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The Assumption Chord
Kate Baggott
Kate Baggott goes in search of the abstract art of D. S. Baden
and stumbles on a hidden treasure. But Baden's art may be a metaphor, or a symbol, or a
quest, or a need, or even an illusion. This essay, no doubt, is as provocative as it is
entertaining and educative.
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I know art history is not
a profitable discipline when the economy is as bad as it is, but I am not squandering your grant
money Professor. Yes, I extended the car rental for another three days, but I've kept the
budget in mind and turned down the extra insurance to save money. Except for that scare the
day I arrived, I have remembered to stay on my own side of the road and keep my foot light on
the accelerator--which hasn't been easy under the circumstances. You once told me that awe is
for undergraduates, but the material that's been falling into my lap here is truly awesome. If
I were a scientist, I would have shouted eureka a dozen times this week. That's why, Professor
Marian, you have not received a report of my progress or expenses until now.
* * *
My route has followed as
closely as possible the route Baden took when he left the old Christie Street Veterans Hospital.
The major difference is time spent travelling. I was able to leisurely explore the old parts of
Stony Creek, Grimsby, Jordan, St. Catharines, Virgil, St. David's, Queenston and
Niagara-on-the-Lake in two careful days. A journey that would have taken Baden two weeks.
Even though I am not more than two hours from Toronto, life is
noticeably different here. People fall into two groups, locals and strangers. Luckily the
weather is so cold and rainy that and no one suspects me of being a tourist, the most annoying
breed of stranger, come to bathe in the summer peace or autumn colours. This is what I've
learned of the local sociology. They are very careful. Friendly, but restrained. Polite--yet
to the extent that their formality feels like rudeness. Living so close to the border, they
suspect every stranger is an American. In all their carefulness, these people save everything.
Every attic is an archive. They track their ancestry like addicts search the streets for a fix.
These old new worlders tell immigration stories that are more ancient than the Grimm's
collection and inhabited by twice as many ogres and giants. They live in old towns that are
really nothing more than islands of community on seas of farmland--at least that used to be the
case. Old orchards and vineyards, over the past ten years, have begun to sprout luxurious
housing developments for former city-dwellers who want the illusion of country living without
all the gardening.
The old towns are red brick and fieldstone. The families who live
in these houses can recite the list of previous inhabitants backward to the original builder.
Some of them repeat their own family name down through six or seven generations. Octogenarians
are common and, while they may forget what day of the week it is, they have very long memories.
How could I, you might ask, learn anything of Baden's travels in the area among people who are
profoundly suspicious and polite? My research methods were anything but orthodox. I walked up
and down the streets of the old towns until I encountered someone who looked suitably elderly
out walking. I'd stop them to ask for directions to the local library and, after their response,
ask the irresistible question: "Have you lived here very long?" I listened to them in the street
until their legs were tired. From sheer exhaustion they were forced to invite me to tea and
continue the fascinating stories of their lives in the comfort of their own homes.
Before you accuse me yet again of wasting valuable time and money,
let me assure you now that I have met six people who encountered Baden in the five years he
spent in this region.
| "I can prove Baden was notorious,
that he painted darkness because he liked it and was happy there. I'll bet you
he concentrated on images of winter because he was sterile." |
The five women and one man, aged eighty-one to ninety years, were
children when their mothers were widowed during the First World War. Even the oldest, born in
1905, claims not to remember her father. The other disturbing coincidence among the six lies
in the fact not one of them knew our Mr. D.S. Baden became an artist of some renown after he
left the Niagara escarpment for Europe at the end of 1922.
Their ignorance does not result from living in a culturally
bankrupt region, that assumption would be merely urban prejudice on my part. My father once
told me that he'd been shown minor works by Lawren Harris and A.J. Casson that were kept under
beds and in closets. The fact that all three families my father did business with here had a
Group of Seven painting they did not display, made him wonder just how many more there were in
the area. The way some people dream of striking oil, my father dreamed of one day discovering
a cache of Canadian art on the Niagara Peninsula.
I studied the walls of the houses of the old people I visited.
There were escarpment landscapes in huge numbers, but none that had the intense shadow and dark
pallet of Baden. For a half hour or more I wondered if Krystensen and Morgan were right in
their assertion that Baden did no work in his Niagara period because his post-war trauma had not
yet settled down to the clinical depression that plagued him the rest of his life (Swedish
Journal of Art History, 1984). Finally, after no fewer than four cups of tea, I became so
impatient that I asked about hidden paintings.
The person I asked has, according to her nephew, suffered a
series of mild strokes that have made her conversation garrulous and uninhibited. Nelly Darby
is ninety and walks seven miles a day. She says its because she takes exercise that she is not
bent over and shrunken like a dried apple.
"You won't live to my age," she told me. "Your nose is too big,
you need too much air." Which I assume was her way of saying, "I know you're Jewish, young
lady."
I asked her if Baden was an unhappy man and she snorted.
When I asked her if she had a painting done by Baden, she snorted again.
"He fixed our stove once, but that's the only work I saw him do.
You should ask Martha Gibson if she has a painting. Martha's mother had more patience than
mine. The only painting I saw is the one of Mrs. Maclean down at the high school. My mother
didn't put up with that, you know."
Yes, Baden painted a person. A human figure. Naturally I wanted
to rush right out to see the painting of the mysterious Mrs. Maclean and talk to Martha Gibson.
Unfortunately the car was out of gas and, having spent my
research assistant stipend on tuition and subsistence, I was flat broke after I bought half a
tank. Naturally, after hearing you repeatedly lecture on the insufficiency of your research
grant, I did not call you. I have also heard you lecture on the evils of the business my
father was in. Always the typical academic, I have heard you condemn art dealers who profit
only when masterpieces are hidden from the scholar's eye and held in private collections. I
was on the brink of actually getting somewhere in our research and because of our lack of money
I found myself up against a wall. Luckily, my art has always been tainted by commerce. And my
father, who was half carnival husker and half sophisticate, taught me survival well.
"On every level," he would lecture to me, "we don't buy art.
We're sold it."
I made a quick long distance phone call to Toronto, a charge of
$2.15 will show up on the calling card statement, and then I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Mr.
Herbert Emilion, who I am sure you have read about in the business section of whatever newspaper
it is you read, and his wife Moira have a second or third home in a Georgian red brick mansion
older than Confederation. I thought it would be easier to sell the importance of our research
to someone who has already bought Baden's work. My father sold November Maples at Dusk, circa
1926, to Mr. Emilion from the estate of a French businessman who had purchased it from the
artist in Paris. Our mortgage payment was due the next day and I must say my father's
salesmanship was brilliant and desperate.
"Baden has always been considered a minor contemporary of the
Group of Seven in Canadian circles," he told Mr. and Mrs. Emilion. "He's always been more
popular in Europe, too sombre for the new world. You might call Baden the Leonard Cohen of
post-WW1 Canadian art." Of course, my father knew that Moira Emilion, before her marriage, was
one of the Montreal Cohens--recently of West Mount and even more recently of Rosedale. "Baden's
pallet, you'll notice, is much darker even than Emily Carr's. He never used yellow, he never
painted sunlight. Notice that the shape of the trees cloaks the darkness rather than the other
way around. If his contemporaries were in awe of the wilderness, Baden was frightened of it. If
the others were seduced by geography, Baden was raped by it."
Professor, you might laugh at my father's elementary analysis,
but you probably haven't seen November Maples at Dusk. The trees reach into themselves against
the winter, the ground is snow less and the branches heavy with ice turning grey in the most
reluctant light. It should make one feel miserable and cold, but it doesn't. That, you and I
know--if you haven't forgotten--is the source of beauty in all Baden's work. It makes one
want to be alone with their winter. I think we should sub-title our paper "A Season of Privacy".
Although, based on what Miss Darby said about her mother, I doubt Baden spent much of his time
here alone. This area of our research, which I have to tell you we're doing, is what I used to
sell Herbert Emilion the role of benefactor in our research. I was willing to play the game
without knowing if I could win. To tell the truth, by that point, I would have considered
success an invitation to supper.
"Don't you think," I asked the Emilions, "that this association
between madness and artistic talent is a little over done?"
"It's profitable," Herbert answered. "A mad artist is always more
valuable than a sane one. Remember Van Gogh."
"Ah!" I said, and began my imitation of my father. "But even more
valuable than a mad artist...is a mad artist whose madness was one of his own creations. Think
Dali."
"I thought we were talking about Baden. How could he be anything
but depressed? A healthy artist would paint all four seasons, not just winter," Moira added.
"He expressed his warmth in other ways."
"If your research is going to prove Baden was a sane man who
spent his spare time campaigning for woodland preservation, or some equally charming cause,
it's not going to increase Baden's profile in Canada or the value of my painting," Herbert
Emilion, company president and CEO said.
"Oh, it's more pornographic than that. We've discovered a
painting of a real human being. This work may be the only time Baden painted a woman's flesh
instead of tree bark. He came to Niagara and seduced war widows left and right. Do you know
what dangerous people lovers are, Mrs. Emilion? I bet he ruined Mrs. Maclean's life when he
unveiled that picture. Even if he didn't sleep with her, everyone would have thought he had.
I can prove Baden was notorious, that he painted darkness because he liked it and was happy
there. I'll bet you he concentrated on images of winter because he was sterile. How else could
so many women bear so few illegitimate children?"
"Annie," Moira said, laughing, "do you really know where you're
going with this?"
I'd like you to know, Professor Marian, that I was not lying to
the Emilions. I had Miss Darby's quote to work with so it was more a game of creative
hypotheses. A bibliography is not required at that stage.
I asked for $10,000 thinking we could fund the next project too.
They gave me $2,000 and put me up in a guest room for the night, so I saved the $50 it would
have cost for a hotel. I asked for a few hundred in cash (for which I will provide receipts),
but the rest is covered by the cheque enclosed. Please have the tax receipt sent to the
Emilions' charitable foundation. Address to follow.
Early the next morning--with a full tank of gas--I left to go see
Mrs. Maclean, Baden's only known representation of a human figure, which hangs in a high school
auditorium.
"Painting in the auditorium?" The secretary at the school
repeated. "I don't think there is one, is there?"
I had to see the principal and convince her that the painting was
indeed in her school's auditorium. At least I hoped it was still there. With the head-custodian
as my guide, I was finally permitted to explore the walls of the auditorium--a room too
beautiful to belong to a high school. Mahogany and brass rails across the balcony have
generations of pairs of initials scratched into the surface; the thick black velvet curtain
holds the school's Latin motto in gold thread.
The painting is only four feet by three, very small by Baden's
standard. In the partial light I didn't see it until I walked all the way down the aisle and
was near the lip of the stage.
| "My angel, the way I will paint her,
will be woman enough to do nothing but make love to men in mourning ... What
men need in their mythology is not an angel of victory, but an angel of
survival." |
It hung off the line under the huge plaque of Rotary Award
winners' names. Baden's use of darkness was so extreme I could barely make out the human
figure I'd staked all my hopes on. I lifted the painting off the wall and almost dropped it
as I coughed in the clouds of dust that surrounded me. The painting wasn't so dark, it was
filthy--more than seventy years worth of teen-age boredom and sticky hormone breath had covered
the canvas with a layer of almost black film. I lay the painting, down on the floor and asked
the janitor for a soft cloth.
Always the budget traveller, I took the half-loaf of bread out
of my pack and reconciled myself to just cheese for lunch. When the janitor came back I showed
him how to clean the painting with slices of bread, which, my father taught me, is just damp
enough to remove the filth without damaging the paint.
"Bread? You'd think," the janitor said, "they'd have special
cleaners for this kind of thing."
"Hey, they used soap, water and Q-tips to clean the Sistine
Chapel," was my response, and I realised too soon that it might have been an insensitive
remark. I didn't want the custodian to think I thought he was just a stupid janitor. "When I
was a kid my father and I used to dance around the house every time he sold a painting. It
meant there was enough bread both to clean paintings with and eat."
The janitor and I sat on the floor rubbing slices of bread over
the Baden--I revealed the signature first--until the bread slices pilled into soft balls of
dust dough.
"I bet you never thought," the janitor said, "you'd spend all
these years in school to end up with dirty fingernails."
"I like this work," I said. "Do you know what we call a scholar
with clean hands?"
"What?"
"Tenured."
Even I, Professor, will admit that joke is slightly unfair. I do
know you had your term as an indentured research assistant. Why else would you wear such thick
glasses, if you hadn't spent your youth straining your eyes hunched over archives kept in poor
light? But, for now, there is still dirt under my fingernails that I can't scrub out and I am
proud of it.
After the first layer of dust was removed from the frame, I could
read the brass plate on the front: In loving memory of the one hundred and six graduates of
this school who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war to end all wars ~ The St. Catharine's
Ladies Auxiliary, 1919. What we found under the grime on the war memorial, was not one
figure but two and even more shocking--Baden's use of yellow and sunlight.
Professor, this is not typical of Baden at all. I don't know
whether to be disappointed or overjoyed. In many ways I would have to say this is a terrible
painting. The scene depicted is the type of war memorial that appears in every town. Perhaps
if Baden had been a sculptor, or the Ladies Auxiliary had been richer, Victory would cradle
the fallen soldier in bronze outside the railway station--exactly the way it does in thousands
of towns and cities across the world.
In Baden's memorial painting, Victory is not a huge androgynous
creature with long locks and flowing robes. Baden's angel is definitely a woman. In a shaft of
sunlight Mrs. Maclean, as the angel of victory, kneels with palms stretched out and held toward
the sky. A soldier is stretched out over her lap; his face is dim and lacks individuality--
that's why Miss Darby didn't mention his name when she told me about the painting. There is no
object represented to cast a shadow and obscure the soldier's features. He is no one and
everyone. Mrs. Maclean has a face, but like a Dutch seventeenth century saint or Madonna, her
features have an almost cartoon colouring and with this clarity of face the body gradually
softens until it all but dissolves into the light. In the typical neo-classical tradition,
the soldier and victory are assumed in the absence of landscape. What is horrible about Mrs.
Maclean's pleasant, pink face is that--like a contemporary fashion photograph--it is absolutely
void of expression.
"Well, would you look at her," the janitor said, and whistled.
"What do you think?" I asked him. "Did the painter love her or hate her?"
Neither of us could find the answer in the painting, so we hung it back up
and I went to see Martha Gibson.
* * *
"I was just a child when my
mother knew Mr. Baden," Martha Gibson said as soon as I reached her door. "I won't remember anything
that can help you. Would you like a cup of tea?"
Martha Gibson did not want me in her home, but given the local
customs that the elderly hold so dear, she was forced to give me the invitation, which, in the
interests of academic inquiry, I was forced to accept. She did talk to me like Nelly Darby had--Martha
Gibson was not prone to river long monologues. I had to interview her, I felt like a dentist. Pulling teeth.
"Did you live in this house with your mother?"
"I've lived here all my life."
"Where did your mother meet D.S. Baden?"
"Danny was a border. My mother was a widow, we had to eat."
"You called him Danny?"
"My mother did."
"But no one called him Danny, not even his mother."
"My mother always called him Danny, until he painted
Alena Lomond and left."
"I thought her name was Maclean."
"After she married Archie Maclean. Ladies used to take their
husband's name, but I don't suppose you did," Mrs. Gibson said to me, and stiffened her
back as straight as her age would let her.
"I'm not married."
"You're old enough."
"My work keeps me busy."
"You girls don't know how to work. If you want to see real work,
get a husband. Good wives work hardest of all."
I got the impression that unlike her own mother, Mrs. Gibson made
a much better widow than she did a wife.
"What about Alena Maclean?" I asked, changing the subject before
Mrs. Gibson could eat me alive. "Was she a good wife?"
"No. She wouldn't stop singing long enough to be a good wife."
"She was a singer?"
"For the war," Mrs. Gibson said with a sharp nod over her teacup.
"At charity teas and for the soldiers."
"Did Baden ever hear her sing?"
"Oh my goodness, young lady," Mrs. Gibson said, losing patience
with me for being young and stupid. "Everyone heard Alena Lomond sing. Don't you listen?
I told you I couldn’t remember anything."
Mrs. Gibson led me to a cupboard in her upstairs hallway
and directed me to pull down a cardboard box from the top shelf. For the second time that
day I coughed like my lungs would never breathe again.
"All that is his," Mrs. Gibson said. "Take what you want."
Inside was a pair of pyjamas, three mismatched wool socks
and a black bound sketchbook, pages yellow and fragile.
"Take it," Martha Gibson said as I carefully opened the cover.
"Mrs. Gibson, this is worth a lot of money," I said turning the
pages slowly. I thought I was going to faint with curiosity. "About eight thousand dollars."
"I'll die before I spend all that and the government will get it
all. Take the book."
The university should write you a tax receipt," I insisted
and tried to hand the sketchbook to Mrs. Gibson.
"I don't want strangers in my things. It's yours. Keep it."
Mrs. Gibson shoved the sketchbook back into my hands as if it was the spare umbrella
any good hostess foists upon guests when an unexpected rainstorm threatens to postpone
their departure. I think if Mrs. Gibson hadn't been so frail she would have sent me flying
out the door with a good shove.
So, Professor, I have it. And the sketchbook is full of faces of
women, and notes are written in the margins. At Mrs. Gibson's insistence it is mine, but maybe
I'll let you look at it when you are finished showering me with A+s. That, of course, is a joke.
I would never resort to bribery and make our precious academic climate...chilly.
Until I return--which will be before my roommates let my cat starve
to death--you will have to be satisfied with my partial transcription of Baden's notes on Alena
Lomond's performance of June 18, 1918. A newspaper had commissioned Baden to provide an
illustration of the event, one of the many commissions published without signature, which explains
how he paid the rent due his succession of widowed landladies:
Why is victory winged? Victory is not the same angel that
guides the souls of women who have died in childbirth to their eternal rest. Surely, chance
and choice cannot have the same heavenly anatomy. My angel, the way I will paint her,
will be woman enough to do nothing but make love to men in mourning without even
offering them her touch. I am different than the others. I hear her having already lived
in the mud these boys cannot wait to leave for and I have seen men drown in it too. I am
different from the others because I know now that I am a man in mourning and do not resent
her infidelity, even though I only now can recognise it. I have not met this woman, but I can
see that she is not herself on stage. She knows it is a better thing to be beautiful and blank
as clean canvas, to go through the motions of a love song, knowing that each of us will transform
her into the different women we want. What men need in their mythology is not an angel of victory,
but an angel of survival.
And so, Professor, I can end my first field report to you by saying
that I have found it. I have found it!
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