A personal and intimate perspective on one of Canada’s most prominent 20th century multidisciplinary artists, who was once described as “abstraction’s poet-philosopher.”
Pre-orderA leading 20th-century Canadian artist, Gagnon was a probing painter, photographer, and filmmaker whose singular body of work carries unmistakable metaphysical weight.
—Geoffrey James, photographer
Charles Gagnon (1934–2003) was a painter, photographer and filmmaker considered by many to be an important figure in Quebec and Canadian art in the 20th century.
His early career emerged alongside the American Abstract Expressionists and his growing multidisciplinary practice broke away from the singularity of painting shared by his Montreal contemporaries of the Automatistes and the Plasticiens. The complexity and depth of his work as a painter, photographer, and filmmaker was distinguished by a probing, introspective quality. His paintings were simultaneously rigid and free-flowing, with self-imposed rules and structure contrasted by rich fracture and gestural brush work. Across all disciplines he played with multiple levels of perception, and many works evoke the liminal space of the threshold, or multi-plane spaces.
In Charles Gagnon: The Colour of Time, the Sound of Space, this long-standing multidisciplinary work is brought into full view with texts that explore Gagnon’s various practices, from painting to photography to film. An English-language essay by art historian and curator Roald Nasgaard chronicles Gagnon’s artistic evolution from his early years in New York in the 1950s to his final productive years in the late 1990s in Quebec, and situates him within an expanded international historical context of artists, artworks, and art movements. Filmmaker and professor Olivier Asselin’s French-language essay engages Gagnon’s use of different media, including the role of sound and music in his artworks. Michiko Yajima Gagnon, the wife of the late artist, gives insight into the inseparability of everyday life and Charles’s creative undertakings: his friendships with other artists (Tōru Takemitsu, Lee Friedlander), travel (to New York, Japan, and, particularly, the American Southwest), and the relationship between the landscapes surrounding his studios and his artwork.
Featuring more than 250 art reproductions and archival images, Charles Gagnon is an intimate portrait of an artist and the celebration of a life’s work.
“Charles Gagnon is to my mind one of the most important Canadian artists of the 20th century. This elegant and lush publication provides a much-needed account of the innovative and experimental nature at the heart of his practice, and of the rich and diverse artistic paths he travelled.
—Lesley Johnstone, former director of exhibitions, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
“This visual feast of a book is the best account yet of the life and work of Charles Gagnon. A leading 20th-century Canadian artist, Gagnon was a probing painter, photographer, and filmmaker whose singular body of work carries unmistakable metaphysical weight. With family recollections, deeply researched curatorial essays and more than 200 illustrations, we are left with a deep understanding of the man and his art.”
—Geoffrey James, photographer, Guggenheim fellow, and lifelong friend
“Nous étions sérieux, Charles et moi, peut-être un peu solennels, pas sans humour pourtant ; entre nous, le respect de l’intégrité. Nos galeries fréquentent ses œuvres depuis longtemps avec ferveur, un bonheur chaque fois.Sur chaque réalisation, Charles répandait ses propres feux et braises ; le métier est sûr, réfléchi. Ses œuvres se déclinent au présent, toutes périodes confondues, car leur évidence est la joie, leur effet tonique contagieux et fraternel. Ainsi ces repaires-oasis, nés d’un patient regard sur l’éphémère et sa durée, sur le vif de l’art, sa pulsion guérissante. Ce «présent», le cadeau, une œuvre-phare exceptionnelle et généreuse, éclairant les aveuglements et désolations dont notre temps déborde.”
—Roger Bellemare, Galeries Bellemare/Lambert