Shadbolt, 'like a zephyr from the mysterious East/12 Soon this Viennese stage designer, who had studied with Hans Hofmann, was running classes in 'constructivismus, kinetismus, vorticismus/ He set up a lively puppet group and started lecturing on Rudolph Steiner, P.D. Ouspensky, and Madame Blavatsky. Macdonald and Varley were among his major devotees.127 As Joyce Zemans has remarked, the Vancouver scene could be summed up by Varley's advice to 'forget anything not mystical/12 It was in this atmosphere that Macdonald produced his first important paintings. The young designer - Macdonald was not trained as a painter -

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 39

found he had to struggle with two concerns: technique and subject. Both were affected by Varley's tutelage. (Later A.Y. Jackson, deprecating Varley, called Macdonald 'one of Varley's victims' and suggested that Varley 'held the big stick over him.'129) Technique was a problem Macdonald battled with for a long time. He found that his design training, especially the tendency to use flat, decorative qualities, adversely affected his paintings. As he explained to his friend G.H. Tyler, 'As one of their designers in the factory, I had certain expressions of design forms, colour combinations, and commercial mannerisms well saturated in my blood. It was the hardest battle to get them out of my system when I commenced to paint. The line and decorative forms were always forcing themselves too much, so much so that I can clearly see now what my wife and Varley meant when they remarked that I was producing coloured drawings.'130 Subject was perhaps easier to apprehend. Varley and Macdonald made numerous sketching trips to Garibaldi Park, the Squamish Valley, the Cheakamus Valley, and the Gulf Islands.131 Garibaldi was a particular favourite. In 193 8 Macdonald described that landscape in terms that exemplify his own inner consciousness and subjective thoughts, manifested through objective observation: I found what I inwardly felt glaciers should be - simply marvellous in tortured forms, block massed ice, irridescent [sic] caves, and constant thundrous [sic] crashes of ice walls some twenty or thirty feet high. I spent five days over there, going across the four and a half miles of lake in a row boat each day and two miles or so of morrain on foot and returned to civilization with some sketches of unusual subject matter for British Columbia. The amazing wonder of it will last me for many a day.132 He continued his panegyric, exhibiting a painter's interest in colour: 'Personally I do not believe that anything more magnificent will ever be found in B.C. — with its meadows, flowers, peacock coloured meadow pools and lakes, emerald green glacier lakes, four glaciers, black volcanic necks ot root; rea cinder, pale ochre shale, and blue mountains.'133 The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park (1932) and The Black Tusk (1934) mirror these interests. The former, Macdonald's first monumental canvas, is a largely successful attempt to break away from a flat, decorative approach to picture-making. By means of repeated diagonals, Macdonald has established a convincing recession in space, a clear articulation of foreground, middle ground, and background. The tusk itself looms large and strong out of the smooth field of ice. The contrast in value between the black tusk and the white ice accentuates the power of the rock, as does the positioning of the tusk just below the upper framing edge. Yet the conventional linear perspective suggests intellectual, man-measured space. Such space is dissolved in The Black

40 The Logic of Ecstasy

JOCK MACDONALD The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, B.C.

Tusk, done two years later. In this small panel painting space is less sharply defined, less precisely demarcated. Rather, the ruder, darker tusk rises from a swirling sea of rock and snow. Macdonald was now using intuitive reason to pierce to the heart of his surroundings. A few years later he drew attention to this difference by comparing the British Columbia landscape to that of California. 'I am confirmed in my mind/ he wrote to Harry McCurry of the National Gallery about a trip south, 'that British Columbia is the land of inspiration. B.C. has that vapour quality which seems to me to be much more clairvoyant in its inspiration than that blazing and relentless sunshine down south.'134 Macdonald was not simply reacting to the external clairvoyance of his beloved province; he was also now reflecting his own inner, creative consciousness. Years later, writing about his teaching techniques to his friend Maxwell Bates, Macdonald noted: 'After some two years of such study [from nature] I encourage the student to expand his "inner self" and commence expressing his personality in creative effort.'1^5 Writing directly to a student,

From Conventional Religion to Mysticism 41

he emphasized the importance of this step: The longer you retard your own inner creative consciousness the more you retard (and even destroy) the possibilities you possess of becoming a distinctive contributor to the world of art/13 With The Black Tusk Macdonald had taken a first step into his own creative consciousness. Already, like his friend Emily Carr, he recognized movement and space as methods of delineating mystical apprehension. The five painters began their search for ecstasy by using a non-empirical, emotive approach to reality. Their central aim was an immediate grasp of the undifferentiated unity of the universe as a whole. Their subjects were nature and man; their techniques were movement and space. Their search was never narrow or self-indulgent. All five began their lives in conventional Christian contexts; all five, in varying degrees, included some elements of Christianity in their mysticism, although this was minimal in the case of Macdonald. Through considerable cross-fertilization, the five painters set out on a search for a new theory of art.

JOCK MACDONALD The Black Tusk

C H A P T E R TWO

Whitman and Transcendentalism

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, And look at quintillions repen'd and look at quintillions green. I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, My course runs below the soundings of plummets. I help myself to material and immaterial, No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me. I anchor my ship for a little while only, My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself

I

If Christianity was the point of departure in the mystical voyage undertaken by the five painters, transcendentalism was an important road that they all travelled individually. Through transcendental theories in general and those of Whitman in particular, Harris, Carr, Varley, Brooker, and Macdonald found support for their pantheism, their rejection of organized Christianity, their emphasis on the intuitive individual, and their generally optimistic outlook. The influence of Whitman and other transcendentalists on these painters seems considerable. However, since transcendentalism was a literary and religious movement, having virtually no pictorial form, its influences were of a philosophic rather than a visual character.1 The five painters worked according to transcendental beliefs, but their paintings are not redolent of specifically transcendental iconography. The influence of medium is such that transcendentalism has the greatest documentable influence among creators who wrote. This is true both within the group of five we are studying and outside it. Carr was the most imbued

Whitman and Transcendentalism 43 with this American philosophy, making many notes on Whitman; Brooker quotes Whitman extensively in his novels and poetry, while Varley, who shied away from virtually all writing except letters, gave only vague indications of interest. At the same time, three Canadian contemporaries or near contemporaries wrote extensively about Whitman. These were R.M. Bucke, the London, Ontario, author of Cosmic Consciousness, J.E.H. MacDonald, the Group of Seven painter and poet, and Fred Housser, the author of the first book on the Group of Seven, A Canadian Art Movement. These three authors, by themselves, encircled our five painters, providing them with analogy and analysis on Whitman and others. Before considering how Canadians approached Whitman and the transcendentalists, it is worth outlining just who the latter were and what they believed. In the fall of 1836 the Transcendental Club held its first meeting in Boston. Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the club's most faithful members, while others included Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau (the youngest member at twenty-two), Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody. Transcendentalism was a religious, philosophic, and literary movement, being postUnitarian and freethinking in religion, Kantian and idealistic in philosophy, and Romantic and individualistic in literature. In rejecting forms, creeds, rites, and explanations, it sought to reach the depth of things by a direct, immediate encounter with reality. Its objective, Emerson announced, was an original relation with the universe.2 The heyday of its creativity was the 18308 and 18408. Walt Whitman was not part of the Transcendental Club. Born in 1819 and living in Brooklyn, Whitman did not come to the attention of the members of the famous Boston club until 1855, with the first publication of his poetry in Leaves of Grass. Considerably influenced by Emerson, Whitman was immediately acclaimed by the transcendentalists, who acknowledged that his work advanced theirs. Whitman, more than other transcendental writers, was of particular interest to Canadians. In his Bliss Carman and the Literary Currents and Influences of His Time, published in 1930, James Cappon included two chapters dealing with Whitman, and concluded that Whitman exerted a considerable influenced upon Carman.3 As Ramsay Cook has noted, not only was Bucke a Whitmaniac, but also Flora MacDonald Denison, her son Merrill Denison, Dr Albert Durrant Watson, Roy Mitchell, and numerous others. At Mazinaw Lake, Ontario, Mrs Denison operated an inn that became a mecca for Whitman devotees, and at which was organized the Whitman Club of Bon Echo. The club even had its own magazine, Sunset of Bon Echo, published with suitable irregularity 'according to bank balance/4 In number six of Sunset, Flora MacDonald Denison left no doubt about her evaluation of the American poet: It is not that each day, more and more, Walt Whitman is coming into "His Own" but that through him

44 The Logic of Ecstasy

each day more and more we are all coming into "Our Own." Life is one ever lasting miracle and Whitman is its greatest apostle.'5 But Denison was not content to have organized support for Whitman restricted to cottage country. She, along with A.E.S. Smythe and Henry Saunders, started the Whitman Fellowship of Toronto on the poet's birthday, 31 May, in 1916. Nearly one 6 hundred attended the inaugural meeting. What is distinctive about transcendentalism and why did so many flock to be involved with the Whitman Fellowship? In its 'attempt to reach the depth of things by a direct, immediate encounter with reality/ transcendentalism does not differ from mysticism in general. As has been noted, there are may varieties of mystical thought and experience, including transcendentalism and theosophy. Certainly early twentieth-century Canadians found Whitman's literary expression of mysticism congenial, for it combined a raw, pioneering technique, similar to that popularized in Canada by the Group of Seven, with mystical themes. Furthermore, it was relatively apprehensible, accessible in one convenient book, Leaves of Grass, made all the more tantalizing by being proscribed (it was not available on the open shelves of Toronto public libraries). Artistic Canadians felt Whitman was modern, that his concerns and techniques were ones that up-to-date creative people should examine seriously and possibly emulate. And Canadians were given entre into Whitman's writing by their own local mystic, R.M. Bucke. Bucke was introduced to Leaves of Grass in midwinter 1867-8 by a Montreal friend.7 A prodigious reader, Bucke soon acquired the book and 'soaked through the crust into the heart of it.' By April 1869 Bucke felt he had isolated the essence of Whitman: 'here is a man who receives images of spiritual and material things from without and transmits them again without the least thought of what will the world say of this idea and how will the world like this form of expression, or into what form did such a great poet cast his thought. He speaks from his own soul with the most perfect candor, sincerity and truth.'9 Bucke was clearly impressed by Whitman's mystical experience and his frank description of it. Bucke's own mystical conversion, which occurred in 1872, came after reading 'Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning and especially Whitman.'10 What is the nature of such conversions? Dr R.M. Bucke, before writing Cosmic Consciousness, recorded his own experience: All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flamecoloured cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next instant I knew that that fire was in myself. Directly afterwards there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness, accompanied or immediately followed by an intellec-

Whitman and Transcendentalism 45

tual illumination quite impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted for a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed.11

Bucke first met Whitman on 18 October 1877, when the Canadian went to Camden, New Jersey. Although he recorded that 'Whitman only spoke to him about a hundred words altogether/ he felt profoundly moved.12 Twenty years later the significance of the meeting had not diminished in Bucke's mind: 'it would be nothing more than the simple truth to state that I was, by it, lifted to and set upon a higher plane of existence, upon which I have more or less consciously lived ever since/13 From this initial meeting he drew the conclusion that Whitman was a god, a concept that Bucke was to develop for the rest of his life. To his friend Harry Forman, Bucke explained that Whitman seemed 'more than a man and yet in all his looks and ways entirely commonplace ("Do I contradict myself?"). He is an average man magnified to the dimensions of a god/14 These exhilarating feelings were continued when Whitman visited Bucke in London, Ontario, in the summer of i88o.15 Bucke had already started work on Whitman's biography before this visit and continued to work on it while the great man was in his house. This book, deliberately more hagiography than biography, was meant to establish Whitman as the supreme example of the evolution of moral nature. The end result, Walt Whitman, is neither conventional biography nor thesis book. Rather it is a compilation of documents, a source book of biographical and bibliographical information knitted together by Bucke's oblique theme of Whitman's exalted moral nature. This theme was rendered much more oblique than Bucke had intended by the master himself. Whitman read the proofs and attacked them in such a way that Bucke called him 'the terrible surgeon with the knife & saw/1 The disciple acquiesced. Yet Bucke's basic concept of Whitman remained unaltered. In his brief and stoical funeral oration for Whitman, delivered in March 1892, the London doctor said: 'In your own right to-day you take rank among the supreme creative gods. There in the highest regions of the ideal for countless ages your work will go on moulding into higher and yet more noble forms the spirit of man/17

46 The Logic of Ecstasy

During the 18905 Bucke's most ambitious project was the preparation of Cosmic Consciousness, that book Lawren Harris called the greatest book by a Canadian. Bucke defined cosmic consciousness as 'a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe/ And, he continued, Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs an intellectual enlightenment or illumination which alone would place the individual on a new plane of existence - would make him almost a member of a new species. To this is added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense, which is fully as striking and more important both to the individual and to the race than is the enhanced intellectual power. With these come, what may be called a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall have this, but the consciousness that he has it already.1 Bucke's four major points of cosmic consciousness - unity of the cosmos, intellectual enlightenment, emotional exaltation, and the immediate presence of eternity — are very close to the major tenets of transcendentalism. Then Bucke proposed that the world is on the brink of three revolutions that will radically and permanently alter human existence: aerial navigation, socialism, and cosmic consciousness. Of the last revolution, he wrote: In contact with the flux of cosmic consciousness all religions known and named to-day will be melted down. The human soul will be revolutionized ... Religion will govern every minute of every day of all life. Churches, priests, forms, creeds, prayers, all agents, all intermediaries between the individual man and God will be permanently replaced by direct unmistakable intercourse. Sin will no longer exist nor will salvation be desired ... Each soul will feel and know itself to be immortal.19 Here again we see the extent to which Bucke has absorbed the basis of transcendentalism, added a good dose of mysticism, and provided a theory thoroughly compatible with theosophy. Bucke proposed four distinct stages in the evolution of cosmic consciousness, the transformation from, 'brute to man, from man to demigod/20 The accomplishments of each stage are cumulative: first, the perceptual mind - the mind made up of percepts or sense impressions; second the mind made up of these and recepts - the so called receptual mind, or in other words the mind of simple consciousness; third, we have the mind made up of percepts, recepts and concepts, called sometimes the concep-

Whitman and Transcendentalism 47

tual mind or otherwise the self-conscious mind ...; and, fourth, and last, we have the intuitional mind - the intuition. This is the mind in which sensation, simple consciousness and self-consciousness are supplemented and crowned with cosmic consciousness.21

Much of Cosmic Consciousness is made up of fourteen extraordinary instances of cosmic consciousness that Bucke examines. These include Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Mohammed, Francis Bacon, William Blake, and, of course, Walt Whitman. Now, in discussing Whitman, Bucke had the freedom he lacked when writing Whitman's biography. The great poet was dead and could no longer make revisions in the manuscript, deleting references to mystical and deistic matters, as he had done with Bucke's earlier work. Unrestrained, Bucke let loose: Walt Whitman is the best, most perfect, example the world has so far had of the Cosmic Sense, first because he is the man in whom the new faculty has been, probably, most perfectly developed, and especially because he is, par excellence, the man who in modern times has written distinctly and at large from the point of view of Cosmic Consciousness, and who also has referred to its facts and phenomena more plainly and fully than any other writer either ancient or modern.22

To support this extravagant contention, Bucke selects evidence from Whitman's poetry and prose. It is in Whitman's poem 'Song of Myself that Bucke sees the first evidence of Whitman's experience of cosmic consciousness, his illumination. Other examples followed. Concluding his paean to Whitman, Bucke re-emphasized his godlike qualities. Bucke placed the American author above Buddha and Paul, and only slightly below Jesus, Because Whitman was able to integrate his cosmic experience within the rest of his life, and was able to accommodate that experience without being mastered by it.2^ The way Whitman used his new knowledge, his integration and balance, was particularly important to the London psychiatrist. This veneration for a god, this admiration of integration and balance, also emerges in J.E.H. MacDonald's interpretation of Whitman. We know of MacDonald's evaluation from a lecture he delivered to the English Association at the Toronto Central Reference Library, and from extensive notes MacDonald made for that lecture in his notebooks. They document that MacDonald consulted Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness while preparing his lecture, 'An Artist's View of Whitman.'24 We are not left in doubt about MacDonald's veneration of the great grey poet: 'He is a great specimen of humanity, divinely humane & level with a soul standard. He draws our

48 The Logic of Ecstasy

attention widely & speaks deeply for all from the soul of man. As an artist, then, I would ask you to admire Whitman's scope, his variety, his color, range of sympathy, language & prolific detail, his vast sense of the heavens and the sea/25 Certainly not going as far as Bucke in his deification, MacDonald none the less calls Whitman 'divinely' humane, and lauds his sense of the heavens as well as of the earth. That MacDonald should draw back from deification is hardly surprising. Although a poet, he was certainly not a mystic, and had great difficulty accepting esoteric beliefs, as is made very clear in the letter MacDonald wrote to Brooker after Brooker's 1927 exhibition at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto. Here MacDonald explained that he disliked 'anything of the occult or secret doctrine/2 Yet MacDonald had a great deal of time for the transcendentalists in general and Whitman in particular. He named his son Thoreau. In his Whitman lecture, he acknowledged that he had been reading Whitman for a long time - so long, in fact, that when he was first introduced to the works of the American poet, they were not available on the open shelves of the public library, but could only be read after application and interview with the chief librarian. Whitman was, according to MacDonald, 'a little under the ban/ 27 Young MacDonald found Whitman interesting, at least partly because of his proscribed state. He considered his writing 'Modernist Art' and he came to accept him 'as air & sunlight & a liberator of the soul/2 MacDonald did not skimp in his praise for Whitman's new language and vision, his modernism, recommending that 'Whitman, of all writers, should be the patron saint of the modern artist/29 To underscore his own approval, MacDonald quoted Emerson's famous reaction to Leaves of Grass: 'Emerson welcomed W. with one of those contemporary finalities of appreciation ... which will remain almost a part of the book itself. He wrote to W. "I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of 'Leaves of Grass.' I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes me happy." '3° MacDonald too certainly warmed to that great power. He concluded that Whitman 'gives us the freedom of the world. His range of sympathy, his color, his daylight reality, his auroral mysticism fill landscapes/31 Along with happiness came freedom, the right to explore, question, and expose; along with emotion came nature, the power to discern, study, and reveal. These rights and duties were clearly manifested in the land. Early in his lecture MacDonald suggests that many of Whitman's 'great qualities' are summed up by the poet's 'quiet line': 'The large unconscious scenery of my native land with its lakes & forests/32 Here, for MacDonald, was a clear siren song, a hymn in praise of nature, a call to the wilderness he was powerless to resist.

Whitman and Transcendentalism 49

The third Canadian contemporary of the five artists thoroughly imbued with Walt Whitman heard the same sirens singing. Fred Housser, however, combined Bucke's attitudes with MacDonald's, and lauded Whitman both for his mysticism and for his support of a land-based nationalism. In addition, unlike either Bucke or MacDonald, Housser was a committed theosophist, one who believed that in Whitman the higher manas, a theosophical term that will be discussed later, was active. In a lecture delivered before the Toronto Theosophical Society, on i June 1930, and printed in two issues of The Canadian Theosophist, Housser drew extensively from Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness. He mirrored Bucke in describing Whitman as 'one possessing a kind of cosmic consciousness,... unquestionably one of the pioneers of the new race which is to come in America.'33 In his concluding chapter, Bucke had proclaimed a millennial vision of a new world peopled with a 'new race/ those having cosmic consciousness.34 Housser put Whitman alongside Moses, Jesus, Paul, Homer, Buddha, and Krishna, declaring him, like the others, to be redolent of the theosophical higher manas. Housser also picked up on Bucke's three revolutions, discussing the 'new era [that] has been entered since 1914' as one characterized by diminishing physical distances caused by airplanes and radio, the socialistic experiments in government made in Britain and Russia, and, of course, the new 'spiritual unity in the race as a whole' engendered by cosmic consciousness.35 This new era would be one that acknowledged the strength and creativity of every people. Following Whitman, as well as others,3 Housser was a strong nationalist, believing in the intrinsic worth of the here and now. Housser first exposed his nationalism in A Canadian Art Movement: The Story of the Group of Seven, published in 1926, the heyday of the Group of Seven. Housser wrote: 'For Canada to find a true racial expression of herself through art, a complete break with European traditions was necessary; a new type of artist was required; ... a deep-rooted love of the country's natural environment ... a love of our own landscape, soil and air.'37 This viewpoint closely reflects Whitman's contention that continental America must turn away from the feudal past of Europe to build a new order founded upon nature. In the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 Whitman had written that the poet of America 'incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes.'3 Housser picked up on this, quoting Whitman to the effect that he 'respectfully credit[ed]' the imported creations of the past, 'then dismissing... [them], I stand in my own place with my own day here.'^9 This hymn to the here and now rather than the past is constantly sung by the Group of Seven, who also could resonate to a veneration of the earth itself. In his 'Poem of the Sayers of the Words of the Earth' (1856), Whitman declared:

50 The Logic of Ecstasy

I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth! I swear there can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth!40

In 1876, broken in health, the poet retreated to the 'primitive windings' of Timber Creek, New Jersey. There he found relief by returning to 'the naked source-life of us all - to the breast of the great silent savage all-acceptive Mother/41 Further in A Canadian Art Movement Housser draws on Whitman for another important concept: the idea that the artist, the author, the creative person interpose no artifice between self and the stark reality of each earthly creature so that our consciousness can become a mirror of nature. Quoting Whitman's preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass, Housser writes: The art of art, the glory of expression is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity, - nothing can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give to all subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is a flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved it, you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall leaning of the sunflowers on their stocks, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art 'I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains ... What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You will stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.'42

Housser truly lauded this democratic, mystical veneration of nature, this sublimation of individual personality. Housser published another article on Whitman. This time it appeared in The Disk, a magazine that advertised itself as one 'for experimental ideas.' In its first and probably only issue, Housser printed part of a chapter of his manuscript 'Whitman to America: The Study of an Attitude/ which he titled

Whitman and Transcendentalism 51

The Whitmanic Attitude and the Creative Life.' Here he continued to amplify his ideas about religion and creativity. Developing the thesis he started in his theosophical lecture of 1930, Housser wrote that the essence of Whitman's Leaves of Grass was religious, the search for one's integrity, the state of being entire or complete. Joining religion and creativity, he contended that 'the creative attitude is eventually religious. One who possesses it sees life as forever liquid and changing and is perpetually endeavouring to perceive meaning in it in terms of an expansion of consciousness and a quickening of the inner life.' In the next breath Housser drew in his continental, nationalistic ideals: 'If they live on the American continent in the twentieth century they will not be content with imported, imposed conceptions of the good, the true and the beautiful, but desire to create equivalents in terms of their own place and date, equivalents integral to themselves and to their people.'43 He went on to explain how this ideal could be reached. Following Whitman, he counselled taking to the open road, a symbol he saw as 'modern, western and democratic.' For him 'the open road of the creative life is, in the last analysis, a learning how to love.'44 'Creative life starts with the serious determination to find and be oneself, to throw away everything which has been learned in school or in church or in any book and to dismiss whatever insults one's own soul. This implies a complete revaluation and reorientation of all preconceived ideas in terms of one's own integrity. No one can do it for us. We must find out for ourselves. The creative life is therefore a venture into the unknown.'45 These three Canadians - Bucke, MacDonald, and Housser - were surely vital conduits for our five painters, providing contemporary, Canadian analysis of Whitman's ideas. Of particular importance were Whitman's concepts of the divinity of the individual and of nature, of the centrality of the here and now, of the importance of the artist. Of course the five painters did not get all their knowledge of Whitman second-hand. We know that Harris, Brooker, and Carr read Leaves of Grass and can surmise that Varley and MacDonald did too. As mystics, seeking a progressive ascent into unity, the five painters were especially interested in how Whitman mediated the boundaries between self and non-self, how he conceived the progression to unity. Here Whitman's conception of individualism is important. For Whitman a person is more than a mere fraction of a sum known only to God. Rather the specific person is a way of attaining, or moving towards, the divine unity. Whitman asked rhetorically 'whether after all allowance for Kant's tremendous and unquestionable point, namely that what we realize as truth in the objective and other Natural worlds is not the absolute but only the relative truth from our existing point of view ... whether ... the Soul ... does not ... repel the inconsistent, and gravitate forever toward the absolute, the supernatural, the

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eternal truth/4 Here the divine perspective is not reserved only for God. Like Emerson, who noted 'there is no fact in nature which does not carry out the whole sense of nature/47 Whitman wrote in the preface to Leaves of Grass: 'It is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women/4 Transcendent reality exists at each point; the individual soul can be and go anywhere. The poet, the creative person, is the joiner, the link between one individual and unity. This means that Whitman lauds each individual as having the potential for transcendence. Here personal characteristics are not germane, for everyone has the potential to attain unity; Whitman, despite his extensive use of the first person, does not talk about his own inner self, or probe his own dark side. Personal work, none the less, is necessary for self-fulfilment, for transcendence. Emerson and Whitman believed that the poet could serve as inspiration and guide because the ultimate vision is unified, but that one person's poem could not completely fulfil another's needs because each must come to see for himself or herself in order to achieve genuine divine unity.49

II Emily Carr read Housser's manuscript 'Whitman to America' and was deeply moved by it. According to Doris Shadbolt, Housser had introduced Carr to Whitman, probably during her momentous 1927 trip, and Whitman was subsequently Carr's constant reading companion.50 She read him voraciously and assiduously, though not intellectually. Max Maynard, a Victoria painter who knew Emily Carr, remembered her as a great admirer of Whitman. On one occasion he recalled 'her reading bits of Whitman to me ... not whole poems, but just fragments, picking out a statement that she found particularly profound or illuminating or satisfying to her/51 Certainly Carr was quick to quote Whitman to her friends. Complaining about a newspaper report to her friend Nan Cheney, Carr wrote: 'What is this Walt Whitman says "I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words" & then later - "Him who makes dictionaries of words Print cannot touch" I love Walt Whitman He takes you right out & up & hits the spot every time & is so understandable. I've learnt heaps of him by heart did it just to spite my memory which pretended it was so poor/52 Carr was also unusually tolerant of Whitman's unexpectedly open discussion of the body and sex. To her same friend, writing in her usual relaxed, unpunctuated style, Carr made an analogy between the creative needs of Whitman and Van Gogh: I went to Walt Whitman never tire of him. Song of the rolling Earth. Song of myself - Open road - etc. Sons of Adam dont appeal so I leave them alone.

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tho I think I see why he had to include them and perhaps for the same reason it was necessary for Van Gogh to collect sex experiences, perhaps it was really theirwork made them like that or rather they did it to develop expression in work to develop their whole selves so they could work more wholly & completely with every faculty.53

Given this attitude, it is little wonder that Carr was sent Housser's manuscript on Whitman in July 1933. She devoured it. She even carefully copied the glossary of Housser's book, typing it into her own notes with a small fount on the typewriter.54 In her diary she wrote: 'It's a wonderful, splendid book to nourish the soul. Fred knows his Whitman and Whitman knew life from the soul's standpoint. What glorious excursions he made into the unknown! He wrote, "Darest thou now, O soul, Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region, Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow"; and he dared/55 Less than a fortnight later Carr amplified on her reactions to Housser's manuscript and tied the lessons to her painting: Fred Housser's Whitman to America is absorbingly interesting and wonderful to me. It clarifies so many things. Integrity has a new meaning for me, living the creative life seems more grandly desirous (opening up marvellous vistas) when one is searching for higher, more uplifting inspiration, when one is listening intently for what a thing is saying and for the urge of life pouring through all things. I find that raising my eyes slightly above what I am regarding so that the thing is a little out of focus seems to bring the spiritual into clearer vision, as though there were something lifting the material up to the spiritual, bathing it in the above glory. Avoid outrageousness and monstrosity. Be vital, intense, sincere. Distort if it is necessary to carry your point but not for the sake of being outlandish.

Seek ever to lift the painting above paint.56

From Whitman, via Housser, Carr was now seeking both higher inspiration and the flowing urge of life, and attempting to capture these in paint. But Whitman was not her only inspiration, her only leader in the search for the spirit in nature. She looked both to the Indians and to that earlier transcendentalist, Emerson. At one point she referred to 'Whitman and Keats and Emerson' as her 'sanctuaries.'57 In a talk Carr gave to the Normal School on 22 October 1935 she used Emerson's ideas to identify the strength in art in general and in historical Indian art in particular. Giving a dig to formal art training and writing, Carr started her discussion by noting that she could not find the things she wanted to say in art books. Rather they seemed to be 'out in the woods ... and down deep in myself.' Emerson, she felt, understood this perfectly. She quoted from Emerson's booklet 'How to See Modern Pictures':

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This most illusive of all elements in a picture, this something plus, is born of the artists [sic] attempt to express the force underlying all things. It has to do with life itself. The push or the sap in Spring, heave of muscles, Quality of life, Quality of protection, etc ... It is expressing the 'Felt nature' of the thing then, that the artist becomes the mouthpiece of the universe of which he is part and reveals it unto man through the 'something plus' in the picture, the nature as well as the appearance of the life and forms about him.5 Applying this theory to the early work of west coast Indians, Carr commented that 'they were obliged to rely on their own five sense[s], and with these to draw from nature direct ... Their knowledge of her [nature] was by direct contact, not from theory/ Beyond this direct contact with nature, Carr believed the Indians' art was great because they 'were striving to capture the spirit of the totem and hold it there and keep it there and keep these supernatural beings within close call/ Indian art was great because 'it was produced with intensity. He [the Indian artist] believed in what he was expressing and he believed in himself/59 Here, from both the Indians and the transcendentalists, Carr had found support for her cornerstones of nature, spirit, and self-worth. While reading Housser's 'Whitman to American/ Carr was struggling with her painting The Mountain. On 15 May 1933 she had left home and travelled into the high mountain country north of Vancouver, stopping first to visit her sister Lil at Brackendale, then venturing on to Lillooet. Here, in this remote village, Carr recognized that her dear dog Koko, who had accompanied her along with another dog, Tantrum, and Susie the rat, was too ill and would have to be put down. Deeply attached to all animals and to this dog in particular, Carr was mightily distressed. As an antidote to her sorrow, she plunged into work. In her diary she recorded her surroundings, her reactions: Oh, these mountains, great bundles of contradiction, hard, cold austere, disdainful, remote yet gentle, spiritual, appealing! Oh, you mountains, I am at your feet - humble, pleading! Speak to me in your wordless words! I claim my brotherhood to you. We are of the same substance for there is only one substance. God is all there is. There is one life, God life, that flows through all. He that formed me formed you. Oh, Father of all, raise my consciousness to that sense of oneness with the universal. Help me to express Thee. Do Thou use me as a channel, help me to keep myself clear, open, receptive to Thy will.60 Carr did not find that her mountain painting progressed smoothly. Aware of the contradictory nature of mountains, she none the less felt

Whitman and Transcendentalism 55

overwhelmed, 'like a tiny rowboat trying to tow it [the mountain] into port and the sea is rough/ * But after reading 'Whitman to America/ she thought she had a grasp on her needed combination of the spiritual and movement, only to find the mountain, once again, intractable: 'I thought my mountain was coming this morning. It began to move, it was near to speaking, when suddenly it shifted, sulked, returned to obscurity, to smallness. It has eluded me again and sits there, mean, puny, dull. Why? Did I lower my ideal? Did I carelessly bungle, pandering to the material instead of the spiritual ? Did I lose sight of God, too filled with petty household cares, sailing low to the ground, ploughing fleshily along?'62 When Carr finally managed to catch her mountain in canvas simply called The Mountain, there was nothing puny or small about it. Rather, by placing the mountain at close range, she forced herself to deal with its presence, its bulk, its immobility. Yet, mindful of the contradiction, she also captured the movement, the swirl of growth, Whitman's urge of life. With giaitt folds and hollows, she built up her mountain almost architectonically, so that it grew from the earth below. The small village, crouched at the foot of this brooding presence, seems like cardboard, insubstantial and impermanent. This principle of growth, of movement, is central to understanding canvases such as The Red Cedar and Dancing Sunlight. In the former work a single, vibrant tree, topped by a canopy of verdant growth, exudes vitality. Executed principally in complementary colours - the green of the foliage against the red of the trunk - the painting has a concentrated force, a power underlined by the swirling tendrils and the fire-like underbrush. This reductionism might well have been influenced by the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, since this painting was executed the year after Carr returned from a trip to New York, where she met O'Keeffe. 3 Anthropomorphic traces are also evident - Carr found trees 'more sensible than people and more enduring.' This same power is evident in Dancing Sunlight, a canvas depicting the antithesis of The Red Cedar. In Dancing Sunlight Carr is interested in the movement of the light around the trees, rather than in the movement of the trees themselves. She integrates her painting into a great yellow-green swirl, a joyful gambol between barely delineated trunks and branches. Time and again Carr returned to the importance of growth. Max Maynard has a telling anecdote. Once, when discussing a reproduction of a Cezanne landscape, Carr surprised Maynard by criticizing the piece: 'It lacks the principle of growth.' Maynard understood Carr to mean that the work was not full of spirit, something Carr 'felt in her bones. Something throbbing, rather portentous, tremendous power behind things/ 5 This growth was, to a certain extent, learned from and nurtured by Walt Whitman/ To her

56 The Logic of Ecstasy

EMILY CARR The Mountain

Whitman and Transcendentalism 57

EMILY CARR The Red Cedar

58 The Logic of Ecstasy

EMILY CARR Dancing Sunlight

friend Ruth Humphrey, in April 1938, Carr wrote: 'When I want to realize growth and immortality more I go back to Walt Whitman. Everything seemed to take such a hand in the ever-lasting on-going with him - eternal

overflowing and spilling of things into the universe and nothing lost/ 7

Whitman and Transcendentalism 59

Remembering Carr's professed dislike of words - she was such an inventive wordsmith that a real dislike is hard to credit - and her belief that 'Nature is God revealing himself, expressing his wonders and love/68 it is little wonder that Whitman's 'Song of the Rolling Earth' appealed to her:69 A Song of the rolling earth, and of words according, Were you thinking that those were words, those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea, They are in the air, they are in you.

Ground and sea and air were principal components of Carr's late paintings. In Above the Gravel Pit, by her own admission, she sought 'a wide, open sky with lots of movement... My desire is to have it free and jubilant, not crucified into one spot, static.'70 And movement, again, dominates her oilon-paper, Strait of Juan de Fuca (ca. 1936). Over a broad beach wash sea and sky, one great rhythmic pulsing, wave upon wave of sea or sky. All is unified. As for the Sadhu in Ecstasy, referring back to Carr's interest in The Sadhu, all is active, moving. Nothing stands alone. Even colour, freed from verisi-

EMILY CARR Above the Gravel Pit

60 The Logic of Ecstasy

militude, reflects and unifies, so that the green of the earth is mirrored in a strip of green in the sky. Carr wrote about her discovering of this overall unity: I woke this morning with 'unity of movement' in a picture strong in my mind. I believe Van Gogh had that idea. I did not realize he had striven for that till quite recently so I did not come by the idea through him. It seems to me that clears up a lot. I see it very strongly out on the beach and cliffs. I feel it in the woods but did not quite realize what I was feeling. Now it seems to me the first thing to seize on in your layout is the direction of your main movement, the sweep of the whole thing as a unit. One must be very careful about the transition of one curve of direction into the next, vary the length of the wave of space but keep it going, a pathway for the eye and the mind to travel through and into the thought. For long I have been trying to get these movements of the parts. Now I see there is only one movement. It sways and ripples. It may be slow or fast but it is only one movement sweeping out into space but always keeping going - rocks, sea, sky, one continuous movement.71

In January 1937 Carr suffered her first heart attack. Eastern friends rallied, buying her pictures and writing her letters. Among her saved correspondence was a letter, probably from Yvonne M. Housser, which suggests, again, how dominant Whitman was for Carr. A postscript notes: If I can get some copies made of the [Housser] Whitman manuscript I will send you one/ This would have pleased Carr considerably, for she had acknowledged that she did so want a copy of Housser's book 'to line and score and study and make my very own/72 More telling even is her correspondent's comment: 'What a grand thing to have said about your work - "That it reminds one of Whitman." I think it does - it has strength, breadth and is creative in its own right/73 III

Lawren Harris was probably as imbued with Whitman as was Carr. In 1925, in notes for a play, Bertram Brooker developed a character, Manchee, based on Lawren Harris. There is no reason to believe Brooker was not documenting Harris as he saw him. On 26 August 1925 Brooker wrote: Manchee: Something like Harris ... Under forty, supremely confident of his art and ... rather self-centred, rather wanting to be courtiered, especially in his own studio ... As a Canadian almost ferociously patriotic, with a great feeling for the country, which has been gready bolstered by Whitman, hesitating to go to

1

LAWREN s. HARRIS From the North Shore, Lake Superior

2

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Self-Portrait

3

EMILY CARR Indian Church

4

FREDERICK H. VARLEY The Open Window

5

LAWREN s. HARRIS Mountain Experience

6 EMILY CARR Sunshine and Tumult

7

JOCK MACDONALD Departing Day

8

BERTRAM BROOKER Sounds Assembling

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Europe or even New York for fear of being seduced from his utterly native viewpoint. Everything new is going to happen in this country. As a mystic he also believes that things are going going to happen in this country, indeed are happening. He feels himself in the vanguard of the movement and is looking for every sign. Unless people show some sign of it he is impatient with [them]. He hates Europe and is impatient with slavish admiration of anything that comes from there. He quotes Whitman a great deal.74

This sketch is interesting for several reasons. The two references to Whitman, the only authority noted, are surely telling. Brooker also, without dissimulating, called Harris a mystic. The overriding theme, however, is Harris's 'ferocious' patriotism. How these three, potentially conflicting, characteristics are blended into one person is the subject to hand now. The earliest reference Harris made to Whitman is found in his 1910-14 notebook. Here, among other recorded quotations (including numerous by the Irish mystic A.E. [George Russell]), Harris noted Whitman's admonition: I say no man has ever yet been half devote enough, None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough.75

Coming as he did from a religious family, Harris seemed to take this statement to heart and, for the rest of his life, devoted a great deal of energy and discipline to his adoration and worship. If Harris's method was henceforth a devotional one, it was also one predicated on exploration and change. As Whitman expressed so convincingly in 'Song of the Open Road/ the challenge was the 'profound lesson of reception/ The individual must be ready and able to receive the joy and the sorrow, the beautiful and the ugly. In the 19205 Harris discussed his methods in his notebook: We live only when we adventure and give expression to the results of our adventure. We should understand then and never forget that we permit all rules, conventions, institutions and prohibitions to become stable only that we may thereby have a base from which to venture further, a working place wherein we can give form to our findings and a haven where we can rest and recuperate from past strain and effort and acquire energy for further adventure. And we should recognize and never forget that with every least increase of vision the known means are going to be modified, changed, enlarged, the rules the learned make strained, broken or forgotten and to the exact extent of the increase of vision. And we should recognize and never forget that all pioneering is the advance guard of our adventure into the unknown where greater and greater amplitude of life awaits us. And we should further know that any pio-

6i The Logic of Ecstasy

neer in any pursuit is going to discover something new, untoward, strange and perhaps unpleasant to our grooved ways of life, and to the exact extent in which he does so is he of value to us.7

Given this transcendental attitude, Harris determined to adventure into the unknown, fully aware that his discoveries might prove strange and even frightening. From the North Shore, Lake Superior (colour plate 4) exposes the duality characteristic of transcendentalism. Whitman believed that nature is formed and informed by the spirit, that every tree or mountain is a symbol of a greater spiritual reality, that God not only created nature but is in nature as well. Transcendentalists saw the physical world as both fact and symbol. Harris did too. In his notebook of the 19203, he explained that 'visible nature is but a distorted reflection of a more perfect world and the creative individual viewing her is inspired to perceive within and behind her many garments that which is timeless and entirely beautiful/ 77 In From the North Shore, Lake Superior Harris worked both fact and symbol. The title refers to a specific spot. The headland and island are carefully delineated. The texture of the water is precisely rendered, suggesting specific weather conditions. Concrete facts abound. Yet the ideal is also clearly present. The viewer is placed above and well away from the foreground hills, so that distance is created between viewer and scene, access is difficult, and penetration impossible. Unnatural clouds and unexpected light make the section more exalted, more beautiful. Perhaps, as Roger Mesley suggests, these cloud-like forms are flower petals unfolding beneath a mystical light.7 This light, as Emerson would have it, causes the universe to become 'transparent, and the light of higher laws than its own'79 to shine through it. For Emerson the soul of man 'is not an organ ... not a faculty, but light ... From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.' ° If the view below the horizon seems based on concrete fact, that above the horizon line seems composed of mystic organisms. Nature here is not a setting for human activity or habitation, but a primeval place, uncontaminated by history or civilization. It is vast, solitary, alive, and timeless. An important factor in this painting is a person's place within such a system. Harris believed that individuality, personality, was detrimental. Rather what he sought was the individual union with the greater self, with that which is also timeless and beautiful. The personal is to be transcended. Harris wrote that 'each of us here as a personality is but a reflection of a greater self that abides eternally in a greater world and ever seeks to inform us here of that perfect world.' * Through meditation and thought Harris believed that the individual could venture on the avenue of 'the high impersonal great soul of man.' Subsequently, great art might result. Harris sum-

Whitman and Transcendentalism 63

marized his beliefs about an individual's position, abilities, methods, and artistic potential: 'All great art is impersonalf,] achieved by a sublimation of the personal in ecstasy/ 2 The easiest place to see that greater, perfect world is in nature. Many of these aspirations were, in Harris's case, simply that: while he penned universal and democratic ideals, he practised individual and patrician art. Whitman was similarly inclined. His sublimation of individuality is less apparent, however, because of his democratic style, which was partly adumbrated by writing in the first person. For Whitman the poet should not be an alienated genius but a democratic writer having a deep affinity with the spirit and literary tastes of the common people. In the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass he stressed that the American poet fails 'if he be not himself the age transfigured/ Furthermore, in describing his own reform principles, in writing seemingly contradictory poems against and for free love, or prostitutes, or evil, or corrupt people and things, Whitman admitted prizing unsullied reform principles, not particular reform policies. The leaders of reform interested him not for their individual politics but rather for their fiery passion. 'We want/ he wrote in 1863, 'no reforms, no institutions, no parties - We want a living principle as nature has, under which nothing can go wrong/ 3 Yet at the same time that Whitman was promoting the common and the average, he was promulgating the great and heroic, of whom he was a prime example. Characteristics were ascribed not only to man but also to nature. The prime characteristic Harris identified in nature - vast, solitary, alive, and timeless - is one that Whitman explored in Leaves of Grass. Here Whitman linked divinity and roughness, a concept vital for a real understanding of Canadian landscape painting in the 19205. The earth never tires; The earth is made silent, incomprehensible at first - Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged - keep on - there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. 4

This concept of nature being both rude and incomprehensible on the one hand and divine on the other is the same concept Emily Carr struggled with when she tried to apprehend her mountain. Whitman went further. He understood that nature, the elemental force, can be a serious threat to man's self-confidence. In his poetry, therefore, he attempted to arrange an accommodation, a reconciliation of man and nature through the medium of spirit. In 'Passage to India' Whitman specifically describes the poet's primary task as giving a humanly intelligible voice to 'this

64 The Logic of Ecstasy

cool, impassive, voiceless earth/ The poet's responsibility is to reintegrate the natural and human orders, so that 'Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and diffused no more/ 5 In this light it is obvious that Whitman's optimism was a brave front to the realities of an uncompromising American continent. In raising this problem of the human relationship with environment, Whitman was touching on social concerns, on the structural features of the new capitalist economy. He, however, never inquired too closely into the underlying economic assumptions of his society, preferring to accept a fundamental distinction between society and government and to identify the villain as government. In short, he found government, and the primary political circumstances that promoted it, to be the reason for what was unsatisfactory about American life. Harris had to wrestle with similar concerns, for he too knew that nature could be vast and inimical to people. Like Whitman, he decided to attack institutions rather than the society that engendered those institutions, or nature herself. Like Whitman, 7 again Harris coped with the physical world by gradually dismissing its outward aspect and then readmitting it on different terms. Harris explained in the 1928-9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada: So the Canadian artist was drawn north, and there at first devoted himself to Nature's outward aspect... at first more or less literally copying a great variety of her motives ... Then followed a period of decorative treatment of her great wealth of material... Then followed an intensification of mood that simplified into deeper meaning and was more rigorously selective and sought to have no element in the work which did not contribute to a unified intense expression. The next step was a utilization of elements of the North in depth, in three dimensions, giving a fuller meaning, a more real sense of the presence of the informing spirit... Today the artist moves towards purer creative expression, wherein he changes the outward aspect of Nature, alters colours, and, by changing and reshaping forms, intensifies the austerity and beauty of formal relationships, and so creates a somewhat new world from the aspect of the world we commonly see; and thus he comes appreciably nearer a pure work of art and the expression of new spiritual values. The evolution from the love of the outward aspect of Nature and a more or less realistic rendering of her to the sense of the indwelling spirit and a more austere spiritual expression has been a steady, slow and natural growth through much work, much inner eliciting experi-

ence. 88 However, the problem does not end here. If Harris could find a way to remake nature in spiritual terms to satisfy his optimistic prognostications even if in his remake few read optimism - he still had to find a way to cope

Whitman and Transcendentalism 65

with the linking of art and nature. Along with Carr and many other painters of his generation, Harris had to deal with the problem of the dialectic between art and nature, especially a nature that seemed rough and rude. In Europe, Kandinsky, Picasso, and Klee all had to confront the problem; in the United States, Dove, O'Keeffe, and Hartley were equally concerned. Three solutions appeared: obviate the tension between art and nature, as the Symbolists did, by making them separate and autonomous; emphasize the tension, as the Cubists did, by visual puns and spatial ambiguities; or reconcile the tension, as did the five Canadians examined here, by perceiving art and nature as based on the same laws. We have already seen how Emily Carr propounded this aesthetic belief, one that derives directly from German romantic philosophy and American transcendentalism. Harris was similarly moved. Agreeing with Housser and Whitman, he felt that the artist, seeing more clearly than other people, has a special duty. In his 1926 article 'Revelation of Art in Canada/ Harris forcefully commented that 'any change of outlook, increase of vision and deepening of conviction in a people shows itself first through some form of art, art being both a clarifying and objectifying process/ 9 In the 1928-9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, edited by Bertram Brooker, Harris denounced the theory that art is based on art. Rather, Harris wrote, in his famous statement: The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these. Our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age/9° Harris reverted to this idea of art and nature being based on the same laws on many occasions. Lauding Whitman's 'prophetic insight/ his ability to integrate (reminiscent of Bucke's praise for Whitman's integration and balance), Harris explained that 'in the golden age of a people as in ancient Egypt, in Greece and in a few of the Italian cities of the renaissance we get moments of harmony when life and the arts fuse and flourish in terms of unity of the soul/91 Concluding the same paper, Harris wrote: 'All great art is in one sense a rebirth, a recreation, an extrication by intensity, by penetration of vision, of intrinsic and timeless beauty from the infinitely changing appearances of nature and the processes of time in humanity/92 For Harris in the mid-i92os, art based on the same laws as nature must respond to and be directed by what was characteristic of local nature, the North. Time and again Harris referred to Canada simply as the North, often employing a capital letter. He saw the North as having specific mystical and pictorial characteristics:

66 The Logic of Ecstasy

The Canadian artist serves the spirit of his land and people. He is aware of the spiritual flow from the replenishing North and believes that this should ever shed clarity into the growing race of America and that this, working in creative individuals, will give rise to an art quite different from that of any European people. He believes in the power and the glory, for the North to him is a single, simple vision of high things and can, through its transmuting agency, shape our souls into its own spiritual expressiveness. He believes that this will create a new sense and use of design, a new feeling for space and light and formal relationships.93

In developing these thoughts Harris was following a well-worn transcendental path, one that Emerson had been instrumental in adumbrating. Emerson, a creature of his time, viewed the arts primarily from a literary point of view, as the artist's expression of his moral insight, rather than from any concern with intrinsic, formal qualities. Emerson saw art's 'highest value' 'as history/ and believed that art was simply a different mode of expressing historical, poetical, or philosophical ideas.94 Moreover, Emerson believed that the fine arts sprang from indigenous sources. 'We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe,' he proclaimed in 1836. American culture must be domesticated. An art that embodied and conveyed the essential ideas of American nationality was an art eminently worthy of encouragement.95 Harris, for whom Emerson was a constant companion while in Germany, followed these precepts at this stage. Harris, and his friends in the Group of Seven, found further sources of support for their nationalistic painting. One was an exhibition of contemporary Scandinavian art, hung in the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo in January 1913. Harris, along with J.E.H. MacDonald, saw this show and bought the catalogue. Many of their attitudes towards the exhibition seem to have come directly from the introductory catalogue essay, written by the SwedishAmerican art critic Christian Brinton. Brinton proposed a nationalistic interpretation of modern Scandinavian art, and tied this nationalism of the ordinary people firmly to the land. In 1931 MacDonald lectured on Scandinavian art and revealed Brinton's philosophic influence. But the influences went further. Since the natural aspects of Scandinavia and Canada are parallel in numerous respects, MacDonald suggested that 'except in minor points, the pictures might all have been Canadian.' Harris and MacDonald felt that 'this is what we want to do with Canada.'9 Both philosophically and iconographically the Scandinavian show encouraged Harris to pursue nationalistic, landbased painting. At the same time Harris and his friends found considerable support for their romantic northern nationalism closer to home. Right in Canada there was an important contemporary movement promoting the idea that Canada's unique character derived from her northern location, her severe winters, and

Whitman and Transcendentalism 67

her population of 'northern races.' For Tennyson Canada was the True North/ for Kipling the 'Lady of the Snows.' Ideas about the importance of geography, climate, and the character of 'races,' debated for centuries, surfaced in Canada soon after Confederation and were promoted by associates of the Canada First Movement and the Imperialists. An early proponent of these ideas, Robert Grant Haliburton, claimed Canada's future as a dominant nation was secure because of its northern character. He proclaimed the northern race idea in a lecture of 1869 entitled 'We are the Northmen of the New World,' suggesting dominance of this race because of the attraction of Canada to hardy northern European immigrants, and because of the creative force of a northern climate. Nor, as Carl Berger has demonstrated, did these ideas dissipate.97 Propelled as he was by transcendental nationalism, Scandinavian romanticism, and contemporary Canadian geographic determinism, it is little wonder that Harris should trumpet Canadian northern nationalism so loudly. These nationalistic and idealistic concerns found pictorial expression in Harris's Lake Superior canvases, his Rocky Mountain works, and his Arctic landscapes. Seasonally and geographically they bespoke a northern country, where ice and snow, mountains, and icebergs were the norm. Katherine Dreier, Lawren Harris's American theosophical friend, explained that 'the greatest impression that was made on me when we saw something of each other [in the late 19205], was your love and interest of the North. Your consciousness of the psychic vibrations which one finds there.'9 In Icebergs, Davis Strait, and in other similar works depicting Arctic scenes, Harris perhaps found his ultimate northern subject-matter. Using the format he had developed to such effect in his Lake Superior canvases, Harris delineates a narrow foreground, then places his main theme in a middle ground so demarcated that the viewer is both cut off from the subject and uncertain as to its precise location in space. Yet, recalling Whitman's 'Song of the Open Road,' the viewer is invited on a journey, one that will encompass barrenness, coldness, ice, nakedness, and pain as well as light and discovery. These spatial considerations notwithstanding, the work is still clearly focused in nature. (This canvas also certainly suggests further cosmic interpretation, but that is not the subject to hand.99) A few months before the trip to the Arctic that provided the material for Icebergs, Davis Strait, Harris, returning from Europe, wrote to Emily Carr about the centrality of nature: 'But I have an idea - confirmed by what I felt in Europe - that we here, in our own place, on new land, where a new race is forming [,] will find for the present and perhaps for some time to come, that the fullest life in art for us comes by way of nature, sharing and imbibing her life; her deep, deep intimations - and establishing ourselves by getting that into our art.'100 Isolation Peak also exudes that very sense of northern power and climate,

68 The Logic of Ecstasy

LAWREN s. HARRIS Icebergs, Davis Strait that tremendous faith based in nature. Here, more than in Icebergs, Davis Strait, are joined the real and the ideal mentioned above. Isolation Peak is a real mountain in the Canadian Rockies that Harris sketched. In his final canvas, however, the roughness and crudeness that he mentions as the properties of a forming country have ben smoothed into compelling rhythms. He moulds and manipulates his volumes, building up his striated hills to climax in the forbidding mountain. Now the whole work is redolent of the ideal. The forms and colours of nature are only used as a point of departure in the ascent to a level of higher awareness. The move from the particular to the general finds echo in the move from the real to the ideal. Time and again Harris understood the necessity of growth, of change. Always he recognized the importance of nature. Harris wrote about his move to the universal from the particular of the North: The artist moves slowly but surely through many transitions towards a deeper and more universal expression. From his particular love, and in the process of creating from it, he is led inevitably to universal qualities and toward a universal vision and understanding. These are the fruits of a natural growth having

Whitman and Transcendentalism 69

LAWREN s. HARRIS Isolation Peak its roots deep in the soil of the land, its life in the pervading and replenishing spirit of the North, and its heart-beat one with the life of its people.101 IV

Brooker's adoption of transcendentalism was surely no less dominating than Harris's, yet the use to which the two creators put this philosophy differed in important ways. Harris was thoroughly imbued with northern nationalistic spirit in the 19203; Brooker was interested in the here and now, be it northern or not. Like Harris, Brooker was a great admirer of Bucke, and frequently referred to Cosmic Consciousness.*02 That Brooker absorbed Bucke's deep interest in and reverence for Whitman is apparent, especially in Brooker's book Think of the Earth. In this novel Brooker set up a seminal scene in which three characters discuss the nature of Tavistock's belief in himself as a son of God. Dr Bundy, talking to Laura and her father, Canon Macaulay, asks Laura about Tavistock: 'You believe that this man is what he thinks he is himself - a new Christ! Not in the sense that Whitman was - stating the old gospel in a new way, for the

70 The Logic of Ecstasy

new world - but a man sent from God - a son of God - sent to perform a miracle - sent to redeem the world. You believe that - do you?'103 Brooker accomplished a number of things in a very short space by this speech. He first revealed that, like Bucke, he saw Whitman as godlike in his ability to reinterpret the old gospel in the form and language of the new world, of the here and now. Then, continuing, Brooker indicated that he did not see Whitman as a son of God, the one God, an idea with which Bucke might well have disagreed. Further in the scene, Laura added another dimension to the debate, to the tension, by reminding her father and Dr Bundy that many people, including her father, think of Whitman as mad. Brooker played on the stresses created by this triangular analogy to Whitman: godlike, of God, or mad. Recognizing just how provocative his analogy was, Brooker had his hero, Tavistock, invoke Whitman too. While lying on a bed, with his arms straight down his sides like a corpse, waiting for a sign from God, waiting for God to enter him, Tavistock thought of Whitman's lines: O to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and look at where I cast them, To pass on (O living! always living!) and leave the corpses behind.104 In this trance, Tavistock was aware of 'familiar' 'presences - angels.' An imagined sky came close, ... The stars grew, dazzling him with their brightness. It seemed to him that he could feel the pull of their attraction. He knew why lob had spoken of the morning stars singing together coupling them in the same breath with the sons of God shouting for joy. He knew why Blake had made of the 'morning stars' his grandest design. He felt there was a kinship between the stars and the sons of God - the great souls who have known the unity of everything. His own desire had been that the earth should be like a star - single and singing!105 Here surely is the nub of Brooker's 1927 paintings, works such as Creation and The Dawn of Man. In the former piece we see, through a hole, a portion of a globe shape. Behind explodes dazzling light. Two corners are blocked off to help contain and emphasize the unity, the singling power. In The Dawn of Man Brooker is less obtuse. A stylized humanoid, embracing more than a dozen poles, gazes, enraptured, though a gap towards distant, light-filled space. This is everyman, disengaged from the ties of the bodily corpse, passing on, adventuring into a new world. This is 'ecstasy that transfigured dreams/ eternity as now.

Whitman and Transcendentalism 71

BERTRAM BROOKER Creation

72 The Logic of Ecstasy

BERTRAM BROOKER The Dawn of Man

The time in these paintings is important. In the introduction to the Yearbook of the Arts in Canada of 1928-9, which Brooker edited and produced, he makes his debt to Whitman for this concept very clear. Brooker starts off the volume by quoting Whitman, in part, that 'the direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is today/ He must 'flood himself with

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the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides/ In his introduction, titled 'When We Awake/ Brooker clarifies and extends the meaning of Whitman's passage by quoting him, again, to the effect that the artist 'places himself where the future becomes the present' (the italics are Brooker's).10 He then goes on to explain: 'the artist should be aware of present tendencies, but not immersed in them to the extent of destroying his backward and forward perspective. Art and literature on the grand scale is never narrowly contemporary/107 Was this an oblique dig at Harris and his northern nationalism? Certainly in Think of the Earth Brooker has Tavistock discuss now, the present, in very different terms from Harris's nationalistic ones. Seeking unity in the world, Tavistock 'tried to draw it all together - past and present and future - in an everlasting - now. He tried to crush into the tiny chamber of his mind the immense reaches of infinite space and the brightness of starry circlings through endless time/108 Brooker's sense of space, Tavistock's infinite space, is particularly noteworthy. In a 'Seven Arts' article he tried to define modern art. He concluded that a 'modern work of art is a pure receptacle/ 'It actually is empty/ Modern creators 'simply create a space palpitating with life in which something anything may happen. And the happening variefs] with each beholder/109 Here we have Whitman's 'profounder lesson of reception' expanded. Instead of being open to receive external stimuli, Brooker now posits that the beholder must project the true self into this space. This is the lesson of The Dawn of Man™ This beholder, this person without personality who is parting the forest of poles, is the common man. Brooker, like Whitman, aimed to speak to all the people, not just some segment of the population. He made this clear in a column of 6 July 1929, where he explained: I place William Blake ... among the very greatest poets. But men like Bliss Carmen and Walt Whitman, who drew their inspiration from the things and happenings of everyday, which they shared in common with their hearers, were happier and consequently were able to add something to the world's happiness instead of to its harrowing ... The exultation of the spirit that comes from the contemplation of supremely natural things is more attuned to the mass of mankind and is thus more penetrable to the simplest hearts/111

Writing his poem 'night/ Brooker again links Whitman and the common person. He is discussing an 'old man' who talks of nothing but fish and birds and the plain affairs of the people who make their living up here in the hills

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He interjects a small scene: and the night heightens over the silent house • where Aubrey sits alone under a shaded lamp slowly turning the pages of Whitman's Leaves of Grass112 On another occasion, discussing the paintings of the Group of Seven, he made very clear that he did not regard 'the practice of the arts as something apart from life, aloof and precious.' In a forceful paragraph Brooker explained: 'The artist is not a precious person. True, he does not descend to vulgarities and trivialities. But in his seeking he does not seek something that is aloof from life or cut off from the experience of the great masses. He does not seek something different from what the mass experiences, he simply seeks more of it - a larger sense of it - a more intense absorption of it.'113 Brooker did not stop in distinguishing the similarities and differences between artists and the masses. He also probed the similarities and differences between artists and scientists. In notes for his lecture The Artist as Mystic,' Brooker started by dividing people into those who believe and trust that 'god takes care of everything' and those who 'can't leave it all in god's hands' and want 'to see if it isn't possible to understand the purposes and the laws of the universe here and now.' This latter type, according to Brooker, becomes a scientist or an artist. Both artists and scientists want to produce unity and harmony; but their methods of so doing differ: the scientist hopes to achieve unity by putting facts or measurements of time and space together the artist hopes to achieve unity by putting together certain aspects or impressions and thus forming a harmony or what we call a work of art114 These two groups of creative people are 'moving' - Brooker's word, for, according to him, 'the great majority [of people] of course don't move.' In seeking unity and harmony, artists and scientists move centripetally: the scientist and artist stand at the circumference of life, so to speak and begin accumulating facts or impressions moving inward as they go to fresh rationalizations

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to new harmonies pattern within pattern until they arrive at some conception of a unified universe their direction is from the diffused and far-flung circumference of a circle towards its centre115

Brooker contended that most creative people operate this way, by involution. However, he identified another group who reverse that direction, who start internally. 'Frequently without volition of their own they suddenly arrive at the centre'; they have a mystical revelation of unity. It is then 'a state of mind/ Brooker saw Blake as his prime example of this category of artist, but he suspected that El Greco was also working from this state: we cannot say positively of El Greco but we can of Blake that he had achieved and experienced unity within himself and he called it the bosom of god the world of imagination paradise11

Taking his terminology in part from the critic R.H. Wilenski, in his book The Modern Movement in Art, Brooker continues this discussion by comparing the artist who has found unity and the artist who is seeking unity. This latter Brooker calls, after Wilenski, the 'architectural artist/ The former, like Blake, 'drew from his imagination toward nature, instead of from nature toward his imagination, as most artists do/ Such mystically motivated artists ... try to force into forms a formless experience an experience in which all forms are lost in pure formless being they are not concerned with the architecture of the material universe because they have seen beyond the material universe and hence they select the most fluid forms and rhythms in the attempt to suggest that forms are not solid or real but that the universe is an infinite flux of being, of activity, or of thought the architectural artist is concerned with revealing the secrets of form the spiritual artist is concerned with revealing the secret of formlessness this explains why the architectural artist usually works with masses, volumes, blocks, angles, planes, and so on whereas the spiritual artist usually works with lines, curves, whirls, and flamelike rhythms117

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One of the problems inherent in Brooker's thinking is his need to call forth constancy that contains change, to be able to find unity through the infinite flux of being. To do so Brooker draws upon Vernon Blake in his book Relation in Art. Comparing Blake's conclusions to Einstein's, Brooker finds them 'practically the same ..., namely that the universe conserves a constant nature by an unceasing readjustment of the relations which compose it, and in such a way as to regenerate the same resulting sum of relations.'118 Whitman too, as will be explored in further detail below, was interested in the readjustments of relations that go into the unity of the universe, of nature. The challenge was to acknowledge nature's infinite malleability without calling into question its spiritual constancy.119 Canvases such as Endless Dawn and Green Movement should be considered in this light. They speak of those vast reaches of space, celestial brightness, and endless time. They are not concerned with revealing the secrets of form but those of formlessness. The forms themselves, recognizable but highly stylized natural forms, mountains and trees, are not the main thrust of the work; the forms are not particularly solid, in the case of the trees in Green Movement, or real, in the case of the mountains in Endless Dawn.

BERTRAM BROOKER Endless Dawn

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Rather what is emphasized in each canvas, what is important to Brooker, is the vigorous ribbon forms of the foreground. These flow through both works, entering and exiting endlessly, offset at times by Brooker's startling lemonyellow light, emphasizing that infinite flux of being, of activity, of thought within spiritual constancy.

BERTRAM BROOKER Green Movement

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In 1949 Brooker made a speech about his painting, attempting to give his audience some sense of his pictorial thrust, of the history of the development of his art. Interestingly, after having suffered the cool and uncomprehending reception of his 1927 Arts and Letters Club show, he made no mention of his contemporary mystical interests and aims two decades later.120 Rather he concentrated on form. He emphasized the fluid motion, the concept of time passing.121 'Most of the shapes were floating areas of colour - they were verbs, representing action and movement - and when, in some cases, they came close to recognition as objects, such as spheres or rods or peaks, these were only intended as the path or climax or culmination of a movement, not its finish/122 A poem dated just about the same time as Brooker was executing these strangely coloured fluid works puts a different, less formal, thoroughly mystical interpretation to these ribbons, these arches, these paths: I Have Uttered Arches i have uttered arches wide and white into the infinite and over them my soul marches elated tall with all my lives behind me i stride upward to the undermost fringe of heaven here my last arch ends where strengths cross where i must wrestle with the pouring fierceness of god and overcome and become as he is knowing good and evil123

This feeling pervades numerous contemporary Brooker paintings. Nor is it surprising, coming from a painter who could write that 'the highest faculty of the artist is ... essentially a religious sense - a sense of the mystery of the whole of life/124 Considering the spiritual artist's process of creation, Brooker proclaimed that 'Blake, in a condition of religious ecstasy, was able to perceive the "constant" or "sum" of these relations which compose the universe, that he was able to look "through" the universe, so to speak, to the ideal unity within it/125 Again Brooker found support for this idea from Whitman, quoting him to the effect that 'the altitude of literature and poetry

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has always been religion - and always will be ... The religious tone, the consciousness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of the unknown, of Deity over and under all, and of the divine purpose, are never absent, but indirectly give tone to all/12 In this idea, then, Brooker was close to Harris and Housser, who all lauded Whitman's devotional stance. Cosmic and timeless, though constantly moving through space, Brooker's paintings are his efforts to 'crystalize into unified wholes'127 his personal mystical vision. V

In tracing the influences of Whitman and the transcendentalists, it is hardest to find direct proof of them with Frederick Varley. None the less, Varley's work and writing are redolent of those very attributes prized by Whitman and promulgated by Bucke, MacDonald, and Housser. Whether Varley came to these conclusions directly, through reading or hearing about Whitman and the transcendentalists, or whether he acquired these ideas indirectly, from Oriental writers, who, in turn, had greatly influenced the transcendentalists,128 it is impossible to know. What is evident, however, is the parallels in belief between Varley and Whitman. Varley venerated nature. Like all transcendentalists, and most mystics, he recognized God's immanence in nature. Along with Housser, he saw artists having a special power, and felt that the creative attitude was a religious one. Like Housser too, he knew the importance of self-love, and always rose to the challenge of the journey toward a vision of eternal life. Such a journey, MacDonald noted, could only be undertaken by those who seek freedom, that optimistic component of Whitman's belief. Varley concurred. Yet, unlike most of his contemporaries, especially his friends in the Group of Seven, Varley was not a convinced, committed nationalist. Furthermore, unlike many other Whitmanics but like the bard himself, Varley celebrated the physical body. His attachment was to the here and now, all of it, to the freedom and wilderness of the new world, Whitman's concepts taken literally. The Cloud, Red Mountain exposes a number of these beliefs. This 1928 canvas is somewhat reminiscent of Harris's From the North Shore, Lake Superior in its combination of the real and the ideal, in the delineation of the real in the lower portion and the ideal in the upper portion. But Varley mixes his sections more than Harris, painting his mountain range in surprisingly vivid reds, offset by the complementary; green. The effect is truly 'moving forms, majestically conceived/129 Like Harris, Varley worked with the spaces as well as the volumes. It is in the spaces that his sense of freedom, his sense of release is most evident. In a letter to a collector friend, Varley exhibits his communion with nature, his need to explore, and his sense of release:

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FREDERICK H. VARLEY The Cloud, Red Mountain It is wonderful to leave the sheltered town [of Vancouver] & in two hours time be up in a dazzling white world, full of fantastic forms, wind carved & polished, where one can bathe in prismatic colours, incredibly pure. It is a tireless country Arnold, always inviting you to climb the next peak, enticing you away, farther & farther away from the problems that were born in the valley & you know damned well you must return to them, but one returns with clearer vision & many of the fool worries have ben sweated out of you.130 Time and again Varley returned to the centrality of nature. He was convinced that a painter can really learn only from nature. To Vera he counselled: 'Get the sky, the sea, the countryside into you and paint/131 Not limiting his comments to painting, he explained that 'the only way of living is to empty your mind in order to be filled by nature itself/132 Nor were these pronouncements isolated. Writing to his sister, Ethel, in 1914, about the stimulating atmosphere and artists he found in Toronto, he revealingly said:

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'We are endeavouring to knock out of us all of the pre-conceived ideas, emptying ourselves of everything except that nature is here in all its greatness. And we are here to gather it and understand it if only we will be clean enough, healthy enough, and humble enough to go to it willing to be taught and to receive it not as we think it should be, but as it is. And then to put down vigorously and truthfully that which we have culled./133 Again and again Varley returned to the concept of man's position vis-avis nature. In an 1960 interview he commented: 'nature is bigger than I am. I want to lose myself.' Later he mentioned that, for him, painting 'is the result of a deep emotional... something you have received from nature,'134 supporting Underbill's contention that creativity is intuitive. Many years before he had referred to painting as 'belonging to the eternal.'135 During the late 19203 and early 19305, in Vancouver, he linked these concepts together in a series of arresting open-window canvases. The Open Window (colour plate 5) and View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach are deceptively simple in composition - Varley declared 'composition is nine-tenths of painting from my point of view/13 In each canvas the sea and the shore are framed on three sides by the open window, and on the fourth side, high on the horizon, by distant mountains. The subject really is space. Considering this age-old problem of how to paint space, Varley concluded, in his deceptively simple manner, that 'you have to paint spaces with a space/137 In the earlier of the two canvases, View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach, the viewer is led deep into the canvas, towards the shore and eventually out to sea, by the weathered stones and the lines of surf curving with the beach. The frame-within-a-frame device not only delineates the view, the beyond, but emphasizes the openness, the space, of the sea above the quadruple lines of surf. In the later canvas , The Open Window, the introduction, the details of rocks and beach and surf, have all been eliminated. Daringly Varley now almost completely fills his window with an iridescent wash of yellow-green atmosphere. Conventional markers of distance have been wiped out, including a firm horizon line. The distant mountains now virtually blend into the sea. Only a thin band of white above the rounded shapes, perhaps snow, perhaps light, remains to link the real to the ideal. This paring down to essentials is reminiscent of Chinese painting, something Varley admired considerably. In particular he lauded Chinese painting for 'deep impressions/ for 'the very subtle movement of thought and the depth of thought./13Years after painting this work Varley acknowledged: 'I recognized that the simpler work is, the richer it becomes. It doesn't become rich by filling up space/ On the subject of simplicity, too, he advised: Tf there is silence between the forms, respect the silence/139 Through the device of the window-frame, Varley

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FREDERICK H. VARLEY View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach

injected human presence and thus here implied the mystical union of man and nature. Chris Varley rightly judged this piece to be Varley's 'most serene and inspired painting of the period/ one in which he 'invoked a meditative state, and proclaimed his unity with nature/140 Simplicity and unity were very Whitmanish aims. Like Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman subscribed to the Unitarian proposition that art should be simple and economical, and that it should suggest a unity, like Emerson's cosmic sense of standing in relation to all things. 'The art of art/ said Whitman, 'is simplicity/141 In Leaves of Grass he said: 'My poems, when complete, should be a unity in the same sense that the earth is/142 Varley, like Whitman, was also more concerned about saving the soul here and

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now/143 than, like Harris, with saving art by re-establishing for it a moral purpose. This interest in the present-tense soul prompted a further difference. Unlike most of the other painters considered in this study, Varley never restricted his apprehension of God in nature to God in wildlife. Rather Varley persisted in including humans, in integrating them into his life if not his surroundings. His student and friend and lover, Vera Weatherby, was one such person. Known best as the model in Dhdrdna and the green Vera portrait, she was also the subject of numerous other pieces. One such, also called Vera, was done before the two above-mentioned works. Not based on

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Vera

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'spiritual' green, but rather on more 'lusty' earth colours,144 this Vera, of about 1929, belongs beside The Cloud, Red Mountain, for each has a distinct and similar combination of the real and the ideal. Years later Varley wrote to Vera of the two of them working together 'better because we knew the countryside - we felt its character and its moods belonged to us - we were on honour bound to express.' 'This harmony, quickened into activity, permeated everything we saw.' 'We lived splendidly with no limitations to dreams.'145 Knowing the countryside, living in harmony, living splendidly with no limitations - all good Whitmanic attributes. Like others who turned away from rules and customs, Varley followed the Whitmanesque idea about the superiority of nature over art. 'Nature is rude at first,' Whitman said, 'but once begun never tires. Most works of art tire/14 Varley agreed. He also agreed with Whitman that the true use of the 'imaginative faculty' is not to imitate nature literally, but to illuminate the facts and phenomena of nature, including human nature, by means of the artist's awareness of identity or soul. For Whitman art is meant 'to give ultimate vivification to facts, to science, and to common lives, endow them with the glows and glories and final illustriousness which belongs to every real thing and to real things only.'147 For Varley art is 'the recording of Life and varies in degree according to the inner experiences of the artist combined with his imagination or vision.' Clarifying this, he continues: 'Art is not merely recording surface life - incidents, emotions. The Artist divines the causes beneath which create the outward result.'148 Glows and glories were certainly Varley's aim too. In 1933 Varley did one of his most experimental figure canvases, Coraplementaries. Here he seemed to be probing more carefully the ways of achieving freedom, and the end result, especially in terms of paint application, is very free. His study involved colour, its physical and psychological properties. He had been working with the Munsell colour system, which posited three primary colours, blue, red, and yellow. But, in 1931, there appeared an English translation of Wilhelm Ostwald's Colour Science. To Munsell's three primary colours, Ostwald added a fourth, sea-green, emphasizing the importance of the hues between yellow and blue. Varley was fascinated. He decided to carry Ostwald's ideas further, not content just with colours, but wanting to attain 'colours in light.' He attempted to work out the 'scientific vibrations in colour ... Some colours vibrate and come way out, until [the circle of a colour wheel is] in that pentagonal form. The North Pole is where the pure light is. There is no colour at all. The South Pole is intense dark. There is no colour ebbed in this blackness.'149 For Complementaries Varley then took two figures, 'one of an earthy - and I say earthy I mean gloriously so, of a girl associated with harvest fields ... and everything was rich with that, and

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FREDERICK H. VARLEY Complementaries

the other was an aesthetic type. The aesthetic type was at the back of the good earth/ He furthered this polarity by painting his aesthetic type 'all amongst the mauves and the cool colours, and much lighter/ Technically, he used considerably less impasto than on other occasions, virtually staining his canvas. Often the ground appeared between areas of colour. The range of hues was considerable. Rays of colour, rather like strobe lights, criss-cross over the surface, in a manner suggestive of cubism. Returning to his point of departure, the question of colours in light, he felt he had succeeded in producing the 'film of colour' you look 'through to get the colour/150 As Robert Ayre

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mentioned in reviewing this piece, a multidimensional world is suggested, one in which individual is integrated with environment to create a new whole.151 This same sense of another dimension appears in Three Clouds and a Tree, although the method of achieving this sensation is very different. Now Varley returns to solid pure colour, rather than the film of colour, and saturates his forms, particularly the dominant, rounded bulk of a mountain, in rich hues. This sense of power and presence of the mountain is reinforced by the vibrant but spindly evergreen in the foreground. The tree, ever moving and changing, seems to be pointing towards the moving, ephemeral clouds. Here Varley recognized, captured, the 'everlastingly changing' 'mysteries of nature'152 - a very transcendental thought. Like Harris Varley also found special release, special communion in the far north, he went to the Canadian arctic during the summer of 1938, travelling on the annual patrol of the government supply ship Nascopie. On

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Three Clouds and a Tree

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about 26 August 1938, the Nascopie docked at Thule, in Greenland, its most northerly stop. Between Thule and Craig Harbour, on Ellesmere Island, the next port of call, Varley wrote in ecstasy about 'this magical country' where 'you find a cleansing of the spirit':153 I'm more drunk than ever in my life, drunk with the seemingly impossible the glaciers up the Greenland coast & weather rounded mountains - the icebergs - literally hundreds of them, floating sphinxes - pyramids, mountain peaks with castles on them - draw-bridges & crevices, hugh cathedrals - coral forms magnified a thousand fold - fangs of teeth hundreds of feet high strange caves giving out in front of them the intense singing violet of space until the cave is as unreal as a dream and because of the blue greens & the violets of these bergs. The grey sky twins mauve & sea deep purple and red. Under such conditions one lives in prismatic colours. Offsetting that is the unusual strata of mountain forms & the dun colour of the rocks with lichen occasionally sprinkled like gold dust upon them, & the little brown people ...

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Arctic Landscape

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beautiful they are - refined - quiet speaking - cleanly, exquisitely dressed - a people possessing pride of well being ...I54

Varley captured much of the power and mystery of his experience in his canvas Arctic Landscape, one of the few he worked up after the trip. In content Arctic Landscape is reminiscent of Harris's Icebergs, Davis Strait. Both depict two bergs, a large one in front of a smaller one. The similarity, however, ends there. While Harris's piece is cool and intellectual and unhuman, Varley's is scintillating and emotional and alive. By his Ostwald-influenced colours blues and greens and violets - Varley sought to live in prismatic colours; by his floating sphinx forms - part man and part animal - Varley sought to cleanse the spirit. Before painting this work, while in Ottawa in 1936, despondent and depressed about the state of the art he was seeing, Varley concluded: 'we have not yet begun to speak deeply.'155 Surely, however, in Arctic Landscape and in The Open Window, Varley did manage to 'speak deeply,' that very Whitmanesque aim. VII

Another deep speaker whose interest in Whitman can only be guessed at is Jock Macdonald. Certainly Macdonald, a friend of Carr, cannot have been ignorant of Whitman. Whether he knew and loved Whitman's writing as did Carr cannot be currently ascertained. What can be asserted, however, is that Macdonald was a general practitioner of transcendentalism. Following Carlyle and Emerson, Macdonald believed in the need for an attitude of wonder in viewing nature; he held a conviction that every object is a symbol of God, and he rejected history in favour of the everlasting now. Following Kant, he asserted the veracity of consciousness and honoured the fidelity of the mind to itself — meaning that man was committed to an unswerving loyalty to himself, to the integrity of his own mind. The laws of his intellectual and moral nature were inviolable. Did Macdonald get these ideas from such German romanticists as Goethe and Kant? Unlikely. Did he learn them from English romanticists like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle? Possibly. Did he acquire them from the American transcendentalists ? Possibly. Or did he pick them up from his Vancouver friends ? Very likely. Another source of support for such ideas is the Orient. As Arthur Christy has documented, the American interest in the spiritual and moral aspects of the Orient coincided with the growth of the transcendental movement.15 This interest was certainly furthered in British Columbia during the 19203, with the popularization of theosophy and the generally increased exchange of ideas, as will be seen below. What remains clear is that Jock Macdonald was exploring the inner life, the depths of thought and sentiment.

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He said as much talking about his 1932 canvas In the White Forest. This work is a densely composed and thickly painted agglomeration of snow-covered pine trees. Rather anthropomorphic in both movement and shape, the trees seem to talk and sway to their own rhythm. When the director of the National Gallery of Canada, H.O. McCurry, asked Macdonald if he had any work suitable for an exhibition in Tokyo, Macdonald replied, suggesting this canvas: The subject, in its expression, concerns the inner (mental) interpretation of snow in the forest much more so than the outer visible impression. Such a viewpoint may suit the oriental atmosphere. I do know this canvas looks fine in a warm room light/157 Here surely Macdonald is agreeing with Emerson that the true artist is an interpreter of nature, a kind of Aeolian harp through which the winds of nature blow. The artist/ he wrote, 'must first of all study nature... [to] become aware of the hidden laws of Nature ... the laws which awaken in us the universal truth of all-relating harmony and the sense of unity, the laws which are found in every department of man's activity, an

JOCK MACDONALD In the White Forest

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expression of order, relation, union and unity/15 He senses the law of unity that inspires and guides all creative minds. In seeking the all-pervading truth through painting, he agrees with Emerson's view that an artist, divinely inspired before nature, structures his art to speak on both ideal and actual levels.159 Creativity here is Underbill's intuition, not Blake's imagination. The recognition of the actual, the real', is important. Thoreau insisted on the fusion of art and life: 'Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.'1 ° To be wild or natural in the good sense means to be true to what actually is. Great art, in this way, reflects reality, for Thoreau, like Emerson, believed that the ideal may also be reality. Art is therefore an arrestment and a fixation of reality.1 * Like all the other artists considered here, Macdonald felt that Canada's nature was special, that through an understanding of Canadian nature artists could reach spiritual knowledge faster and better. After a trip to the western United States in 1937, Macdonald explained that 'B.C. has that vapour quality which seems to me to be much more clairvoyant in its inspiration than blazing and relentless sunshine down south. I am more certain now that Canada is the land where artists can find the environment for true creative activity. I hope that I never have to go south in order to find the necessary means to keep my material body alive.'1 2 Though coming from Scotland, Macdonald was not immune to the prevalent Canadian land-based nationalism. However, like Emerson, he believed that nature is the catalyst through which man achieves union with God. When Graham Mclnnes's A Short History of Canadian Art, written from a nationalistic point of view, appeared in 1939, Macdonald acquired a copy and underlined nationalistic statements such as 'during the course of time every nation has produced an art reflecting its essential spirit.'1 3 Macdonald's nationalism was never as strident, never as determined, as Harris's. Rather it took the form of a belief in the spiritual awakening that he, like Harris and others, saw going on around him. After moving to Ontario in 1947, Macdonald wrote an article about the development of painting in the West. In the introduction to this article he reiterates his interest in spiritual values and his belief that these are most visible in creative people: 'There is an awareness that our nation, in order to express its spiritual values, must cultivate and develop beyond its material value the inner soul of its people. The fruits of this expression of culture are found in the creative energies of our artists, poets and musicians.'1 4 And, even more revealingly, in reviewing Blodwen Davies's book Tom Thomson, Macdonald wrote that Davies 'shows penetrating knowledge of the relationship of art to life. He [sic] sees Thomson ... as a part in the whole development of the striving of the race for spiritual

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freedom/1 5 Again, this coincides very closely with Emerson's view that a work of art 'is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature/166 In Pacific Ocean Experience, painted in Nootka, Macdonald distilled these senses, these laws. Here a small man rowing a very small boat is encircled by nature, by the forces of the sea. The viewer is immediately aware of Macdonald's sense of 'the hidden laws of nature/ 'the laws which awaken

JOCK MACDONALD Pacific Ocean Experience

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in us the universal truth of all-relating harmony and the sense of unity, the laws which are found in every department of man's activity, an expression of order, relation, union and unity/1 7 The canvas is so effective because it works on the viewer on many levels: the intellectual study of nature, the intuitive apprehension of solitary experience, the emotional thrust of opposites. Macdonald recognized these many layers. He is recorded as saying: 'I felt that the curve of a wave, the breaker on the beach and the foam on the sand wasn't all of the sea. The sea has solidity and transparency, cruelty and tenderness, joy and terror, cunning and friendship, all included in visual observation.'168 The most powerful aspect of Pacific Ocean Experience is its point of view. Macdonald gives us a bird's perspective. We are looking down from above, down to the diminutive man, and virtually through him, to the very womb of the world. From this godlike position, we see the cosmos, we understand its breadth and its unity, and we have a new concept of our position within it, a new sense of our identity, our self, our soul. This new understanding is what art should produce. Macdonald, in his lecture on nature, defined art, 'in its fullest expression,' as 'knowledge, made concrete, of the inner truths of nature, or creation - all being.'1 9 These ideas parallel Whitman's. Whitman, as will be remembered, aimed to improve and transform life, to identify and expose its miraculousness and to sing the transcendence of human love, which he saw as divine.170 More specifically, Whitman was interested not only in variety and freedom in nature, but also in the particular quality of identity of being that attends these attributes in nature. He wrote that 'the quality of Being, in the object's self, according to its own central ideal and purpose, and growing therefrom and thereto - is the lesson of Nature.'171 The anguish of being is most clearly adumbrated in Macdonald's Pilgrimage of 1937. Here, ordered trees bend to form an enclosed path, perhaps a natural sanctuary, down the centre of which march teeth-like forms. Shafts of light permeate the dense, oversized foliage; two canoes are pulled up, as if on shore. The image came to its disturbed artist in a dream. Macdonald, coincidentally, was struggling to find a job, to 'ek[e] out a near starvation existence' in depression-plagued Vancouver.172 The wonderful sense of depth, openness, and daring so prevalent in Pacific Ocean Experience is now replaced with a closed, restricted, and stylized interior dream world. Macdonald explained that this painting 'might not be conservative enough' for a national exhibition.173 As the title Pilgrimage would suggest, Macdonald saw this canvas as symbolizing a personal voyage, a trip undertaken by himself and, by implication, by invitation, the viewer, through an unrealistic land. Here, the immediacy of the experience is paramount. But it is a mystical journey for the self through the unreal world. Although the road-like track suggests movement through space and time, these spaces and times are unearthly,

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JOCK MACDONALD Pilgrimage

mysterious, other-worldy, and incomplete. As Whitman might, Macdonald conceived this work as a beginning rather than an end. Here, as in Pacific Ocean Experience, Macdonald asked the viewer to take up the artist's suggestion and carry on the exploration, the pilgrimage, to make it personal. This request gives to the act of painting and the act of viewing a sense of continuity. The moods in Pilgrimage and Pacific Ocean Experience are very different one from the other. In the latter canvas, the aerial perspective emphasizes the possibility of movement upward, not simply horizontally or vertically. While

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the small figure in the boat is contained on the two-dimensional plane, it has the possibility of release, of freedom, in the third dimension. Even this partial freedom is different from Whitman's buoyant and exuberant invitation to adventure in 'Song of the Open Road/ the first line of which is 'Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road/ Macdonald is even darker, more contained and constrained, in Pilgrimage. Now the traveller can only venture in one defined direction and the temper of the arrival as well as of the journey itself is far from uniformly positive. The road is not open. Its end is shrouded, disappearing at the vanishing point in such a way that forest and trees meet to prohibit, to eradicate, all forward movement. Macdonald's study of the way, as exemplified in these two canvases, is also more personal than Whitman's exploration. Unlike Whitman, Macdonald was willing to probe the dark side of his own nature. The indefiniteness of the end of the path travelled in these two paintings suggests not simply a realistic voyage, but, more important, a mystical voyage of the soul. These seminal canvases address the soul rather than the mind, a feature also common to Whitman, who declared in his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass that people expect a poet 'to indicate the path between reality and their souls/ Dissecting the characteristics of this new language of the soul that addresses the imagination, Whitman wrote in 1876: 'Poetry must possess a certain fluid, aerial character, akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or no imagination, but indispensable to the highest purposes/174 Macdonald's two canvases possess, to varying degrees, that certain fluid, aerial character and were certainly obscure to many. Yet honesty of expression still dominates. This honesty exposes another Whitman-like characteristic. Macdonald emphasized that art must evolve, that art must be a reflection of its time. This new art cannot help itself evolving/ he wrote. Tt is the art which is the conscious expression of our time. There is no possibility of returning to the art of the past/175 In this respect, then, art is to serve the people by illuminating the realities of the here and now, by exposing the underlying laws of being, of nature, and by speaking to the soul. In this respect, too, Macdonald was following Whitman's assertion of the validity of communion with nature, for the sake of both the individual and the collective soul. Like Whitman, he was concerned not only with art as communion but also as expression and prophecy. However, he never went as far as Harris did in this direction; he never pushed art as a major tool of salvation.

CHAPTER THREE

Theosophy and the Fourth Dimension

This 'Be-ness' is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other hand, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. Madame Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine

I

Mysticism, at the heart of most known religions, provides a very broad basis from which to choose a religion. Bertram Brooker looked at this problem in his 1930 article in The Canadian Forum. He concluded that the weaker mystic accepts the 'paraphernalia of explanation' or recognized religions, while the stronger mystic, such as Bucke or himself (by implication), attempts 'to work out his own explanation in terms more natural to his own type of mind, feeling that the oriental element in most religions (including Christianity), with their metaphorical elaborations, is foreign to the forthright directness and "realism" which is increasingly characteristc of modern western thought/1 Those who chose this more independent path, while remaining open to some oriental mystical experience, were often influenced by theosophy or theories of the fourth dimension or both. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York on 20 October 1875. Colonel Henry Steel Olcott was named president, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky secretary, and William Q. Judge counsel. Madame Blavatsky was the acknowledged power of the organization. Born in Russia, she studied occult knowledge in many foreign lands, allegedly including India. In 1874

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she came to the United States to defend the validity of spritualist phenomena, and here she met Olcott, who for many years had been interested in spiritualism. A lawyer and author, Olcott had written a series of articles concerning the materialization seances in Chittenden, Vermont. With this background, it is hardly surprising that the Theosophical Society was first composed of those primarily interested in spiritualism. Spiritualism is predicted on the twin beliefs that the human personality survives bodily death in some form and that it is possible to communicate with the surviving personality, usually through a medium. The original society had three objectives: 1 To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color 2 The study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies, and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance of such study; and 3 The investigation of the unexplained laws of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man.2 Gradually the early spiritualistic thrust of the society was modified. Between 1875 and 1879 Blavatsky began to attack spiritualism, and, after her return from India in 1879, introduced the idea of reincarnation. Only with the publication of her second theosophical treatise, The Secret Doctrine, in 1888, does fully developed theosophy appear. The society was also undergoing organizational growing pains. In 1879 Blavatsky and Olcott sailed for India via England. In the latter country they established a London Lodge; in the former, in Adyar, they established the permanent headquarters. The two leaders were particularly welcomed in India because, unlike most English, they made no distinction between race, creed, or colour, and they proclaimed a philosophy favouring Hinduism. In their periodical The Theosophist, founded the year of their arrival, they promoted their ideas and increased interest in the study of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy. Already theosophy was promoting nationalism, as it would later in Canada. While Blavatsky continued her efforts at doctrinal development, Olcott in India and Judge in the United States provided the organization for the society's expansion, which was rapid. By 1888 there were about two dozen lodges in the United States and an aggregate membership of about 460. By 1896 there were 103 U.S. branches, about a quarter of the total worldwide, and the membership stood at near six thousand.3 However, doctrinal disputes, exposure of fraudulent phenomena, and the death of Madame Blavatsky in 1891 ensured that the subsequent history of the society would be fractious. The first Canadian lodge, that of Toronto, was chartered in 1891. By 1920 there were eighteen more in Canada. Two years later the Canadian branch

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claimed 962 adherents.4 Henceforth the numbers declined.5 By 1922 there were three lodges in Toronto, the main one on College Street, a west-end lodge, and an Anne Besant lodge. These were patronized by prominent men and women, including Dr A.D. Watson, Flora MacDonald Denison and her son Merill Denison, as well as Dr Frederick Banting, Albert E. Smythe, Roy Mitchell, and Arthur Lismer. In 1920 the periodical The Canadian Theosophist started publication. In its first issue it outlined theosophical aims in simplified form, declaring that theosophy hoped to speak 'to all men ... who aim at fostering peace, gentleness, and unselfish regard one for another, and the acquisition of such knowledge of men and nature as shall tend to the elevation and advancement of the human race ... It joins hands with all the religions and religious bodies whose efforts are directed to the purification of men's thoughts and bettering of their ways, and it avows its harmony therewith.'7 This broad-minded attitude encouraged membership of a specific kind. Canadians interested in theosophy were usually also attracted to transcendentalism and a liberal Christianity open to mysticism. All these theories had certain elements incommon. In general, they postulated that there existed no boundary between the higher realm of spiritual truth and the lower one of material objects. Man, though physically tied to the material, had the potential to transcend his physical condition by using his soul and working through his intuition rather than strictly through rational understanding. God was no longer simply the originator of the universe, sitting in distant judgment over its inhabitants, but now existed in man and nature as well as extending above all creation. These theories then put new emphasis on intuition, equality, freedom, individualism, and nature. Contemporary creative Canadians interested in this type of thinking, including the five painters under discussion, typically exhibited philosophic interests that embraced both transcendentalism and theosophy, as well as some liberal Christianity. The Canadian Theosophist frequently quoted Walt Whitman, and, as already discussed, F.B. Housser, a theosophist and biographer of the Group of Seven, wrote an article on Whitman for the monthly paper in which he suggested that the poet was a predecessor of the movement. Roy Mitchell, Albert Edward Smythe, Albert D. Watson - all theosophists - were active Whitman exponents and participated in the Whitman Club in Bon Echo.9 The nature and extent of this type of thinking alarmed conventional Christians and, in 1921, provoked the appointment of a Canadian committee of thirty-seven bishops, the Lambeth Committee, to consider the detrimental effects of spiritualism, Christian Science, and theosophy in relation to Christianity.10 Despite such concerns, theosophy continued to attract adherents because of its appealing tenets.

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In Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled we see the outlines of theosophical belief. The work is a treatise on the ancient wisdom, a universal and ageless occult knowledge in which there was unity between science and religion.11 The book, inspired according to its author by Adepts, or Masters, claimed that our many faiths have all evolved from a single, primitive source, a source known to both Plato and the ancient Hindu sages. Every religion is based on one and the same truth, the secret doctrine.12 This ancient religion, this secret doctrine, is presented as the answer to religious strife of the present and predicted to be the religion of the future. With time Blavatsky believed that all sectarian religions would disappear; Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism would all vanish, to be replaced by the 'grand religion of the past/13 The book posits an emanationist view of the world. This is a hermetic theory of evolution - a circular movement out of the source then a return to that source. First there was an involution: the descent of a 'divine spark' into matter; then that spark slowly climbs back to be reunited with its source. Thus, there is a 'personal spiritual entity within the personal physical man/14 and the human race will return to 'that point of departure,... [and] be finally physically spiritualized/15 This theory suggests evolution originating from above rather than from below, the reverse of Darwin. Nevertheless, the emanationist cosmology does present a way around the difficult problem of evolution versus creation. This approach was typical for the ancient wisdom, his suggested, and united rather than separated religion and science. Luckily we can have access to this secret wisdom, for a secret occult brotherhood has conserved the wisdom throughout the ages. This ancient Kabala, the Gnosis, the traditional secret knowledge, has been held by secret fraternities of Adepts, who hold the key to the understanding of miracles, psychic phenomena, and life after death.16 In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky amplified her earlier arguments, modifying some according to her research in India. Here she explained that the Secret Doctrine was founded on three fundamental principles: 1 There is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. 2 The periodicity of the universe, its appearance and disappearance like a regular tide of flux and reflux. 3 The fundamental identify of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul through the cycle of Incarnation.17 Consistent with the idea of evolution and cycles, and like Hinduism, Blavatsky's view suggested that the earth will experience seven rounds, or states,

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of evolution. The first three take it through the process of materialization; in the fourth, during which humans appear, earth is crystallized; the last three stages are the gradual fading out of the physical, to return to the spiritual. In the fourth - the human - stage, there is equilibrium between spirit and matter.18 The emanationist view also presented a way to understand and experience fall and redemption. Fall was not seen as original sin, but only as an abuse of physical intelligence, the psychic, being guided by the animal, which has put out the light of the spiritual. In keeping with the cyclical nature of the universe, everything is seen as illusion, or Maya, because it is temporary.19 Falls are seen as phases of the 'descent into matter/ which involves the general outgoing of spirit into all matter, and the 'fall of angels/ The fall of man is not seen as a consequence of an act of mortal man, but rather as the 'Fall of Spirit into generation/ gods who incarnate into mankind.20 Evil is not the result of a negative thought, but rather is a consequence of thought itself. Blavatsky explained evil as 'thought per se: something which, being cognitive, and containing design and purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus find itself naturally in opposition to pure quiescence, as the natural state of absolute Spirituality and Perfection/21 The Secret Doctrine thus combined ideas from Asian religions with a cosmological framework which gave meaning to individual destiny. It gave significance to individual suffering and held out hope for personal salvation. In her last book, The Voice of the Silence, published in 1889, Blavatsky amplified her explanation of the process of individual spiritual development. Here she suggested the way in which the individual could grow from ignorance to wisdom. Ignorance is seen as the objective universe, 'the great illusion/22 Life limited to a perception of this world is ignorance, and the soul limited to this view is in the web of delusion. However, in each person there is something eternal and divine, the 'inner God' or 'higher self/23 Union with this divine self brings wisdom. The progress of the soul is symbolized as the passage through three halls. The first hall is that of ignorance, the soul's state before it recognizes that it must seek contact with its deeper self. The second hall is that of learning. Here the individual is aware of other dimensions but may be distracted by psychic powers. The third hall is that of wisdom, or union with the self, beyond which is the Vale of Bliss. In this last stage the pupil is becoming merged into the one, the Brahma or Atman. At this height of yogic concentration, 'thy Self is lost in SELF, thyself unto THYSELF, merged in THAT SELF from which thou first didst radiate/24 This means that personality, and individuality, must be stamped out. The self of matter and the SELF of spirit can never meet, one of them must be removed. 'Ere thy Soul's mind can understand, the bud of

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personality must be crushed out, the worm of sense destroyed past resurrection. f 2 5 And, in that often quoted admonition: 'the Mind is the great Slayer of the Real. Let the Disciple slay the Slayer/26. Again, Blavatsky gave instructions on methods of slaying the slayer. She counselled against the 'Doctrine of the Eye,' that which is visible and obvious, for that is for the crowd. Rather she pressed for the 'Doctrine of the Heart,' that which emanated from Buddha's deepest understanding, for that is for the elect. To distinguish between the two doctrines, the student must be able to separate 'Head-learning' from 'Soul Wisdom.' The former is useless. It is part of the world of delusion. Rather, one should 'soar beyond illusions, search the eternal and the changeless... Avert thy face from world deceptions; mistrust thy senses, they are false. But within thy body... seek the Impersonal for the "eternal man." /27 This search should be actively undertaken. Blavatsky does not counsel quietism. She recommends seven portals, or seven keys, to wisdom. These seven are charity, harmony in word and act, patience, indifference to pleasure and pain, dauntless energy, meditation, and wisdom.28 Neither Polonius nor Kipling would disagree. In The Voice of the Silence Blavatsky gives practical advice on how to harmonize a religious life and life in the world. She bases much of her theory on the Asian belief that life in this world is in some ultimate sense illusory. But she does suggest four practices: a self-denying activism; a recognition that life on this earth is not intrinsically worthwhile, but can be valued as a method through which salvation is sought; a subtle elitism, for only a few humans see the illusionistic nature of life here; and a life of personal sacrifice. Her method was a school in which no one fails. Everyone continues until he and she achieves success, though progress is at different rates. Success is the emancipation of the soul, the 'raising of the entire mass of conscious god-hood/29 which occurs by accumulating the wisdom gained during life, and reapplying that wisdom in a next life, a reincarnation. It is not the body that reincarnates, nor is it the astral body, or the animal passions, or the animal soul. All these four elements of the person die and disintegrate. The three higher elements, the 'upper imperishable triad' composed of spirit, soul, and mind, are the eternal part of the individual. These, the theosophists feel, are analogous to the Christian Trinity.30 This trinity, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, is the real core of the person and only uses the lower four elements as vehicles through which to work. Reimbodiment on earth occurs until the individual is able to overcome all the forces that tie a person to the earth. Atma, what Blavatsky called the 'Spiritual Ego' or the 'Higher Self/ is formed from the indissoluble union of Buddhi and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas.31 Atma does not progress; Atma does not belong to this plane. It is but 'the ray of light eternal which shines upon and through the darkness of matter/32 The body follows 'the whims, good or bad, of Manas; Manas tries to follow the

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light of Buddhi, but often fails/33 Manas is the 'intelligent medium between the upper Triad and the lower Quaternary/ Without Manas, Atma-Buddhi are irrational and cannot act.34 The other important element of the theosophical life of human destiny is karma, the law of cause and effect as applied to each individual moral life. All actions are believed to have consequences, either in this life or in succeeding ones. To Blavatsky karma is the law of retribution, working inexorably to bring 'absolute and unerring equality, wisdom, and intelligence.'^5 Karma, then, is an impersonal law that adjusts effect to cause on all planes, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. For Blavatsky reincarnation and karma mean that the present life and circumstances of an individual are the result of deeds and thoughts in past lives. Important for our understanding of the graphic influence of esoteric writing in general and theosophy in particular is the emphasis placed on geometric symbolism, especially triangles and circles. What is often called sacred geometry is inextricably linked with various mystical tenets. Many volumes on mysticism and the occult are illustrated with intricate diagrams and charts, some of which Tuchman reproduced in his lavish 1986 catalogue. In The Secret Doctrine eighteen consecutive pages are devoted to the esoteric meanings of the cross and the circle; squares and triangles are treated elsewhere with equally detailed attention.3 Of the triangle Blavatsky wrote: 'The triangle played a prominent part in the religious symbolism of every great nation; for everywhere it represented the three great principles - spirit, force and matter; of the active (male), passive (female), and the dual or correlative principle which partakes of both and binds the two together/37 In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky refers to the importance of the triangle on a number of occasions. She sees a square surmounted by a triangle as life linked with divine life: the square being the symbol of a person, the triangle his or her immortal soul. The triangle, then, represents Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the upper three human principles. But the triangle has further meaning. Blavatsky quotes a French writer, Ragon, to the effect that the equilateral triangle with its apex pointing down is the symbol of water, while the same triangle with its apex pointing up is the symbol of fire. The two triangles combined are the emblem of the Theosophical Society.38 C.W. Leadbeater, an important theosophical writer, was also fond of the triangle, using it prominently in his graphic explanation of involution and evolution. He, along with Annie Besant, also ascribed to that shape the meaning of an 'upward rush of devotion/ In Thought-Forms the two theosophists waxed ecstatic about this sharply pointed form, calling it 'a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact' and suggesting that the person who made this thought form 'is one who has taught himself how to think. The determination of the upward rush points to courage as well as conviction,

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while the sharpness of its outline shows the clarity of its creator's conception. •39 The circle was no less important. In the beginning of The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky spends some time explaining the symbols for human development. She starts with a plain circle, 'ever-eternal nature, sexless and infinte/ Not content to stay with this enigma, she calls the 'boundless circle' 'the First or "primeval" ancient,' the ' "Archetypal World" from whence proceed the "Creative, Formative, and the Material Worlds," ' 'the Word of Logos in union with VOICE and Spirit (the expression and source of Consciousness)/ ' "the visible infinite, visible by the naked eye[!! ]; the endless expanse beyond the Earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky." /4° In Thought-Forms Besant and Leadbeater titled an illustration of a plain circle in a solid, contrasting field as 'The Logos Pervading All.'41 Blavatsky explained that a circle with a point in the centre represents the reawakening of the universe. In a third diagram the point is transformed into a horizontal diameter, which symbolizes 'a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude.' When the horizontal line is crossed by a vertical one, it is the sign for the origin of human life to begin, what Blavatsky called pure Pantheism.42 These symbols, triangles pointing various ways, circles divided or whole, appeared with great regularity in Harris's abstractions, and, to a lesser extent, in the work of the other painters examined here. Another important concept is that of vibration or energy flow. In theosophical and other occult texts vibration is understood to be the formative agent behind all material shapes. Baudelaire, for example, used vibrational imagery and interpreted the world as being in constant motion: 'the more vigilant senses perceive more reverberating sensations' in which 'all sublime thought is accompanied by a nervous shaking/43 Blavatsky and her followers took from Buddhist cosmology the notion of vibration as a force that produced all the shapes in the visible and the invisible world. In theosophy the concept of vibration occupies a central place as a cosmic principle. Consciousness consists of the ability to recognize and respond to the vibrations of the universe. This idea is pushed further by Besant and Leadbeater. In writing Thought-Forms these two theosophists fused the concept of vibrations with Western scientific investigations and argued that higher matter - the results of thoughts and feelings, thought-forms - is structured by the vibration in a person's higher body just as physical matter is shaped by vibration. Kandinsky derived his theory of vibration directly from theosophy. He believed that human emotions consist of vibrations of the soul, and that the soul is set into vibration by nature. 'Words,' Kandinsky contended, 'musical tones, and colours possess the psychical power of calling forth soul vibrations ... they create identical vibrations, ultimately bringing about the attainment of knowledge.'44

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II That Emily Carr found theosophy worthy of study has already been noted. Before she rejected it in favour of her own, very individual Christianity, she read Ouspensky and Blavatsky, and probably others. Like most mystics, certainly those with transcendental interests, she related very strongly to theosophy's acceptance of nature and animals as a 'Spark of the divine Fire/ just as man was. These interests paralleled Carr's earlier feelings for Indian art. Nirvana, done fairly soon after her return from her first, momentous Toronto trip, explores a new sense of nature and of Indian art. In theosophical terms Nirvana is an eternal and unchangeable state arrived at only when the spirit breaks loose forever from all matter or form and mingles with the universal essence.45 The Christian theosophist C.W. Leadbeater has one of the clearest definitions of the seven theosophic planes of nature. The first five, starting with the lowest, are the physical, astral, mental, buddhic, and nirvanic. The nirvanic is the highest attainable by man. The two states of consciousness above this are so exalted that we know nothing of them except that they exist. Leadbeater explained: Nirvana has for ages been the term employed in the East to convey the idea of the highest conceivable spiritual attainment. To reach Nirvana was to pass beyond humanity, to gain a level of peace and bliss far above earthly comprehension. So absolutely was all that was earthly left behind by the aspirant who attained its transcendent glory, that some European orientalists fell at first into the mistake of supposing that it was an entire annihilation of the man an idea than which nothing could be more utterly the opposite of the truth. To gain the full use of the exalted consciousness of this exceedingly elevated spiritual condition is to reach the goal appointed for human evolution during this aeon or dispensation.46 That Carr felt there was a possibility of reaching Nirvana, this exceptional level of peace and bliss, is definite, though whether she used the term as Leadbeater did is unknown. In her painting Nirvana the foreground Indian poles are tightly enclosed by the frame, ensuring that the viewer is pulled in close to the venerable carving. However, as close as we can get physically, we can only go so far spiritually. This is due partly, Doris Shadbolt feels, to Carr's 'subjective experience of the Indian forms [which] called for density, weight, enclosure and opacity.'47 We see the poles in profile, so that they are forever looking away from us, forever gazing off into the beyond. Apart from the closeness of the poles to the picture plane, Carr's major change evident here involved a new integration of her subject with nature. Or, rather, her new subject was this integration, not Indian documentation. A comparison with

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EMILY CARR Nirvana

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EMILY CARR Tanoo

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the earlier, 1912 watercolour version, called Tanoo, underlines this fact, especially in the elimination of the foregound material. In Nirvana Carr achieved this integration through very uniform values, except for the beach in the middle ground, something Tobey criticized her for later,48 and through a very uniform brush stroke. Here, surely, Carr was really using soul wisdom rather than head learning, was seeking the eternal and the changeless, an approach The Sadhu reinforced strongly.

EMILY CARR Tree

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Soon Carr's search took her increasingly into the forest. Partly with Lawren Harris's encouragement, she started to drop the Indian themes to concentrate on nature.49 A fine set of canvases resulted, including Tree, Old Tree at Dusk, and Grey. These are certainly not portraits of individual trees. Rather they are devotions on trees - attempts to probe the essence of treeness,

EMILY CARR Old Tree at Dusk

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to understand the rhythms, the laws of geometry and design that permeate trees. In this attempt she was following theosophical teaching: every form of plant life is built rhythmically, with every detail placed according to fixed laws of geometry and design. This sense of a pervading, all-embracing rhythm really typifies Tree and

EMILY CARR Grey

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Grey. Now the surrounding growth reflects the motion of the central subject, so that the environment really provides a stage, a shell for the light-filled centre. Here too Carr was very near abstraction, although she was loath to admit it. In Grey, in fact, she even accepts the distance of a non-identifying title. A little later, she wrote to her friend Edith Hembroff, one of her later biographers: Lawren would like me to try working abstract, but it does not appeal to me yet. At least not to the extinguishing of other elements. I see the idea of his concentrating and reducing a thing to its 'essence/ as it were but, unless one can make that essence intelligible, it seems to me to come back too much to 'decoration/ tickling up and satisfying the eye without satisfying any bigger part of yourself or others; only stimulating their curiosity maybe. Oh! I don't know what the good of it all is anyhow - this painting! And yet, no one wants to give it up. It keeps gnawing and snagging and then sneaking off on you just as you're going to grab!50

Both canvases shine with an inner light and pulsate with rhythm. Carr's sketching method, as detailed in her journal, also reveals affinities with a more specifically theosophical doctrine. Blavatsky described 'Be-ness' as being symbolized by absolute abstract space and absolute abstract motion. Carr discusses this concept in her own language. Sketching in the big woods is wonderful. You go, find a space wide enough to sit in and clear enough so that the undergrowth is not drowning you. Then, being elderly, you spread your camp stool and sit and look around, 'don't see much here. Wait' ... Everything is waiting and still. Slowly things begin to move, to slip into their place. Groups and masses and lines tie themselves together. Colours you had not noticed come out, timidly or boldly. In and out, in and out your eye passes. Nothing is crowded; there is living space for all. Air moves between each leaf. Sunlight plays and dances. Nothing is still now. Life is sweeping through the spaces. Everything is alive. The air is alive. The silence is full of sound ... You must be still in order to hear and see.51

Here is esoteric vibration, resonance of nature and soul. Tree, Grey, and Above the Trees all exemplify Blavatsky's 'Be-ness/ abstract space and abstract motion, though in somewhat different ways. In a manner analogous to Cubism, Carr has broken the distinction between object and ground by integrating the object, in this case a tree, with its environment. This integration tends to pull the whole image closer to the picture plane, to dimmish traditional Euclidean depth. Unlike the Cubists, however, Carr did not achieve this effect through breaking the image down into facets. Rather she isolated a dominating rhythm, responding to vibration, and used that rhythm as the leitmotif for the whole work. In this way, in Tree, the sinuous

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roots lead the linear rhythm, which, in turn, is dominantly reflected in the low-slung branches. In Grey Carr uses the rhythm of the form, the triangular outline of the evergreen, which she repeats over and over in the surrounding trees, the surrounding shapes. This is 'bare subjectivity' of approach. Space is not deep penetration behind the picture plane. Rather, as in Malevich's repeated shapes, it is increasingly two-dimensional. Carr's space now is close to Blavatsky's absolute abstract space. In both paintings she has gone beyond the particular to generalize, to capture the eternal and the changeless she so sought. Carr returned to this issue, her definition of abstract space, in her journal. Here she rhetorically asked: What am I after - crush and exaltation? It is not a landscape and not sky but something outside and beyond the enclosed forms. I grasp for a thing and a place one cannot see with these eyes, only very very faintly with one's higher eyes ... It is a swinging rhythm of thought, swaying back and forth, leading up to , suggesting, waiting, urging the unordered statement to come forth and proclaim itself, voicing the notes from its very soul to be caught up and echoed by other souls, filling space and at the same time leaving space, shouting but silent. Oh, to be still enough to hear and see and know the glory of the sky and earth and sea.52 In Above the Trees she proved she could be still enough to capture something outside and beyond the enclosed forms. Now, as the title suggests, the point of view is aerial. In the bottom third of the canvas crinoline-like evergreens sway to the persuasive rhythm of some unheard band. This cyclical, repeated motion is taken up in the rest of the picture, a great expanse of luminous blue space. We have no guide as to the nature of this space. Is it sea? Is it sky? How vast is it? How blue? The questions have no real meaning, for here we have 'Be-ness' rather than being. Carr has been still enough to hear and see with her higher eyes the vibrations, the glory of the sky and the earth and the sea. Carr's interest in theosophy was not only promoted by Lawren and Bess Harris. Fred and Yvonne McKague Housser also had lasting interests therein and certainly made their views known. Another proponent of this theory was Katherine Dreier, the dynamic head of the Societe Anonyme, whom Carr met in New York in April 1930. Dreier had written Western Art and the New Era: An Introduction to Modern Art, a book exhibiting a considerable theosophical basis as well as a great debt to Kandinsky. On this her one and only trip to New York, Carr acquired a copy of Western Art and the New Era, annotated and underlined it heavily and discussed it with the author. Dreier emphasized the artist's quest to discover the innate spirituality in everything and the potential of art to develop the soul; she asserted that all art stems from

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EMILY CARR Above the Trees

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the 'great spiritual forces that continue to unfold and develop the spirit of man';53 she stressed the necessity to be true to one's inner nature while at the same time going beyond the merely personal. Carr marked passages such as The recognized function of art is to free the spirit and to invigorate and enlarge our vision.'54 She noted Dreier's emphasis on feeling, the necessity of developing the senses, and her contention that the primary purpose of art was to elevate the human spirit.55 She also did not miss Dreier's great interest in Kandinsky, in both his ideas and his paintings.56 These interests notwithstanding, Carr was never fully persuaded of the efficacy of theosophy for her. Repeatedly she railed at its ethereal nature, convinced that she herself needed a 'thicker juice of life/ Repeatedly she bucked the 'vague wearinesses' she noticed in Harris's theosophy, cognizant of her own desire for more substantive terrestrial fare.57 Yet she took from theosophy a new understanding of abstract space and abstract motion and made these central principles in her subsequent painting. Ill

For Lawren Harris the situation was quite different. Theosophy became for him a guiding principle, the way for him to get in touch with himself and with creativity. An intellectual who spent years reading and thinking, Harris promoted a theosophy that followed the broad outlines set out by Blavatsky and company, but modified or interpreted it to suit his own personality and circumstances. When Emily Carr wrote to him, in early 1934, announcing that she was rejecting theosophy in favour of Christianity, Harris replied in a wonderful, tolerant, and expansive letter, defining for Carr his own understanding of theosophy. Harris started by talking about religion, for that was Carr's concern. Right away he linked theosophy to Christianity: 'Christianity for the first three centuries was pure Theosophy/ a belief paralleled by the Christian Scientists, who felt that the corruption of Christianity only occurred during the fourth century. Harris then continued, explaining his beliefs and admitting his lack of knowledge: 'For me, I know Theosophy is both creative and re-creative, and lies behind every belief, every religion in the world - at its source, not at its decline, its disintegration. But so far, I know very little of the real internals of Theosophy. It is not a sect as is Christian Science, unity or new thought, or in the same sense. For it advocates the study of all religions, philosophies and science. It is the synthesis of all of these - that is what makes it difficult/5 Like Varley, Harris chafed at the idea of restrictions, especially intellectual ones. He was more pleased with the syncretic nature of theosophy, the reason so many contemporary intellectuals, including Brooker, delighted in it.

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Harris was also interested in personal betterment, in the nature of salvation, and recognized that Carr was too. This is how he explained the difference between Christian salvation and theosophical development in the same letter: Also - we are gods - potentially. 'Know ye not that ye are gods/ The kingdom of God is within you/ The essential difference is this - it seems to me. Religions enhance or bring solace to the personal life - good. Theosophy does neither, in its deepest sense, beyond the comfort or reincarnation - many lives and a continuous life thru' them of development to godhood. It contributes little to the personal life directly - for the personal, as such, is temporary, must eventually be transcended - the soul must be lost to find it - or the personal lost to find the soul. Therein lies its severity - its seeming coldness.59

Harris seemed to thrive on the combination of severity and breadth. To a theosophical audience, in his article Theosophy and Art/ Harris stated that there is 'a divine being within each one of us ... to be disclosed over the ages by self-devised creative effort and experience/ ° Personal betterment required individual effort. The movement of the soul is towards a more encompassing, more universal vision of life. For Harris This movement or momentum occurs in the life of every creative individual. If not thwarted, he also ascends to the peak of his expessive, communicative vision and participates in the enduring motion of universal life and order and leaves works of art that do not describe that order but embody it as an immediate self-contained experience. That ascent toward fullness of life, wherein a people or an individual participates in the life of universal order and finds release in a greater and more inclusive consciousness, is something that cannot be contrived because the motivating creative urge lies deeper than intellect or reason; it is an inner unfolding.61

Creativity, for Harris, is a long struggle towards unity. Like Underbill, he emphasized sensation over thought; like Blake he sought to dissolve the barrier between inside and outside. A few years after his correspondence with Carr on theosophy, Harris discussed his views with another artist, Yvonne McKauge Housser. 2 In 1934 Bess Housser had divorced her husband and Group of Seven biographer Fred Housser and married Lawren Harris. That same year Yvonne McKague and Fred Housser were married. This liaison was to be short-lived, for Fred Housser, a committed theosophist, died in late 1936. During Fred Housser's

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last illness, and after his death, Lawren and Yvonne carried on a considerable correspondence, one that dealt in part with Christian Science and theosophy. This correspondence, like that with Carr, is very revealing of Harris's views. Here we can see another side of his beliefs, however, for now he was not trying to teach theosophy, as he did with Carr, but rather to discuss and clarify his beliefs with a sympathizer. Harris clearly favoured theosophy over Christian Science. To Yvonne Housser he remarked that somewhere Blavatsky observed that seven-eighths of the suffering of a physical body is from dwelling too much in thought on the suffering. Change the thought, 'learn to ignore the lesser for the greater - and so lose the lesser consciousness & the illness/ Blavatsky also counselled calling a doctor if the body requires one. 63 In another letter Harris returned to the question of health, thought, Christian Science, and theosophy. 'Yes I believe/ he wrote, 'that physical health is an effect of thought but of right emotion just as much as right thought - and I am not at all convinced that Christian Science has the answer to that ... To me the philosophical basis is finer - of Theosophy than it is of C.S. - much broader and more embracing - it answers my inner questions with a more satisfying sweep and grandeur that thrills something inside me'64 Much as Harris championed the dour life of hard, intellectual work, he was very much in touch with his other half, his emotional side. He relished the sweep and grandeur and thrills of theosophy. On another occasion he wrote to Yvonne: Theosophy is no soporific like an ordinary religion - it excites all sorts of things, unknown and untoward things, in the individual and one then finds that one has a merry combat to recapture ones [sic] balance - ones [sic] justness to the universe - ones [sic] inner relation to all that is.65 Lawren Harris and Yvonne Housser also discussed the institutional side of theosophy, the Theosophical Society. Harris's letters again exhibit his candour as well as his firm belief in the foundations of this 'ageless wisdom/ Without dissimulating, Harris admitted that 'the whole history of the T.S. is outwardly a mess and certainly can be depressing to think about/ But, he continued, the organizational mess should not mask the verity of the philosophy: H.P.B. [Blavatsky] had a different task in a different age and with a different race - than did Buddha. She did all she did, wrote what she wrote under guidance. So far as we known only she (or he) and Judge were in contant and direct contact with the Great Ones and only their works are truly dependable. Their Life was in one sense their own - their work, the work of the Lodge. The West needed first an all comprehensive philosophy - a synthesis of religion, science, and philosophy - The East had always had it.66

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Harris's correspondence with Emily Carr and Yvonne Housser is important because it demonstrates conclusively that he was thoroughly imbued with theosophy.67 That Harris reflected this teaching in his paintings is also to be expected. Just how he did that is harder to apprehend. Having already noted Harris's representational works, I will turn to his abstractions, recognizing that in his representational pieces he also exposed and conveyed his theosophical beliefs. Harris's adoption of abstraction was slow and cautious. After a 1930 trip to Europe, a trip he described as one that 'define[d] things/ isolated the difference between European and North American art, he wrote to Emily Carr: I cannot yet feel that abstract painting has greater possibilities of depth and meaning than art based on nature and natural forms. As you say it so frequently becomes arid - but, of course, it need not. I have seen almost no abstract things that have deep resonance that stirs and answers and satisfies the soul, however. But that does not say that some painter may not produce them tomorrow or the next day ... To you and me and many others the representational, as representation means nothing - the spirit everything - but we cannot get the spirit without the use of representation in some degree or altogether (it does not matter which) so we use the representational in our own place, here - and we come to love the representational because it provides a home for the spirit - and we sensed the spirit first and always through the life and forms of nature.68 As usual Harris employed a spiritual, emotive response as his critical scale; as usual he qualified his response, leaving room for modification; as usual he emphasized the primacy of nature in the particular, Canadian, context. While Harris was musing on abstraction, he had virtually stopped painting. That he was anxious about this creeps into his letters to Carr. In the spring of 1932 he acknowledged 'a new life stirring within me - something pristine and clear-eyed — but I have been dull for so long that I almost fear it will come and go and leave no trace of its meaning.' 9 Later that year, he acknowledged: T looked my stuff over the other day and everywhere found it wanting, sadly lacking. At other times though, I do see something in it, but that something never realized in its fullness, never properly or sufficiently made objective just hints within the poverty of expression. I am not painting. I am at a cross roads where the entire problems of a life time meet. I do see the way/70 To counteract his poverty of expression, Harris realized he would have to redouble his efforts; he would have to find a clearer, sharper focus; he would have to identify objectively - all specific theosophical aspirations, though not exclusively so.

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His 1934 move away from Toronto to New Hampshire freed him, as Sandra Shaul has noted, from both his personal problems and his nationalistic crusade, although the latter was certainly well on the wane by then/1 At the same time, Harris found the New Hampshire landscape familiar and sympathetic. To the Houssers he wrote that Hanover 'is in the Boreal zone. I don't know how it got there, but it's colder and more northern in feeling than all of Southern Ontario/72 These feelings of coolness and northernness came to the fore in a canvas, Winter Comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone. Here a stylized snow-covered pine tree is laid on top of an island form, which, in turn, is put on top of a mountain form. The whole is surrounded by a frame of vibratory cloud-like shapes. This layering of images is reminiscent of the mountain range depicted in Besant and Leadbeater's Thought-Forms. Plate W, representing the music of Richard Wagner, is like 'the successively retreating ramparts of a mountain/73 Harris's work is retrospective in nature, a compilation of Algonquin trees, Lake Superior islands, Arctic mountains, and Lake Superior clouds. From this odd historical telescoping, Harris finally made his leap into abstraction. After considerable study of modern art in New York City,74 he produced Resolution. Not his first totally non-representational piece, Resolution is an early,

LA WREN s. HARRIS Winter Comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone

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A. BESANT and c.w. LEADBEATER Wagner (Thought-Forms, plate W)

accomplished example of his new direction. Given Harris's fondness for triangles, and his work with mountain-like forms over the last decade, it is hardly surprising that Resolution includes a prominent set of triangles. The triangle shape suggests a mountain, a motif from nature. After Harris returned to Canada in 1940, he wrote up his view on the various kinds of abstract painting. In his 1947 notebook he explained that there were three

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main kinds. In the first, artists 'take a motive from nature and convert it into an expressive organization which may be far removed from the actual scene. It may emphasize the drama, the spirit of the subject or not, depending upon whether the subject suggests this or suggests an aesthetic essay in fine and moving relationships/75 Harris appears ambivalent about the nature of creativity. In this definition he seems to be favouring Blake's imagination; on other occasions he definitely champions Underbill's intuition. Whether Harris was after the spirit of the subject or a more formal goal in Resolution is difficult to say. At this point of departure it is surely even possible that he did not clearly separate one from the other.

LAWREN S. HARRIS Resolution

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Theosophy gave.Harris plenty of examples of the use of geometrical symbols for emotive and intellectual motifs. The triangle was a favoured one. As well, in Thought-Forms, Besant and Leadbeater contended that the 'sharpness of outline shows the clarity of its creator's conception/7 It is noteworthy that Harris favoured sharpness of outline in much of his work, with the notable exception of his last canvases. This combination of grand emotion and clear thought is one that Lawren Harris certainly sought. He may also have followed the example of Wassily Kandinsky in his preponderant use of the triangle. Greatly influenced by theosophy himself, Kandinsky wrote in Concerning the Spiritual in Art that 'the life of the spirit may be graphically represented as a large acute-angled triangle, divided horizontally into unequal parts, with the narrowest segment uppermost ... The whole triangle moves slowly, almost invisibly forward and upward/77 Kandinsky may have helped Harris in another way: by pointing out a justification for line and colour as expressions of the inner core behind the visible appearances. In his 1926 book On Point and Line to Plane, Kandinsky declared that it cannot be doubted that every phenomenon of every world can be translated into line and colour as expressions of the 'inner essence' of the phenomenon in question. Only abstract art permeates through the outer shell of nature, the deceptive, visible shell, to reveal the universal law. Kandinsky thus propounds a very important justification for non-objective art.7 As Sexton Ringbom has documented, Kandinsky was influenced here by Goethe, a poet Harris surely read.79 In one of his most famous maxims, Goethe had declared that the beautiful is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would otherwise have remained forever hidden.80 Kandinsky's idea of the special ability of artists, who work with laws common to both nature and art, to expose such laws is hardly novel, as has already been seen. It was important in nineteenth-century romanticism. In music Novalis had made this claim, but it was Goethe who elevated the principle to apply it to all the arts. This concept of the unity of the laws otart and nature was particularly emphasized by a number of theosophists, especially Rudolph Steiner, a German Goethe scholar and educator read by Kandinsky and probably Harris. * Steiner provided Kandinsky with further justification for abstract art, for its inner faithfulness to nature, by investing Goethe's 'secret laws of nature' with colours and forms based on theosophical thought-forms. Kandinsky then pursued this practice of theosophical-based imagery. In On Point and Line to Plane he attempted to show the correspondences between artistic and natural creation apprehended intuitively. 2 Cognizant of Kandinsky's writings, Lawren Harris was certainly developing his thinking along similar lines, as we have seen when discussing his interest in Whitman. In 1933 Harris gave a talk to an international theosophi-

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cal convention at Niagara Falls. This talk was reprinted in two sections in The Canadian Theosophist. In the first section Harris proposed that until such time as we become perfected in beauty, the arts will be for us, of the highest, practical importance, in that they mirror for us, in some degree, the essential order, the dynamic harmony, the ultimate beauty, that we are all in search of, whether consciously or not ... This, so far as I know, is the real experience embodied, or contained in all true works of art whatever, be it sculpture, poetry, music, drama, architecture or painting. Their power is the transforming power of beauty, of the experience of unity of being.83

These ideas were very close to those of Claude Bragdon, the translator of Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, the book Harris had reviewed in 1924. In Architecture and Democracy Bragdon urged his reader to 'study Nature' to discover 'the laws which underline and determine form and structure, such as the tracing of the spiral line ... Such laws of nature are equally laws of art, for art is nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness/ 4 Here again we are working with the concept of the divinity of all nature, including man. This viewpoint suited Harris, for his interest in the essential order and unity of being was of central importance in his personal philosophy. These ideas were developed further in Harris's concepts of abstract art. Like Kandinsky, he would justify abstract art, or some abstract art, because of its exposure of the underlying laws of nature. Harris defined his third kind of abstract painting as simply a fine organization of lines, colours, forms and spaces, independent of anything seen in nature and independent of any specific idea or message. In the best paintings of the late Dutch artist Mondrian, for instance, there are severe, exact and beautiful proportions carried to the last degree of simplicity and perfection. These and others of their kind may seem arid at first, but on attentive acquaintance they can move one into a rewarding satisfaction. For we should note that a work of art of noble proportions and nothing more can instill that sense in the onlooker. Indeed, if political minds were on the level of the best in art, politics and government would be just and noble for faultless and noble proportions in art parallels justice in life and can engenderit.85

On another occasion, in a paper entitled 'Science and Art/ Harris suggested that he was not talking about a parallel law but the same law. The law of equilibrium or justice... is thegoverning, informing, unifying power inherent

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in all life and inherent in all art, and it is strictly impersonal in life and in art.' Having accepted the unity of creativity and art's special power to isolate the hidden laws of nature intuitively, Harris was able to turn from nature to abstraction, to spend considerable time and great energy in searching for faultless and noble proportions in painting. This search consumed him for a good many years. It is interesting to note Emily Carr's reactions to Harris's early abstractions. She did not see his U.S. work until 1941, after he had returned to Canada. Remembering her own ambivalent and eventually hostile attitude towards both theosophy and abstraction for her personal use, one might have expected her to reject Harris's recent non-representational paintings. A February 1941 letter to her Vancouver friend Nan Cheney points to that attitude, especially concerning theosophy. Carr wrote: 'I'd like to see his [Harris's] new work, hope [sic] she [Bess] has not influenced him there because Besses [sic] own work is not (or wasnt [sic] when I saw it) much, too [sic] much 'sluch' & too Theosophy/ 7 But when Emily finally did see Harris's abstractions, she was entranced. To Nan she explained, in September 1941: 'I went through all his abstracts again a real joy & treat I love them/ It is possible that Resolution and Mountain Experience were among the works Carr admired. In Mountain Experience (colour plate 6) Harris is working a format very similar in its basic construction to Resolution. Both canvases are dominated by a central triangle, which is approached by a pointed shaft, a light-like, curving energy. Preliminary sketches for Mountain Experience clearly show that Harris was working with his first kind of abstraction, which takes a motif from nature and converts it into an expressive organization. In one sketch, 9 the forms at the base of the mountain triangle are clearly rocks or hills; in the final canvas these forms have become abstracted organic shapes, relating geometrically and aesthetically to the central triangle. Another important change has taken place in the progression between Resolution and Mountain Experience. In the latter work the wave-like emanations that hugged the right framing edge of Resolution have moved inward to attach themselves to the central image, the shafts of light. The image is becoming more concentrated and more central.90 This same focusing is evident in Abstract No. 7, painted in about 1939. Again, a sketch91 suggests an inspiration from nature, from mountains. Once more, in the final canvas, these natural elements have vanished and the image has been pared down to float in the frame rather than relate to framing edge. The cloud-like emanations apparent in the sketch have been brought in to encircle the major triangular shapes, perhaps depicting a theosophical upward rush of devotion. The concentric circular planes can be read similarly. The compositional breaking-away from the edges to centre the image affects our understanding of space. With a definite horizon eliminated, the propensity

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LA WREN s. HARRIS Abstract No. 7

to seek three dimensions through pespective is greatly reduced. Harris emphasized this two-dimensionality by favouring flat areas of colour, and by working space through overlapping, transluscent areas of colour. In spatial terms he has created both fullness and void, an achievement close to theosophy's principles. In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky explained that 'Space is ... a "limitless void" ... [and] a "conditioned fullness" ... being, on the plane of absolute abstraction, the ever-incognisable Deity,... and on that of mayavic perception, ... the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested: it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL/92 In the late i93o's Harris found a method of working space that seemed to encompass both the limitless void and the conditioned fullness. This was the spatial concept of Dynamic Symmetry, to which Harris was introduced by Emil Bisttram, a painter whom he and his wife Bess had met in Santa Fe,

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New Mexico. The Harrises had moved to this artist-infested city in March 1938, and soon became involved in an active circle of painters who shared interests in Kandinsky and esoteric concepts.93 Bess Harris started studying Dynamic Symmetry with Bisttram in Taos, a city 75 miles away.94 She found it fascinating, 'a gorgeous kindling of the inner life in terms of graphic composition/ She wrote to her good friend Doris Mills, trying to explain the process: 'It is a simple approach to dynamic symmetry - the recognition of certain "dynamic" areas, the use of a trellis or line skeleton for each area the choice of elements to be used, - the idea to be expressed - and then the placing of these elements on the trellis in a manner to express the idea. Not very clear? - Like theorys [sic] of music I expect one has to work with them before they become living.'95 Bisttram took his concepts of dynamic symmetry from the Canadianborn Jay Hambidge. After measuring a great many Greek vases, Hambidge concluded that he had rediscovered the techncial methods of the Greek designers of the classic age. Dynamic Symmetry is the study of area - the mathematical study of interior spaces and their relationships, based on various possible configurations of the square and its diagonal. Working with the golden-section rectangle, Hambidge discovered what he called the 'whirling square rectangle,' a spiral curve that is identical with the whirled arrangement of some plants.9 It is important to recognize that this canon of structural form differed from all other theories of proportion—and there were many - in that it involved a dynamic interaction of space rather than a modular unit of length. Soon a considerable number of Canadian and American painters were interested in Hambidge's theories, believing, like Bisttram, that they were reflecting a universal principle of perfect structure.97 That this mathematical theory of structure sounds much like theosophy is not surprising. Both sought perfect unity; both were predicated on scientific study; both placed primacy on space, not line. And Dynamic Symmetry appealed to many of those who veered towards theosophy, including the Bisttrams. In 1939 Yvonne Housser had visited the Harrises in New Mexico and became acquainted with the Bisttrams. Subsequently Yvonne Housser and Mayrion Bisttram corresponded. In January 1940 Mayrion Bisttram wrote Yvonne Housser a long letter detailing the history of their family's esoteric study: 'It is faith with knowledge that we seek and that is difficult to acquire. The faith of Catholicism is the blind faith that requires leadership and guidance, the faith of the theosophist is something born of the first realization of "I am" and "I know...." That is why he travels a lonely road, with no priest to show him how, no ritual to inspire him. It is a lonely search, this search for truth but it is one filled with the eternal wonder at the mystery of life.'98 Certainly the theosophical emphasis on space jibes thoroughly with that of Dynamic Symmetry. So do the forms in art.

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In Harris's development, timing is of considerable importance. After all, Dynamic Symmetry was known in Canadian artistic circles the decade before, in the 19205 - C. W. Jeffreys lectured on the topic and Franz Johnston practised it in the mid-i92os" - yet Harris's work shows little such influence until he got to Sante Fe. In fact, as late as April 1937, Harris seemed to drawback from anything suggesting such a precise and even formulaic approach. In a letter to Emily Carr, talking about his abstract painting, he lauded the 'informing spirit of great Nature' as a way 'to escape the mechanical.'100 As Doug Worts suggests, Harris's new acceptance of Dynamic Symmetry probably had something to do with how Bisttram taught and used this theory.101 Unlike Hambidge, Bisttram used the principles freely, not slavishly. He explained of Dynamic Symmetry: 'I do not consider it a formula that ties me down to specific limitations, i.e. root rectangles; nor do I consider it mechanical or inhibiting. I find it releases the imaginative powers, liberating the creative forces towards a final unquestionable order. It is possible to arrive at similar space-problem solutions through taste and/or intuition, but these are accidental in most instances, and if constant and controlled, they become an attribute of genius.'102 The Harrises certainly thought enough of Bisttram's work to acquire two of his drawings, pieces still in the family collection.103 Returning to Lawren Harris's canvases, we can clearly see the influence of Dynamic Symmetry in preparatory sketches for Abstraction, of about 1939.104 As Dennis Reid has pointed out, three pencil sketches show the development of his ideas, and demonstrate the trellis approach to composition.105 In the final canvas Harris furthered the concept by pulling the two pairs of triangles in the upper section out of symmetry, so that they were not longer parallel around the central axis. This composition too fits very cogently with Hambidge's ideas for, in a 1921 manuscript, he describes his law of harmony as 'a certain asymmetrical harmony of arrangement, the satisfying balance of things that are placed with apparent irregularity yet seem inevitably right.'1 Nor is Abstraction the only canvas in which the influence of Dynamic Symmetry is apparent.107 Perhaps Dynamic Symmetry as taught by Emil Bisttram also encouraged Harris to expand his use of circles and curved shapes.10 Not that Harris had totally ignored circles hitherto. They were, after all, of considerable importance to theosophists109 and interested Kandinsky too. But, until painting Abstract No. 7, Harris had usually employed them singly and volumetrically. Now multiple circles appeared in his canvases. In Abstraction three circles hold down the central image in a manner reminiscent of the hermetic scheme of the universe.no These circles are further divided internally, as done by Blavatsky and by Hambidge in his book Dynamic Symmetry. Although one might not expect Hambidge to use circles, he did so, both pictorially and

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LAWREN s. HARRIS Abstraction

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LA WREN s. HARRIS Three Studies, Involvement 2

theoretically, on two occasions. Using a lengthy mathematical process, he diagrammed and discussed concentric circles made up of 'whirling square rectangles/111 These concentric circles closely resemble those that Harris used. It can be seen, then, that the formal and spatial organization that Harris discovered in Dynamic Symmetry meshed with theosophical principles. Similar ideas also appear in the paintings of Jock Macdonald, who was also interested in circles. Harris's ideas meshed with Kandinsky's theories and practices as well. For Kandinsky the triangle and the circle constituted the 'primary pair of contrasting planes/ as can certainly be ascertained by examining a range of his painting in the 1920S.112 It is known that Harris was very familiar with some of these works. In 1926 he travelled to New York and examined the International Exhibition of Modern Art, organized by Katherine Dreier, president of the Societe Anonyme, and held at the Brooklyn Museum. Harris managed to persuade the trustees of the Art Gallery of Toronto to exhibit a modified version of the exhibition in 192/.113 It included three works by Kandinsky, Whimsical Line, Rote Tiefe, and Gaiety, the last of which was illustrated in the catalogue. Harris was thoroughly familiar with these pieces, because he conducted numerous tours of the exhibition and wrote about it for The Canadian Forum.*14 The Kandinsky canvases in this show were rife with theosophical sym-

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bols."5 As we recall, theosophists believed that aspiration, both devotional and intellectual, was depicted as a pointed form, while thought on the Logos took a circular form. Upward aspiration was diagrammatically represented by a triangle or triangular column rising through various horizontal levels."6 Kandinsky's famous 1931 statement summed up his feelings about the impact of the circle and the triangle. The contrast of an acute angle of a triangle with a circle has no less effect than the contact of the finger of God with the finger of Adam in Michelangelo/117 With considerable help from Blavatsky, Kandinsky, and Bisttram, by the late 1930'$ Harris was finally beginning to find the formal and spatial tools with which to express his intuitive and intellectual beliefs in paint. IV

During the 19305 Fred Varley's search was along similar lines. The results, however, were very different. Like Harris, he sought both an intellectual and an intuitive basis for his vision; and he recognized that one of his tools was the manipulation of space. Both artists understood the power of creation and knew they had to struggle before its relentless demands. Varley wrote to his sisters about the awe of creation, what he called 'the Power':

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I tell my students the workshop is sacred as a church. Their paper is no longer paper, but space; they have power to call out of space moving forms that lose & find themselves, eliciting the imagination of the onlooker & leading him inevitably to that unknown motif which is the spiritual longing awakened in him through analysis & contemplation. You see, no work of art exists without the fusion of mind with medium. Medium itself must have its spirit released through the artist's conquest over it, before it can speak freely, & then you know no work of art is complete. The artist's job is to break fetters & release spirit, to tear to pieces & recreate so forcefully that, as I stated, the imagination of the onlooker is awakened and completes within himself the work of art" 8 Through analysis and contemplation Varley strove to release sufficient spirit to speak to the viewer, to titillate the imagination. He found encouragement for these aims in Vancouver. In July 1926 Varley suddenly accepted a position at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts, an institution that had opened the year before under the direction of Charles H. Scott.119 Soon Jock Macdonald, also a teacher at the school, John Vanderpant, and Harry Tauber joined Varley in his exploration of the mysteries of local nature. It was not a smooth adventure for any of these emboldened men. As Varley commented later, they found Vancouver to be 'crude & ignorant of anything of the aesthetic - lacking a cultural background.'120 Setting out to address this lacuna, Varley determined to make Vancouver into 'a throbbing centre for the Occident & Orient/121 These interests were given more rein when, in the fall of 1933, Varley opened a new art school, the British Columbia College of Arts. Now he 'revealed the vision of an international movement, drawing together from the east & west powerful forces of the art world, welding them together on the B.C. Coast - fusing Occident with Orient into one vast activity/122 This fascination with the Orient was hardly new, for, as noted, Varley was reading that popular book The Light of Asia as early as 1902. What is new is Varley's integration of Oriental philosophies and aesthetics into his painting. In February 1928 he acknowledged this new direction in his work to Eric Brown, the director of the National Gallery of Canada: Tve just been studying an early Chinese painting & find in it more of the spirit of British Columbia than any painting I have seen. I feel on the edge of discovering a new field of expression. Sometimes I'm almost there but the blamed [sic] thing eludes me/123 Varley's range of Oriental interests was, as usual for him, eclectic and hard to identify precisely. One student of his, Fred Ames, recalled that Varley introduced his students to the gamut of Japanese woodcuts, Hindu mysticism, Russian priests, Chinese horses, Persian manuscripts, Matisse, and back to Japanese prints.124 Another acquaintance, Harry Adaskin, remarked that Vera Weatherbie, a student of Varley's and later a

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sitter for him, introduced Varley to vibrations or auras. According to Adaskin, 'Vera, who was involved in mystical speculation, taught Varely about auras: vibrations which surround all people revealing the true state of their emotions and spirit. These vibrations were depicted as colour by those spiritually ready to receive them/125 It is known, too, that as early as 1918, Varley read the work of the Indian Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright, novelist, and painter Rabindranath Tagore, an author also studied by Lawren Harris and Bertram Brooker.12 Tagore visited Vancouver in 1929, an event the students of the class of 1929 recalled with spacial emphasis.127 As a Hindu, Tagore propounded beliefs that usually meshed well with theosophy. In fact, it is possible to analyse Varley's work in terms of the specifics of Tagore's philosophy. Red Rock and Snow, The Cloud, Red Mountain, and Mimulus, Mist and Snow were three paintings Varley completed in time for the February 1928

FREDERICK H. VARLEY Red Rock and Snow

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FREDERICK H. VARLEY Mimulus, Mist and Snow

Group of Seven exhibition. In the first canvas, a work that brings to mind Macdonald's The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, Varley has drawn attention to the great power of nature. He concentrated on the rhythmic sweep of the snowfield around the thrusting mountain, and on the dark tusk itself, a shape made all the more poignant by its placement. The bold tusk seems too powerful to be contained within the frame, pressing above the upper edge. Here, with Tagore, we can sense Varley's interest in 'the principle of rhythm which transforms intert materials into living creatures/ The ultimate purpose of art, Tagore believed, was 'to evolve a harmonious wholeness which finds its passage through our eyesight into imagination/12 a sentiment we have already seen Varley sharing in so far as he felt his work incomplete without the response of the viewer. The sense of unity through rhythmic rapport or vibration is an important concept for all the five painters under discussion. Varley remembered

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Aristotle's quote 'God revolves perpetually/129 Certainly for Hindus unity through rhythm was an indestructible eternal principle, the 'transmigrating life-monad' infusing all forms of existence to unite them subtly to one another in an unending flow of phenomena. This mystical perception of unity linked humans, animals, birds, trees, flowers, and even demons and other divinities in a sustained rhythmic rapport.130 Tagore certainly lauds such unity and theosophists assiduously sought it. Mimulus, Mist and Snow works the same general subject-matter from a very different point of view. Now, rather than taking a relatively conventional perspective, with the viewer looking down to the foreground, or up to the moutain tusk, Varley has positioned himself right on, or even in, the lush foreground flowers, the mimulus. Through the wild abandon of yellow, red, and green mountain flowers we see an exotic, highly coloured, decorative middle ground, painted, as Chris Varley remarks, in a manner reminiscent of Russian folk art popularized by Nicholas Roerich.131 Beyond this flattened surface, at some misty, indeterminable distance, rises the tusk. The whole experimental work - surely more discordant in final effect than was intended - is a paean to God. Tagore called God the great Artist who revealed Himself, his personality, to us through His creations. The human artist, in turn, responds to the call of the Suprene Artist through his own work of art. 'In Art/ Tagore suggests, 'the person in us is sending its answers to the Surpreme Person, who reveals Himself to us in a world of endless beauty across the lightless world of facts/132 This same sense of awe and wonder at the world is present in The Cloud, Red Mountain (already reproduced on p. 80), although, here again, Varley has changed his point of view. Now he has taken an imperial stance, atop a red mountain gazing off into limitless space. If this space stretches forever back, however, it is contained at the top by an unexpectedly shaped pair of backlit clouds. Thus, the space is sandwiched between the upper clouds and the lower mountain, framing it, containing it. Surrounded by the vastness of nature, the limitless void of possibility opens. Man may partake of these riches. Instructed by the Orient, man here is a harmonious part of that natural universe. Tagore commented that in India, having been in constant contact with the living growth of nature,... [man's] mind was free from the desire to extend his dominion by erecting boundary walls around his acquisitions/133 A good participant of the Group of Seven in this regard, Varley fully agreed with the Group's emphasis on man's oneness with nature.134 Along with the Seven, and Walt Whitman, Varley could also empathize very directly with Tagore's description of himself as a wayfarer, a wanderer, a pilgrim whom 'none can stop... from my long journey (into the unknown)/ Like all creators, he was a pilgrim engrossed and intoxicated with the journey itself.135 Like the poet Cavafy, the creative person sought the long way to Ithaca. That

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person accepted the eternal call of the endless path, believing that this world, not the next, is permeated through and through by the living presence of God. This view, as we have seen, is one shared by theosophists and transcendentalists, but rejected by many Christians who have seen the world as a foreign place, a prison, from which we should escape as soon as possible to return to our real home in heaven, in the presence of God. A key aspect of the nature of this worldly home is the divinity in the individual. Since God is all-pervasive throughout the universe, he is also present in every person. But that person must seek unity with the God in her or him, must seek the Infinite Soul as the final truth and thus attain the perfect union with the world. This search Varley considered in his famous 1932 canvas Dhdrdna - a title to be found in theosophical literature. The traditional interpretation of this canvas is problematic. In 1949 Donald Buchanan explained the title as a 'Buddhist term signifying the power to project oneself into one's surroundings.'13 This interpretation has continued.137 Yet the term Dharana, with a range of possible diachronic marks over the a's, is not generally used in Buddhism.13 It is, however, featured in Hinduism, in Patanjali's Yoga, and means something rather different.139 Yoga is a branch of Hindusim. The word 'yoga' comes from the Sanskrit and means 'to yoke.' As a spiritual exercise or discipline, yoga signifies the yoking or joining of the individual to Brahman, with Brahman meaning the indescribable Supreme Principle of Life, the non-personal Supreme One that pervades and transcends all things.140 Yoga proposes ways by which an individual can attain mystical union with the Divine Reality, Hinduism's highest aim.141 It attempts to transform human nature by working with the mind illuminated by the transcendent.142 The practice of yoga is the progressive reduction of empirical consciousness to the point of complete breakdown and metamorphosis into universal Self-Awareness. The yogin aims to orient every thought and wish towards the One, which surpasses all opposites, and to be remodelled in the image of that Being. Classical yoga, or the raja yoga of Patanjali, is divided into eight steps that must be accomplished for transforming human nature.143 The first five of these, designated as 'outer members/ are, strictly speaking, preliminary exercises, such as the observation of ethical precepts, the practice of posture, and the control of vital energy. The three remaining steps, 'inner members,' constitute the actual path of transformation, the means by which the mind 'inclines towards liberation.' With the practice of concentration the yogin takes the most decisive step on that path. Dharana is the first of these three final techniques. Dharana involves binding and holding, and stands for the fixation or concentration of the mind. One author declared: 'Know concentration to be

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the holding of the mind in a motionless state/ Patanjali, the father of classical yoga, suggested that 'concentration is the binding of the mind to [one] place.' From this suggestion comes the concept of concentration sometimes being identified with 'one-pointedness,' but this is not quite correct, since it implies the arrest of the psycho-mental flow, while concentration implies a fixation of the mind in order to gain understanding.144 Dharana, then, is a creative act based on the principle of centralization of consciousness. These concepts would have considerable appeal to Varley. The artist who urged adding intellect and will to emotion to create the three components necessary for aesthetic expression would appreciate the rigour demanded in centralizing consciousness. The painter who sought the causes beneath the outward result would laud the actual realization of the ultimate reality. The reader who probed The Light of Asia and Tagore would surely be aware of yoga. Yet there is another possible source for Varley's use of the term dharana, a source that would partially explain his spelling Dharana. That source is theosophy. Right on the first page of Blavatsky's last book, The Voice of the Silence, we reaid that 'he who would hear the voice of Nada, "the Soundless Sound," and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dharana.'^5 Footnotes explain that 'the Soundless Sound' literally translated from the Sanskrit would be 'Voice in the Spiritual Sound/ and that Dharana is 'the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon some one interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from everything pertaining to the external Universe, or the world of the senses.'14 Later on in the same booklet, instructions to Lanoo, the disciple, include 'Withhold thy mind from all external objects, all external sights. Withhold internal images, lest on thy Soul-light a dark shadow they should cast. Thou art now in DHARANA, the sixth stage/147 Blavatsky is clearly referring to Patanjali's sixth stage of yoga, and it is clear that Varley's painting Dharana is inspired by this idea. A reinterpretation of the canvas makes iconographic sense. A young woman, sitting on the top step of a veranda, with her face thrust upward and her unseeing eyes open, appears lost in contemplation. The concept of projecting outward to achieve union with nature seems distant, virtually non-existent. Rather, Varley's intent was a different union, the mystical union with Divine Reality sought through an internal process, the concentration of consciousness, through a fixation of the mind to gain understanding. Once this internal concentration had been achieved, the outward union with nature would follow naturally.14 Varley, reversing his procedure from his early self-portrait, now literally concentrates his paint, great globs of it, on the face and the post over the head. Glowing pink, the face is outlined, as is the rest of the figure, especially on the right side. Of interest too is the triangular shape of the figure. In The

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FREDERICK H. VARLEY Dharana

Voice of the Silence it is noted that the sacred symbol for Dharana is the triangle. But once the preliminary and lower stages of a person's advance have passed, the disciple no longer sees the triangle.149 In Dharana Varley was probing his own need for self-awareness, trying 'to tune in with the God inside/150 finding wisdom, as both Whitman and Blavatsky would say, through union with the divine self. Varley would have full understanding of Pollock's contention that 'I am nature.' An important larger message here, moreover, is that Varley read and knew theosophy. The strength of Dharana lies in Varley's ability to make his personal search a symbol for every person's search for self-awareness; his personal search becomes the larger theosophical search. Varley was aware of the challenge this canvas presented. Years after completing Dhardna, he wrote: 'Dharana [sic] is lasting. I find my work too abstract for a great many people/151 As usual, too, Varley, in this canvas, shows himself to be an inconoclast: the painting alludes to the yoga concepts of dharana, but does not follow the rules of posture of classical yoga. The woman is sitting with her head thrust

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distinctly upward and holding her right hand clenched, both of which are unacceptable in yoga posture. But Varley is not interested in depicting classical yoga dharana; rather he seems to be seeking the freedom to reveal himself. In this, too, he agreed with Tagore. When Tagore came to Vancouver to lecture in 1929, he said, according to the report in the student yearbook The Paint Box, 'Art represents man's personal world of realty [sic] in which he is revealed to himself in his own light, the light that has its numerous rays of emotion, visible and invisible/152 On another occasion, in Creative Unity, Tagore wrote. 'It is some untold mystery of unity in me, that has the simplicity of the infinite and reduces the immense mass of multitude to a single point/153 In Dharana, a canvas Varley considered one of his best and most lasting, he too was looking for the simplicity of infinity and hoping to reduce immensity to a single point. V

Jock Macdonald struggled with similar grand aims in his Modalities - works that vacillated between the geometric and organic, started in 1934 and pursued for the next five years. Formally they combine his interest in the organic and the geometric; stylistically they build on his design training; emotionally they probe the automatic, the unconscious; and intellectually they demonstrate his considerable fascination with mysticism. Macdonald initiated this activity in 1934 when he painted a small oil sketch and then a larger canvas called Formative Colour Activity. This was his first automatic work, a piece he remembered well. Later he wrote: 'At that time I was interested in colour & had been for sometime carefully observing colour in flowers & plants. But I created the canvas with no preconceived planning. I drew nothing on the canvas. I just started off with pure vermillion. Well do I remember doing it. I painted the canvas from beginning to end without stopping to eat or rest. I was in ecstasy & was pale & exhausted, but terribly exhilarated, when I finished/154 This method of exploring colour came from a number of sources, as Joyce Zemans has documented.155 From Kandinsky Macdonald took the idea that a painter can 'conduct colour harmonies without reference to natural forms/ just as 'a musician can weave melodies without reference to natural sounds/15 And from the French Purist painter, teacher, and writer Amedee Ozenfant, whose Foundations of Modern Art1^7 he read, he surely gained support for his search into the underlying structures of nature. This search is so familiar to us because it was central to the aims of Harris, Carr, and Brooker too. Ozenfant wanted rational, precise, well-ordered art in harmony with universal laws; he sought a new classicism of constants and a new understanding of structures. Yet he was well aware of the 'impenetrable mystery

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JOCK MACDONALD Formative Colour Activity

of the world/ In his famous 1931 Foundations of Modern Art, Ozenfant acknowledged that 'only a transcendental reality could satisfy me'158 He goes on to explain this statement, departing, as did Macdonald, from a flower: A flower is no longer one of nature's smiles ... but magnetic waves directed along certain axes, so rapid that they become matter, colour. And if the colour of the rose be a wave of a certain frequency, as no doubt its aroma is too, that etherialises it still further. Reality is metamorphosed into a prodigious agglomeration of vibrations, obedient to equations that are majestically simple. This immaterialism is very far from materialism. With heads held high

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and feet solid on earth, let us seek out the norm that underlies all aspects, and organize primary forms in structures permanent and impressive to all eternity.159

Ozenfant continued, clarifying just how he felt nature should be approached: not by 'complete rapture with nature,' or by the "return to nature," ' but rather by clinging to nature 'in spirit/ That does not mean gaping at nature lackadaisically ... It is what is not seen that should be painted: art is the rendering perceptible of mystery/1 ° Macdonald's ideas closely parallel these. He seemed very interested in the concept of vibrations, as can be ascertained from the sketch of Formative Colour Activity. In undated notes headed 'Colour IV (D)/ Macdonald wrote: In addition to the colours of the spectrum there are a vast number of vibratory colour waves, some too low & others too high to be registered by the human optical apparatus. It is appalling to contemplate man's colossal ignorance concerning these vistas of abstract space. As in the past man explored unknown continents, so in the future, armed & [with] curious implements fashioned for the purpose, he will explore these little known fastnesses of light, colour, sound & consciousness.1

Macdonald was certainly looking to vibration, his 'fastnesses/ as part of the structure of reality. These vibrations can be apprehended in nature by logic and reason. In looking for basic structure, Macdonald exhorted his students to 'extract all there is to know about any one of God's creations and then put down his observations/ 'Let the motto of your work be, "Think seven times and draw once and for all time." n 2 John Vanderpant also reiterated the very centraliry of logic and reason. In the 1928 issue of The Paint Box, he wrote: Chaos belongs to matter, it is an external consequence of matter. Reason is its internal opposite. Reason is positive in quality, matter negative. Chaos is only appearance, reason IS. If one has established through reason and analysis firm contact... with the infinite laws of life, one has created the correct attitude essential to artistic self-expression in the material appearance of fine art.1 3

In agreeing with Vanderpant's emphasis on intellect, Macdonald joins Harris, Varley, and Brooker.

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Like Varley, Macdonald also believed in the essence of individuality in art. He exhorted one student to 'put down his observations in his own way. This is the only way to create original design/1 4 To Lois Steen, another student, he wrote: 'You must talk in your own language - always/1 5 Be 'your own self in your own way/1 Macdonald seemed in complete sympathy with Vanderpant's emphasis on 'one's individual mentality/1 7 and went even further, it seems to me, to agree with Tagore that art is self-revelation. These concepts of individuality and self-revelation, as well as the logic of structures, were the basis for Macdonald's momentous Modalities. The word 'Modalities' bears some examination. Emily Carr, interested in Macdonald's painting, got the word confused and persisted in calling these works 'Modernities'1 Ozenfant titled a whole chapter in Foundations of Modern Art' 'Modalities/ He defined the term as 'typical form of feeling and thinking/1 9 But Macdonald, in spite of reading Ozenfant, seems to have come up with a somewhat individual definition. He told Harry McCurry that modalities 'is a new word, dug up from the dictionary and so far I think it the only classification which interprets the expression of this work. It means "Expressions of thought in relation to nature" and was considered by Kant to relate to creative expressions which could not be said to relate to nature (objectively), nor relate to abstract thoughts (subjectively) about nature, but rather included both expressions/170 From which dictionary Macdonald got this definition is unknown. It is possible that, having found the word, Macdonald then modified its meaning to suit his own purpose. From mid-1935to tne ^U of 1936 Macdonald had plenty of opportunities for 'expressions of thought in relation to nature/ In August 1935 the Depression forced the closure of the British Columbia College of Art. Thus liberated, Macdonald took his family north to the remote Indian community of Nootka, a settlement about two-thirds of the way up the west coast of Vancouver Island. There, about three miles from Friendly Cove, the family of three camped in an abandoned cabin, and Macdonald started working on his Modalities, a series of semi-abstract and abstract paintings. The sketch Departing Day was an early piece; later a canvas was completed. Departing Day (colour plate 7) is made up of three orbs, two being placed diagonally to each other on the canvas and the third partly hidden by the second, lower, circle. The upper orb, with its concentric circles, is reminiscent of the force lines seen in Formative Colour Activity. The concentric circles in the upper corner also bring to mind theosophy and the theosophist Ouspensky, in his 1931 book A New Model of the Universe. Just when Macdonald became enamoured of this volume is unknown; that he did is acknowledged by Lois Steen, who recalled that Macdonald used to recommend it to his students.171 In A New Model of the Universe Ouspensky writes:

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Humanity is regarded as two concentric circles. All humanity which we know and to which we belong forms the outer circle. All the history of humanity that we know is the history of the outer circle. But within this circle there is another, of which men of the outer circle know nothing, and the existence of which they only sometimes dimly suspect, although the life of the outer circle in its most important manifestations, and particularly in its evolution, is actually guided by the inner circle. The inner or the esoteric circle forms, as it were, a life within life, a mystery, a secret in the life of humanity.172

On another, less obviously symbolic, level, is Macdonald's understanding of art as an 'expression of our inner consciousness/ for art expresses 'the inner meaning of apparent reality/173 Like Kandinsky, Macdonald made a distinction between inner and outer. In Nootka Macdonald was fascinated with this distinction, with the secret in the life of humanity.174 Probing further, he read the works of scientists, especially those like Arthur Compton and Sydney Klein who were examining cosmic rays and astronomy.175 In undated handwritten notes entitled 'Science and the Infinite (Sydney Klein)/ Macdonald recorded. It is only in recent years that we have been able to realize that it is the Invisible which is Real, that the visible is only its shadow or its manifestation in the Physical Universe, & that Time & Space have no existence apart from our physical senses ... It is by escaping the Physical, the negative or shadow, that we can best gain a knowledge of the Spiritual, the positive or real. The first step to a clear undertanding of this is to recognize that it is not we who are looking out upon Nature but that it is the Reality which is ever trying to enter & come into touch with us through our senses, & is persistently trying to waken within us a knowledge of the sublimest truths. It is difficult to realise this, as from infancy we have been accustomed to confine our attention wholly to the objective, believing that to be the reality.17

Departing Day can be seen in this light, in the light of the invisible real. The friendship between Vanderpant and Macdonald was important to both artists. In 1937, after Macdonald had moved back to Vancouver from Nootka, he showed his photographer friend his new paintings, especially his modalities. To Harry McCurry at the National Gallery Macdonald revealed some of his excitement of creation and some of Vanderpant's reactions: I think Vanderpant can tell you that I have been searching for a new expression in art & that my time at Nootka has provided me with a new expression (which is yet only being born) which belongs to no school, or already seen

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expression. To fail to follow through the force which is driving me - & which I clearly believe is a true creative art - would be destruction to my very soul. Vanderpant will probably not speak of my experiments to anyone without my permission, but I think if you enquire he would remark that the experiments interested him tremendously.177

Vanderpant certainly was impressed. In fact he had already written to McCurry about Macdonald's 'splendid thing' for the London show, and about 'that striking composition ... a liberation of limited thought/17 Perhaps this striking composition was Fall (Modality 16). The most monumental of all his Modalities, Fall (Modality 16) pursues the questions of what Vanderpant called 'metaphysical unfoldment' from a slightly different direction. Now the flatness and decorative qualities only slightly evident in Departing Day are exaggerated, on purpose too. In Fall (Modality 16) Macdonald goes one step further in his exploration of the mystical, the positive. He based this modality on a fifteenth-century hermetic scheme of the world. Hermetic writings are a collection of works on occult, theological, and philosophical subjects ascribed to the Egyptian god Thoth, known in Greek as Hermes Trismegistus. Written in Greek and Latin, probably between the middle of the first and the end of the third century AD, the collection deals in part with astrology and other occult sciences. The underlying concept of these sciences was that the cosmos constituted a unity and that all parts of it were interdependent. But because these assumed affinities could not be discovered by ordinary science, recourse had to be made to divine revelation. The aim of hermetism, like its contemporary religious movement gnosticism, was the deification or rebirth of the individual through the knowledge of the one transcendent God, the world, and its people. That this theory sounds very much like theosophy is not surprising, for theosophy borrowed liberally from popular hermetism, which was very frequently alluded to in late medieval and Renaissance literature. Thomas Norton, who died in 1477, invented a hermetic scheme of the universe here illustrated. The lower rectangle is Satan's kingdom. This is surmounted by a triangle representing the created world, a triangle that, in turn, is divided into four smaller triangles representing earth, water, air, and heaven. In the centre is man, halfway into heaven, since his soul and spirit partake of the divine. The apex of the triangle reaches into God's heaven, with God, infinite good, at the centre. Finite good is the lower heaven that encircles the fourfold triangle. This lower heaven is made up of the angelic, the elementary, and the ethereal.179 Macdonald, in Fall (Modality 16), clearly uses the general form and arrangement of shapes of Norton's hermetic scheme, while taking some

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liberties therewith.1 ° He turned Satan's lower rectangle, or chaos, into a striped vessel in which his principal triangle sits. At the base of this triangle Macdonald has maintained the three circles, but has given them more prominence by making them bigger and including concentric circles within each larger, outer, circle. Mandala-like, these circles now intertwine. Rather than include any explanatory script, Macdonald incorporated a stylized tree above the circles in his inverted triangle, symbolizing the three elements of air, water, and earth. Following Norton, Macdonald's finite heaven is made up of large concentric circles that modify the hot colours of the main triangle as they pass over it. In notes titled 'Symbols/ Macdonald explains that two concentric circles form the symbol of the Deity.1 I Macdonald was not slavishly following Norton. In his canvas he omits the infinite heaven and God entirely. Perhaps he thought it unnecessary since his small black-andwhite circle, divided horizontally and positioned towards the top of the dominant, central triangle, looks like what Madame Blavatsky called 'a divine immaculate Mother-Nature within the all-embracing absolute Infinitude/182 Rather he puts his scheme into a decorative, organic setting in which butterfly and leaf shapes gambol on highly colourful, planar surfaces. That he should do this is probably not surprising in view of his background in textile design. But there are also other possible reasons. In A New Model of the Universe Ouspensky talks about 'the general tendency of Nature towards decorativeness, "theatricalness," the tendency to be or to appear different from what she really is at a given time and place/ He writes of 'the endless disguise, the endless masquerade, by which Nature lives/1 3 Macdonald's canvas too is surely a masquerade, even a double masquerade: he plays with the decorativeness of nature and hence disguises the symbolic meaning of the whole hermetic image. In this complex painting Macdonald may also have been using the principles of dynamic symmetry, just as Harris would a year or so later. Macdonald's ordering of area, demarcated through contrasting diagonals, and his concentric circles suggest Hambidge's theory, one with which Macdonald was thoroughly familiar.1 4 Perhaps Macdonald was also trying to delineate the fourth dimension, new space, through 'colour planes' and through 'intensity and value,' methods he suggested in his 'Art in Relation to Nature' lecture.1 5 Certainly in Fall (Modality 16) the warm tones are carefully worked through gradations of intensity and value. That this painting should succeed when attempting so much is a mark of Macdonald's artistry. Subsequent paintings were less ambitious. The interest in decorative nature as a means of representing the unreality of the perceived world is evident in later modalitis such as Birth of Spring, Winter, and The Wave. In The Birth of Spring curvilinear twig-like forms emerge from swirling billows of green and blue. The symbolism is clear. Here we see Macdonald mediating

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THOMAS NORTON Hermetic Scheme of the Universe (W. Cooper T/ie Philosophic Epitaph]

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JOCK MACDONALD Fall (Modality 16)

between the real and the unreal, apprehended nature and perceived nature. It was a difficult path to walk, for he understood, on the one hand, nature's masquerade, but also knew, on the other hand, that nature was the best avenue to spiritual enlightenment. He was adamant in his belief in the importance of nature, in his need for contact with nature. In 1939, the year he painted Birth of Spring, he wrote: 'My enthusiasm grows for expressions in the semi-abstract - or my "modalities" - which I find lifts me out of the earthliness, the material mir [sic] of our civilization... I will have been faithful to my inner consciousness. Where I have a definite anchorage is in the fact that nature is still my medium for study, and I believe as definitely as ever that there can be no art with aesthetic values which has no contact with

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JOCK MACDONALD Birth of Spring

nature/1 Earlier he had said, 'I have to live with nature, be in constant touch with its life forces/187 He copied Thomas Mann from The Beloved Returns to the effect that 'the creative ... binds together nature & spirit, and in it they are one.' At the same time, he agreed with Mann that 'to give up the existence in order to exist... it takes more than character, it takes mind, & the gift of renewal through mind/188 Along with Harris and Varley, Macdonald was firmly convinced of the need to work intellectually at his painting, to treat the problems in apprehending the spiritual in nature in a reasoned, intelligent manner.

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His reasoning, in fact, seems to have provoked his friend Emily Carr. In 1941 she wrote that Macdonald 'wearies me with all his fancy talk about life and philosophy[.] his letters are full of those "theosophy phrases." 'l89 Yet Carr also acknowledged the impotance she attached to thought. Writing about a trip to Vancouver, in October 1938, she said: 'I enjoyed Macdonald's things very much indeed. Wish I could see them several times. Once is not enough. There is a great deal in them to think about and I like him/190 Birth of Spring suggests Macdonald used more than the wording of theosophy. The crescent moon shapes projected into the air are very reminiscent of shapes illustrated in Besant and Leadbeater's Thought-Forms. In this book figure 27 is titled 'Sudden Fright/ The description notes, in part, that 'when a man's astral body is ... in a state in frenzied palpitation, its natural tendency is to throw off amorphous explosive fragments, like masses of rock hurled out in a blasting.'191 Kandinsky also adopted these forms.192 What better way to depict the explosive growth in spring? In his Modalities Macdonald was consciously trying to discover a new consciousness through nature. His was an intellectual as well as an intuitive probe; he sought and found support and guidance in various mystical and theosophical sources. In trying to describe how his Modalities departed from nature, he called them 'a nature form in extension.' And he described 'extension' by using an analogy to the fourth dimension.

A. BESANT and c.w. LEADBEATER Sudden Fright (Thought-Forms, figure 27)

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Those 'modalities' are thought idiomes of nature - not completely geometrical, but containing a nature form in extension. That is all I seem to be able to say at the present. It means the same as saying the 4th dimension is an extension of the third dimension; it contains an essence of the 3rd, but has a different space & a different time, & through its added value of motion, it is an entirely new dimension. And the awakening of a new consciousness will arise out of the new knowledge, from the slow understanding, of the 4th dimension. For me, abstract & semi-abstract creations of pure idiom, are statements of the new awakening consciousness. Thus, I have more than a surface interest in the experiments I made on the extension of nature forms.193

Macdonald's interest in theories of the fourth dimension is not unique; these theories are worth exploring.

VI In 1904 C.H. Hinton published his influential book The Fourth Dimension. The next year Albert Einstein announced his Special Theory of Relativity. Hinton considered a higher, unseen fourth dimension as space; Einstein posited that this higher, unseen fourth dimension was time. It was the former theory, however, rather than the latter, that so influenced modern artists in the Western world, including many working in Canada. Emerging out of dissatisfaction with materialism and positivism, the concept of the fourth dimension gave rise, as Linda Dalrymple Henderson has documented so convincingly, to various idealist and mystical philosophic systems, and gained notable adherents. In Europe cubism and futurism were strongly influenced by its tenets, while in the United States Marcel Duchamp and the Steiglitz artists were also believers. Another important group of creators in Russia were strong adherents.194 Hinton explored his hyperspace philosophy most completely in two volumes, A New Era of Thought and The Fourth Dimension. Here Hinton returned to Kant's interpretation of space as the a priori framework needed for all perceptions. Hinton agreed with Kant, suggesting that if we apprehend the world through spatial intuition, we must work on and develop that space sense to intuit new kinds of space. We are restrained in this search by 'self-elements' that reinforce traditional ways of seeing. These hindrances may be overcome by the 'casting out of self/ the careful, selfless study of an arrangement of objects. Hinton chose for this study purpose blocks of multicoloured cubes. With these cubes he felt we could learn to visualize the four-dimensional hypercube, or 'tesseract' as he called it. Both A New Era of Thought and The Fourth Dimension are mainly descriptions of Hinton's work with the tesseract, the first non-geometric attempt to portray the fourth dimension.

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Hinton's idea of the tesseract used a combination of time and space. He saw the tesseract as the sections that would be formed when the cubes passed through three-dimensional space. The analogy was to a sphere passing through a plane: the sphere produces a series of increasing then decreasing circles, which would be experienced by a dweller of that plane as a movement in time. The coloured cubes Hinton had introduced were to be the 'sections' of the four-dimensional hypercube. We, the viewers, are to see the hypercube as it passes through our space.195 However, this new form of seeing requires great industry. Hinton gave an example: If, for instance, we could think of a human body right down to every minute part in its right position, and conceive its aspect, we should have a four-dimensional picture which is a solid structure. Now, to do this, we must form the habit of mental painting, that is, of putting definite colours in definite positions, not with our hands on paper, but with our minds in thought, so that we can recall, alter, and view complicated arrangements of colour existing in thought with the same ease with which we can paint on canvas. This is simply an affair of industry; and the mental power latent in us in this direction is simply marvellous.19^

As Hinton noted in a couple of chapters, the belief in the existence of higher dimensions has had a long and distinguished history. It stretches back before Plato and Aristotle. Also the idea was to be co-joined with Kant's 'thing-in-itself/ so that Platonic ideal and Kantian conception were subsequently standard features of the hyper space philosophy.197 Another major impetus for hypers pace philosophy, and one that is of great importance to us, was theosophy. Madame Blavatsky herself put no credence in the fourth dimension. Not until her book The Secret Doctrine, of 1888, does she even refer to the concept. Here she suggests the idea was misconceived.19 Many later theosophists, recognizing the popularity of the fourth dimension, disagreed. For example, C.W. Leadbeater compared the theosophical idea of 'astral vision' to four-dimensional sight.1" Further confusion occurred when two of the leading hyperspace proponents, the American Claude Bragdon and the Russian P.D. Ouspensky, came to proselytize the fourth dimension concept from backgrounds in theosophy.200 With these two popular twentieth-century writers the separation between theosophy and hyperspace becomes muddy indeed. Both Bragdon and Ouspensky, as we have seen, played important roles for Canadian painters. Ouspensky was reviewed by Harris and read by Brooker in 1924, recommended to Carr and read by her in 1927, and, at about the same time, read by Macdonald. Varley, as usual elusive, is the only painter for whom there is no documented proof that he read this Russian theosophist-hyperspace advocate. Another interesting connection, one that surely

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titillated Harris and others in their nationalistic phase, was that Ouspensky derived part of his theory from Cosmic Consciousness, the book written by R.M. Bucke of London, Ontario. Bragdon had his role here too, for Bragdon translated Ouspensky's Tertium Organum and wrote its introduction. Tertium Organum, published originally in 1911, was Ouspensky's most important book. Here he went beyond Hinton's theories and tesseract system and adumbrated his own understanding of the fourth dimension. Ouspensky felt that the 'psychic' world, the world of the mind, as opposed to the physical world, was the area of the fourth dimension. Like Hinton, having recourse to Kant, Ouspensky located the source of the ideas of space in the mind. From this basis he devoted much of his seminal book to a study of 'conditions of receptivity' to prove that an expansion of consciousness can be made and to show just what the nature of space and time will be in this new state of awareness. As had Hinton, Ouspensky used the analogy of the means of perception of three dimensions in a two-dimensional world to explain the nature of perception of four dimensions in our three-dimensional world. He believed that time and motion as we perceive them in the third dimension are illusory: they are wrong because we do not see them in the real four-dimensional world. Time, in fact, he believes 'includes in itself two ideas: that of a certain to us unknown space (the fourth dimension), and that of a motion upon this space.'201 But this motion does not exist in reality, Ouspensky contends. It only appears to exist because we do not see the real space; we are looking at the world as if through a narrow slit, and are seeing the 'lines of intersection of the time-plane with our three-dimensional space only/202 Ouspensky posits a reality that is constant and still. It is only our incomplete vision that suggests the illusion of change. Consequently, with real vision, real understanding, of the fourth dimension comes the understanding that the notion of time is an incomplete sensation that will recede as our understanding of space enlarges. Part of the restriction in our understanding of the fourth dimension is what Ouspensky calls our 'psychic apparatus.' Those who have a higher spatial sense than ours are those who have 'higher intuition' and have joined that intuition with higher emotions and higher intellect.203 If a person can develop an intuitive capability in which 'an element of knowledge or ideas is always united with an emotional element/ the number of dimensions that person can perceive will also increase to four. Ouspensky stresses the difference between the psychic and pyhysical phenomena and in this distinction gives artists a special duty. The world of physical phenomena represents an incomplete three-dimensional section of the noumenal world of four dimensions where the psyche functions.204

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Matter, therefore, is an illusion. Like time and motion, it is a product of our limited vision. The willingness to give up matter, time, and motion, the ability to discern the four-dimensional world of noumena requires great sensitivity, higher emotions. Ouspensky saw these qualities most clearly in art. To the understandable joy of creative people, Tertium Organum extols the visionary power of the artist. All art, in essence, consists of the understanding and representation of these elusive differences. The phenomenal world is merely a means for the artist just as colors are for the painter, and sounds for the musician - a means for the understanding of the noumenal world and for the expression of that understanding. At the present stage of our development we possess nothing so powerful, as an instrument of knowledge of the world of causes, as art... Only that fine apparatus which is called the soul of the artist can understand and feel the reflection of the noumenon in the phenomenon. In art it is necessary to study 'occultism' - the hidden side of life. The artist must be a clairvoyant: he must see that which others do not see; he must be a magician: must possess the power to make others see that which they do not themselves see, but which he does see.205

Thus, artists have an important role to play in leading individuals to higher consciousness, to cosmic consciousness, which can and will be done using the new intuitive logic, the logic of ecstasy, the Tertium Organum. VII

In 1949 Brooker delivered an address at Hart House in Toronto in conjunction with an exhibition of his recent paintings. In this address, entitled Tainting Verbs/ he outlined his philosophy and the development of his painting in a necessarily summary fashion. He implied that, in 1927, he had 'plunged into painting without any knowledge of drawing or pigments/ at a time when he was closely associated with the Group of Seven.2 Yet, as Joyce Zemans has amply demonstrated, by 1913 Brooker was already familiar with the broad spectrum of European modern artists, particularly those who exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show.207 However, Brooker's production of paintings was always uneven: interested in various modes of creativity, he jumped from medium to medium, painting for a while, then turning to play-writing, or poetry, or advertising, or novels. Between his 1913 illustrations and about 1924, he seems to have done little painting. But in 1924 he started working on a momentous series of paintings, his verbs, 'the experiences I derived from music/208 To continue Brooker's explanation of these early works:

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I shamelessly used a ruler and compass, trying to compose on the canvas some sort of replica of the colour, the volume and the rhythm I experienced when listening to music. There were shapes in some of these early pictures, but they were not objects in the ordinary sense - they were not nouns - you couldn't name them. Most of the shapes were floating areas of colour - they were verbs, representing action and movement - and when, in some cases, they came close to recognition as objects, such as spheres or rods or peaks, these were only intended as the path or climax or culmination of a movement, not its finish.209

Brooker was certainly not alone in his interest in music as a means of initiating abstract art and defining an abstract art theory. He was, however, very much alone in Canada at that time, and had to look beyond national boundaries for support. Early support came from reading the American Arthur Jerome Eddy, who, in 1914, wrote Cubists and Post-Impressionism.21° In a chapter entitled 'Color Music/ Eddy explained that 'the use of line and color freely to produce pure line harmonies and pure color harmonies with no reference to objects is quite another, and in a sense, a far higher art - a more abstract art/211 These ideas were common to James A. M. Whistler, Francis Picabia, Garbrielle Buffet, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, and Wassily Kandinsky too. Walter Pater boasted that 'all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music/ and Kandinsky wrote that 'a painter who finds no satisfaction in mere representation, however artistic, in his longing to express his internal life, cannot but envy the ease with which music, the least material of the arts today, achieves this end/212 This is the concept of synaesthesia, the analogy between one art form and another. Although synaesthesia is a logical consequence of the theosophical world-view, it was not original to it. Eighteenth-century mystics such as Swedenborg and Bohme promoted the concept. From these sources Romantics suggested that the universe is a storehouse of correspondences and analogies, that the artist's duty was to tap the very foundations. Baudelaire, in 1857, in his poem 'Correspondences/ gave synaesthesia one of its most influential artistic expressions. Fascinated with the creative process, Brooker felt that music could provide the painter with the tools by which feeling rather than seeing could be emphasized. This is not to say, however, that he disregarded the pitfalls inherent in synaesthesia, or those in the outright copying of the methods used by one art form into another art form. On 19 October 1929, in his weekly newspaper column The Seven Arts/ Brooker explained that 'the borrowing of methods [from another art] is a bad thing for the same reason that Kandinsky's collation of 'certain colours' with 'certain [musical] tones' was a 'mistaken and stultifying endeavour/213 Earlier that same year Brooker had

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discussed his conception of the analogy between music and the plastic arts with a number of musicians and had come away disappointed. He found musicians, 'whose art is so abstract/ to be 'almost the last persons to appreciate the abstract trend in the plastic arts/ He quoted Fritz Reiner as saying, 'The musician does not think in terms of geometrical forms when he is composing, and the artist cannot hope to duplicate in any way the rhythms of music in his compositions/214 As Brooker suggested later and as this comment by Reiner implies, Brooker was working with geometric forms. These forms started off as ribbon-like bands. In Abstraction - Music these ribbons, emanating from the approximate centre of the lower picture frame, almost enclose an amorphous, central space. Both the ribbons and the idea of origin in the bottom centre are similar to Georgia O'Keeffe's 1919 Blue and Green Music. O'Keeffe too was certainly fascinated with the concept of music as the pure art to which painting aspired. Brooker's ribbons also resemble those of another contemporary American painter fascinated with the relationship between music and painting, Arthur Dove.215 Another striking analogy is to the thought-forms built by music illustrated in Besant and Leadbeater's Thought-Forms. Plate M, in this book, an organ work by Mendelssohn, is described as 'a shape roughly representing that of a balloon,

BERTRAM BROOKER Abstraction - Music

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GEORGIA O KEEFFE

Blue and Green Music

having a scalloped outline consisting of a double violet line. Within that there is an arrangement of variously-coloured lines moving almost parallel with this outline ... In the hollow centre of the form float a number of small crescents/21 This theosophic idea of thought-forms seems an apt description of Brooker's definition of great art. He struggled with the difference between creativity and interpretation, especially after he found musicians unable to understand his synaesthetic use of music in painting. Eventually he defined the creative person, painter or musician, as a 'channel' through which expression can be made. In an undated letter to the editor of the Toronto Daily Star, Brooker amplified his theory, one that sounds very like Blake's notion of imagination: The great works of art of the world are not meticulously faithful likenesses of persons or things; they are the Ideas of those things conceived in the mind of the artist and projected into his pictures, his poetry, his statues. They are, to use the phraseology of Schopenhauer, "objects that have passed through a subject." /217 But the creator, the individual, cannot, should not, work in isolation. This concept of the place of the creator in the cosmos is central to Brooker's system of belief. He followed a partially Neoplatonic monism in which 'the concern with all of the relationships within a whole ... is the

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A. BESANT and C.W. LEADBEATER

Mendelssohn (Thought-Forms, plate M)

concern of each and every artist/ He described a work of art as a 'unity, the perfect wholeness of the total/218 He talked about his 'feeling of all being One/219 These ideas of unity, of all equals one, might have been culled from John Donne, whose works he read assiduously,220 but also might have come from a number of other sources, including Blake, Whitman, Plato, and Havelock Ellis. Ellis, the British writer famous for his work on sex, was known to Brooker, who recommended Ellis's book The Dance of Life soon after its publication in 1923.221 Ellis was a mystic, one who wrote that a 'conversion/ the same word Brooker used, 'is a turning round, a revolution ... [in which the soul becomes] one with itself, it becomes one with the universe/222 This sense of unity and its nature is of prime importance to mystics in general and Brooker in particular. Brooker, unlike Ellis,223 but like the theosophists and many other mystics, rejected the apparent world as the real world, contending, rather, that what we see is not the whole picture. However, like the Neoplatonists, Brooker believed that reason is capable of mapping all phenomena. He went even further, probably influenced by theosophy, suggesting that even God is not beyond reason. Brooker determined to pursue ecstasy logically. He determined to seek harmony in another dimension, to order his life for the glory of God. By his own admission in this search he drew upon Ouspensky, Havelock Ellis, and

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Middleton Murry.224 In his diary of 20 April 1924 he explored, at length, the need for an orderly apprehension of spiritual equilibrium: It may be, as some think, that the body and the mind, the so-called realities and ideas, are unreal, and merely the reflection of something of higher dimension; that we can only approach spiritual equilibrium by throwing these things off. But until it can be shown to us that there is a way to this higher dimension we must set about the practical business of putting our house in order; and perhaps, if these things are reflections only, the exercise of putting them in order, may expedite our knowledge of celestial order and equilibrium. But, above all, the conversion to higher dimensions must come through knowledge and study of them, and we must first organize our lives so as to have the leisure and the freedom to explore those regions.225

Knowledge, study, and organization were all part of Brooker's contemporary paintings. Sounds Assembling (colour plate 8) is the culmination of one segment of that search. Ideas for this monumental canvas percolated for many years - Brooker typically worked this way, not only in his painting but also in his writing. Two temperas, both titled Oozles, are preparatory pieces for the large canvas. Each is composed of a series of rods emanating from a central point and suggests movement outward, an explosive force. A canvas, The Three Powers, shown in Brooker's misunderstood 1927 exhibition at the Arts and Letters Club,22 incorporated the earlier ribbons into a composition primarily involving three rod-forms worked to explore multidimensions. In Sounds Assembling Brooker added together his various rods - the star at the unifying

BERTRAM BROOKER

The Three Powers

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BERTRAM BROOKER OozleS

point, clearly evident in the centre, is a development of Oozles, owned by Queen's University- and put them into a new, puzzling illusionistic space.227 Two features help to make this space puzzling: the projection of the brightly coloured rods beyond the picture frame, and the circular openings cut into a blue-black plane. The vibratory play of the two types of geometric lines, the straight against the circular, gives this canvas intensity. Writing notes to himself about a novel, Brooker equated his book to his 'world and spirit painting' and mused whether 'the "moving out" will be more impersonal, will be suggested by the cyclings of lives rather than of individual thoughts. I should like to suggest the opposition of streams and circular circumferences.'228 Seeking universal rather than individual symbols, streams, and circular circumferences, Brooker probably turned to the theosophic analysis of specific feelings. Despite protestations about his lack of formal involvement with theosophy,229 he spent a great deal of time with Fred Housser and Lawren Harris, both committed theosophists, and he owned Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence.2^0 It would appear that he found the unifying structure for Sounds Assembling in Leadbeater's theosophical Man Visible and Invisible.

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c.w. LEADBEATER Intense Anger (Man Visible and Invisible, plate xm)

This 1902 book analyses various astral bodies, including that of a person expressing intense anger. Leadbeater's contention, of course, is that all individuals expressing intense anger would project vibrations, astral bodies, similar to this illustration. Plate XIII diagrams the emotion and the text adds an explanation: 'the strong and vivid thoughts ... express themselves ... as coils or vortices, but this time as heavy, thunderous masses of sooty blackness, lit up from within by the lurid glow of active hatred ... Firey arrows of uncontrolled anger shoot among them like flashes of lightning/231 Brooker's streams and circular circumferences, those geometric shapes he so favoured, surely had their origin in this tempestuous anger clairvoyantly read. His puzzling spaces too found support from Leadbeater, who wrote that as man learns to function in higher planes 'he finds himself in a world of many dimensions, instead of one of three only/ 'Short of really gaining the sight of the other planes, there is no method by which so clear a conception of astral life can be obtained as by the realization of the fourth dimension/232 Brooker seemed to reflect this sentiment in his poem 'salvation/ Here he talked about 'the fourth dimension' and 'astral bodies' as 'a sort of release / from space and time / from the body / from matter/233

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Time and again Brooker returned to his interest in the fourth dimension, in vibratory movement, in verbs and being. Like Hinton, he was aware of the need to 'cast out of self; like Ouspensky, he felt the fourth dimension was situated in the world of mind rather than the world of matter. Like Macdonald, Brooker read Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe, a 1931 edition of which he had in his library. Brooker's poem 'being' concerns these very features. This reads, in part: but she is enclosed in a bubble of abstraction where neither harm nor hurry can disturb her and there is only just being only a funny contented dazed familiar continuance of something inside not exerting itself but just continuing not unusual or puzzling no somehow familar and intimate herself living unconscious of body or anything around free of duty and hurry and the need to move and the urge to think herself living yet not herself for her self is ever concerned with moving and thinking something under her self continuing being.234

This contradiction between self and not-self that Brooker concluded was being was explored in another way in his large canvas The Finite Westling with the Infinite. Here Brooker dramatically angles two intertwined forms: one light, the other dark; one angular, the other curvaceous; one anthropomorphic, the other not. These forms appear in front of two shafts of indeterminate nature and a further form in the lower right-hand corner. As already mentioned, in the same way as Brooker had written about Blake in particular and spiritual artists in general, he is dealing here with forms that are not solid or real, with a universe that is in an infinite flux of being, of thought. Probably just about contemporaneously with the execution of this oil, Brooker wrote an article on the poetry of e.e. cummings in which he con-

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BERTRAM BROOKER The Finite Wrestling with the Infinite

tended that cummings's 'metaphysical verse' has a 'queer fourth-dimensional quality/ He analysed this metaphysical verse as tending 'towards the mathematical and the musical.' It was mathematical in being both precise and measured; it was musical because of both the abstract arrangements and the patterns of sounds. Then Brooker ties cummings's poetry to visual images: To say that there is a fourth-dimensional quality to cummings' work is ... to hint at the removal of phenomena from ordinary space-time dimensions into a realm which, like that of the fourth dimension, demands the transcendence of ordinary mathematics to become intelligible.

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In this respect his poetry relates to that type of abstract painting which cannot be called two-dimensional, and yet possesses, instead of the usual space-perspective that makes a painting three-dimensional, a new and puzzling illusion of space that is foreign to normal visual experiences.2^5

As Joyce Zemans has ably demonstrated, in these early paintings Brooker was aiming for that new and puzzling illusion of space.236 Despite his considerable efforts, by 1930 or so Brooker had to admit that Toronto audiences were not ready for his abstractions, for his conceptions of time, unity, and being. Before he set aside abstraction, however, he painted Resolution. Here Brooker continues his examination of unity and movement by placing geometric shapes within a mysterious space, which, in turn, is framed or encircled. The earlier ribbon-like form reappears, to be joined by harder shafts. Both forms are floated in a space faceted in a cubist manner. But these two overlapping shapes block the centre or point of greatest recession, contributing to the visual uncertainty about the depth and nature

BERTRAM BROOKER Resolution

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of the space. This mystery of space is furthered by the lack of connection between the two forms themselves and the space in which they are situated. Our only clues are the overlapping of the forms and the containment of the ends of the forms within the circular shape. Variations in colour values suggest that the two forms are illuminated from both on top and behind, adding to the sensation that the top shafts project forward from the picture plane while the cubist space recedes backwards. Space always exerted a considerable fascination for Brooker. In his award-winning novel Think of the Earth he has his hero, Tavistock, describe a wondrous space. He seemed to be standing at the brink of a limitless, pale gulf. As he became accustomed to the strange sensation, the space took the form of a sphere. He looked into its depths with a profound curiosity, as though recognizing the description of a promised land. Its vast emptiness, its purity, its shining transparency fascinated him. He felt himself drawn into it, treading its unsubstantial blueness timidly. He thought of Peter walking on the water. It was like the inside of an enormous shell, murmurous with unimagined possibilities. He felt himself in the presence of invisible powers, capable of performing any miracle.237 Ouspensky also talked about space and light at the moment of illumination. But Ouspensky went beyond the exciting and positive to make mention of the fearful and negative. 'This sensation of light and of unlimited joy is experienced at the moment of the expansion of consciousness ... at the moment of the sensation of infinity, and it yields also the sensation of darkness and of unlimited horror.'2^ Sounds Assemblingis especially poignant because, with its pairing of light-filled spaces and blue-black planes, it incorporated both of Ouspensky's types of sensations. In a diary entry of 20 April 1924, Brooker probed some of these seemingly contradictory states and summarized major aspects of his philosophy. He discussed the importance of mind over the senses, and he acknowledged the impossibility of equilibrium, the reality of constant motion: It must be remembered that the Will to Power, or the Will to Surpass Self, is only a by-product of the Will to Equilibrium, of the Return to God, or whatever you wish to call it. And it must also be remembered that this Equilibrium need not imply Rest. We speak of things 'coming to rest' in this world, but they never do. They merely readjust themselves, for the world and the solar system continue to move. Moreover, this Equilibrium is not a physical thing. It will not be found in this world...

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Man has attempted a wider organization in the hope of getting SECURITY and SERENITY. He has developed a mind ... And it is mind, now, not his senses that he must satisfy. 239

All five artists varied considerably in their interest in and use of theosophy and the concept of the fourth dimension. Harris was thoroughly imbued with theosophy and tried to persuade Carr to accept it too. She baulked, but accepted the theosophical emphasis on rhythm and movement as central tenets in her painting. Varley, as always, wandered freely, incorporating Oriental and theosophical thoughts on the nature of development, of life. Macdonald too borrowed important concepts from occultists and theosophists, as well as probing the fourth dimension. Brooker also drew on Ouspensky's theories and tempered them with theosophical teachings. These theories, then, were vital for the development of their painting, and affected it profoundly.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nature, Space, and Movement

Moving form, majestically conceived F.H. Varley, The Paint Box, 1928

The five painters discussed here were discontented with a civilization alien to the spirit. Through their painting they sought to reconnect, to unify, the individual, the nation, the continent, and ultimately the universe to the One, to God. The means they employed were culled from nature and involved, beyond the representation of nature, space and movement. Their actual methods of procedure was as distinct as the individuals that practised them. Two of the five, Carr and Harris, progressed in a rather linear fashion, moving from the microcosm to the macrocosm. One, Brooker, was radically different, starting, as he explained it, with the imagination rather than with nature, starting to paint by painting the whole in his abstractions. When these were misunderstood, even by most of his closest peers, he reversed and turned to the more traditional progression from nature to imagination. Macdonald and Varley were also somewhat anomalous, working both macrocosmic and microcosmic approaches simultaneously. Macdonald produced modalities at the same time as landscapes, and Varley painted revealing portraits or spiritual figures while also producing landscapes. The individual order of procedure notwithstanding, the five painters considered here were all convinced that through a thorough study of nature, through painting nature with appropriate space and movement, they could advance the cause of civilization, they could reunite the individual with an erstwhile alienated spirit.1 At the very base of their universal symbolism was nature. Time and again these five painters underlined, as did Macdonald, that 'the artist does perceive through his study of nature the awareness of a force which is the one order to which the whole universe conforms/2 Carr had put it her own way, talking

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about nature, claiming brotherhood to mountains.3 Brooker lauded the true artist who 'sensed something of the universal rhythms which flow through every manifestation of nature/4 Often more laconic, Varley explained that 'the only way of living is to empty your mind in order to be filled by nature itself/5 Harris was so thoroughly convinced of the centrality of nature that he had great problems turning away from nature to non-representational painting. This belief in the centrality of nature is, of course, a very Romatic notion, one at the core of both transcendentalism and theosophy. Walt Whitman talked about there being 'divine things, well envelop'd' in the earth, while Madame Blavatsky emphasized that 'the root of all nature, objective and subjective, and everything else in the universe, visible and invisible, is, was and ever will be one absolute esssence, from which all starts, and into which everything returns/ More simply, Theosophy is divine nature'7 and 'we speak of the Diety and make it identical, hence coeval, with Nature, the eternal and uncreate [sic] nature/8 It was a short jump from a veneration of nature to seeing nature as the symbol and salvation of nation. As always, Harris was the most vociferous in his nationalism. In 1926 he wrote of 'the charged air, the clarity and spaciousness of our north country. For it has in it a call from the clear, replenishing, virgin north that most respond to the greater freer depths of the soul/9 Macdonald entered the spirit, after a trip to the United States, by telling the director of the National Gallery of Canada that he had wish to move down there for 'I am more certain now that Canada is the land where artists can find the environment for true creative activity/10 Even Carr got into the act, drawing on the Indians for analogy: must we bedeck ourselves in borrowed plumes and copy art made to fit other countries and not ours? Shall we try to make Canada look English or French or Italian by painting conscientiously in a style that does not belong to us. Or shall we search as the Indian did, amid our own surroundings and material, for something of our own through which to express ourselves. Make for ourselves garments of our own spinning, to fit our needs and become a very part of us. We may not believe in totems, but we believe in our country and, if we approach our work as the Indian did with his singleness of purpose, and determination to strive for the big thing that means Canada herself, ... our work may be crude but it is liable to be more worth while.11

In an earlier speech, given in 1930, in the Crystal Garden, to the Victoria Women's Canadian Club, on the occasion of Carr's first one-person show in her native city, Carr again drew on the art of the West Coast Indians to make her nationalistic point. Her approach was frankly regional. Here, however,

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she went further, linking the magnificence of western scenery to modernism in art and consequently agreeing with Edvard Munch on the importance of the inner images of the soul, the images on the back side of the eye: Her [Western Canada's] great forests, wide spaces, and mighty mountains and the great feel of it all should produce courageous artists, seeing and feeling things in a fresh, creative way. 'Modern' we ... call it... Some say the West is unpaintable and our forests monotonous. Oh, just let them open their eyes and look! It isn't pretty. It's only just magnificent, tremendous. The oldest art of our West, the art of the Indians, is in spirit very modern, full of liveness and vitality. They went for and got so many of the very things that we modern artists are striving for today.12

It was Brooker who most clearly identifed this land-based nationalism, perhaps because he was not overly sympathetic to it. In The Canadian Forum, reviewing the Group of Seven, he suggested that 'there is little disposition on the part of either public or press to recognize in this departure from traditional methods of landscape painting a native and national movement, peculiar to this country and, as it were, redolent of this country/13 Brooker goes on to predict that recognition for the Seven will probably not come until they, like Whitman, find acceptance in Europe. He was right. A few years later, after the Group of Seven's triumph at the 1924 Wembley Exhibition in England, Brooker explained, in greater detail, just why it is so difficult to provide a unified art or literature in Canada. He identified: -

a country that is not unified geographically, a people that is not unified racially, a history ... failing to unify for us our past... a population too small to provide an adequate audience for artists, a general conception of art that lacks any hint of national consciousness, but clings instead to old notions of connoisseurship borrowed from feudal times and countries, - a disruption of the settling process ... by ... mechanization ... - a destruction of ethical-philosophic-religious stability by the encroaching skepticism of a science-ridden age.14

Brooker concluded that 'art in any country or time ... should crystallize into harmonious and unified wholes the experiences of people living at a certain time and in certain conditions/15 This statement mirrors very much what Harris was saying. This emphasis on nature and on the here and now was also basic to both transcendentalism and theosophy. Both philosophies helped promote nation-

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alism. Transcendentalism became part of the nineteenth-century American psyche, while, in the twentieth century, followers of Madame Blavatsky propounded nationalism in India, Ireland, and Canada. In the East, the theosophists' respect for indigenous religions and heritage had important political implications. The movement for Indian independence was partly based on an affirmation of Indian self-respect and pride in India's past. In Ireland theosophy was also associated with the movement emphasizing national heritage and a spirit of independence. George Russell (A.E.) and William Butler Yeats, deeply interested in mysticism and theosophy, were key players in the evolution of Anglo-Irish literature.16 Following this argument, it appears that nature is malleable, that nature can react differently to different people at different times. This is what Whitman proposed, a tricky proposition at best. He wrote, in language undermined by suppressed doubt: 'Nature consists not only in itself, objectively, but at least just as much in its subjective reflection from the person, spirit, age, looking at it, in the midst of it, and absorbing it - faithfully sends back the characteristic beliefs of the time or indivual - takes, and readily gives again, the physiognomy of any nation or literature - falls like a great elastic veil on a face, or like the molding plaster on a statue.'17 What Whitman was trying to do here was to reaffirm the old faith in the new world of the American west. However, by emphasizing nature's infinite flexibility, he also inadvertently calls into question its ultimate dependability, its spiritual constancey. As well, by giving prominence to subjective elements in perception, he virtually eliminates objective reality.1 Gradually negative personal impulses - criticism, doubt, and dismay - had crept into his poetry. The Canadian painters under consideration here, believing as they did the here-and-now theory, had to contend with the same problem. In 1935 Harris wrote to Yvonne and Fred Housser: 'I think there is no doubt that the impress of the time[,] place and people gets into a work just as does the individuality of the particular painter.'19 This realization brings to question just what nature meant. Was nature seen as reality, and if so was it subjective or objective reality? Or was nature perhaps a symbol for society? Or, finally, was nature the point at which the ideal could most easily be apprehended Harris's contention that nature is but a distorted reflection of a more perfect world? These questions are germane if we consider the character of nature represented in the paintings. The five artists discussed here all, in their individual fashions, suggested that in nature one could see the indications of an ideal, a more perfect world. However, each artist painted nature in a manner that is often inhuman, cold, crude, and perhaps even cruel. A young painter, Jack Shadbolt, stated that Emily Carr's paintings suggested to him 'a malignant and somber nature more worthy of solemn awe or fright than of reciprocative joy' and that she

166 The Logic of Ecstasy

'evoked the presence of the terrible and elemental forces of our landscape/20 Harris, as will be recalled, recognized that the newly discovered landscape could be 'strange' and even 'unpleasant/ In 'Revelation of Art in Canada' he explained: 'To some of us the newer zest of this continent is not entirely friendly. Its results appear crude, raucous, ill-formed because forming/21 Brooker referred to 'the more violent rhythms and starker light' of the Canadian north.22 How can these characteristics be reconciled with an ideal, for surely an ideal is positive? Gaile McGregor contends that the Group of Seven, of which Harris and Varley were members, provides 'a striking demonstration of how wide the gap between intentions and results can be/ that although they ardently professed a pro-nature stance, many contemporaries saw their paintings as harsh and disturbing at best, and at worst as nightmarish, necessitating retreat to the garrison. McGregor sees this as a problem of the specifics of Canadian nature, of entering the wilderness, a problem adumbrated both by inimical subject-matter and by compositional device, particularly a denial of spatial recession. Here then is a typically Canadian tension between a 'desire for and a fear of reconciliation with nature/ She sees the Canadian frontier as 'the northern frontier, the limits of endurance.'2-* The exploration of limits of endurance is not antithetical to mystical beliefs, including transcendentalism and theosophy. Certainly Whitman, in a poem such as 'Song of the Open Road/ was anxious that the exploration be internal as well as external, that the voyage be an existential one as well as a physical one. Theosophists too recognized the enormous struggle necessary to attain the Path. The ladder by which the candidate ascends [to the "Voice of the Silence"] is formed of rungs of suffering and pain; these can be silenced only by the voice of virtue. Woe, then, to thee, Disciple, if there is one single vice thou hast not left behind. For then the ladder will give way and overthrow thee; its foot rests in the deep mire of thy sins and failings, and ere thou canst attempt to cross this wide abyss of matter thou has to lave thy feet in Waters of Renunciation/24 Christian churches, especially the more fundamental ones, bespoke equally vociferous admonitions to explore the limits. It was through mystical belief that the five artists found a way out, a way beyond the northern frontier, the garrison mentality. They counteracted the sense of being engulfed by an inimical universe and the sense of human limitation through mysticism, by building on a revealed experience of the unity of all nature and all individuals. The realities of the here and now could be accepted if such limits were considered to be only a small part of the greater truth, the One that everyone aspired to join. It was important, however, to keep the goal constantly in mind, not to be sidetracked by one aspect of the problem but to aspire constantly towards the greater unity.

Nature, Space, and Movement 167

The individuality of both mysticism and the five painters under consideration precluded any uniform schedule of development. At one pole we can see Brooker launching right into very transcendental paintings, then drawing back when these were thoroughly misunderstood. At the opposite pole we see Harris working through representational and decorative landscape paintings until he came to his Lake Superior, Mountain, and Arctic works, in which he tried to combine the real and the ideal. Then he was stuck. His nationalistic concerns pushed him into a blinkered determinism to paint nature, the wilderness, the North. Only when he was able to abandon his narrow nationalism (and he finally did so in his 1933 lecture Theosophy and Art/ where he propounded a 'metaphysic ... of universal scope'25) was he simultaneously able to abandon nature-based painting and embrace abstraction.26 For Harris, then, a mystical emphasis on nature actually acted as a retardant in the development of his spiritual paintings because he believed so vociferously in the particular Canadian ambivalence towards the wilderness. Harris, and to a certain extent Carr, had to abandon the particularly Canadian, the here and now, the narrow Northern jingoism, to discover mystical release. Theosophy and transcendentalism both provided a way to this abandonment. Each emphasized a continental rather than a narrowly national approach. Whitman saw the new world, both the actual and the dream, embracing the whole North American continent27; theosophists talked about the coming of a new race on the North American continent. Harris's antiAmerican pronouncements were made in 1926 in the heat of his nationalistic passion,2 but he also suggested, citing Whitman, that 'we get moments of harmony when life and the arts fuse and flourish in terms of the unity of the soul. No doubt we will move into such a moment on this continent'29 [emphasis mine]. In his important article 'Creative Art and Canada,' for the 1928—9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, Harris recognized and acknowledged the strain between the here and now on the one hand, and the universal and timeless on the other hand, what he called the 'interplay of opposites' in another paper.30 Contending that a people must become individualized before the universal can have any meaning, in the Yearbook he wrote: 'We have thus the seeming paradox that it needs the stimulus of earth resonance and of a particular place, people and time to evoke into activity a faculty that is universal and timeless.'31 Already, however, Harris seemed to be looking for a way beyond jingoism. He suggested, in the same article, that Canadian 'clarity and unpretentious devotion ... born of the spirit of the North' could be positive influences on the 'forming race to the south.' His fight was not really with the United States. As ever he railed against the 'European attitude and its tradition.' 'So, in the modern world/ he wrote, 'and in the new world on this continent, we slowly emerge from the swaddling clothes of the old

i68 The Logic of Ecstasy

Europe ... Now the new race is finding its own character and direction, its own creative zest, and it seeks to possess and express its own soul/32 (Harris's use of 'race' here is a borrowing of theosophical terminology, for the theosophists used 'race' to mean civilizations, and discussed the fifth 'root-race,' the current one, and the sixth root-race, the one they anticipated would be born in America.33 Bucke also used the word 'race' to mean civilization, to suggest a new spiritual life.34) By the end of the 19205 Harris was moving towards continentialism. A decade later he was moving towards universalism. Brooker was never as narrowly nationalistic as Harris. Writing in the same 1928-9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, while strongly supporting the development of a sense of Canadian confidence, Brooker emphasized that true creativity can never be shackled, that a restricted concentration on the here and now is detrimental, that 'art and literature on the grand scale is never narrowly contemporary/35 In one of his 'Seven Arts' newspaper articles, he recorded: 'I feel... impatient with the kind of mind that accepts as praiseworthy only art flavoured with Canadianism/3 Like Blake, he concentrated on a visionary here and now. While focusing on the time scale, Brooker also mentioned the space scale, urging his readers to see life 'as manifestations of a great unified realm of being whose every part depends upon or gives birth to every other part, in an endless and subtly interrelated "becomingness." /37 These two scales of space and time provided the pictorial methods for depicting the transcendent world; space and motion were the tools the five painters used. Carr's painterly explorations took her from the static, planar Indian Church to the rhythmic, space-filled Sunshine and Tumult. In the former work, human activity and power is constrained by the strength and might of verdant nature. In the latter painting nature has acquired an anthropomorphic energy sufficient to delight and inspire any viewer. Here, surely, she has succeeded in her aim of capturing that something additional, that breath that draws your breath into its breathing, that recognition of the oneness of all. Jock Macdonald certainly thought so. After seeing her 1938 one-person show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, he wrote to the director of the National Gallery: 'I feel in her work the first conscious expression of the rythm [sic] of life, relating this rythm of all nature, and definitely causing the observer of her work to be conscious of the fact that he or she is also related even though there is no physical body represented/38 Brooker's transcendental paintings showed less linear progression towards the ineffable because he tried to start there, to start with 'the immense reaches of infinite space and the brightness of starry circlings through endless time/ He was most successful in his most abstract pieces, such as Sounds Assembling, because here he was unconstrained by naturalistic representation and could give full rein to his interest in space and concept of motion

Nature, Space, and Movement 169

depicted as energy over time. His more representational paintings, such as The St. Lawrence, were redolent of those characteristics so criticized in Harris's painting: coldness, lack of humanity, over intellectualization. His purpose, however, was rather different from a cold, intellectual stance: to respond 'to the new, the natural, the open, the massive.'39 Regrettably, Brooker's pictorial marriage between order and freedom, emotion and intellect, particular and universal, was not readily perceived by his audience. If Brooker aimed to proceed in an orderly fashion, developing in his audience an understanding of the endless 'becoming/ of the wholeness and oneness, of life, Varley posited the same aim. His methods, however, were very different. Less intellectual and disciplined, more intuitive and spontaneous, Varley none the less recognized the centrality of emotion, intellect, and will in the appropriate combinations, and the validity of space and motion as tools. He declared: 'We are trying to offset the weakness and sentimentalities that flesh seems blessed and cursed with, by clear active thinking and impersonal vision/40 Never the resounding nationalist, he preferred to emphasize the unitive universal over the divisive particular. Touring western Canada in 1924, the heyday of Harris's intense nationalism, a reporter quoted Varley as saying: 'It is ... a mistake to distinguish too much between the art of different countries and nations, between the art of different ages. Under the profession of surface life which we call history is something real and unchangeable. An old master is thoroughly modern. There is no modern art, only modern ways of expression/41 Varley none the less responded forcefully to the Canadian wilderness and proclaimed 'for life, for real joy of living, ambition & incentive - "Oh Canada!" '42 In his great pieces, such as The Open Window, he has pared his subject down to its Oriental essence, combining simplicity and space to allow the soul to roam over limitless space, into timeless time and through blessed silence. Macdonald, under Varley's tutelage, started with an abiding love and respect for nature, and developed from there, using his designer tools to apprehend the cosmos. Deeply interested in natural law, in science, he aimed to discover and depict those laws in paint, seeing as he and the others did that the laws of nature and the laws of art were the same. Like Munch, Macdonald emphasized that art comes from the interior: 'The interpretation of the world, in art, becomes expression of our inner consciousness - our subjective thoughts - manifested through objective observations/43 It is in this way that we must view Macdonald's experiments, his modalities, his attempts to explore the inner consciousness, the mystery, the secret in the life of humanity, and the passage of time or space in metaphysical unfoldment. Harris is the most complex and intellectual of the five painters. These characteristics prevented him from following the more intuitive union of space and motion with nature. Rather, Harris had to separate nature, had to

170 The Logic of Ecstasy

rid himself of her, to see her. In a truly religious way, a mystical and transcendental and theosophical penitent's way, he had to drop his possession, his having, to attain being. Eventually Harris did succeed. He united rhythm and space with an intuitive apprehension of nature. In calling art 'the moral order of the universe' he explained this as meaning that the universe is order and that art or harmoniousness controls that order. It means that the universe functions within the law of harmony - or perhaps I should say, is the law of harmony. It means that the stars in their courses, the planets in their orbits, the earth in its rotation, - the seasons and tides, the fructification of seeds and the blooming of flowers, the ideas and spiritual impulses are rhythmic, interdependent. It means that everything in the universe works and lives within the law of harmony - is part of one, great living unity.44

Harris and the other four painters wanted to coalesce rational thought and intuitive awareness to discover the logic of ecstasy.

Notes

PREFACE

1 Lawren S. Harris, The Greatest Book by a Canadian and Another/ Canadian Bookman 5/2 (February 1924), 38 2 F.C. Happold, Religious Faith and Twentieth-Century Man (New York: Crossroad 1981), 39-40 3 Ibid., 42-3 CHAPTER l 1 Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985) 2 Some of these are found in books such as Patrick Grand, Literature of Mysticism in the Western Tradition (London: Macmillan 1983); Georgia Harkness, Mysticism: Its Meaning & Message (Nashville: Abingdon 1973); James H. Leuba, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1929); Rudolph Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact (Highland [Ulster]: Anthropsophic Press Publishers 1914); Steven Payne, John of the Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1990). 3 New York: E.P. Dutton 1943; first published 1914. For this reference, and for a great deal of help with mysticism and this book I am indebted to Professor Don Evans. 4 B.H. Streeter and A.J. Appasamy, The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion (Delhi: Mittasl Publications 1987; first published 1921), 69 5 Ibid., 3 6 Ibid., 30 7 Ibid., 18 8 Ibid., 18-19 9 Ibid., 22 10 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Boston: Beacon Press 1947; 1962 paperback), 85 11 Franz Marc, 'Spiritual Treasures/ in The Blaue Reiter Almanac, documentary edition, ed. Klaus Lankheit (New York: Viking 1974), 59

172 Notes to pp. 6-15

12 Quoted in Maurice Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 18901985 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1986), 45 13 Ibid., 49 14 Francis V. O'Connor and Eugene V. Thaw, Jackson Pollock: Catalogue Raisonne (New Haven: Yale University Press 1978), 26 15 Quoted in Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art, 19 16 Michael Parke-Taylor, In Seclusion with Nature: The Later Work of L. LeMoine FitzGerald, 1942 to 1956 (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1988); Dennis Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas: The Later Work of Lawren S. Harris (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1985); Philip Fry, Charles Gagnon (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, exhibition catalogue, 1978); David Burnett, Perceptual Realism (London: London Regional Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1988) 17 National Archives of Canada, Emily Carr Papers, MG3O, 0215, diary, Thursday, 17 Nov. 1927. For a generally accurate published version of much of these diaries see Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (Toronto/Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin 1966) 18 Underhill, Practical Mysticism, 65, 67 19 Ibid., 97-8 20 Hundreds and Thousands, 15-16 21 Ibid., 17 22 Ibid., 17-18 23 Paula Blanchard, The Life of Emily Carr (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & Mclntyre 1987), 33-4 24 Maria Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography (Toronto: Oxford University Press 1979)/ 7 25 Blanchard, Life of Emily Carr, 32 26 The Book of Small (Clarke, Irwin 1942), 26 27 16 July 1933 28 Underhill, Practical Mysticism, 24-5 29 Diary, 9 Sept. 1933 30 Underhill, Practical Mysticism, 101-2 31 2 Dec. 1931 32 Diary, 14 Oct. 1933 33 A preliminary watercolour, called Friendly Cove, is in the Weir Foundation, Queenstown, Ont. 34 Diary, 14 Oct. 1933 35 Underhill, Practical Mysticism, 90, 91, 92, 95, 97 36 Emily Carr Papers, vol. 2, Harris-Carr correspondence, Harris to Carr, undated, ca. March 1929 37 Underhill, Practical Mysticism, 65-6 38 Carr Papers, Harris to Carr, undated, ca. March 1929 39 Hundreds and Thousands, 23 Nov. 1930, 21 40 Carr Papers, diary, 17 Nov. 1933 41 Hundreds and Thousands, 93

Notes to pp. 15-22 173

42 Ibid., 29 Jan. 1934. Years later, on 22 Dec. 1940, Carr wrote to her friend Nan Cheney and gave another slant to the matter. She said: 'Well by & bye [sic] the whole thing soured on me. Mainly the supercilious attitude towards the bible & their denial of the divinity of Christ and the atonement. Christ was on/}/ a good man to them. Bess sent me a Madame Blavatsky book which infuriated me. I flung it across the room when partly read & then I burnt it & told Bess & Lawren I did not like Theosophy. I liked & believed in plain bible & I burnt Madam B. & we've never mentioned the matter since.' Cheney Papers, University of British Columbia, Special Collections Division 43 Harris to Carr, 10 Feb. 1934. Harris, here, could not stop himself from analysing both theosophy and theosophy's relationship to Christianity. It is a strong and revealing letter. 44 Hundreds and Thousands, 17 July 1933, 42 45 Doris Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr (Toronto and Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin/Douglas & Mclntyre 1979), 139 46 Archives of British Columbia, Hembroff Papers, Carr to Hembroff, 16 Nov. 1936 47 Shadbolt, Art of Emily Carr, 138 48 University of British Columbia Library, Special Collection 49 Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr (Vancouver: Douglas & Mclntyre 1990), 78 50 Diary, 17 Jan. 1936 51 Carr Papers, vol. 12, Notes 'From the Sadhu: Ecstasy and Vision.' At the end of these notes Carr recorded the titles, publisher, and prices of four books by Sadhu Sundar Singh, and one other book about him and his work. 52 Ibid. 53 Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 139; as quoted by Carr in her notes 'From the Sadhu: Ecstasy and Vision,' i 54 Ibid., 74 55 Ibid. 56 Page 9 of Carr's notes. I have retained Carr's inconsistent capitalization of Nature. In the original (The Sadhu, 192) Nature is always capitalized and the 'in' in 'God in Nature' is italicized. This sentence is preceded by the biblical quotation 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.' 57 The Sadhu, 132 58 Diary, 24 Nov. 1930 59 F.C. Happold, Religious Faith and Twentieth-Century Man (New York: Crossroad 1981), 78-9 60 Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906-1930 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1978), 19 61 For more details on Christian Science see Stephen Gottschalk. The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press 1973) 62 Charles C. Hill, John Vanderpant Photographs (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, 1976), 28

i/4 Notes to pp. 22-9

63 National Gallery of Canada, Harris Papers, Bess Harris to Russell Harper, started 14 July 1962 64 Ibid. 65 Cook, The Regenerators, 65-6 66 Bland Papers, as noted in L.R. Pfaff, 'Portraits by Lawren Harris: Salem Bland and Others/ RACAR 5/1 (1978), 24 67 For the most up-to-date analysis of Brooker's multifarious interests see Provincial Papers, 7 (1989). 68 'Mysticism Debunked/ Canadian Forum, March 1930 (reprinted in Sounds Assembling, ed. Birk Sproxton [Winnipeg: Turnstone Press 1980], 65). The title is an unfortunate one in that it seems to suggest that Brooker did not believe in mysticism. As his book review proves, this is far from true. Rather he complained in the review that the author, John Middleton Murry, had failed to describe the indescribable, that Murry had not been able to make clear to those who had not had an illumination just what mysticism really is. 69 University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers, unpublished ms, 'A Candle in the Sunshine/ 140-2 70 Ibid., Brooker Diary, 29 Feb. 1924; Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin 1923), 218 71 'Mysticism Debunked/66 72 University of Manitoba, Brooker Diary and Papers, 29 Feb. 1924 73 Ibid., 29 Feb. 1924, 2 74 Ibid., 2 Mar. 1924 75 Ibid v3 76 Ibid. 77 For the best analysis of FitzGerald's influence on Brooker see Patricia E. Bovey, L.L. FitzGerald & Bertram Brooker: Their Drawings (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1975) 78 An address delivered by Brooker at Hart House, Toronto, on 17 Nov. 1949 in conjunction with an exhibition of his paintings. The exhibition ran from 7 to 27 Nov. 1949. Reprinted in Sounds Assembling (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press 1980), 36 79 'Painting and Poetry/ undated, reprinted in Sounds Assembling, 26 80 Sounds Assembling, 52 81 Dave Brock, 'A Fire in the Belly/ Vancouver Sunf 3 Oct. 1969. Others expressed similar thoughts. Mona Gould, in 'Verbal Meanderings: A Collection of Recollections/ Gossip (Toronto), August-September 1969, p. 4, wrote: 'Vocal and individualistic. His talk was quality talk, spiced with mysticism and utterances of great insight and wisdom. Here was a painter as spellbinding in the man as on canvas. He was a striking person/ 82 John A.B. McLeish, September Gale: A Study of Arthur Lismer of the Group of Seven (Toronto/Vancouver: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1955), 9 83 Varley Inventory (with Peter Varley), F.H. Varley to Maud Varley, 8 Nov. 1918 84 MacKenzie Porter, 'Varley/ Maclean's Magazine 72/23 (7 Nov. 1959), 30-3, 62,64-6, 71

Notes to pp. 30-37 175

85 Varley Inventory, Varley to Ethel, undated [1902] 86 Christopher Varley, F.H. Varley: A Centennial Exhibition I Une exposition centenaire (Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1981), 34. For further information on the whole rather complicated organization of the Canadian War Records see Ann Davis, The Wembley Controversy in Canadian Art,' Canadian Historical Review 54/1 (March 1973), 64 87 Varley, F.H. Varley, 34, according to Barker Fair ley 88 Varley Inventory, Varley to Maud, 16 Sept. 1918 89 Quoted in Varley, 40, 42 90 Varley Inventory, Varley to Maud, 8 Nov. 1918 91 Varley, 42 92 Varley Inventory, Varley to Maud, 10 Dec. 1918 93 Varley Inventory, Varley to Maud, undated, probably 1914 94 Joyce Zemans, 'An Appreciation/ in Peter Varley, Frederick H. Varley (Toronto: Key Porter 1983), 67; see also Lawrence Sabbath, tape-recorded interview with Varley, September 1960, in Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Archives, Queen's University, Kingston. 95 Varley Inventory, Varley to Ethel, undated, ca. 1914 96 As reported in the Edmonton Bulletin of 27 Mar. 1924, and the Edmonton Journal of 27 Mar. 1924 97 F.H. Varley, 'Room 27 Speaking,' The Paint Box (annual publication of students of Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts) 2 (June 1927), 23 98 Chris Varley, Varley, 156,158 99 Porter, 'Varley,' 66 too Varley Inventory, Varley to John, 13 Jan. 1937 101 McMichael Canadian Collection (Kleinburg, Ont.), Archives, Varley to Vera, 18 Jan. 1936 102 National Archives of Canada, Varley Papers, MG3O, 0282, vol. 24. Writer unknown. Dated 10 Mar. 1937 103 Chris Varley, Varley, 130 104 Varley Inventory, Varley to Ethel and Lil, 27 Jan. 1956 105 Fiona E. Davenport, letter to author, 21 June 1989 106 Ruth Stevens Appelhof, The Expressionist Landscape: North American Modernist Painting 1920-1947 (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1988), 47, 81 n.i6 107 National Archives of Canada, Carl Schaefer Papers, MG30, 0171, vol. 1-5, Macdonald to Schaefer, 6 Apr. 1955 108 J.W.G. Macdonald, 'Art in Relation to Nature,' reproduced in Joyce Zemans, jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape IA Retrospective Exhibition (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1981), app. i, p. i; notes in the possession of Marilyn Westlake Kuczer 109 Ibid., 5 no Ada F. Currie, 'The Vanderpant Musicales/ The Paint Box 3 (June 1928), 48 111 Peter Varley, Varley, 17 112 From an interview between Anna Ackroyd and Sheryl Salloum, undated, in notes kindly provided to me by Sheryl Salloum, who is preparing a biography

176 Notes to pp. 37-41

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123 124

125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

of John Vanderpant, 'Underlying Vibrations: The Life and Photography of John Vanderpant' 'Underlying Vibrations'; unpaginated Hundreds and Thousands, 23, 32 University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers, Vanderpant to Brooker, 10 Sept. 1929, and Brooker to Vanderpant, 21 Aug. 1936 As quoted in 'Underlying Vibrations' Ibid. 'Artery,' The Paint Box 3 (June 1928), 55 National Archives of Canada, Vanderpant Papers, notes (untitled), 5 (first sentence begins 'It becomes clear ../) 'Because of the Cause or Giving the Reason Why/ Camera Craft 36 (December 1929), 578 Tradition in Art/ Photographic Journal 68 (November 1928), 448 Vanderpant undated notes, 1935-7, quoted in Charles C. Hill, John Vanderpant: Photographs (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, *976), 27 Hill, Vanderpant, 27 National Archives of Canada, Lawren S. Harris Papers, MG3O, 0208, vol. 2, Notebook, undated, [19205]. 'We are each of us but channels and the more we permit the full tide of thoughts and ideas to flow through us the surer we are to learn to discriminate between the temporal and the eternal, and between what we befoul and what comes to us wholly pure/ Brooker, 'The Seven Arts/ 9 Mar. 1929 (syndicated newspaper column, appearing in Ottawa Citizen; collected in National Gallery of Canada Library) Shadbolt, 'A Personal Recollection/ in Vancouver: Art and Artists 1931-1983 (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1983), 36 Ibid., 36-7 Zemans, Macdonald, 47, quoting Jack Shadbolt from an interview with Zemans on 21 Feb. 1978 National Gallery of Canada, Archives, file 7.1], A.Y. Jackson to H.O. McCurry, note in file 7-iM, undated Burnaby (BC) Art Gallery, Macdonald to G.H. Tyler, 2 Jan. 1936, copy R. Ann Pollock, Jock Macdonald (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, 1969), 5; from an interview with Beatrice Lennie, 30 Dec. 1968 National Gallery of Canada, Archives, file 7.1, Macdonald, J.W.G.; Macdonald to McCurry, 7 Sept. 1938 Ibid. Ibid., Macdonald to McCurry, 23 Oct. 1937 McCord Museum Archives, Montreal, Jock Macdonald to Maxwell Bates, 21 Oct. 1956 Robert McLaughlin Gallery Archives, Jock Macdonald to Lois Steen, 24 Nov. 1958, quoted in Joan Murray, Jock Macdonald's Students (Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1981), 11

Notes to pp. 42-7 177

CHAPTER2

1 In examining this problem in U.S. art, Max Kozloff wrote: 'So resonant has been this "psychic ruckus" [the competition between autocratic imagination and an egalitarian social conscience] exemplified by Whitman, that much of our art appears to be, by and large, a dilation of its central themes/ From 'Walt Whitman and American Art/ in The Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press 1970), 29 2 Paul F. Boiler, American Transcendentalism 1830-1860: An Intellectual Inquiry (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1974), xiii-xviii 3 Toronto: Ryerson Press 1930 4 Stanley E. McMullin. 'Walt Whitman's Influence in Canada/ Dalhousie Review 49/3 (Autumn 1969), 363 5 Sunset of Bon Echo 6, n.p. 6 McMullin, 'Walt Whitman's Influences/ 366 7 Arten Lozynsky, Richard Maurice Bucke, Medical Mystic: Letters of Dr. Bucke to Walt Whitman and His Friends (Detroit: Wayne State University 1977)' 25 8 Ibid., Bucke to Harry Buxton Fordham, 19 Feb. 1869 9 Ibid., 26; Bucke to Forman, 11 Apr. 1869 10 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Longmans, Green 1902), 399; quoted from a privately printed pamphlet that preceded Cosmic Consciousness. It is interesting to note that, when Bucke wrote up this experience of his in Cosmic Consciousness, he used the third person. 11 Ibid. 12 Richard Maurice Bucke, Walt Whitman (London: Alexander Gardner 1884), 50 13 R.M. Bucke, 'Introduction' to Calamus. A Series of Letters Written during the Years 1868-1880. By Walt Whitman to a Young Friend (Peter Doyle) (Boston: L. Maynard 1897), 12 14 Lozynsky, Richard Maurice Bucke, 46; Bucke to Forman, 24 Oct. 1877 15 There is a further Canadian connection in this story: when Whitman was seriously ill Bucke persuaded the renowned Canadian doctor William Osier to attend him. Osier at the time was living in the United States. 16 Lozynsky, Richard Maurice Bucke, 85; Bucke to Whitman, 20 Mar. 1883 17 Ibid., 91; from In Re Walt Whitman, ed. H.L. Traubel, R.M. Bucke, and Thomas Harned (Philadelphia: published by editors through D. McKay 1893), 443 18 R.M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (New York: E.P. Button 1901), 3 19 Ibid., 5 20 Ibid., 7 21 Ibid., 16 22 Ibid., 225

178 Notes to pp. 47-52

23 Ibid., 232 24 National Archives of Canada, J.E.H. MacDonald Papers, MG3O, Dm, vol. 3, notebook 25 Ibid., partial notes for lecture, p. 5. It is interesting to note that an earlier version read somewhat differently: 'He is a great specimen of humanity, & all should have some interest in him. He speaks for all deeply from the soul of man/ 26 University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers, MacDonald to Brooker, 28 Jan. 1927 27 'An Artist's View of Whitman/ i 28 Ibid., 2,14 29 Ibid., 33 30 Ibid., 7-8 31 Ibid., notes, n.p. This polarity in interest and interpretation continues today so that recent books focus, on the one hand, on Whitman the mystic (for example, George B. Hutchinson, The Ecstatic Whitman: Literary Shamanism & the Crisis of the Union [Columbus: Ohio State University Press 1986]) and, on the other hand, on Whitman as a reflection of his time and place (see David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville [New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1988]). 32 'An Artist's View of Whitman,' 2nd version, p. 5 33 F.B. Housser, 'Walt Whitman and North American Idealism/ Canadian Theosophist 11/5 (X5 July 193°)/ *36 34 Cosmic Consciousness, 383-4 35 Housser, 'Walt Whitman/ 140 36 Contemporary Canadian nationalism has been thoroughly discussed, though Whitman's influence has been neglected. For an interesting analysis of the forces of nationalism see Carl Berger, 'The True North Strong and Free/ in Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto: McGraw-Hill 1966). 37 Toronto: Macmillan 1926, p. 17 38 Leaves of Grass (New York, 1856), iv 39 A Canadian Art Movement, 18 40 Leaves of Grass, 329 41 Ibid., 'Song of Myself (Garden City 1917), 88; see also Specimen Days (Philadelphia 1882-3), 83~4 42 A Canadian Art Movement, 122-3 43 F.B. Housser, The Whitmanic Attitude and the Creative Life/ The Disk i (i933)/ 23 44 Ibid., 27 45 Ibid., 29 46 Walt Whitman, in notes for a lecture on Kant and others, in The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman (New York: Putnam's Sons 1902), 6:185; quoted in Thomas B. Byers, What I Cannot Say: Self, Word and World in Whitman, Sevens, and Merwin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1989), 32 47 Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen E. Whicher (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1957), 229

Notes to pp. 52-60 179

48 Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, ed. James E. Miller, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin 1959), 419 49 Byers, What I Cannot Say, 32-3 50 Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr (Vancouver: Clark, Irwin/Douglas & Mclntyre 1979), 60; Housser and Carr corresponded. 51 Archives of the Province of British Columbia, taped interview between Max Maynard and Derek Reimer, Accession no. 1642, 29 Nov. 1978, transcript, tape 6, track i, p. 11; see also Edyth Hembroff-Schleiher, M.E.; A Portrayal of Emily Carr (Toronto: Clark, Irwin 1969), 34: 'sometimes she would reread a few passages from her well-worn copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.' I am indebted to Marie Leduc for this reference. 52 University of British Columbia, Special Collections Division, Cheney Papers, Carr to Cheney, 20 Mar. [1932]. I have reproduced Carr's erratic punctuation just as she wrote it. 53 Ibid., Carr to Cheney, n.d., envelope postmarked 15 Mar. 1938 54 National Archives of Canada, Emily Carr Papers, MG3O, 0215, vol. 12, headed 'From F.B. Housser's book on Whitman ... Glossary' 55 Diary, 30 July 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands (Toronto/Vancouver: Clark, Irwin 1966), 47 56 Carr Papers, 12 Aug. 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 48 57 Ibid., vol. i, Carr to Ira Dillworth, 2 Aug. 1942 58 University of British Columbia Library, Special Collections Division, Cheney Papers, 'Talk on Art by M. Emily Carr,' 6 59 Ibid., 7-8 60 Diary, 7 June 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 36 61 Ibid., 29 July, 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 46 62 Ibid., 12 Aug. 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 48-9 63 Ruth Stevens Appelhof, The Expressionist Landscape: North American Modernist Painting 1920-1947 (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1988), 74 64 Cheney Papers, Carr to Cheney, 20 Mar. 1932 65 Maynard-Reimer interview (see note 51), 11-12 66 Appelhof (The Expressionist Landscape, 67-9) suggests that Charles Burchfield, another admirer of American transcendentalist poets, also influenced Carr in her employment of rhythmic lines to denote movement and to unify her compositions. 67 Quoted by Shadbolt, The Art of Emily Carr, flyleaf 68 Diary, 17 July 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 42 69 She quoted two other stanzas in her diary of 3 Nov. 1932; in Hundreds and Thousands, 30. 70 Ibid., 6 Sept. 1937, in Hundreds and Thousands, 293 71 Ibid., 4 Apr. 1934, in Hundreds and Thousands, 106-7 72 Ibid., 20 Aug. 1933, in Hundreds and Thousands, 51 73 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, vol. 2, General Correspondence, 1943-45, [probably Y.M. Housser] to Carr, undated [probably spring 1937]. I

i8o Notes to pp. 61-67

am indebted to Marie Leduc for this reference. 74 Brooker Papers, diary, 26 Aug. 1925 75 National Archives of Canada, Harris Papers, MG30,0208, vol. 2, notebook n.d. ca. 1910-14 76 Harris Papers, notebook, n.d. [19205], n.p. 77 Ibid. 78 Roger J. Mesley, 'Lawren Harris' Mysticism: A Critical View,' Art Magazine 10/41 (November/December 1978), 15 79 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Nature,' in The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Random House, Modern Library 1950), 19 80 'The Over-Soul,' in Selected Writings, 263 81 Harris Papers, notebook, n.d. [19205], n.p. 82 Ibid. 83 Quoted in Reynolds, Beneath the American Experience, 111; from Walt Whitman's Workshop: A Collection of Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. C.J. Furness (New York: Russell & Russell 1964), 62 84 Leaves of Grass (New York: Grosset and Dunlap 1971), 111 85 Scully Bradley et al., eds, Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum, 3 vols. (New York: New York University Press 1980), 3:568 86 M. Wynn Thomas, The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1987), 23-7 87 Ibid., 37 88 'Creative Art and Canada,' in The Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, ed. Bertram Brooker (Toronto: Macmillan 1929), 185 89 'Revelation of Art in Canada,' Canadian Theosophist 7/5 (1926), 85 90 'Creative Art and Canada,' 185 91 Harris Papers, vol. 5, 'The Creative Individual and a New Order,' n.d., 5 92 Ibid., 12-13; see ak° v°l- 6' 'Science and Art,' 9 93 'Creative Art and Canada,' 184 94 Lilian B. Miller, Patrons and Patriotism: The Encouragement of the Fine Arts in the United States 1790-1860 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1961), 25 95 Ibid., 25-6 96 Art Gallery of Ontario, J.E.H. MacDonald Papers, lecture delivered 17 Apr. 1931; see also Ann Davis, 'An Apprehended Vision: The Philosophy of the Group of Seven' (unpublished PhD thesis, York University, 1973), 230-2; and Roald Naasgard, The Mystic North: Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America 1890-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, exhibition catalogue, 1984), 158-61 97 'The True North Strong and Free' 98 Yale University, Societe Anonyme Papers, Katherine Dreier to Lawren Harris, 25 July 1949 99 For a good analysis of how Ouspensky's concept of dualities influenced this work see Mesley, 'Lawren Harris' Mysticism/ 16

Notes to pp. 67-74 181

100 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, Harris to Carr, June [1930] 101 Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove, Lawren Harris (Toronto: Macmillan 1969), 39. After Harris returned to Canada in 1940, he became more political, like Whitman. Like Whitman, and Brooker After him, Harris professed great interest in the common man. Like all transcendentalists, Harris railed against material power in favour of things of the spirit. In 'Democracy and the Arts' (an undated typescript, presumably a speech, National Archives of Canada, Harris Papers, vol. 5, 9) Harris wrote: 'And we are becoming convinced that the only standard we can apply if we are to serve not only the highest ends but the mere preservation of our society, is a thing of the spirit... 'I think we all see that the present vast struggle is one between those forces which would control the world for the sake of material power - and this always means tyranny in some form - and those forces which would release the great resources of the world, both material and cultural, for the benefit of all people, those forces which are guided by the principles of the spirit. 'We are all aware that the things of the spirit are a sense of over-all justice, veracity, Tightness and appropriateness, and the primary, the basic feeling and concern for the welfare of all our fellows.' 102 See, for example, 'Mysticism Debunked' and 'The Artist as Mystic,' a lecture Brooker gave to the Hart House Sketch Club on \ Nov. 1927 and repeated again for the University Extension series at the Art Gallery of Toronto sometime after 17 Oct. 1930. Lecture notes with Phyllis Brooker Smith. I am indebted to Joyce Zemans for this material. University of Manitoba, Bertram Brooker Papers, Brooker to L.L. FitzGerald, 17 Oct. 1930 103 Think of the Earth (Toronto: T. Nelson & Sons 1936), 241 104 Quoted in ibid., 248 105 Ibid., 248-9 106 Brooker also referred to Whitman's emphasis on the now in his diary entry of 6 Aug. 1925. Here he suggested that Whitman, writing 'Day Spring' in the present tense, was working on the problem of how to convey now, how to apprehend the inner life. 107 Bertram Brooker, 'When We Awake/ The Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, 1928-9,15 108 Think of the Earth, 258 109 'The Seven Arts,' Ottawa Citizen, 16 Feb. 1929 no In 'The Seven Arts/ newspaper article of 20 Apr. 1929, Brooker wrote: The most common state of man is a mood of exultation above and beyond the body. He forgets himself and becomes one with the sights and sounds and the beauty and suffering of the world around him. It is this mood that makes artists and poets of us all... These moderns, who have decended into the body, to explore it and to lay it bare, are not artists. There is no song in their work.' 111 'The Seven Arts/ Ottawa Citizen, 6 July 1929 112 Reproduced in Sounds Assembling (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press 1980), 54 113 'The Seven Arts/ 8 Dec. 1928 114 'The Artist as Mystic/ n.p. The layout I have used here is Brooker's.

182 Notes to pp. 75-81

115 116 117 118 119 120

121

122 123 124 125 126 127 128

129 130 131 132

133 134 135 136 137 138

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Thomas, Lunar Light, 118 When the pictures first went up, all Brooker heard was a 'curious silence/ 'relieved only by the whispering of groups who would not come up and discuss them with me openly.' A few days later Brooker was further hurt. 'Lismer asked Lawren to say something at 1:30, but after a while he and Lawren went over to the fireplace, talked together for a while and then left the club. Gradually everybody left the table and I was there alone.' Yet on coming home, he experienced a 'slight feeling of resentment - very slight - which soon passed through a rather lonely stage to a feeling of complete confidence and poise in the Infinite.' University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers, diary, 24 Jan. 1927 In 'Notes for the FREE PROSE/ Phyllis Brooker Smith Collection (private), on 6 Aug. 1925, Brooker wrote that the work 'must be fluid, because all is passing. We do not want to create complete, superb works ... Language itself, too, must be fluid ... to create a new language/ He referred to Whitman here too. Like Bergson, he acknowledged the flow and process of works as important. Reproduced in Sounds Assembling, 36 Ibid., 28, dated 21 Nov. 1926 'When We Awake' in The Yearbookof the Arts in Canada, ed. Bertram Brooker, 1929,16 'The Artist as Mystic/n.p. 'When We Awake/ 17 Ibid., 3; see also 'The Seven Arts/ 8 Dec. 1928 The Oriental influence on transcendentalism is documented. See, for example, Arthur Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism (New York: Octagon Books 1932; repr. 1963), and V.K. Chari, Whitman in the Light of Vedantic Mysticism: An Interpretation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1964). F.H. Varley, untitled article in The Paint Box 3 (June 1928), 12 McMichael Canadian Collection, Varley Papers, Varley to Arnold?, 15 Apr. 1929 Ibid., Varley to Vera, undated Lawrence Sabbath taped interview with Fred Varley, September 1960, Queen's University, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, transcript, p. 11; also Lawrence Sabbath untitled article on Varley in Montreal Star, 10 Oct. 1964 Varley Inventory (with Peter Varley), Varley to Ethel, undated [1914! Sabbath interview, 4 and 7 Varley Inventory, Varley to Ethel, undated [1914] Sabbath interview, 7 Ibid., 11 Ibid., 6

Notes to pp. 81-90 183

139 Ibid., 8 140 Christopher Varley, F.H. Varley: A Centennial Exhibition (Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1981), 104 141 Walt Whitman, The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace L. Traubel (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1902), 5:170 142 Ibid., 9: 3 143 Charles R. Metzger, Thoreau and Whitman: A Study of Their Esthetics (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books 1968), 73 144 Donald W. Buchanan, 'The Paintings and Drawings of F.H. Varley/ Canadian Art 7/1 (October 1949), 3 145 Varley Papers, Varley to Vera, undated [Ottawa, ca. 1940] 146 Complete Writings, 9:10 147 Ibid., 3: 46 148 F.H. Varley, 'Room 27 Speaking/ The Paint Box 2 (June 1927), 23 149 Sabbath interview, 11.1 have modified Sabbath's punctuation. 150 Ibid. 151 Robert Ayre, 'Varley Opens Up the West Coast and Suggests Other Dimensions/ Montreal Gazette, 29 May 1937 152 Sabbath interview, 5 153 Edmonton Art Gallery, Archives, photocopy, Varley to Elizabeth Cowling, undated [ca. 30 Aug. 1938]. There is certain confusion about the dating. Varley wrote to his sisters on August 25, saying they had just left Thule. However, the printed map detailing the 1938 trip, issued by the Department of Mines and Resources, records that the Nascopie docked at Thule on August 26 and left three days later. A copy of this map is in the Archives of the Edmonton Art Gallery. 154 Ibid. 155 National Archives of Canada, John Vanderpant Papers, Varley to Vanderpant, Easter Monday [1936] 156 The Orient in America Transcendentalism, 46-9 157 National Gallery of Canada, Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 2 Apr. 1937 158 'Art in Relation to Nature/ i; reproduced in Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1981) 159 Donald N. Koster, Transcendentalism in America (Boston: Twayne Publishers 1975), 29 160 Carl Bode, ed., The Portable Thoreau (New York: Viking Press 1947), 193 161 Koster, Transcendentalism in America, 30 162 Macdonald to McCurry, 23 Oct. 1937 163 Toronto: Macmillan 1939, p. i. This copy of this book is with Marilyn Westlake Kuzer. 164 J.W.G. Macdonald, 'Observations on a Decade ... 1938-48: The Development

184 Notes to pp. 91-8

165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175

of Painting in the West/ Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada 25/1 (1948), 20 Unidentified clipping, Kuzer Papers (private), Tom Thomson a Manifestation in Canada's Spiritual Growth/ undated Brooks Atkinson, ed., The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Modern Library 1950), 13 Macdonald, 'Art in Relation to Nature/ i Maxwell Bates, 'Jock Macdonald, Painter-Explorer/ Canadian Art 14/4 (Summer 1957), 152 'Art in Relation to Nature/ 9 Jessica Haigney, Walt Whitman and the French Impressionists (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Me lien Press 1990), 41 Complete Writings, 5: 98 Macdonald to McCurry, 26 Mar. 1937 Ibid., 16 June 1938 Cited in Haigney, Walt Whitman, 44 'Art in Relation to Nature/ 9; Bates, 'Jock Macdonald,' 152 CHAPTER3

1 Brooker, 'Mysticism Debunked/ reprinted in Sounds Assembling: Poetry of Bertram Brooker, ed. Birk Sproxton (Winnipeg: Turnstone Press 1980), 64 2 Quoted in J. Stillson Judah, The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America (Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1967), 93 3 Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press 1980), 104 4 Canadian Theosophist, 1920-30 5 Ibid. 6 Michele Lacombe, 'Theosophy and the Canadian Idealist Tradition: A Preliminary Exploration/ Journal of Canadian Studies 17 (Summer 1982), 103; for Banting see Michael Bliss, Banting: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1984) 7 Canadian Theosophist 1/1,15 Mar. 1920, i 8 F.B. Housser, 'Walt Whitman and North American Idealism/ Canadian Theosophist 11/4,15 June 1930,103-6; 11/5,15 July 1930 9 Stanley E. McMullin, 'Walt Whitman's Influence in Canada/ Dalhousie Review 49/3 (Autumn 1969), 361-8 10 Canadian Theosophist 3/2,15 Apr. 1922; reprint of letter to the editor of the London Free Press, 15 Oct. 1921,19 11 The best analysis I have found of theosophical belief is in Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revised (see note 3). I am indebted to this book for much of the following analysis of theosophical beliefs. 12 Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 2 vols. (New York: J.W. Bouton 1877), i: xi, 444, 511; 2: 99, 639 13 Ibid., i: 613

Notes to pp. 98—103 185

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44

45 46 47

Ibid., 2: 593 Ibid., i: 296 Ibid., i: 406, 456-7; 2: 38, 106-7 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1963; reprint Verbatim with the original edition, 1888'), i: 14-17 Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revised, 42-4 Secret Doctrine, i: 274 Ibid., i: 192 Ibid., 2: 490 Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1889), 3 Ibid., 9 Ibid., 20 Ibid., 12 Ibid., i Ibid., 26 Ibid., 47-8 Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revised, 68; quoting William Q. Judge, The Ocean of Theosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1964) The Secret Doctrine, i: 18 Ibid., 2: 230 Ibid., 244 Ibid., 245 Ibid., 242 The Key to Theosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1889), 201 2: 545-82, 590-8 his Unveiled, quoted by Jeremy Adamson, Lawren S. Harris: Urban Scenes and Wilderness Landscapes 1906-1930 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1978), 179; see also The Voice of the Silence, 19, 79 The Secret Doctrine, 2: 591-6 Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (London: Theosophical Publishing House 1901), 46 The Secret Doctrine, i: 98-9 Figure 42 The Secret Doctrine, i: 4-5 Quoted in Maurice Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art Abstract Painting 18901985 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1986), 20 Sixten Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos: A Study in the Spritualism ofKandinsky and the Genesis of Abstract Painting (Abo: Abo Akademi, Finland 1970), 121 Besant and Leadbeater, Thought-Forms, 70 C.W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible (New York: John Lane 1909), 20-1 Emily Carr (Vancouver: Douglas & Mclntyre 1990), 125

186 Notes to pp. 106—13

48 Carr Diary, 24 Nov. 1930; reprinted in Hundreds and Thousands (Toronto / Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin 1966), 21; Ruth Stevens Appelhof, The Expressionist Landscape: North American Modernist Painting 1920-1947 (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, 1988), 60-1 49 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, Harris to Carr, undated letter [spring 1929] 50 Archives of British Columbia, Edith Hembroff Papers, ADD MSS 876, Carr to Hembroff, day before Thanksgiving, 1936 51 Hundreds and Thousands, 126 52 Hundreds and Thousands, 61 53 Katherine Dreier, Western Art and the New Era: An Introduction to Modern Art (New York: Brentano's 1923), 19 54 Ibid., 8 55 Ibid., 125 56 Appelhof, The Expressionist Landscape, 66 57 See, for example, Carr Papers, Carr to Ira Dilworth, 6 Nov. 1942. On 11 December 1935 she burned theosophical literature sent to her; Hundreds and Thousands, 208. 58 Carr Papers, vol 2, Harris to Carr, 10 Feb. 1934 59 Ibid. 60 'Theosophy and Art/ 161 61 Bess Harris and R.G.P. Colgrove, Lawren Harris (Toronto: Macmillan 1969), 21 62 At the same time, with Yvonne Housser, he returned to a topic he had discussed with Emily Carr, the problem of finding your self through losing your self, the progress of the soul through the three halls. Here too Harris clearly favours theosophy over Christian Science: 'It is difficult as you say in your letter Yvonne dear to lose the lesser consciousness in awareness of the deeper to lose one personal self in the steady outlooking Perceiver, who sees the ceaseless movement of active life, - with its meaning; - like a dance of masks, - and remains steady, unperturbed, - looking out, - All the books say that it is difficult. In the Notes Judge says it takes many, many lives but there is no other way to solve our problems - and no effort without its effect - no least effort is lost - and no matter how may failures every effort is moving in the direction of ultimate accomplishment - the accomplishment of dissolving our separative personal self into the person and unified consciousness that is "not weary, nor heavy laden." Like you I believe that the very heart of C.S. is compatible with the heart of Theosophical thought. The average and orthodox interpretation of the teaching thought is mostly concerned with the outer wrappings and effects. I believe it is a mistake to take physical well-being as proof of the spiritual life, or to work with that end in view. The Bhagavadgita asserts again and again that disinterestedness in results is the only way to move away from the concern with the little self.' National Archives of Canada Y.M. Housser Papers, MGJO, 0305, vol. i, Harris to Y.M. Housser, 23 Feb. 1937

Notes to pp. 114-18 187

63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., Harris to Y.M. Housser, 26 Mar. 1939; the contemporary interest in Christian Science in Toronto was ubiquitous, with many of Harris's and Y.M. Housser's friends and relatives being practitioners of C.S. 65 Ibid., Harris to Y.M. Housser, i Dec. 1937 66 Ibid. 67 Both Jeremy Anderson and Dennis Reid have documented Harris's thorough involvement with theosophy most effectively. Yet confusion still remains because of a letter Bess Harris wrote to Dennis Reid on 25 October 1968 (National Gallery of Canada), which says, in part: 'Your first two questions imply that you are looking for traces of the dogmas and doctrines of the Toronto Theosophical Society in his painting. He believes it fair (or true) to say that he did not paint from any such point of view - or to put it another way - he did not teach Theosophy in his work. He also states that his endeavour was to imbibe the spirit of the ancient eastern wisdom, and then to imbue his own work and life as he went along with the feeling and thought which to some extent was the outcome of his endeavour.' Here Bess Harris was certainly reacting defensively to earlier negative comments about Harris's theosophical interests. Perhaps she focused too narrowly on the Toronto Lodge, a branch that followed Besant and Leadbeater rather than Blavatsky and Judge. Perhaps she zeroed in too strongly on the word 'teach,' for Harris preferred to instruct by example rather than by lecture. Whatever the cause or causes of Bess's misleading reaction, it is very clear that Lawren Harris did imbibe and imbue. Harris joined the Toronto Theosophical Lodge in March 1923. 68 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, Harris to Carr, June 1930 69 Ibid., Harris to Carr, undated [Spring 1932] 70 Ibid., Harris to Carr, undated [fall 1932] 71 Sandra Shaul, The Modern Image: Cubism and the Realist Tradition (Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1982), 16. Despite Harris's views concerning nationalism expressed to Carr, as quoted above, we must be careful not to impute to Harris narrow nationalistic concerns in the late 19205 and early 19305. As early as December 1926 Harris wrote to Katherine Dreier that 'now a few of us move toward universal consciousness. The strictly limited national outlook was in our peculiar circumstances necessary first.' Yale University, Societe Anonyme Papers, L.S. Harris to Katherine Dreier, undated (December 1926] 72 Y.M. Housser Papers, Harris to Yvonne and Fred Housser, 14 May 1935 73 Thought-Forms, 82 74 For details see Dennis Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas: The Later Work of Lawren S. Harris (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1985), 23-4; Douglas Worts, 'Lawren S. Harris: Transition to Abstraction 1934-1945,' unpublished Masters of Museum Studies paper, University of Toronto, 1982, pp. 61-2 75 National Archives of Canada, Harris Papers, vol. 3, Notebook, 1947, p. 7; this essay was reworked slightly and expanded and printed in 1954 as A Disquisi-

i88 Notes to pp. 119-21

76 77 78

79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90

tion on Abstract Painting (Toronto: Rous & Mann). Harris defined: The first is when painting is abstracted from nature.' The second kind of abstract painting is non-objective in that it has no relation to anything seen in nature. It does, however contain, [sic] an idea, a meaning, a message.' Page 46 New York: George Wittenborn 1947, p. 27 On Point and Line to Plane [first published as Punkt und Linie zu Fldche, 1926] (Bloomfield Hills: Cranbrook Press, for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1947), 109 The Sounding Cosmos, 193 Ibid. Adamson suggests that Harris was introduced to theosophy in Germany through Paul Thiem. The German Theosophical Society was then under the secretary-generalship of Rudolph Steiner. Lawren S. Harris, 22 Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos, 193-4 Theosophy and Art,' 14/5,15 July 1933,130 Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press 1918, pp. 210-11 Harris 1947 notebook, p. 8; reprinted almosts exactly in A Disquisition, p. 9 Harris Papers, MG3O, 0208, vol 6. Harris continued: The spiritual evolution of the inner man, the soul, throughout the aeons, and the physical evolution of his bodies within time are governed by that law, and all things have value by virtue of that law, and all problems in life or in art have their solution within that law, and all wrongs whatsoever their inevitable and necessary liquidation therein. 'In short, to put it bluntly, 'Rigid justice rules the universe. This law of rigid justice is the law of art. Thought we do not refer to it as the law of justice, but as the law of proportion, of harmony, balance, poise, equilibrium, or rightness, or appropriateness - it is none the less the same identical law, which every great work of art embodies and exemplifies and without which art would have no meaning, no coherence .../ p. 9. See also Toronto Theosophical Lodge, Archives, Harris radio ms, 5 Nov. and 31 Dec. 1933. The latter is reprinted in The Canadian Theosophist 66/4 (SeptemberOctober 1985), 73-6 University of British Columbia Library, Special Collections, Nan Cheney file, Carr to Cheney, 13 Feb. 1941 Ibid., undated, postmarked 20 Sept. 1941 Reproduced as no. 10 in Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas, 66; see also Worts, 'Lawren S. Harris,' figs 14-173. At about the same time as Harris was working on Resolution and Mountain Experience he wrote to his friend Carl Schaefer of his excitement about nonrepresentational painting: 'It opens up a new field both of subject matter or plastic ideas and of ways of seeing ... The possibilities are very very great and most enticing. There is no predicting where one is going or what one will be into next and that's exciting.' National Archives of Canada, Schaefer Papers, MG30, 0171, vol. 7 Harris to Schaefer, 21 Jan. [1937]

Notes to pp. 121—4 I^9

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102 103

104

105 106 107

108

Reproduced as no. 28 in Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas, 74 Page 8 For details see Reid, Atma Buddhi Manas, 26-33 Doris Millis Speirs Papers (private), Bess Harris to Doris Mills, 28 Dec. 1938 Ibid., Bess Harris to Doris Mills, 19 Feb. 1939 For details see Jay Hambidge, Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase (New Haven: Yale University Press 1920) Elizabeth Mitchell Walter, 'Jay Hambidge and the Development of the Theory of Dynamic Symmetry, 1902-1920,' PhD thesis, University of Georgia, 1978 Y.M. Housser Papers, Mayrion Bisttram to Yvonne Housser, 29 Jan. 1940 Robert Stacey, Charles William Jeffreys, 1869-1957 (Kingston: Agnes Ether ington Art Centre, 1976, exhibition catalogue); transcript of the lecture is in the C.W. Jeffrey Estate Archives. See also 'Johnston Never Member of the Group of Seven Is Exponent of Dynamic Symmetry/ Star Weekly (Toronto), 11 Oct. 1924 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, Harris to Carr, 15 Apr. 1937 Worts, 'Lawren S. Harris/ 73-4 Ralph Pearson, The Modern Renaissance in American Art (New York: Harper and Bros, ca. 1954), 83 See Worts, 'Lawren S. Harris/ 74, pi. 58, for an illustration of one of these. Note the heavy emphasis on circles and triangles in this drawing. It is important, too, to remember that Bisttram was probably not the only transcendental painter to influence Harris. As both Worts and Reid have noted (pp. 79-80 and 27 respectively), Raymond Jonson was surely also an influence. See also Edward Carman, The Art of Raymond Jonson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1976); Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Raymond Jonson: The Early Years (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Art Museum 1980); and Jonson's Composition Four- Melancholia (1925) illustrated in Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art, 43. In the L.S. Harris Papers in the National Archives of Canada there is a sheet of paper entitled 'First Problem in Dynamic Symmetry/ The problem is defined as 'To create root rectangles used in Dynamic Symmetry. Root one or square, root two, root three, root four, root five and whirling square rectangle/ Atma Buddhi Manas, 32 Produced in Walter, 'Jay Hambidge/ 215 See, for example, Painting No. 4, belonging to the Art Gallery of Ontario. The main form in this canvas is clearly a pentagon, a shape discussed in Hambidge's The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry (New York: Dover Publications 1967; unaltered republication of 1926 original), 84-5, 91. Reid suggests strongly that Harris was influenced directly by Bisttram (Atma Buddhi Manas, 33). Worts proposes such influences too ('Lawren S. Harris/ 73-74). While I agree that this influence is quite possible, especially in Harris's contemporary fondness for overlapping, translucent planes, I think that both Hambidge and Kandinsky also had a considerable part to play in this regard. For examples of Bisttram's 1930'$ work see Raymond F. and Lila K.

190 Notes to pp. 124-9

109 no 111 112 113 ' 114

115 116

117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

127

Piper, Cosmic Art (New York: Hawthorn Books 1975), plate 8 and p. 17 The Secret Doctrine, 4-5; Thought-Forms, figs 42 and 54 This will be discussed in greater detail below, under Macdonald's Modalities. Dynamic Symmetry, 32-3,140 On Point, 82 For details of Harris's effort and for the listing of the Toronto show, see L.R. Pfaff, 'Lawren Harris and the International Exhibition of Modern Art: Rectifications to the Toronto Catalogue (1927), and some Critical Comments/ RACAR 11/1-2 (1984), 79-84. Ibid., 83; Harris, 'Modern Art and Aesthetic Reactions/ 7 (May 1927), 23942. Here we can get a clear indication of Harris's contemporary view of abstraction. He identified abstract work as coming from two sources, a naturalistic source and an inner seeing source. Of the latter half he wrote: Tn the main the most convicing pictures, were directly created from an inner seeing and conveyed a sense of order in a purged, pervading vitality that was positively spiritual... In reality they were achieved by a precision and concentration of feeling so fine that on the emotional gamut they parallel the calculations of higher mathematics. But, they remain emotional, living works, and were therefore capable of inspiring lofty experiences; one almost saw spiritual ideas, crystal clear, powerful, and poised.' Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos, 202-4 Worts provides further documentation of Harris's interest in Kandinsky and his pyramid and globe canvases ('Lawren S. Harris/ 61-2). Between 1935 and 1937 Harris read Axis: A Quarterly Review of Contemporary 'Abstract' Painting and Sculpture. See, for example, vol. 2 (April 1935), 7. 'Reflections sur I'art abstrait/ Cahiers d'art 6 (1931), 352 Varley Inventory (with Peter Varley), Varley to Lil and Ethel, 9 Feb. 1936 Chris Varley, F.H. Varley: A Centennial Exhibition (Edmonton: Edmonton Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1981), 78 Varley Inventory, Varley to his sisters, 28 Apr. 1950 Ibid., Varley to Lil and Ethyl, 9 Feb. 1936 National Gallery of Canada, Varley Papers, CR7-1, Varley to H.O. McCurry, 16 Apr. 1934 Ibid., Varley to Brown, 18 Feb. 1928 Ibid., Speech by Fred Ames, Vancouver, 1955, transcript Passionate Canadians, National Film Board film, 1977, quoted in Sheryl Salloum, 'Underlying Vibrations/ unpublished manuscript Russell Harper, The Development 1913-1921,' in Lawren Harris Restrospective Exhibition, 1963 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, 1963), 21, reports Harris reading and annotating Tagore's 'What Is Art' in Personality (New York: Macmillan 1917). Brooker owned Tagore's Gitanjali in a 1913 edition. Brooker Papers, University of Manitoba (where his library is housed) 'Tagore and Art/ The Paint Box (Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts) 4 (June 1929), 65

Notes to pp. 130-33 191

128 Vivek Ranjan Bhattacharya, Tagore's Vision of a Global Family (New Delhi: Enkay Publishers 1987), 59 129 Untitled article, The Paint Box 3 (1928), 12 130 Nancy Wilson Ross, Three Ways of Asian Wisdom: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen and Their Significance for the West (New York: Simon and Schuster 1966), 23 131 Chris Varley, F.H. Varley, 88 132 Personality, 38, quoted in B.C. Chakravorty, Rabindranath Tagore: His Mind and Art (New Delhi: Young India Publications 1970), 235 133 Rabindranath Tagore, 'The Relation of the Individual to the Universe/ in Sddhana: The Realization of Life (London: Macmillan 1914), 4 134 Ann Davis, 'An Apprehended Vision (unpublished PhD thesis, York University, 1973) 135 Bhattacharya, Tagore's Vision, 6; from Tagore's famous poem Gitanjali 136 'The Painting and Drawing of F.H. Varley,' Canadian Art 7/1 (October 1949), 3; see also Donald W. Buchanan, The Growth of Canadian Painting (London and Toronto: Collins 1950), 43. 137 Chris Varley, F.H. Varley, 102: Joyce Zemans in Peter Varley, Frederick H. Varley (Toronto: Key Porter 1983), 64 138 Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India: Thre'e Phases of Buddhist Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin 1983); Alexandra David-Neel, Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Its Methods (London: Bodley Head 1977); Robert C. Lester, Buddhism (San Francisco: Harper & Row 1987); William R. LaFleur, Buddhism: A Cultural Perspective (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1988). 139 I am indebted for these ideas to Marilyn Daniels, who allowed me to read an unpublished paper she wrote on this topic for the University of British Columbia in about 1983. 140 Ross, Three Ways of Asian Wisdom, 19, 25; see also Jean Varenne, Yoga and the Hindu Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1976). 141 Buddhism also has a similar aim, Nirvana, a seeing of the world such as it is, without the imposition of individual self upon it. And Buddhists also seek Nirvana through the Path. Yoga, in fact, was part of the inspiration and basis of the religion of Buddhism, and there is a Buddhist yoga practised. The clearest explantion of all this I have found is in Vivian Worthington's A History of Yoga (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1982). 142 G. Feuerstein, The Essence of Yoga/ in G. Feuerstein and J. Miller, A Reappraisal of Yoga: Essays in Indian Philosophy (London: Rider & Company 1971), 12-13 143 There are numerous varieties of yoga. All consider dharana. The differences between the varieties are not germane to our discussion. For the sake of simplicity, I will discuss classical yoga, as given in the Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali, as yoga. For a discssion of some of the differences see G.A. Feuerstein, The Essence of Yoga: A Contribution to the Psychohistory of Indian Civilization (London: Rider and Company 1974) and Worthington, A History of Yoga. 144 Feuerstein, 'The Essence/ 30-1,103-5; Swami Hariharananda Aranya, Yoga

192 Notes to pp. 133-8

Philosophy of Patanjali (Albany: State University of New York Press 1983) 145 The title-page for this book reads: The Voice of the Silence Being chosen fragments from the 'Book of the Golden Precepts' for the daily use of Lanoos (Disciples). Translated and annotated by 'H.P.B.' (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1889), i. 146 Ibid., 73, nn. 2 and 3 147 Ibid., 19 148 Although Zemans was working with the understanding that Dharana was a Buddhist word meaning 'at one with nature/ in her interpretation of Varley's canvas she recognized the importance of the personal concentration of consciousness and the resulting union with nature. See Frederick H. Varley, 64. 149 The Voice of the Silence, 79, n. 38 150 Varley Inventory, Varley to his sisters, 28 Apr. 1950 151 Ibid., Varley to Vera, 29 July 1941. Varley was inconsistent in the placement of the circumflexes. Here he accented the last 'a/ as did theosophy; later, 13 May 1942, when the Art Gallery of Toronto bought the painting, he accented the second 'a.' Art Gallery of Ontario, Varley Papers, Varley to Martin Baldwin 152 Tagore and Art,' 65 153 Rabindranath Tagore, Creative Unity (London: Macmillan 1925), v 154 McCord Museum, Macdonald correspondence, J.W.G. Macdonald to Maxwell Bates, 30 July 1956 155 Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1981), 53 156 J.W.G. Macdonald, 'Colour in (C)'; collection of Marilyn Westlake Kuczer 157 Zemans, Macdonald, 53 158 London: John Rodker 1931, p. viii 159 Ibid., 286 160 Ibid., 286, 289 161 Collection of Marilyn Westlake Kuczer 162 J.W.G. Macdonald, The Ever Open Book in the Matter of Design/ The Paint Box 2 (June 1927), 47 163 J. Vanderpant, 'Artery/ The Paint Box 3 (June 1928), 55 164 The Ever Open Book/ 47 165 Robert McLaughlin Gallery archives, Jock Macdonald to Lois Steen, 21 Jan. 1958; quoted in Joan Murray, ]ock Macdonald's Students (Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1980), 11 166 Ibid., 24 Nov. 1958 167 'Artery/55 168 University of British Columbia, Nan Cheney Papers, Carr to Cheney, 19 Oct. [1938], and undated letter, postmarked 24 Oct. 1938. In the latter she wrote: 'Have thought a lot about McDonald's [sic] Modernities. You know I am not so keen on that name. I think it may outrage certain people who don't [sic] take the trouble to hunt up its real meaning but only jump on the idea it pertains to "modern" few people use a dictionary on their own. They except [sic] without investigating.'

Notes to pp. 138-44 193

169 Page 266 170 National Gallery of Canada, Archives, 7.1, J.W.G. Macdonald. Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 22 July 1938. In this letter Macdonald scratched out 'could' and substituted 'did.' I have maintained the original as it is better grammar. 171 Murray, jock Macdonald's Students, 11 172 New York: Vintage Books 1971, p. 19 173 'Art in Relation to Nature/ 5, 7 (reprinted in Zemans, Macdonald); Macdonald might have taken these ideas, potentially even these terms, from the Mexican theosophical writer Adolfo Best-Maugard. Macdonald read Best-Maugard and copied The Inner and Outer Causes of Creation' from the Mexican's A Theory of Creative Design (document with Marilyn Westlake Kuzer). 174 It is interesting to note that Departing Day is reminiscent of paintings by Frantisek Kupka. See, for example, The first Step, in Tuchman, The Spiritual in Art, 36. Kupka was thoroughly imbued with mysticism and theosophy. 175 Zemans, Macdonald, 68, n. 33. From his lecture 'Art in Relation to Nature' we can see that he also attentively read Sir James Jeans, Einstein, Minkowski, Sir J.J. Thomas, and P.O. Ouspensky. 176 In the possession of Marilyn Westlake Kuczer 177 National Gallery of Canada, Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 26 Mar. 1937 178 Ibid., Vanderpant Papers, Vanderpant to McCurry, 5 Mar. 1937 179 Kurt Seligmann, Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books 1948), 102-3 180 Just where he encountered Norton's scheme is unknown. Perhaps, like a number of Abstract Expressionists, he read Kurt Seligmann's articles on magic in View, articles that were accompanied by a score of illustrations (Tuchman, The Spritual in Art, 50). Certainly Macdonald would have encountered numerous references to Hermes Trismegistus in Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe and Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy. 181 Document with Marilyn Westlake Kuczer 182 The Secret Doctrine, 4 183 Page 44 184 In 'Art in Relation to Nature' Macdonald spends three pages discussing the 'geometrical structure of a work of art,' Hambidge and Greek systems of measurement; pp. 2-4. 185 Ibid., 8,11 186 Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 2 Dec. 1939. In Macdonald's essay 'Art in Relation to Nature' he wrote: 'No artist can be conscious of the expression of this new art unless he or she has devoted years of searching through naturalistic & idealistic art. The development of an art expression can only be obtained through the most intimate & extended study of nature' (p. 10). 187 Ibid., Macdonald to McCurry, 26 Mar. 1937 188 Macdonald notes on 'The Beloved Returns (Lotte in Weimer) - Thomas Mann'; with Marilyn Westlake Kuczer. In 'Art in Relation to Nature' Macdonald expanded upon this importance of thought and mind by drawing upon

194 Notes to pp. 145-50

189

190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212

the work of the scientist Sir James Jeans. He quotes Jeans as writing, The universe is a universe of thought & its creation must have been an act of thought/ and 'Mind no longer appearas as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator & governor of the realm of nature - not of course our individual minds, but the minds in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown as thoughts' (p. 7). Cheney Papers, Carr to Cheney, 25 Jan. 1941. Macdonald, by contrast, certainly thought highly of Carr. He used her and Varley as examples of 'the creative genius of today, whose consciousness has advanced to concepts of the 4th dimension of thought, carry the torch of a new understanding together with the Philosophers & Scientists' ('Art in Relation to Nature/ 9). Archives of British Columbia, Edith Hembroff Papers, Carr to Hembroff, undated [24 Oct. 1938] Page 55 Ringbom, The Sounding Cosmos Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 10 May 1943 Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982) Ibid., 28-9 Charles Howard Hinton, A New Era of Thought (London: S. Sonnenschein 1888), 86-7 Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 30 London: Theosophical Publishing Co. 1888; repr. Los Angeles: Theosophical Co. 1925; p. 251 C.W. Leadbeater, The Astral Plane: Its Scenery, Inhabitants, and Phenomena (1895) (London: Theosophical Publishing House [1919]), 19 Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 31-2. For example, Bragdon helped establish the Theosophical Loclge in Rochester. P.O. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum: The Third Canon of Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1957), 38 Ibid., 39 Ibid., 297 Henderson, The Fourth Dimension, 251 Tertium Organum, 144-5 Reproduced in Sounds Assembling, 35-7 Zemans, 'First Fruits: The World and Spirit Paintings,' Provincial Essays 7 (1989), 18, 23 'Painting Verbs/35 Ibid., 35-6 Zemans, 'First Fruits/ 28 Quoted in Howard Risatti, 'Music and the Development of Abstraction in America: The Decade of the Armory Show/ Art Journal 39/1 (1979), 8 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Particular (New York: George Wittenborn 1974), 40

Notes to pp. 150-60 195

213 'The Seven Arts/ Ottawa Citizen, 19 Oct. 1929 214 Ibid., 9 Mar. 1929 215 For a fascinating analysis of Dove's work, one that closely parallels what I am attempting to do here, see Sherrye Cohn. 'The Image and the Imagination of Space in the Art of Arthur Dove; Part I: Dove's "Force Lines, Growth Lines" as Emblems of Energy' and 'Arthur Dove and Theosophy: Visions of a Transcendental Reality/ Art Magazine 58 (1983/4), nos. 4 and 5, pp. 90-3 and 121-5 respectively 216 Thought-Forms, 77-8 217 University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers, ca. 1924 218 The Seven Arts/ Ottawa Citizen, 9 Mar. 1929 219 Brooker Papers, diary, 25 Aug. 1925 220 Victoria Evans, 'Bertram Brooker's Theory of Art as Evinced in His "The Seven Arts" Columns and Early Abstractions/ Journal of Canadian Art History I Annales d'histoire de I'art canadien 9/1 (1986), 30 221 Brooker Papers, August Belden to Brooker, 19 Feb. 1924. In this letter Belden also mentions Brooker's recommendation of Tertium Organum; see also Diary, 29 Feb. 1924, in which Brooker mentions Ouspensky, Havelock Ellis and Middleton Murry as authors who helped to 'bring me to orderliness of living.' 222 Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin 1923), 218-19 223 Vincent Brome, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Sex: A Biography (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1979), 254 224 Brooker Papers, diary, 29 Feb. 1924 225 Ibid., 20 Apr. 1924 226 Ibid., 24 Jan. 1927 227 As Zemans has convincingly argued, here Brooker was producing 'abstract painting which cannot be called two-dimensional, and yet possesses, instead of the usual space perspective that makes a painting three-dimensional, a new and puzzling illusionism of space that is foreign to normal visual experience' ('First Fruits/ 28); Brooker, 'The Poetry of e.e. cummings/ Canadian Forum, July 1930; repr. in Sounds Assembling. 228 Brooker Papers, diary, 27 June 1926 229 Zemans, 'First Fruits,' 21 230 University of Manitoba, Brooker Papers (London: Theosophical Publishing Society 1902) 231 Charles W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible, 100 232 Ibid., 24 233 Sounds Assembling, 59 234 Ibid., 57-8 235 'The Poetry of e.e. cummings/ 68-9 236 Zemans, 'First Fruits/ 26-30 237 Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons 1936, p. 42 238 Tertium Organum, 233

196 Notes to pp. 161-6

239 Brooker Papers, diary, 20 Apr. 1924 CHAPTER 4 1 For an interesting analysis of the problems of symbols see Hazard Adams, Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic (Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida 1983). The work of Karl Jaspers, in Truth and Symbol (New York: Twayne 1959), is particularly germane. 2 'Art in Relation to Nature/ i; reprinted in Joyce Zemans, Jock Macdonald: The Inner Landscape (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, exhibition catalogue, 1981) 3 National Archives of Canada, Carr Papers, diary, 7 June 1933; in Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (Toronto/Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin 1966), 36 4 Bertram Brooker, 'When We Awake/ in 1928-9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan 1929), 5 5 Agnes Etherington Art Centre, transcript, Sabbath interview (1960), 11 6 H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1946), 43 7 Ibid., 57 8 Ibid., 64 9 Harris, 'Revelation of Art in Canada/ Canadian Theosophist 7/5 (July 1926), 85 10 National Gallery of Canada, Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to Curry, 23 Oct. *93 7 11 Archives of British Columbia, Carr Papers, ADD MSS 1077, box 17, 'Art of Canada's West Coast/ n.p. 12 Emily Carr, Fresh Seeing (Toronto/Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin 1972), 18-19 13 'Canada's Modern Art Movement/ Canadian Forum 6/69 (June 1926), 276 14 'When We Awake/5 15 Ibid., 8 16 Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press 1980) 17 The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman (New York: Putnam's Sons 1902), 2: 484-5 18 M. Wynn Thomas, The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1987), 118-19 19 National Archives of Canada, Housser Papers, Harris to Yvonne and Fred Housser, 14 May 1935 20 Quoted by D.W. Buchanan, The Gentle and the Austere: A Comparison in Landscape Painting/ University of Toronto Quarterly 11/1 (October 1941), 76 21 Canadian Theosophist 7/5 (15 July 1926), 88 22 National Gallery of Canada, Brooker Papers; 'The Seven Arts/ Ottawa Citizen, 29 Dec. 1928 23 Gaile McGregor, The Wacousta Syndrome: Explorations in the Canadian

Notes to pp. 166-8 197

Langscape (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 54-9 24 H.P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press 1889), 15 25 William Hart, '1932-1948 Theory and Practice of Abstract Art/ in Lauren Harris: Retrospective Exhibition, 1963 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, exhibition catalogue, 1963), 35 26 See, for example, Joyce Zemans, 'First Fruits: The World and Spirit Paintings/ Provincial Essays 7 (1989), 36, n. 54. 27 As Housser wrote, Whitman 'declared the Western world to be "One and Inseparable; the United States and Canada with all their separate states and provinces as the "One Formed out of All." ' 'Walt Whitman and North American Idealism/ Canadian Theosophist 11/4 and 5 (June and July 1930), 137 28 The passage most often cited is that in his 1926 Canadian Theosophist article starting 'We in Canada are in different circumstances than the people in the United States. Our population is sparse, the psychic atmosphere comparatively clean, whereas the States full up and the masses crowd a heavy psychic blanket over nearly all the land' (p. 85). 29 Harris, 'The Creative Individual and a New Order/ National Archives of Canada, Harris Papers, MG3O, 0208, p. 5 (n.d.) 30 Harris Papers, vol. 4, 'Abstract Painting/ i 31 Harris, 'Creative Art and Canada/ in 1928-9 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, ed. B. Brooker (Toronto: Macmillan 1929), 179 32 Ibid., 182 33 'Description of the First Five Root Races/ Canadian Theosophist 9 (September 1928), 203-4 34 Richard M. Bucke Cosmic Consciousness (New York: E.P. Dutton 1901), 383-4. Here Bucke contends that 'a Cosmic Conscious race will not be the race which exists today ... The simple truth is, that there has lived on the earth, "appearing at intervals," for thousands of years among ordinary men, the first faint beginnings of another race; walking the earth and breathing the air with us, but at the same time walking another earth and breathing another air of which we know little or nothing, but which is, all the same, our spiritual life, as its absence would be our spiritual death. This new race is in [the] act of being born from us, and in the near future it will occupy and possess the earth/ 35 Page 15 36 29 Dec. 1928. Brooker continued,in the same article: 'Art seems to me above nationality. In other words, while I agree that the rhythms and the atmosphere of this country should be depicted very differently from the haze and homelier landscapes of Europe, I cannot see that the fundamental aim of a true artist can be materially changed by geography and environment. A too rigid Canadianism will be a poor substitute for the too obsequeous acceptance of anything European which at present prompts most art criticism and the buying of art objects in Canada/ 37 'When We Awake/ 16

198 Notes to pp. 168-70

38 National Gallery of Canada, Archives, Macdonald Papers, Macdonald to McCurry, 24 Oct. 1938 39 'When We Awake,' 17 40 The Paint Box 3 (June 1928), 12 41 Edmonton Journal, 27 Mar. 1924 42 Varley Inventory (with Peter Varley), Varley to Maud, 5 Aug. 1918 43 'Art in Relation to Nature/ 5 44 National Archives of Canada, Harris Papers, vol. 2, 'Interviews/ Vancouver, p. 2

Illustrations

X LAWREN S. HARRIS

From the North Shore, Lake Superior, 1923 Oil on canvas; 121.9 x 152.4 cm London Regional Art and Historical Museums, gift of H.S. Southam, Esq., 1966 xi EL GRECO The Burial of Count Orgaz, 1586 487.7 x 360.7 cm Toledo, Church of Santo Tome 8 BERTRAM BROOKER

Sounds Assembling, 1928 Oil on canvas; 112.3 x 91.7 cm Winnipeg Art Gallery 17

EMILY CARR

Edge of the Forest, ca. 1935 Oil on paper; 86.7 x 58.4 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, gift of Dr and Mrs J. Murray Speirs 19

EMILY CARR

Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky, 1935 Oil on canvas; 111.8 x 68.4 cm Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust The illustrations are listed here by page number, as they appear in the book. The colour plates are listed separately at the end of this section. All works referred to in the text are listed alphabetically by artist and title in the Index.

200 Illustrations

20 EMILY CARR

Roots, ca. 1937-9 Oil on canvas; 112.0 x 69.0 cm British Columbia Archives and Records Service 21 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Photograph Art Gallery of Ontario, courtesy of Mrs James H. Knox 23 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Dr. Salem Bland, 1925 Oil on canvas; 103.5 x 91-4 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, gift of the Toronto Daily Star, 1929 24 BERTRAM BROOKER

Photograph Art Gallery of Ontario 27 BERTRAM BROOKER

The St. Lawrence, 1931 Oil on canvas; 76.5 x 101.7 cm National Gallery of Canada, gift from the Douglas M. Duncan Collection, 1970 29 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Photograph by H. Mortimer-Lamb Silver print mounted on cardboard; 35 x 26.7 cm (image), 51 x 40.5 cm (mount) Art Gallery of Ontario 31 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Some Day the People Will Return, 1918 Oil on canvas; 182.8 x 228.6 cm Copyright Canadian War Museum, Canadian Museum of Civilization 33 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Mirror of Thought, 1937 Oil on canvas; 48.8 x 59.2 cm Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, gift of Harold Mortimer-Lamb

Illustrations 201

34 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Liberation, 1936 Oil on canvas; 213.7 x 134.3 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, gift of John B. Ridley, 1977; donated by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, 1988 36 JOCK MACDONALD

Photograph by John Vanderpant, ca. 1930 Art Gallery of Ontario 40 JOCK MACDONALD

The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, B.C., 1932 Oil on panel; 71.1 x 91.4 cm Private collection 41 JOCK MACDONALD

The Black Tusk, 1934 Oil on panel; 30.3 x 38.1 cm British Columbia Archives and Records Service 56 EMILY CARR

The Mountain, 1933 Oil on canvas; 114.4 x 68.0 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, gift of Dr and Mrs M. Max Stern, Dominion Gallery, Montreal 57 EMILY CARR

The Red Cedar, 1931-3 Oil on canvas; 111.0 x 68.5 cm Vancouver Art Gallery, gift of Mrs J.P. Fell 58 EMILY CARR

Dancing Sunlight, ca. 1937 Oil on canvas; 83.5 x 60.0 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection 59 EMILY CARR

Above the Gravel Pit, 1936 Oil on paper; 61.0 x 91.0 cm Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, gift of an anonymous donor

202 Illustrations

68

LAWREN S. HARRIS

Icebergs, Davis Strait, 1930 Oil on canvas; 121.9 x I52-4 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, gift of Mr and Mrs H. Spencer Clark 69

LAWREN S. HARRIS

Isolation Peak, ca. 1930 Oil on canvas; 106.7 x 127.0 cm Hart House, Harold and Murray Wrong Memorial Fund, 1946 71

BERTRAM BROOKER

Creation, ca. 1924 Oil on board; 60.9 x 43.2 cm Jacob and Grace Jutzi 72

BERTRAM BROOKER

The Dawn of Man, 1927 Oil on canvas; 112.4 x 81.3 cm National Gallery of Canada, gift of Walter, Freeman, Harold, and Vincent Tovell, 1971, in memory of Harold and Ruth Tovell 76 BERTRAM BROOKER

Endless Dawn, 1927 Oil on board; 43.2 x 60.9 cm Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery 77 BERTRAM BROOKER

Green Movement, ca. 1927 Oil on paper board; 58.8 x 43.2 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, purchase with assistance from Wintario, 1978 80 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

The Cloud, Red Mountain, ca. 1928 Oil on canvas; 86.8 x 102.2 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, bequest of Charles S. Band, 1970 82

FREDERICK H. VARLEY

View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach, ca. 1929 Oil on canvas; 99.3 x 84.2 cm Winnipeg Art Gallery, acquired with assistance from the Women's Committee and the Woods-Harris Trust Fund No. i

Illustrations 203

83 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Vera, ca. 1929 Oil on canvas; 61.0 x 50.8 cm National Gallery of Canada 85 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Complementaries, ca. 1933 Oil on canvas; 101.0 x 85.1 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, bequest of Charles S. Band, 1970 86 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Three Clouds and a Tree, ca. 1935 Oil on wood; 30.1 x 38.0 cm National Gallery of Canada, gift from the Douglas M. Duncan Collection, 1970 87 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Arctic Landscape, ca. 1940 Oil on canvas; 83.2 x 99.0 cm National Gallery of Canada 89 JOCK MACDONALD

In the White Forest, 1932 Oil on canvas; 66.0 x 76.2 cm Art Gallery of Ontario 91 JOCK MACDONALD

Pacific Ocean Experience, 1934 Oil on panel; 34.9 x 27.6 cm Samuel and Janet Ajzenstat 93 JOCK MACDONALD

Pilgrimage, 1937 Oil on canvas; 78.6 x 61.2 cm National Gallery of Canada 104 EMILY CARR

Nirvana (Tanoo), 1929-30 Oil on canvas; 108.6 x 69.3 cm Private collection

204 Illustrations

105

EMILY CARR

Tanoo, 1912 Watercolour on paper; 74.5 x 53.2 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, gift of Dr and Mrs Max Stern, Dominion Gallery, Montreal 106 EMILY CARR

Tree, 1932-3 Oil on paper; 87.5 x 58.0 cm Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust 107 EMILY CARR

Old Tree at Dusk, ca. 1936 Oil on canvas; 112.0 X 68.5 cm McMichael Canadian Art Collection, gift of Col. R.S. McLaughlin 108 EMILY CARR

Grey, 1931-2 Oil on canvas; 111.1 x 69.2 cm Private collection, Toronto 111

EMILY CARR

Above the Trees, ca. 1939 Oil on paper; 127.3 x 60.8 cm Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust 116 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Winter Comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone, ca. 1935 Oil on canvas; 74.0 x 91.0 cm LSH Holdings Ltd, Vancouver 117 A. BESANT and c.w. LEADBEATER, Wagner: illustration in Thought-Forms (London: Theosophical Publishing House 1901), plate W 118 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Resolution, ca. 1936 Oil on canvas; 91.4 x 71.1 cm John C. Kerr 122

LAWREN S. HARRIS

Abstract No. 7, ca. 1939 Oil on canvas; 110.5 x 123-2 cm Vancouver Art Gallery, Founders Fund

Illustrations 205

125 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Abstraction, 1939 Oil on canvas; 140.6 x 87.6 cm National Gallery of Canada, gift of the estate of Bess Harris, and of the three children of Lawren S. Harris, 1973 126 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Three Studies, Involvement 2, ca. 1939 Graphite on paper; each sheet 27.7 x 21.5 cm Collection of the Harris family 129 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Red Rock and Snow Oil on canvas; 86.5 x 101.9 cm Power Corporation du Canada/Power Corporation of Canada 130 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Mimulus, Mist and Snow, 1927-8 Oil on canvas; 69.6 x 69.6 cm London Regional Art and Historical Museums, gift of the Volunteer Committee, 1972 134 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Dhdrdna, 1932 Oil on canvas; 86.4 x 101.6 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, gift from the Albert H. Robson Memorial Subscription Fund, 1942 136 JOCK MACDONALD

Formative Colour Activity, 1934 Oil on canvas; 77.0 x 66.4 cm National Gallery of Canada 142 THOMAS NORTON illustration of Hermetic Scheme of the Universe in W. Cooper The Philosophic Epitaph, 1673 143 JOCK MACDONALD

Fall (Modality 16), 1937 Oil on canvas; 71.1 x 61.0 cm Private collection

206 Illustrations

144 JOCK MACDONALD

Birth of Spring, 1939 Oil on panel; 71.1 x 91.4 cm Private collection 145 A. BESANT and c.w. LEADBEATER, Sudden Fright: illustration in Thought-forms (London: Theosophical Publishing House 1901), figure 27 151 BERTRAM BROOKER

Abstraction — Music, ca. 1927 Oil on card; 43.2 x 61.0 cm London Regional Art and Historical Museums, F.B. Housser Memorial Collection 152 GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Blue and Green Music, 1919 Oil on canvas; 58.4 x 48.3 cm Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, gift of Georgia O'Keeffe, 1969.835; photograph © 1992, The Art Institute of Chicago, All Rights Reserved 153 A. BESANT and c.w. LEADBEATER, Mendelssohn: illustration in Thought-Forms (London: Theosophical Publishing House 1901), plate M 154 BERTRAM BROOKER

The Three Powers, ca. 1926 Oil on canvas; 61.0 X 76.3 cm Art Gallery of Ontario 155

BERTRAM BROOKER

Oozles, ca. 1930 Tempera on paper; 22.8 X 17.8 cm Agnes Etherington Art Centre 156 c.w. LEADBEATER, Intense Anger: illustration in Man Visible and Invisible (New York: John Lane Company 1929), plate xm 158 BERTRAM BROOKER

The Finite Wrestling with the Infinite, ca. 1927 Oil on canvas; 112.4 x 81.3 cm Mendel Art Gallery and Civic Conservatory

Illustrations 207

159

BERTRAM BROOKER

Resolution, 1929—30 Oil on canvas; 60.0 x 75.0 cm Art Gallery of Hamilton, gift of the Volunteer Committee, 1983 Colour plates 1 LAWREN S. HARRIS

From the North Shore, Lake Superior, 1923 Oil on canvas; 121.9 x 152-4 c™ London Regional Art and Historical Museums, gift of H.S. Southam, Esq., 1966 2 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

Self-Portrait, 1919 Oil on canvas; 61.0 x 50.8 cm National Gallery of Canada 3 EMILY CARR

Indian Church, 1929 Oil on canvas; 108.6 x 68.9 cm Art Gallery of Ontario, bequest of Charles S. Band, 1970 4 FREDERICK H. VARLEY

The Open Window, 1932 Oil on canvas; 102.3 x 87.0 cm Hart House 5 LAWREN S. HARRIS

Mountain Experience, ca. 1936 Oil on canvas; 142.6 x 88.2 cm Gallery 111, School of Art, University of Manitoba 6 EMILY CARR

Sunshine and Tumult, ca. 1938-9 Oil on paper; 87.0 x 57.1 cm Art Gallery of Hamilton, gift of H.S. Southam, Esq., 1966 7 JOCK MACDONALD

Departing Day, 1939 Oil on canvas; 71.5 x 56.1 cm Art Gallery of Hamilton, gift of the Volunteer Committee, 1985

208 Illustrations 8 BERTRAM BROOKER

Sounds Assembling, 1928 Oil on canvas; 112.3 x 9^-7 cm Winnipeg Art Gallery

Photo credits

Agnes Etherington Art Centre BROOKER Oozles

AK Photos, Saskatoon BROOKER The Finite Wrestling with the Infinite Art Gallery of Greater Victoria CARR Above the Gravel Pit VARLEY Mirror of Thought Art Gallery of Hamilton BROOKER Resolution CARR Sunshine and Tumult MACDONALD Departing Day Art Gallery of Ontario BROOKER The Three Powers; Green Movement; photograph of artist CARR Indian Church; Grey; photograph of artist HARRIS Dr. Salem Bland; Three Studies, Involvement 2; Winter Comes from the Arctic; photograph of artist MACDONALD Birth of Spring; Fall (Modality 16); In the White Forest; Pacific Ocean Experience; The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, B.C. VARLEY Complementaries; Dhdrdna; Liberation; The Cloud, Red Mountain Art Institute of Chicago O'KEEFFE Blue and Green Music Art Resource, Giraudon EL GRECO The Burial of Count Orgaz British Columbia Archives and Records Service

CARR Roots, Pdp 635 MACDONALD Black Tusk, Pdp 2138 Grace Jutzi, Waterloo BROOKER Creation Hart House, Toronto VARLEY The Open Window H. Mortimer-Lamb Photograph of Varley James Stadnick, Winnipeg HARRIS Mountain Experience Jim Jardine CARR The Mountain John Dean, Calgary BESANT and LEADBEATER, platCS M

and W; figure 27 LEADBEATER, plate XIII

John Kerr, Vancouver HARRIS Resolution John Tamlyn, London NORTON Hermetic Scheme of the Universe John Vanderpant Photograph of Macdonald London Regional Art and Historical Museums HARRIS From the North Shore, Lake Superior VARLEY Mimulus, Mist and Snow McMichael Canadian Art Collection CARR Dancing Sunlight; Edge of the Forest; Old Tree at Dusk; Tanoo HARRIS Icebergs, Davis Strait

2io Photo credits

National Gallery of Canada BROOKER The Dawn of Man; The St. Lawrence CARR Nirvana HARRIS Abstraction MACDONALD Formative Colour Activity; Pilgrimage VARLEY Arctic Landscape; SelfPortrait; Three Clouds and a Tree; Vera Power Corp. du Canada/Power Corp. of Canada VARLEY Red Rock and Snow TDF Artists, Toronto HARRIS Isolation Peak Tom Thompson Memorial Art Gallery BROOKER Endless Dawn

Vancouver Art Gallery, John Gorman CARR Tree; Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky HARRIS Abstract No. 7 Vancouver Art Gallery CARR Above the Trees; The Red Cedar William Kent Studios, Ottawa VARLEY Some Day the People Will Return William Kuryluk, London BROOKER Abstraction - Music Winnipeg Art Gallery, Ernest Mayer BROOKER Sounds Assembling VARLEY View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach

Index

The pages on which works of art are reproduced are printed in bold-face type. Above the Gravel Pit 59 Above the Trees 109-10, 111 abstraction xiii, 109,115,120,150,157, 159 Abstraction 124,125 Abstraction — Music 151 Abstract No. 7 121,122 A.E. (George Russell) 61,165 anthroposophy xv Appasamy, A.J. 16 Architecture and Democracy 120 Arctic Landscape 87, 88 Arp, Jean 6 art and nature 65 Arts and Letters Club, Toronto 48,154 Atma 99-100 aura 16; definition of 129 balance 38 Balzac, Honore de 6 Barr, Alfred 6 Bates, Maxwell 40 Baudelaire, Charles 6,150 Beatty, J.W. 30 becoming 12, 35,168 being 18, 92,170 Besant, Annie 29; Thought-forms 1012,119 Bible 22, 26, 29

Birth of Spring 141,144,145 Bisttram, Emil 122-4 Black Tusk, The 39-41, 41 Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, B.C., The 39, 40,130 Blake, Vernon: Relation in Art 76 Blake, William 5, 47, 70, 73, 75, 78, 90, 118,153 Blanchard, Paula 9 Bland, Salem Goldworth 22-4 Blavatsky, Helena P. xiv, 6, 38, 95-102, 103,141; Isis Unveiled 98; The Secret Doctrine 95-7,101-2,147,163; The Voice of the Silence 99-100,133, 155,166 Blue and Green Music 151,152 Bohme, Jakob 6,150 Book of Small, The 9 Bragdon, Claude 147; translator of Ouspensky's Tertium Organum 120,148; Architecture and Democracy 120 Brinton, Christian 66 Brooker, Bertram: photograph 24; conversion 24; unity 25, 73,153; rhythm 25, 27; space 26, 73; movement and verbs 26, 74, 78,149-50; silence 27; stillness 28; and Whitman 69-70; here and now 73; and common man 73; artists and scientists

212 Index

74; architectural and spiritual artists 75; and music 149-51,158; creative person 152; logic 153; fourth dimension 156-9 - WORKS OF ART

Abstraction - Music 151 Creation 70, 71 The Dawn of Man 70, 72 Endless Dawn 76 The Finite Wrestling with the Infinite 157,158 Green Movement 76, 77 Oozles 154,155 Resolution 159 The St. Lawrence 25, 26, 27 Sounds Assembling 154-6,168, plate 8 TTim/c o/ f/ze Earth 69, 73,160 Three Powers 154 Brown, Eric 128 Buchanan, Donald 132 Bucke, R.M. 44, 95; Cosmic Consciousness x, xv, 46-7,49, 69,148 Buddha, Gautama 47, 49,100 Buddhi100-1 Buddhism xiv, 30, 37, 98,132 'A Candle in the Sunshine' 25 Cappon, James: Bliss Carman and the Literary Currents and Influences of His Times 44 Carpenter, Edward 28; The Art of Creation 28 Carr, Emily: photograph 8; and Christianity 7-12,103; great river 7; God 7, 11,14; space 7, no; mystical oneness or union 8,12, 60; influence of Harris 8-10; The Book of Small 9; correspondence with Harris 12-14, 112-13; rhythm 13, no; and Fred Housser 14; and theosophy 14,10312; Raja Singh 14; intuition 15; movement 16,55, 59; influence of Van Gogh 52, 60; influence of Whitman 52-60; Indians 52,105-6; nature 54,103; influence of O'Keeffe 55; light no

- WORKS OF ART

Above the Gravel Pit 59 Above the Trees 109-10, ill Dancing Sunlight 55, 58 Edge of the Forest 16,17 Grey 107-9,1Q8 Indian Church n, plate 3 Kitwancool Totems 13 The Mountain 54-5, 56 Nirvana 103,104,106 Old Tree at Dusk 107 The Red Cedar 55, 57 Roots 18, 20 Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky 17,19 Strait of Juan de Fuca 59 Sunshine and Tumult 16,18, plate 6 Tanoo 105,106 Tree 106,107 Cezanne, Paul x, 55 Chambers, Jack 6 change 51, 61, 86 channel 38, 50,152 Christ 35, 47 Christian Science xv, 22, 97,112,114 Christianity 30, 97,103; rejection of 42 circle 101-2,124-7,141 Cloud, Red Mountain, The 79, 80,129, 131 Complementaries 84, 85 Compton, Arthur 139 Concerning the Spiritual in Art 119 continental 51 Contrasts 22 conversion 4, 24, 44 Cook, Ramsay 43 Cosmic Consciousness xi, xv, 46-7, 49, 69,148 Creation 70, 71 Cullen, Maurice 30 cummings, e.e. 158 Dancing Sunlight 55, 58 Davies, Blodwen: Tom Thomson 90 Dawn of Man, The 70, 72 Departing Day 138, plate 7 Descartes xiii

Index 213

Dhdrdna, 83,134 Dove, Arthur 6, 65,151 Dreier, Katherine 67; president of Socete Anonyme 126; Western Art and the New Era no Dr. Salem Bland 23, 24 Duchamp, Marcel 6,146 Dxirer, Albrecht 26 Dynamic Symmetry 122-6,141 East, culture of xiii, 88, 95,114,128, 169 Eddy, Arthur Jerome: Cubists and PostImpressionism 150 Edge of the Forest 16,17 El Greco 75; Burial of Count Orgaz ix, xi Ellis, Havelock 25; The Dance of Life 153 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 22,48, 62, 66, 82, 88, 89-91 emotion ix, 46,114,169 Endless Dawn 76 exploration 61, 71, 92,131,166 Fall (Modality 16) 140-1,143 figurative xiii Finite Wrestling with the Infinite, The 157,158 FitzGerald, Lionel LeMoine 6, 26 flux 75. See also movement Formative Colour Activity 135,136 fourth dimension xv, 141,145-6,1469, 156-9 freedom 48, 79, 94,128 From the North Shore, Lake Superior x, ix-xi, 62, plate i Gagnon, Charles 6 Gaiety 126 Ghandi, Mahatma 15 God 11-15, 25' 37~8/ 87,113,131,137, 162 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 6, 88, 119 Gottlieb, Adolph 6 Greenberg, Clement 6

Green Movement 76, 77 Grey 107-9,1Q8 Group of Seven 7, 22-3, 44, 49, 66, 74, 79, 97,113,131,149,164,166 growth 55, 58-9. See also change, movement, vibration Hambidge, Jay: Dynamic Symmetry 123,141 Harper, J. Russell 6 Harris, Lawren S.: photograph 21; correspondence with Carr 12-14,11213; logic 14, 24; early Christian education 21-2; light 24; use of geometric symbols 24-7; correspondence with Whitman 60-9; nationalism 60, 66,116,167,169; submergence of individuality 62; rough nature 63; optimism 64; art and nature 65,119; race 67; role of nature 67; and theosophy 112-27; na~ ture of salvation 113; work 114; representational painting 115; abstraction 115,120 (three kinds); and Dynamic Symmetry 122-7; space 123; influence of Kandinsky 123-7 - WORKS OF ART

Abstraction 124,125 Abstract No. 7 121,122 Dr. Salem Bland 23, 24 From the North Shore, Lake Superior ix-xi, x, 62, plate i Icebergs, Davis Strait 67, 68, 88 Isolation Peak 67, 69 Mountain Experience 121, plate 5 Resolution 116-17,11^/121 Three Studies, Involvement 2 124,126-7 Winter Comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone 116 Hartley, Marsden 6, 65 having 18,170 Henderson, Linda Dalrymple 146 here and now 73, 79, 83,164-6 Hermes Trismegistus 6

214 Index hermetic: theory 98,124; scheme of the universe (of Thomas Norton) 140-2 Hill, Charles 22 Hinduism xvi, 96, 98,132 Hinton, C.H. 146-8,157; The Fourth Dimension 146; A New Era of Thought 146 Hofmann, Hans 6, 38 Housser, Frederick B. xv, 49-54, 79, 97, no, 113,155; A Canadian Art Movement 49-50; 'Whitman to America' 50, 52-5 Housser, Yvonne McKague no, 113; correspondence with Lawren Harris 113-14 Hubbard, Robert 6 Hugo, Victor 6 Huxley, Aldous 5 Icebergs, Davis Strait 67, 68, 88 ideal ix, 68, 81 imagination vs intuition 5 Impressionists x Indian Church 11, 168, plate 3 Indians, North American 103,163-4; art of 54 individuality 51,138, 165,167; sublimation of 50, 52, 63,112 integration xvi, 12,15,103 intellect ix, 46,114,127,137,144-5, 169. See also reason intuition ix, xvi, 4,36,42,127,145; as tool of knowledge 97,121 Involvement 2, Three Studies 124, 126-7 /sis Unveiled 98 Isolation Peak 67,69 Jackson, Alexander Young 38 James, William 22 Judge, William Q.: secretary of the Theosophical Society 95 Julian of Norwich n Kandinsky, Wassily 5, 65, no, 123, 135,150; and channel 38; Concern-

ing the Spiritual in Art 119; On Point and Line to Plane 119 - WORKS OF ART

Gaiety 126 Rote Tiefe 126 Whimsical Line 126 Kant, Immanuel 51, 88,146-8 Kitwancool Totems 13 Klein, Sydney 139 Koestler, Arthur 5 Kupka, Frantisek 5 Leadbeater, C.W. 103,147. See also Thought-Forms, Man Visible and Invisible Leaves of Grass 43-4,48, 52, 63, 74, 82,94 Leduc, Ozias 6 Liberation 34, 35 light 16,18, 24, 76, 92, 109,135,166 Light of Asia, The 30,128,133 Lismer, Arthur 97 logic 14, 24,137,153 McCurry, Harry 40, 89,138,140 MacDonald, J.E.H. xv, 47^8, 66; 'An Artist's View of Whitman' 47 Macdonald, Jock (James William Galloway): photograph 36; intuition 36, 145; nature 37, 92,139, 162; God 37, 137; and Vanderpant 37-8; space, movement, and vibration 41, 92-3, 136-7; and transcendentalism 87-94; unity 89-92; rhythm 89; nationalism 90; reason 92; voyage 92-4; here and now 94; and influence of Amedee Ozenfant 135,138; and theosophy 135-46; Modalities 135-46; and individuality 138; and Ouspensky 138-9, 143; and Kandinsky 139,145; science 139; and hermetic scheme 140; circle 141-3; fourth dimension 143 - WORKS OF ART

Birth of Spring 141,144,145 The Black Tusk 39, 41 The Black Tusk, Garibaldi Park, B.C. 39,40

Index 215

Departing Day 138, plate 7 Fall (Modality 16) 140-1,143 Formative Colour Activity 135,136 Pacific Ocean Experience 91 Pilgrimage 92, 93 T/ie Waue 141 In the White Forest 89 Winter 141 McGregor, Gaile 166 Mclnnes, Graham: A Short History of Canadian Art 90 Malevich, Kaszimir 5, no Manas 100-1 Mann, Thomas: The Beloved Returns 144 Man Visible and Invisible, plate XIII, Intense Anger 155,156 Marc, Franz 6 Mimulus, Mist and Snow 129,130 Mirror of Thought 32, 33 Mondrian, Piet 120 Moore, Sturge 25 Mortimer-Lamb, Harold 3 7-8 Mountain, The 55, 56 Mountain Experience 121, plate 5 movement ix, 12, 26, 28, 55, 59-60, 78, 79, 92,113,150,155,160,152-70. See also change, growth, vibration Munch, Edvard 5,164, 169 Murry, John Middleton 154; An Introduction to the Science of Metabiol°8V25 music 150-2 mysticism, definition of 3-6 Nasgaard, Roald: The Mystic North 7 nationalism 49, 90-1, 96,116,163-5, 167 nature ix, 37, 48, 67, 79, 90, 97,103, 109,139,162-70; malleability of 165 Neoplatonism xv, 152 Newman, Barnett 6 Nightingale, Florence n Nirvana 103,104,106 North, Canada as the 65 Norton, Thomas: Hermetic Scheme of the Universe 140-1,142

O'Keeffe, Georgia 6,55, 65; Blue and Green Music 151,152 Olcott, Henry Steel: president of the Theosophical Society 95 Old Tree at Dusk 107 Oozles 154,155 Open Window, The 81,169, plate 4 optimism 42, 64 Ostwald, Wilhelm: Colour Science 84, 88 Ouspensky, P.D. 25,38,103,147-9, 154,160; A New Model of the Universe 138-9,141,157; Tertium Organum x, 148-9; special duty of artist 148 Ozenfant, Amede: Foundations of Modern Art 135-6,138 Pacific Ocean Experience 91 pantheism 42 Pearson, Ralph: How to See Modern Pictures 15 Pilgrimage 92, 93 Plato xv, 98,147,153 Plotinus 4, 6 Pollock, Jackson 6 Presbyterian 22, 36 purgation 13 race 49, 67,168 real ix, 68, 81, 84, 90,139 reception 5 Red Cedar, The 55, 57 Red Rock and Snow 129 Reid, Dennis 124; Concise History of Canadian Painting 6 religion 98; for artists 9; Underbill's link 10 religious attitude 51 Resolution (Brooker) 159 Resolution (Harris) 116-17,11®/121 rhythm 13,16, 27, 75, 89,108-10,151, 166 Ringbom, Sixten 7,119 river 7 Roerich, Nicholas 131 Roots 18, 20

216 Index Rosenblum, Robert: Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition 7 Rote Tiefe 126 Rothko, Mark 6 roughness of nature 165-6 Ryder, Albert Pinkham 6 sacred geometry 101 Sahdu, The 4,16,106 St Augustine 5 St. Lawrence, The 25, 26, 27,169 St Paul 47,49 Schlabitz, Adolf 22 School of Decorative and Applied Arts, Vancouver 36, 128 science 84, 98,139 Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky 18,19 Secret Doctrine, The 95-9,101-2,122, M7 Self-Portrait 32, plate 2 Shadbolt, Doris 15, 52 Shadbolt, Jack 3 8,165 silence 27, 81,169 simplicity 50, 81, 135 Simpson, C.W. 30 Singh, Raja 14 Singh, Sadhu Sunder 16 Societe Anonyme no Some Day the People Will Return 30, 31

Sounds Assembling 154-6,168, plate 8 space ix, 7, 26, 39-41, 76,122-6,127, 141,146,154, 160,162-70; absolute abstract space 95,109-10 Spiritual in Art, The (exhibition) xii, 7 spiritualism 3, 22, 96 Steiner, Rudolph 38,119 Strait of Juan de Fuca 59 Streeter, B.H. 16 Sunset of Bon Echo 43 Sunshine and Tumult 16,18,168, plate 6 Swedenborg, Emanuel 6,150 synaesthesia 150-2

Tagore, Rabindranath 129,131,133, 138; Song Offerings 29 Tanoo 105,106 Tauber, Harry 38,128 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre xiv tesseract (four-dimensional hypercube) 146 Theosophical Society xvi, 29, 95-6,114 theosophy xiv-xv, 95-103; masters xvi, 98; divine plan xvi, 98; reincarnation xvi, 98; absolute abstract motion 95; absolute abstract space 95, no; nationalism 96; Isis Unveiled 98; The Secret Doctrine 96, 98-9,102; The Voice of the Silence 99-100,133, 155,166; Atma-Buddhi-Manas 100; circles 101; triangle 101; influence on Kandinsky 102; vibration 102 Thiem, Paul 22 Think of the Earth 69, 73,160 Thoreau, Henry David 48, 82 Thought-Forms 101-2,119; plate W, Wagner 116,117; plate M, Mendelssohn 151,153; figure 27, Sudden Fright 145 Three Clouds and a Tree 86 Three Powers, The 154 Tobey, Mark 106 Transcendental Club 43 transcendentalism xiv-xv, 42-4; immediate encounter with reality 44 Transcendental Painting Group 6 Tree 106, 107-9 triangle 101, no, 117,124-7 Underbill, Evelyn 3,13, 81,90,113,118, 121; Practical Mysticism 3-5, 7,13 unity 25, 29, 35, 38,41, 46, 49, 73, 76, 89, 91, 113, 120, 123, 130, 153, l66

Vanderpant, John 37,128, 137,140 Van Gogh, Vincent 52, 60 Varley, Christopher 31, 35,131 Varley, Frederick C: photograph 29; movement 28,129; unity 29, 36, 82, 130,132; God 29, 79; intellect 31,

Index 217

127; emotion 32, 88; nature 79; here and now 79; space 79,127; freedom 79,128; intuition 127; auras 129; divinity in individual 132 - WORKS OF ART

Arctic Landscape 87, 88 The Cloud, Red Mountain 79, 80, 129,131 Complementaries 84,85 Dhardna 83,132-5,134 Liberation 34, 35 Mimulus, Mist and Snow 129,130 Mirror of Thought 32, 33 The Open Window 81,169, plate 4 Red Rock and Snow 129 Self-Portrait 32, plate 2 Some Day the People Will Return

30,31

Three Clouds and a Tree 86 Vera 83 View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach 81, 82 Vera 83 vibration 16,38, 84,102,109, no, 130, 136-7,155-6. See also change, growth, movement View from the Artist's Bedroom Window, Jericho Beach 81, 82 Voice of the Silence, The 99-100,133, 134,155,166

Wave, The 143 Weatherbie, Vera 35,128 West, culture of the xiii, 95,114, 128 Whimsical Line 126 White Forest, In the 89 Whitman, Walt xv, 43-94, 97,119, 131,153,163; Leaves of Grass 3-4, 48, 52, 63, 74, 82, 94; Song of Myself 47; Song of the Rolling Earth 52; Song of the Open Road 61, 67, 94, 166; here and now 63 Whitman Club of Bon Echo 43, 97 Whitman Fellowship of Toronto 44 wilderness ix, 48; ambivalence towards 167. See also nature Wilenski, R.H.: The Modem Movement in Art 75 Winter 143 Winter Comes from the Arctic to the Temperate Zone 116 work 9,144 Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, 1928-9 65, 72,168 yoga, Patanjali's 132 Zemans, Joyce 32, 38,135,149,159