Michael Snow

by King, James;

  Like many adolescents, Snow felt unfocused, not quite sure what he was going to do with his life. He also was trying to “cope” with the full implications of his father’s blindness. For him, music became a solace, an escape from everyday reality. As a child, Michael had spent many hours sketching. At the age of ten, he created a cartoon character he called “Aeroplane Ace.” At UCC, he drew surreptitiously.

  In 1940, his drawing of ice skaters obtained honourable mention at the Canadian National Exhibition. He flirted with painting when he combined a slow-growing attraction to visual art with his consuming interest in jazz.

  In the October 13, 1947, issue of LIFE magazine, the nineteen-year-old came upon two articles on Picasso: an anonymous piece with colour illustrations entitled “PICASSO: The brilliant Spaniard is this era’s most important painter. But is he a truly great artist?” and “Portrait of an Artist” by Charles C. Wertenbaker. The Wertenbaker article is headed by a black-and-white photograph labelled “Pablo Picasso Poses with His Latest Work, Paintings of Strange Creatures.” This work, a triptych in oil and charcoal on three asbestos boards, is entitled Satyr, Faun and Centaur with Trident (1946). The satyr is playing a flute-like instrument. The LIFE article awakened Snow’s interest in cubism and led him to paint Jazz Band (1947), a work containing portraits based on Dean, Glandfield, and Priestman. Like Stuart Davis and Piet Mondrian, jazz spoke to his art and inspired it.

  Torn between his passion for jazz and his love of art, Snow remained indecisive about his future. In June 1948, he let fate make the decision for him. Despite poor grades, he graduated and was awarded his school’s art prize. Based on that success, he decided to attend the Ontario College of Art (OCA; now OCAD University) rather than pursue a career as a musician. “I took a compromise course called ‘design,’ because I didn’t know whether I was going to turn out to be a commercial artist or what.” Then he began painting, although he remained in his chosen course: “I had this idea that when you go out you had to have an occupation of some kind. Not a career, but a business.”2

  FIGURE 12. Picasso article in October 13, 1947, LIFE magazine.

  At first, his rebelliousness remained strong, as his lecture notes reveal. He doodled instead of paying attention. He made a caricature of one teacher while asking himself, “What is beauty?”3 What might have been a haphazard decision turned out to be a wonderful turning point in the twenty-year-old’s life. For one thing, the design unit at OCA was very much a bastion of Bauhaus School principles and placed a great deal of emphasis on form, a concern that would dominate the young man’s later career. Even more important was the presence of John Martin (1904–65), the etcher and textile designer who was the head of the design division. Paintings did not have to be submitted in the design program, but when Snow showed some he had done to Martin, he “provided provocative feedback.”

  FIGURE 13. Michael Snow, Jazz Band, 1947.

  Sensing Snow’s potential, Martin took him under his wing. “He suggested reproductions that I ought to see and books that I ought to read. Among the books he mentioned were the [various volumes in the] Documents of Modern Art series, a collection of various artists’ writings: Mondrian, Kandinsky, etc.”4 Martin was particularly interested in contemporary English artists — Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Stanley Spencer, Ben Nicholson. Snow studied their work and gravitated to the cool, cerebral abstracts of Nicholson.

  A year or so later, the young artist discarded his fascination with Nicholson in favour of Paul Klee. The highly stylized work of the Swiss artist became the dominant influence on Snow’s early work. He was attracted to its purity of form, its careful regulation of colour values, and its playful approach to surface values. Interestingly, along with the visual connection to Klee that Snow felt at that time, there was another bond — one that Snow was unaware of at the time. Klee was a violinist, an admirer of Bach and Mozart, and he had attempted to translate musical form into visual form.5 At an unconscious level, perhaps, Snow the musician was responding to Klee the musician.

  In his attempts to find pictorial equivalents to music, Klee was following in the footsteps of Wassily Kandinsky (in Concerning the Spiritual in Art). Specifically, “Klee sought the actual basis for the analogy in the most inner being of music — its rhythm — which in his opinion not only marks the movement of time but also in art.”6 For him, each colour had an intrinsic sound.

  Blue Panel (Wall Panel V) shows how Snow responded to Klee in its careful regulation of colour values and its playful approach to the surface of a canvas. Blue Panel may remind a viewer of Klee, but, on closer inspection, the colour scheme, which is dominated by strong blues together with flecked whites and creams, is not one favoured by the European artist. Moreover, the use of various blocks — configured in several variations — does not conform to Klee’s ordinary way of working. He almost always constructs series of blocks rather than series of variously shaped groups of blocks.

  Responding to an advertisement in Canadian Art magazine, Snow submitted a design for its cover. His design was accepted and appeared in the Summer 1951 issue. As Snow was then merely a student in the OCA design course, this was a significant accomplishment.

  When Snow was in his final year at OCA (1951–52), Martin encouraged him to submit work to the Canadian Society of Artists’ eighty-first annual exhibition. The CSA had never before accepted student work; however, two pieces — Wall Panel II and Polyphony — were accepted by committee. Snow’s “sharp colour sense” was noted in a review of the show.7 Early in 1952, another work was included in the twenty-seventh annual Exhibition of Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour.

  FIGURE 14. Michael Snow, Blue Panel (Wall Panel V), 1952.

  Shortly after his graduation from OCA, Snow and a classmate, Bob Hackborn, a drummer who later became a set designer at CBC, were commissioned to design a mobile (now destroyed) to hang above the staircase of Wymilwood, the new student union at Victoria College in the University of Toronto.

  While still at OCA, Snow had formed a romantic relationship with another student there, Georgine Ferguson. She had been born in Winnipeg but grew up in Montreal. In order to put some distance between her and her parents, she decided to study in Toronto, where she trained in commercial art. At times during the summers of 1952 and 1953, she shared Michael’s bedroom at Roxborough Drive. Bradley and Marie-Antoinette had no objections to this arrangement. During her stay, the young woman noticed that Michael’s parents lived completely separate lives. Another strong memory was of herself and Michael in Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom, one on each side of her, as she read Proust to them.8

  FIGURE 15. Georgine Ferguson, 1953.

  FIGURE 16. Michael Snow, Georgine, 1954.

  Georgine and Michael’s love for each other was all-encompassing. Each was the centre of the other’s universe. Although their ardour may have been fierce and unrelenting, it was also a romance on which their relatively young ages ultimately put a damper.

  Michael had found makeshift work doing paste-ups and other entry-level chores at a commercial art firm that made catalogues. In retrospect, he recalls: “It was horrible, and I was horrible.”9 He was living at home and saving up to travel to Europe.

  He knew that he had to find ways of extending his knowledge of art, and he realized that he had to leave Canada to make that happen. That urge conflicted with his love for Georgine. He came to the conclusion that their connection to each other would survive despite the long absence a stay in Europe would entail.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  A MAN DRAWING LINES

  One way to survive in Europe was to find work in a jazz band. Snow had already acquired a lot of experience professionally. From 1948 to 1952, he played occasional jazz gigs: for instance, he was a guest artist for the Queen City Jazz Band on May 5, July 17, and July 21, 1948; and June 30, 1950; and was a member of his former classmate Ken Dean’s Hot Seven on August 13, October 22, and December 2, 1948; and June 18, August 24, and October 19, 1949. On July 9, 1949, the Glo
be and Mail reported that Snow and Dean were interested only in Dixieland: “no bop or any other so-called progressive style will sway them from that objective.” According to the article, “they were still growing musically, and willing to grow.”

  FIGURE 17. Ken Dean’s jazz band in concert at a high school in Toronto, probably 1948. Michael is playing piano.

  Robert Fulford, a friend of the clarinettist in Ken Dean’s band, recalls this period:

  [I was] a junior impresario — doing promotion stuff, renting the halls, selling tickets, trying not to lose money [for the band, which] played on the Island several times in those days, and the Island seemed like one big party. Mike was not a hell-raiser, but he was funny and sexy — very attractive to women and very attracted to women. He was totally lacking in braggadocio on the one hand or modesty on the other … [playing the piano] seemed natural to him.1

  Bob Hackborn remembers that time vividly, too: “We played frat houses, and hooker hotels in the tenderloin district. I remember we were both playing at the Warwick Hotel, and these two hookers, Micki and Vicki, took a liking to us. They knew we were students, but we actually arranged a meeting with them, and Mike and I were anticipating all kinds of lascivious delights. And the night of our date — that was the night the cops picked them up. We were heartbroken.”2

  In leaving Canada for Europe, Snow had mixed feelings — he was very attached to Georgine. Nevertheless, his spirits were high. He knew he had to undertake this particular rite of passage: he desperately wanted to expand his knowledge of the world. He needed to complete his education. “I was very indecisive then. I did work that was pretty decisive, I suppose, but I kept on vacillating, trying to decide what I should do.”3 Travelling, he felt, would clear his head and allow him to move forward. His decision to travel might have been assisted by a fire at his parents’ home that destroyed five of his canvases. Since those pieces were gone, he could begin from scratch. He had saved up three hundred dollars for the trip.

  In April 1953, Michael, Bob Hackborn, and Georgine travelled to New York City. As Georgine said goodbye to her boyfriend, she was distraught. Deeply in love with Michael, she feared that this separation might become a permanent one.

  Snow took his trumpet — an instrument he was not then adept at — whereas Bob took a complete set of drums. The two left for Le Havre aboard the SS United States. As soon as they arrived in France, the pair took a train to Paris. They hoped to find employment playing jazz and thus pay their travelling expenses. That summer they obtained work at three Club Mediterranée (known as Club Med today) camping resorts at Golfo di Barrati on the coast of Tuscany, on the island of Elba, and at Becici-Budva on the coast of Montenegro in Yugoslavia. Bob Hackborn fondly remembers the night they were “coming down from Trieste on a boat, and we suddenly arrived at this small coastal village. It was night and beautiful and it looked like a Van Gogh painting, and there was this little club at the end of the wharf, and we heard jazz coming from it.”4 Michael’s memory was of being enthralled by hearing the sounds of jazz and the music becoming louder as they approached shore. The two hurried off the boat and headed in the direction of the music, which was emanating from a small bar where a band was playing New Orleans jazz.

  FIGURE 18. Bob Hackborn (left) and Michael Snow at a costume night in the bar of the Hotel Grand Coeur, Méribel Les Allues, February 1954.

  In September and October, Snow worked with David Lancashire at a jazz club (La Rose Noire) in Brussels. Michael later told his friend that he was in a constant state of depression, but that observation startled Lancashire. “Everything was for laughs then. And for music. We had an apartment above [the club], and we’d sit up and talk all night and talk all day. He was serious about art — Cézanne was very important to him — but I can’t remember any gloom.”5

  Hackborn has similar memories. He recalls only two arguments: “one was about colour. We were trudging down this dusty back road to the Club Med, and the sun was setting, and I said it was such a beautiful orange colour, and Mike said no, it was yellow, and we argued about it, and he really got quite angry.”6

  A month after the band’s run in Brussels ended, Snow, as pre-arranged, met Bob in Milan. The two travelled through Germany, Switzerland, the south of France, and Spain, and ended up in December in Malaga, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. They remained there until the end of January, then made a short trip to Tangiers, headed to Paris, and finally to the French Alps, where they obtained work as a piano and drums duo.

  In the French Alps, at the ski resort in Méribel Les Allues, Snow had a precarious sexual adventure. One night, Hackborn remembered, he “commandeered” another man’s girlfriend, and later that night “the guy got drunk and burst open the door of our room and stood there swaying and yelling at us.” This is not the complete story, as Snow recalls. The person who hired Hackborn and Snow was a French novelist who had won the Prix Goncourt. He had a wealthy girlfriend — she had her own airplane. Snow recalls:

  Somehow, the guy thought I was making out with her, which I wasn’t, and he threatened me a couple of times. One night he got into a rage and said “I’m going to kill you,” and he went and got a gun. Everyone was trying to talk him out of it — you know, Don’t shoot the piano player. Hackborn and I ran away and there was a chase. The guy had this big dog, and we were scuffling and running and falling in the snow. We made it through the night and a couple of hours after breakfast the police came and arrested him, but not because of what had happened. It turned out that he was an impostor, a criminal with a record, and off his rocker.7

  Only years later did Hackborn reveal to Snow that he had slept with the lady the night before the incident with the impostor.

  After less than a month in the Alps, and another month in Paris, the two moved to London at the end of April. Six weeks later, after receiving an upsetting letter from Georgine, Snow headed home. She had informed him that she had committed herself to someone else and was engaged to be married. When he arrived back in Toronto, Snow, surprisingly, did not attempt to change her mind, and Georgine remembered that he and she had become distant from each other.

  Despite a hectic time travelling and playing, Snow produced a sizeable amount of work during his time in Europe, especially in Malaga. Two important oils, Colin Curd About to Play and Man with a Line were done there.

  Partially indebted to Klee, this painting of Colin Curd (his real name) is based, Snow reflected, “on a wonderful character and musician I met in Paris — as usual it is not just one subject but a multiplicity of meanings, the largest one discussing the position of all artists (flautists, magicians, painters or poets) and the audience. As you can see, I consider both ends un poco loco [a little crazy].”8 Later, he provided further details: “I had met an interesting young classical musician from England, a flautist. We had memorable conversations about what it was to be an artist, and in particular about who the audience for our work might be and what our relation to them should be.”9

  FIGURE 19. Michael Snow, Colin Curd About to Play, 1953.

  FIGURE 20. Michael Snow, A Man with a Line, 1953.

  A Man with a Line was made on a canvas on which an early work may have been scraped away. The critic John Grande points out “the simple effect of the continuous line,” admiring how “with a typical Snowian sense of double entendre, Line becomes both a metaphor for the process, his own reflection of the process, and the actual subject as well: which, as the title suggests, depicts a man examining a line that extends between the thumb and forefinger of each of his hands.”10

  The man may be examining the line, but he is also a series of lines. The man is Klee-like, but he is placed against a mottled, almost marble-looking background. In this work, Snow compares his subject (drawn with a series of lines mainly in red) to the stolidity of the background. As a result, two levels of representation are placed against each other.

  If Snow became an artist by serendipity, his previously haphazard energy came into sharp focus by 1953. His de
votion to exploring what it means to be an artist took over and, in a sense, became his life. For Snow, the artist is someone who ventures into new territory on a constant basis, always willing to embrace evolving conceptions. In 1953, that process was underway.

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  INTIMATIONS

  The Toronto art scene to which Snow returned in 1954 is often described as moribund. This is not completely true. As much as in any large American city in the fifties — except New York and Los Angeles — there was a kind of bedrock conservatism in Toronto, more so than in Montreal. However, both these Canadian metropolises had already been the homes of some major innovations in contemporary art. In Montreal, Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Yves Gaucher, and Claude Tousignant were advanced modernist artists.

  In Toronto in 1953, eleven abstract painters from Ontario — Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén, Hortense Gordon, Tom Hodgson, Alexandra Luke, Jock Macdonald, Ray Mead, Kazuo Nakamura, William Ronald, Harold Town, and Walter Yarwood — formed Painters Eleven and held their first exhibition at the Roberts Gallery in 1954. In the mid-fifties, William Ronald moved to New York City, where his work was taken up by Samuel M. Kootz, a leading dealer.

  American abstract expressionism may have influenced Ronald and the other members of Painters Eleven, but, in various ways, they had established a distinct, authentic modernism. Douglas Duncan (Picture Loan Society), a connoisseur of Canadian modern art, showed prime examples of it. Before 1950, he was the only dealer doing so in Toronto.