Square Victoria, painting by Adam Sofineti

Square Victoria

by with No Comment Art
Square Victoria, painting by Adam Sofineti

Square Victoria, acrylic on canvas, 30"x40"

When we landed at Dorval at around 6 PM, it was already dark and from airport we headed to my cousin’s place in DDO. Thinking back, as we were drown on the 20 and than on Sources Boulevard, it was no big deal of a cityscape, but I felt a great deal of happiness and I was overwhelmed with a sentiment of accomplishment:

“We did it! We’re now in Canada!”

All the restaurants, car dealers and gas stations looked magnificent in the night.

The next day we wondered out to discover our new neighborhood, in daylight it was even more impressive, with its wide roads and Pharmaprix that had so many hidden treasures. As fearless explorers, we even got as far as the mall, by foot…

It was probably on our third day in Canada, that we decided to go downtown to get our social insurance number and medicare cards. What a ride! We had to take the 208 bus, than the 215 till its terminus and from there to take the metro. So many people, so many different faces, so many different languages, all being so cool, knowing how things work.

“Oh, you have to pull that wire, to get off at the next stop!”

It must be the terminus, everyone is getting off. We just follow them, most of them will take the metro.

We’re in the metro, checking out the map on the wall, we don’t need to change lines, Square Victoria is our stop. More people, more faces, more languages.

Square Victoria

Which exit should we take? Should we go left or right? We go right, till the end of the passage, we get trough the door and… We almost felt on our back as we looked up at the buildings! This is how skyscrapers look in real!

Getting out of the metro at Square Victoria, in February 2003, is a memory I will never forget. I tried to express through this painting the emotions I felt that moment. It was a cold day and there was quite a lot of snow, but this is painting and not a photography of that day.

Otto Dix - Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas, etching and aquatint, 1924 (Image source: Wikipedia)

Otto Dix at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

by with No Comment Art
Otto Dix - Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas, etching and aquatint, 1924 (Image source: Wikipedia)

Otto Dix - Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas, etching and aquatint, 1924 (Image source: Wikipedia)

Finally, this weekend we made it to the MMFA with my wife to see the Rouge Cabaret: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix. Apparently it’s the first North American exhibition devoted to this German master.

Just to put things in perspective, Dix took part in the World War I as an officer. He documented the horrors he witnessed with a series of drawings and prints. Mass graves, mutilated bodies, decomposed cadavers and injured soldiers became his main subjects.

After the war, during the time of the Weimar Republic, Germany is chaotic, more 2 million soldiers did not returned. Orphans, widows and crippled soldiers were common presence on the streets that became the main inspiration of Dix. Add to this murky cocktail an economic crisis with huge unemployment and the rise of the Nazism and you get a pretty nasty place to live in. Dix is painting the widows, the orphans, the unemployed that are pushed by the force of the times to become prostitutes.

In the exhibition there is a room that is dedicated to the portraits Dix has painted, following the principles of New Objectivity. His models are not just painted with great realism, but because of the colors used and the backgrounds chosen. we get a very good idea of their personality. I really liked the portrait of actor Heinrich George, his posture, the light and the colors present us an extrovert and loud individual.

There were a few things that I found annoying. The works are presented in dim light, to better protect them and the designer of the exhibition is punishing the visitor to read long text written with Impact, a font that is bold, that is narrow and is absolutely inappropriate for long texts. At one point my eyes could not take it any more, I just gave up reading the explanations.

The World War I engravings in the first room were butchered. They should have not squeezed them on two rows. Because of their size, the low intensity of the light (in this particular case it also amplified the dark mood of the subject), for a medium stature person the top row was too high and the bottom row was too low. A short person would have a very hard time seeing anything from the top row. Would they have had an extra wall, they could have presented them on a single row.

When our soldiers are fighting abroad and when we are facing a Global economic crisis, bringing these works to Montreal is a laudable initiative. If you’re a fan of the XXth century art, you should not miss this exhibition. It will be open till January 2nd.