Rick Janson Art Studio

There were no mortar boards and gowns when I was awarded my BFA in the summer of 1987. It was a small graduating group, and instead of being held in the auditorium, NSCAD held the ceremony on the patio in the middle of the school, which at that time was housed above a block of shops facing on to Granville Mall, a pedestrian street in the heart of Halifax. The speeches were short, the dress was summer casual, and short on pomp and circumstance, it was long on the open bar.

After the presentations, everybody mulled about and chatted amid the complementary drinks. The school registrar approached me with a confession. She told me that they were glad that I graduated when I did. Had I taken one more art history course, the school would have been forced to consider awarding me an art history major — something they didn’t offer. Had I known that beforehand, I might have done so. Instead I graduated without a major but an art history minor that, as it turned out, was almost a major. Darn.

Not that it made any difference in my future employment prospects. None of my employers ever raised the lack of a major on my CV.

I got the bug for art history not at NSCAD, but much earlier in Toronto attending Scarlett Heights Collegiate Institute (the story goes it was called that because the acronym of Scarlett Heights Institute of Technology would have been SHIT). But the high school did have a lot of technical courses on offer, including a class I took on shorthand — the only male among about 25 teenage girls in the class. But SHCI did have an amazing art program that came down to Mr. Samatoka (I’m still not clear if that spelling is correct). He travelled to some of the world’s great art museums and took an incredible number of slides which he shared with us as part of the art history portion of the class. I couldn’t believe my luck, being in grade nine and at least twice a week got to look at amazing works of art, and better yet, frequently works of art of naked ladies.

By the time I got to NSCAD, after a false start at the University of Ottawa Art School, I was already familiar with many of the movements that dominated Western Art.

But I loved the lecturers NSCAD had on its faculty. I still recall a lecture on performance art where the erudite speaker spoke about artists and the act of autocorprophagia. He looked out at a sea of rather blank stares. “Does anybody know the meaning of autocorprophagia?” he asked. One student raised his hand. “Sir, to eat your own shit.”

That turned out to be the correct answer. 20th Century modern art certainly came a long way from the works of Michelangelo, although art historians have made the case that his David did have a nice bum. If you are going to Florence, make sure you walk all the way round.

Art history has dominated my thinking on art making, although I have not been tempted to eat my own poo, thankfully.

When I was in Arles in 2022 it was hard not to notice all the signs pointing to places that Vincent Van Gogh had painted. The river boat we were about to sail on up the Rhone River was docked at the place where Vincent had painted his Starry Night Over The Rhone. There was another nearby in a green space to indicate where the house had been that Vincent had shared with Paul Gauguin. Apparently the house was destroyed during Allied bombing of the town in World War II (and thus highlighting the need for the Monument Men).

At that moment I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of these locations and make my own interpretation, following in the footsteps of the masters.

By the time we got to Paris I decided to look for the location Gustave Caillebotte had used for his Paris, Rainy Day, a large canvas that draws visitors to the Art Institute in Chicago. I found that many of his locations were in the neighbourhood near the Gare St. Lazare, which itself was a favorite subject for Monet and other impressionists.

The difficulty of finding anything by Caillebotte is his reputation for exaggeration and invention. That is the prerogative of artists, not just modern-day Russian trolls and MAGA activists. I passed over the Europa Bridge, another of Caillebotte’s locations used for Le Pont de L’Europe. I had to laugh given the large girders on the bridge that tower over the pedestrians in his painting are actually below your waist. Similarly, by the time I found Dublin Square, the location for Paris, Rainy Day, I recognized the buildings, but the immense square was somewhat diminutive compared to the painting.

And of course, the modern world also happened. Instead of couples walking in their finery amid the sprawling square, I saw delivery people parking their vans up on the sidewalk, bicycles chained to a fence, advertisements and motorcyclists passing through. I thought this would be fun to paint.

Unlike Caillebotte’s massive canvas, mine is quite small.

What I did have in common with Caillebotte was the weather. Clearly I needed to get in and out quite quickly as the clouds were threatening rain.

Tomorrow we’ll look at my take on Monet’s water lily garden at Giverny.

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