Norval Morrisseau Prints

Norval Morrisseau Prints

THE ART OF NORVAL MORRISSEAU

By Jack Pollock and Lister Sinclair
Art by Norval Morrisseau 
Hardcover: 200 pages 
Size: 13.25 x 11.25 x 1
Publisher: Methuen Publications
First Edition edition (1979) 
ISBN: 0458938203

** A french edition was published (1981) with some different images and six different limited edition prints**

Five prints were included with the English Deluxe Edition (1979) at purchase:

SHAMAN CONJURING SPEECH

YOUNG GULLS WATCHING

SHAMAN AND APPRENTICE
COMPOSITION WITH LOONS

THE DAWN

Six prints were included with the French Deluxe Edition (1981) at purchase:
SERMON TO THE BIRDS

BIRDS SPEAK WITH THESE CHILDREN

WOODLAND CREATURES

FISH AND LOONS OF LAKE NIPIGON


CHILDREN OF LIGHT AND SOUND

The Deluxe presentation box for the English edition

The Deluxe presentation case for the French edition

The Deluxe Edition book



Vancouver Sun promotional advertisement (1979)


BOOK REVIEW

Images featured with the 1979 Ottawa Citizen article

CHALLENGE PAYS OFF IN PUBLISHING VENTURE

Ottawa Citizen
December 11, 1979
By Kathleen Walker
Citizen Staff Writer

Jack Pollock is suffering from postnatal depression.

For two-and-a-half years, the Toronto gallery owner has put his life’s blood into the production of Canada’s “art book of the year” – The Art of Norval Morrisseau.

Pollock has had to absorb the challenging input of the artist, the ego of his editor, Lister Sinclair, a drive for quality in text and plate reproduction, and the desire to publish a book different from the standard coffee table tome.

Pollock and his publisher, Methuen Publications, have succeeded. In fact, the $1,000 deluxe collector’s edition is more coffee table than book.

The price includes not only a leather bound book but five, ready to mount Morrisseau prints. And it all comes wrapped in wood, linen and leather. As Pollock says, all it needs is the legs and the book is a coffee table.

The 350 deluxe editions were put on the market this summer, and the demand pushed the price to $1,500 by the time the publisher’s stocks sold out last month.  Some of the initial buyers have put the special editions back on the market, but they’re asking $2,500 now.

Regular editions of The Art of Norval Morrisseau are still in the bookstores at the more affordable price of $50 apiece. The special-edition profits have been used to keep down the regular price.

“The book should have retailed for $100 a copy,” says’ Pollock.  “There are 130 colour plates done by Eberhard Otto, who doesn’t sneeze for under $500.  And the design was not in-house, I insisted on hiring Burton Kramer, who’s brought a European approach to the design of the book. He’s done a fabulous job, especially with the black-and-white reversals.”

The book is as much about art as it is about the artist. The prose is very personal, whether it be Jack Pollock’s reminiscences about his discovery of Morrisseau and his 17 years of dealings with a very temperamental artist, or Morrisseau’s own probing of his past and present history.

The text is at once an indictment of the white man’s treatment of Indians and a saga of self-discovery through self-abuse.

Pollock demanded and got the publisher to do everything he wanted, including a series of snapshots that illustrate his section of the text.

“The pictures were taken in 1962 in Beardmore, Ontario when I first met Morrisseau and saw his work. They were taken by a student with a Brownie camera and I’ve arranged them like one would see them in a photo album,” Pollock says.

Morrisseau latched onto Pollock as his “blood brother, agent and friend,” needing, perhaps, reassurance of his artistic worth from someone living in the Mecca that is Toronto.

Half Indian himself, Pollock has been all those things to Morrisseau. He has announced exhibitions without knowing if the work would arrive on time. He has been able, because of his own difficult upbringing, to relate to the thoughts and problems that are peculiar to Canada’s native population, thanks to the society that runs rigidly on White Man’s Time.

Because Pollock is homosexual, he can understand Morrisseau’s bisexualism. Because Pollock is a romantic, he can derive satisfaction from the romance of Morrisseau’s imagery.

In an introduction to the book, editor Sinclair tries desperately to file Morrisseau away into some European box marked Romantic. The effort is a dismal failure.

With his Western-based intellectualism and his cool approach to emotion, Sinclair is the wrong person to assess Morrisseau’s artistic worth. His comments are the low point of an otherwise excellent book.

The words and art of Morrisseau make the book come alive:

Morrisseau on religion:

“I feel that I have outgrown Christianity. Christ never enters my mind much anymore. But I do believe he was a good soul. He is up there. I know where he is. I admire Christ. He was a very good man but I only loved Christ out of part of me.  I loved him and I worshiped him but I had been brainwashed until I feared him. He tried – he tried his best.”

On the Ojibways:

“My people are so downright poor that all I can bring them is pride. I haven’t got enough money so that I can supply all of them. I supposed if I had a billion dollars, that might partly solve the problem. But money isn’t everything. Certainly not for my people, because many of them would only buy more booze anyway.”

On himself:

“Half my life I have been criticizing myself, feeling guilty, and it’s hard to get away from that. But I keep going. No matter how much I have abused my physical body, I was always spiritually strong.”

“Now I know I can be spiritually channeled and I can make my paintings beautiful. The Spirit has chosen the colours. This way it comes so easy. It seems as if I had a whole art gallery, a whole museum of beautiful pictures to bring back from another plane. And when I show them to people on this plane, they can see that they have great power because they have come from a powerful place.”

Article and associated image Copyright the Ottawa Citizen. Used Under Fair Dealing.