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Arcadia
Revisited
An
essay by curator of the exhibition, Roger H. Boulet
I.
The Promise
The
climate of British Columbia presents as a whole all the conditions which are met
with in European countries lying within the temperate zone, the cradle of the
greatest nations of the world, and is therefore the climate best adapted to the
development of the human race under the most favorable conditions. Because of
the purity of its air, the total absence of extremes of heat and cold, and
consequent freedom from malaria, British Columbia is regarded as a vast
sanitarium. People from the east coming to British Columbia, invariably improve
in health, insomnia and nervous afflictions find alleviation, the old and infirm
are granted a renewed lease on life, and children thrive as in few other parts
of the world.
Kelowna,
British Columbia. Grand
Pacific Land Co. Ltd. Winnipeg, c.1905-10.
The
climate and soil of this district favor the production of the very best
varieties of apples, pears, plums, prunes, peaches, cherries, grapes and all
sorts of small fruits; water-melons, sweet potatoes, tobacco, pea-nuts and many
other things which the ordinary Canadian never dreams of being grown in his own
country. Every advantage that kindly nature can bestow is here abundantly
provided and only the skillful hand of the producer is needed to make the land a
continuous garden.
At
the opening of the New Westminster Exhibition, Earl Grey is reported to have
said, that Fruit-growing in the province had acquired the distinction of
being a beautiful art as well as a most profitable industry and that it offered
the opportunity of living under such ideal conditions as struggling humanity had
only succeeded in reaching in one or two of the most favored spots upon the
earth. The truth and aptness of these observations will be apparent when we
consider that of all occupations fruit-growing gives to the appreciative and
observing grower more real intellectual and aesthetic pleasure than any other
out-door employment, apart altogether from the fact that the work connected with
it is light and free from all the objectionable features incident to ordinary
farm life. And if our sense of beauty is gratified by the glory of an orchard in
bloom or the delicate tints of the ripening fruit, none the less may we
appreciate the comforting fact that, of all forms of agriculture, fruit-farming
is amongst the most profitable when we consider the capital employed and the
time and expense connected with the care of an orchard.
Okanagan
Valley Fruit Lands--Kelowna,
British Columbia.
The
Central Okanagan Land & Orchard Company Limited.
Printed
by Bulman Bros., Winnipeg, c. 1907.
II.
The Idea of Arcadia
The
promise of a longer and happier life, where light agricultural pursuits result
in health, wealth and prosperity, has long been one of the great aspirations of
humanity. It is, in fact, very much part of the mythology of every culture. The
combination of agriculture, which allows for cultural pursuits from which are
derived "real intellectual and aesthetic pleasure" was indeed the
condition envisioned by the Roman poet Virgil in the Eclogues and the Georgics
two thousand years ago. In the Eclogues, shepherds of Arcadia reflect
on life and the human condition, against the image of green pastures, plentiful
orchards and fields, plump sheep peacefully grazing over the countryside-a
golden age when humanity lived in harmony with nature, and life also afforded
time for reciting poetry celebrating peace and love. In the Georgics, Virgil
actually provides a compendium of agricultural knowledge to ensure this happiest
of conditions, which could only be had away from Rome, or the 'City." He
was perhaps suggesting that humanity can create its own Arcadian condition.
While
the original land of Arcadia in Greece was generally inhospitable to such
pursuits, Virgil's transformation of it gave birth to a pastoral tradition in
poetry, which in turn influenced the fine arts, particularly painting. Virgil's
invention of Arcadia and the mythical Garden of Eden in fact combine, in the
European and Judeo-Christian traditions, presenting the idea of a time long,
long ago, in a far-away land, when the human condition was one of innocence and
bliss.
This
lost Eden is almost genetically coded within us. The creation of parks, of
gardens is an expression of this deeply-rooted desire. It has even been
suggested that the voyages of discovery during the 15th
century were motivated in part by the
belief that the mythical Garden of Eden had survived the Deluge and might still
be found somewhere.1 This was perhaps due to the conflation of the
Judeo-Christian myth of Eden with that of the Garden of the Hesperides, where
these 'spirits of the evening' guarded Hera's golden apples, the apples of
immortality. This walled garden, was situated in the west where the sun set, and
was also guarded by a serpent or dragon named Lagon, eventually slain by
Hercules whose 11th labor was to
get some of the golden apples. Completing the twelve labors, Hercules became
immortal.
Variations
of this myth of golden apples can also be found in Norse mythology. Idun, wife
of Bragi, was the goddess of youth and possessed the golden apples that ensured
the immortality of the Gods. In Wagner's epic cycle of operas, Das Ring der
Niebelungen, Idun becomes Freia. When Wotan delivers Freia and her golden
apples to the Giants in exchange for building Valhalla, the Gods suddenly grow
old, and a ransom of the Rhine gold is necessary for the Gods to regain Freia,
her golden apples and their eternal youth. The curse on the stolen gold is what
hastens the destruction of the Gods and the world.
A
common theme in all the Paradise myths is the presence in the Garden of a tree
with various attributes, such as the "tree of life" (immortality), the
tree of "knowledge of good and evil." The presence of death is the
necessary corollary. That death would exist in Arcadia was also accepted, and an
elegiac tradition within pastoral literature and arts was well established by
the time Poussin painted the first of his works entitled Et in Arcadia Ego in
about 1630, with the second version in the Louvre dating from 163840.2
The
literary theme of Arcadia has been a popular one since the Renaissance, both in
literature and painting. During the late 18tn and early 19th centuries, with the
onslaught of the Industrial Revolution, the message of lost Arcadia became even
more urgent in its expression, most notably by William Blake (1757-1827), who
illustrated Thornton's adaptation of the Eclogues in 1821, and who
envisioned a new Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land."
These small wood engravings in turn became the inspiration of artists such as
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) and Edward Calvert (1799-1 883). Towards the end of
the 19th Century,
Symbolist artists once again turned to the regenerative idea of Arcadia as an
urgent wake-up call to a society in the grips of industrialization, materialism,
commercialism and its attendant emotions of disillusionment, decadence and
alienation.4
1. Prest, John. The Garden of Eden. The
Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1981.
2. For a discussion of the literary and artistic
tradition exemplified in these works, see "Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and
the Elegiac Tradition" in Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts.
Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955.
3. An excellent study of the Arcadian tradition
can be found in Cafritz, Robert C., Gowing, Lawrence, and Rosand, David. Places
of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.,
1988.
4. Clair, Jean. Lost Paradise - Symbolist
Europe. Montreal: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1995.
III.
Arcadia Revisited
| That
an artist such as Byron Johnston, working in a contemporary medium such
as installation, can be situated in a context such as the ancient
Arcadian tradition, is not in itself exceptional. It is the work done by
the artist that determines the context. Previous
works
such as the Apple Tower (begun 1992), situated
on the artist's property in the midst of orchards, celebrate the cycle
of the seasons: here time shows the eventual decay of the apples through
the natural process of composting. Every
year, the artist adds a layer of apples to the tower. This striking work
was, in fact, the catalyst for the present exhibition. A new version
created especially for the Kelowna Art Gallery exhibition (and
containing golden apples) stood outside the building. |
Golden
apple tower in front of the Kelowna Art Gallery
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Another
work from 1993, Hypotyposis, balanced
a stripped apple tree, on
e
end tapered to a standard 2"x4", in the presence of a glass bell jar
containing shredded U.S. dollar bills, and an auto anti-theft alarm which could
be activated by the viewer, a poignant metaphor relating to the fate of so many
orchards, as the price of apples continues to fall, and the orchard lands around
Kelowna may yet be turned over to real estate development. (Interestingly
enough, the orchard lands once belonging to Byron McDonald and his associates
now include two golf courses.) Other works have utilized inflatable leg
immobilization devices to suggest the suspension of the life cycle. In these,
the artist has variously used apples or cabbages.
| Two
other elements in the Kelowna exhibition relate directly to the Arcadian
theme. One work, Homage to Byron McDonald (1999),
echoes the photograph mentioned at the beginning of this essay. The
interior courtyard of the Kelowna Art Gallery displays a grandstand of
apples, conjuring up the memory of the proud orchardists of 1910. This
time, the artist has used slightly hail-damaged apples picked a week
before the installation of the exhibition from his own orchard lands
that are not too distant from Byron McDonald's old Keloka orchards in
East Kelowna. Through works such as these, the artist feels very
strongly that he is not only honouring his own heritage, but the work of
every orchardist, every orchard worker, and every farmer. His intent
here echoes the reverence that Millet had towards the peasants of
Barbizon, ennobled not by an imaginary Arcadia, but by their heroic
redemptive toil on the land. |
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The
various components of the installation in the main gallery bring together two
recurring preoccupations of the artist. One is the Arcadian theme. The presence
of a golden apple on the copper-plated shelf is offered for the contemplation of
the viewer who must sit on a copper-plated chair, positioned so that the apple
is beyond one's grasp. On the opposite wall of the gallery, a sleeping youth in
a glass casket, fixed to the wall about 8 feet above the floor is a potent
metaphor for our perpetual obsession with youth, our vain aspirations to
overcome death, whether by improved diet or the new speculations offered by
cryogenics and its related science of cryo-biology. Nearby, on another wall
painted black, 140 hemispherical domes preserve 140 red apples affixed to the
wall. Viewers somewhat eerily see their own reflections multiplied on the domes.
Two other copper-plated boxes are positioned vertically, one inviting the viewer
to enter it, the other stuffed with unraveled 1 6mm film, a metaphor for memory
and the passing of recorded time. A third element presents a narrow
copper-plated box, mounted horizontally on a wall, containing flour. This
references the entire floor of the gallery, which has been covered with seed
grain, (fall rye and wheat), another traditional symbol of the abundance and
fertility of nature.
IV
Illusion and the Sensory Seduction of the Body
Such
Arcadia-related elements occur in the midst of others representing the second
persistent concern in Johnston's work. The twine' pieces pose questions about
perception and the extent to which we can trust what we see, and relate in a
tangential way to the Arcadian theme in that our hopes and aspirations, indeed
our construction of the world and its order, is based on the perception of
'objects' that we have as 'subjects' in the traditional Cartesian or
Enlightenment model. Johnston is particularly concerned with our perception of
space as affected with linear patterns.
| This was exemplified in his
installation entitled Creepers in the 1995/7 Vancouver Art
Gallery's Topographies exhibition. Three new installations of
these twine pieces invite the viewer as 'subject' to experience the
fallacies of perception and the various belief systems we have
constructed from them. They combine with our gratuitous projections onto
the 'object' stemming from the desires and aspirations of our bodies, as
well as our innate will to organize visual stimuli into some ordered
system, a construct of the mind, as is the very idea of Arcadia itself. |
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The
twine pieces present yet another dimension to the participating viewer: that of
sound. Strangely evocative of the Aeolian harp, whose strings were activated by
the wind and generated harmonics, the twine pieces deceptively suggest harmony
and order while disrupting our attempt to perceive both of these essential
attributes of the Arcadian vision.
One
final element also disrupts the meditative calm of the whole space. When the
wall-mounted glass casket is occupied by a living young person, a very loud
antique-looking brass horn can be activated by that person at regular or
irregular intervals, a rude awakening on the one hand, and a reminder that the
gravity so often present in the Arcadian or pastoral tradition, is perhaps best
not taken too seriously, and that the humour and joy inherent in the business of
living should never be forgotten.
Roger H. Boulet
Summerland, BC.
October 30, 1999
To Byron Johnston: Arcadia
Revisited Menu
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