Thursday, October 28, 2010

The End of the Group of Eleven



Art groups come and go. They are held together by the bond of common interest and they have their own lifetime.

Helen McLean, recently wrote an interesting review on Iris Nowell's 'The Wild Ones in Canadian Art'.

While I won't write a review on a review, I will mention a couple of things I found interesting.

The Group bonded together with an uproarious sense of iconoclism. Tom Hodgson, who was one of the members of the group, used to paint in a studio he called 'The Pit'.
Hogdson often painted in the nude, and visitors to his studio, were usually persuaded to abandon their clothing.

Helen wrote about the demise of the group:
"By 1957, the Painters Eleven had done what they set out to do, which was to elevate abstract art to the mainstream of Canadian art. To mark their disbanding, there was one last wild party in the Pit, an occasion marked by heavy drinking, plentiful weed, rope-climbing, fistfights and a fire."

Please click here to read the review:

1 comment:

  1. The nakid painter and his likewise unadorned admirers must have been fun...interesting stuff!

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