Lawren Stewart Harris

Published in conjunction with an exhibition sponsored by the Americas Society, September-November 2000, featuring the work of Canadian artist Harris (d.1970). He was best known for founding the Group of Seven in Canada during the 1920s. Later he transformed from a nationalist representational painter to an important contributor to modernism in the US, sustaining his abstract approach even when he returned to live in Canada for the last 30 years of his life. Fifty- two color plates are accompanied by several interpretive and biographical essays, including one by Hunter, the exhibition's curator. c. Book News Inc.

Lawren Stewart Harris' artistic career began in the first decade of our century. Well known for the nationalist-inspired landscapes that he painted between 1908 and 1932, Harris turned resolutely in 1934 to the painting of abstractions. He continued to create works that reflected his own modernist and mystical developments until the end of his life. Canadians praise Harris' landscapes and admire him as a planner of innovative and heroic-sounding sketching trips into the North. He is also recognized as the chief organizer of the Group of Seven. A long list of younger artists he considered creative greatly benefited from Harris' encouragement and often generous, practical help; many of them have been interviewed for this book. In the lives of some Canadians harris still functions as a gurulike guide – a role he was quite content to take on during his own lifetime – because of the spiritual content of his art and aesthetic writings and the example of his optimistic, vigorous and apparently untroubled life. But Harris' was not an untroubled life, and Light for a Cold Land examines his personal crises and difficulties, some of which caused important changes in his art. The book also uncovers the painting styles, artistic tensions and cultural dynamics of the German milieu in which Harris received his only formal art education. His student years in Berlin profoundly influenced not only his art but also his artistic politics and his philosophy. It is ironic that in the art of this most articulate of Canadian nationalist painters, there are extensive German influences. Light for a Cold Land is the first art-historical study of Lawren Harris that attempts to explore his life and all aspects of his career. It is based on extensive work in archives, libraries, public art galleries and private collections in Canada, as well as research in Germany and interviews with members of Harris' family and many of his friends, acquaintances, colleagues and critics.

Lawren Stewart Harris's artistic career began in the first decade of our century. Well known for the nationalist-inspired landscapes that he painted between 1908 and 1932, Harris turned resolutely in 1934 to the painting of abstractions. He continued to create works that reflected his own modernist and mystical developments until the end of his life. Canadians praise Harris's landscapes and admire him as a planner of innovative and heroic-sounding sketching trips into the North. He is also recognized as the chief organizer of the Group of Seven. A long list of younger artists he considered creative grealy benefited from Harris's encouragement and often generous, practical help; many of them have been interviewed for this book. In the lives of some Canadians harris still functions as a gurulike guilde -- a role he was quite content to take on during his own lifetime -- because of the spiritual content of his art and aeathetic writings and the example of his optimistic, vigorous and apparently untroubled life. But Harris's was not an untroubled life, and Light for a Cold Land examines his personal crises and difficulties, some of which caused important changes in his art. The book also uncovers the painting styles, artistic tensions and cultural dynamics of the German milieu in which Harris received his only formal art education. His student years in Berlin profoundly influenced not only his art but also his artistic politics and his philosophy. It is ironic that in the art of this most articulate of Canadian nationalist painters, there are extensive German influences. Light for a Cold Land is the first art-historical study of Laren harris that attempts to explore his life and all aspects of his career. It is based on extensive work in archives, libraries, public art galleries and private collections in Canada, as well as research in Germany and interviews with mambers of Harris's family and many of his friends, acquaintances, coleagues and critics.

Why do we keep returning to certain pictures? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? This investigates the nature of visual complexity, the capacity of certain images to sustain repeated attention, and how pictures respond and resist their viewers' wishes.

This book reveals the magnificent landscape paintings of the Group of Seven and their associates and explores how they contributed to Canada's modern cultural identity. The early decades of the 20th century were marked by artistic, economic, and social transformation in Canada and around the world. Starting in Toronto, a group of young modern artists, including Tom Thomson and Lawren S. Harris, and Emily Carr in British Columbia, desired to create a new painting vocabulary for the young nation coming into its own cultural identity. They turned away from city life and explored Canada's landscape, painting sublime vistas, monumental rivers, ancient forests around the great lakes, the mighty Rocky Mountains, and the arctic tundra, determined to break away from European stylistic traditions. Together, their paintings imagined a mythical Canada, expansive and rugged, that added to their country's growing sense of national pride. Featuring paintings, sketches, photographs, film stills, and documentary material, this catalog examines the language of Canadian modernism. It also includes essays and interviews that offer contemporary indigenous perspectives on the impact of industry on nature, issues surrounding national identity, and modern Canadian landscape painting. This generously illustrated book critically reviews Canada's modernism in art history.

"Lawren S. Harris is best known for his iconic landscape paintings that declare a sense of cool Canadian resilience. Yet, in the 1920s, an audacious and more colourful interior world began to emerge in his work, and by 1934, he had taken a seemingly unexpected turn toward a transnational career in abstract painting. The social, intellectual, and aesthetic milieu of American transcendentalism shaped a movement of abstract art across North America. Inspired by the ideas of Kandinsky and informed by the writings of Emerson and Whitman, Harris and his North American contemporaries - Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Katherine Dreier, Raymond Jonson - turned to abstraction to express higher states of consciousness. As Harris's career progressed, as he ascended from mountain tops to inner states of mind, he sought greater and more ethereal spiritual heights. This magnificent volume features reproductions of more than 75 paintings by Harris and his contemporaries. Essays by Roald Nasgaard and Gwendolyn Owens investigate Lawren Harris's exploration of modernity and the evolution of his work towards a form of abstraction that enthusiastically embraced the energies of the ambient visual culture"--

A stunning, full-colour collection of the brilliant paintings that revolutionized Canadian art. In the early twentieth century a group of young artists strived to create, in Lawren Harris’s words, paintings that would “embody the moods and character and spirit of the country.” The fifty-four breathtaking colour plates in this book confirm their success. Well-loved landscapes, like Tom Thomson’s Jack Pine, appear beside some unexpected treasures like Edwin Holgate’s Nude in a Landscape. The essays by Joan Murray and Harris give historical context to the Group of Seven, and fascinating captions provide biographical notes and insightful critiques of each member’s style. No Canadian library is complete without this beautiful volume.