Lights Out at the VAG

 'Lights Out'! Canadian Painting From the l960's. At the Vancouver Art Gallery: Feb. 18th to April 29, 2012. Reviewed by Dave Jaffe

     "It was the decade when man walked on the moon," says the handout from the Vancouver Art Gallery or the VAG, as it's called. "When make love, not war was the mantra."
    And the word  "groovy" it tells us, was as good as it got.
    That's how many people think of that long ago decade of the l960's. In those years most of the elite Canadian  visual artists embraced abstract art. And in this art show  those who  came on the art scene back then, have their works shown again.
     From Quebec, Guido Molinari's and Claude Tousignant's works dis[play their brilliant colour. I liked aga
in 'Accelerator Chromatique', a big round circle full of brilliant colours.
     The late Roy Kiyooka, poet and painter, did some brilliant work. One of them, a huge painting is chockfull of blue and green ovals. It shows why Kiyooka was a trend setter in 1960's Vancouver. And then there's interesting work from Ontario, including pop art by Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, and Greg Curnoe.
      Realistic work shows up too, from B.C.-based E.J. Hughes and the satirical works of Maxwell Bates. Bates's painting called  -what else? - 'Beautiful B.C.' with a blonde woman in the back seat, made me smile. Jack Shadbolt's  'Transformation' set me thinking. Was this a poltical message, noting Canada's shift to being an American colony from being a British one? Maybe but maybe not.
    Painters Eleven works from Toronto get displayed too. Here are some of the work by Jack Bush, Harold Town, and of course the pathbreaking William Ronald. Town's work didn't turn me on. But Bush did turn out some eye popping stuff. His paintings still posess pwer.
     "Jack Bush has assumed more and more relevance to the younger painters in Toronto," wrote art critic Denis Reid in l973. True the, but not now.
       Alas, the political and social protests that roiled the 1960's get small notice from these artists. Only Claude Breeze has one painting here that has a social theme. The U.S.-based  civil rights movement, the protests against the Vietnam War, the counterculture and other groups don't show up here.
     A display of t.v. news clips at the show's entrance site, fills us in on the political issues of the day. But that's it for politics.
      So this is a shiny display of mostly Canadian abstract art, empty of any politcal events. The decade that followed, the l970's, produced art that was much more political. Most of the art here, was done by men, who steered safely away from politics. Yet as this show of  67 works reveals, these artists did turn out some very talented work.