ABSTRACT
Janvier and Morrisseau: Transcending a Canadian
Discourse
Curtis J. Collins
1994
The art of Alex Janvier and Norval Morrisseau successfully
transcended the aesthetic norms of Canadian culture in the 1960's and 1970's. Their
respective works synthesize indigenous North American arts to forge a new definition of
painting by artists of Native ancestry, which acknowledges the artistic traditions of
Europe. Morrisseau and Janvier reacted to the political and social climate of this nation
through their respective expressions. However, each artist's contributions to Canada's
artistic identity have been excluded from the modern art history as a result of a
problematic Western discourse, which has remained active for over a century. Fortunately,
this situation is gradually changing as First Nations people such as Morrisseau and
Janvier assert their beliefs within the context of Canada’s true cultural diversity.
Morrisseau's spiritual outpourings and Janvier’s symbolic declarations are
communicated through paintings, which have profoundly reshaped Native and non-Native
approaches to art and culture during the twenty-year (1960 -1980) focus of this thesis.
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