David Garneau

New still life paintings explore tension between making art and writing about it.

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Art criticism is not always appreciated.

Regina artist David Garneau was “unfriended” on Facebook by fellow artist Kent Monkman after writing an article in 2020 critical of the latter’s painting, The Scream, which pictures Mounties, nuns and priests seizing Indigenous children from their families, forcibly sending them to residential school.

In the C Magazine article, Writing About Indigenous Art with Critical Care, an unnamed Métis curator is looking at The Scream at the Winnipeg Art Gallery when a Cree artist approaches and asks what the curator thinks. Startled, the curator exclaims: “Kent Monkman is the Norman Rockwell of Native trauma!”

The comment still reverberates around the Indigenous arts community with varied opinions as to whether Garneau, who is Métis, or just the unnamed curator, was criticizing Monkman, a Cree artist. Well, according to Garneau, he was critical, not of Monkman’s work in general, but of that specific painting.

In a recent interview, Garneau said he feels the “operatic” painting trivializes a terrible injustice. A more accurate account of the seizure of children, Garneau said, can be found in the first-person writings in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report.

Generally, when it comes to art criticism, Garneau thinks Indigenous artists are getting off lightly. Critics, especially Indigenous ones, should cast a far more critical eye on Indigenous art, he says.

The dust-up between Garneau and Monkman could be seen as a real-life example of a recurrent theme in Garneau’s work these days, what he calls “the tension” between making art and writing about it. It’s reflected in Garneau’s latest solo exhibition at the Assiniboia Gallery in downtown Regina, on view until Oct. 5. 

That exhibition, David Garneau: Still Life Paintings, includes the painting Over a Thousand Words, which shows a tangle of  paints atop an open book. The paint tubes belonged to the late Saskatchewan artist Joe Fafard, one of Garneau’s art heroes. Garneau’s early work included ceramics, like Fafard in his early days.

The title of Garneau’s painting refers, of course, to the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words. Clearly, Garneau thinks Fafard’s work is worth more than that. In this case, art seems to triumph over writing. But sometimes writing trumps art, as in the case of Monkman’s The Scream.

Many of the 16 acrylic paintings at the Assiniboia feature books, often placed in unusual ways with other objects, such as rocks, which symbolize grandfathers, the knowledge keepers. Research Midden shows a stack of open books piled one atop another like collapsed teepees. They can be seen as a layered archeological dig through cultural history. Other paintings show books held in a vise, illustrating the struggle of competing views on Indigenous art. The paintings are well-executed cerebral images of freeze-framed objects. But those unfamiliar with Garneau’s iconography may be baffled.

The paintings reflect Garneau’s strong writerly bent. He is not just an artist but also an academic, currently head of the visual arts department at the University of Regina and an author of scholarly articles on art criticism.

The Regina show kicks off an intense exhibition schedule for this veteran artist, who has tackled many media over the years, including performance art.

He is part of a group exhibition, Storied Objects: Métis Art in Relation, that opens Sept. 24 at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, along with a Who’s Who of Métis artists, including Bob Boyer, Dylan Miner, Christi Belcourt, Audie Murray, Katherine Boyer, Jason Baerg and many others.

His attention then turns to Calgary where, on Feb. 2, the Nickle Galleries will open David Garneau: Métissage, a retrospective focusing on Garneau’s Métis-related art, some of which treats Riel as a pop-culture figure. While Garneau is the star, the exhibition also includes works by several artists who influenced him, including Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Bob Boyer, Christi Belcourt and Joe Fafard.

Garneau’s Métis connection, with a particular focus on Louis Riel, has been at the fore of his work throughout his career, says Mary-Beth Laviolette, curator of the Calgary show. Garneau’s great-great-grandfather, Laurent Garneau, was an associate of Riel. After the Northwest Rebellion in 1885, he fled to what is now Edmonton, farming on land where the University of Alberta now stands. The area is still known as the Garneau neighbourhood.

In a 2016 interview with the B.C.-based digital magazine In-Sight Publishing, Garneau explained his rationale for creating Métis-related art.

“At base, my goal is to have Métis presence in public spaces, and to show that we are contemporary people. But more than simply occupy these spaces with aesthetic content, I also want to disturb the assumptions that have regulated these places, collections, and the imaginaries that enable them and their multiple subjects. Each new thing brought into the museum creates a subtle disturbance in the collection. And some things create dramatic disturbances.”

Garneau will have the opportunity for more “dramatic disturbances” in 2025 when the Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History, in the B.C. Interior, launches a nationally touring exhibition of 50 of his paintings. Garneau hopes venues will provide opportunities for visitors to have group discussions about the work. Expect still life paintings of books and rocks, as at the Assiniboia, along with some more traditional works involving bowls of fruit. Rotting fruit. Garneau always has surprises.

Hmmm. What will the critics say? ■

David Garneau: Still Life Paintings at the Assiniboia Gallery in Regina from Sept. 14 to Oct. 5, 2022.

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