The Group of Seven

Today Chuck and Josh celebrate Canada and their art through the lens of the Group of Seven. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:04Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:14Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, believe it or not. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the artsy edition.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, uh, the O Canada or the O Canada edition.

• 1:30Josh Clark?

  I don't know. I think it's a, well, let me ask you this. Had you heard of any of the members of the group of seven? We should probably just say group of seven is Canada's most famous art school and not school like you go and sit in the classroom and learn, but like a group of painters who work together, influence one another, support one another. Right?

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Like a school of fish, except they paint.

• 1:50Josh Clark?

  Right. A school of fish with paintbrushes.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54Josh Clark?

  So like, like this is, these guys were working in the teen, 19 teens, 1920s. And they're still like the foundation of Canada's art. Right?

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, to answer you, I.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  I don't think I had, at least as far as name recognition, but I feel like I have seen some of these works of art before in my many museum visits.

• 2:20Josh Clark?

  I didn't recognize any of them, but I have to say at first, I'm not a big fan of like 1920s, 30s in particular aesthetic. There's a lot of brown and

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32Josh Clark?

  just dark stuff. But I actually, just from researching this and looking at more and more of their paintings, I actually did become a fan of that, that school, but a couple of them in particular.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I really like this stuff. It's not, it's not the kind of thing that personally I would like hang in my house because that's just not my house aesthetic that we're cultivating. But I really enjoy these landscapes of the, the northern realm of Canada, which is where, as you'll see shortly, they mainly concentrated on the sort of woodlands north of the major cities. And to some criticism, kind of ignoring the beautiful coastlines of Canada.

• 3:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and even the Central Prairies too.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was this pretty specific thing. Seven, sometimes six, sometimes eight.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Sometimes 10.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Oh, as many as 10?

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  I think there was 10 overall.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Okay, that kind of came and went. Some passed on, some were fringe members that they were like, you're really one of us, but maybe not an official group of seven.

• 3:37Josh Clark?

  Cause you're a woman?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, in her case, for sure. But yeah, so let's, let's dig into this.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we said that the group of seven kind of formed the foundation of Canada's artistic identity. And there's a number of reasons why, like really solid reasons why that go well beyond these, these guys' artistic abilities, which makes the whole thing that much more interesting, if you ask me. But one of the reasons why is because they came together and started painting Canada's wilderness in particular, at a time when Canada was looking to develop its national identity. Because it wasn't until 1867 that Canada formed the Dominion of Canada with the province of Canada, which is now Ontario and Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  And then I think five years later, they brought B.C. into the mix. But that's what Rush sings about when they, they sing about marching to Bastille Day aboard the Thailand Express.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. And that's the, you know, they were trying, like you said, to form a national identity, sort of de-anglize?

• 4:49Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  It's like something you do in a kitchen, actually.

• 4:52Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  De-anglize, and, you know, in other words, shake off a bit of that Britishness that lingered on, both, you know, politically, economically, and as we'll see here, artistically. Their formal formation started in 1920, but as you said, they were pretty well acquainted with each other in the 1910s and 1910s. Most of them were living in and around Toronto, Canada. Toronto, Canada? Don't I get bagged on for saying that?

• 5:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like Atlanta, USA?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. We're doing our best still. We love Canada, and they love us, so they forgive us of these indiscretions.

• 5:34Josh Clark?

  Most of them love us, for sure.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of them don't, but, you know, there's people everywhere that don't like us.

• 5:39Josh Clark?

  I don't agree with that.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Where are some places where everybody likes us?

• 5:44Josh Clark?

  Germany.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, Germans do tend to like us, huh?

• 5:48Josh Clark?

  Australia. I don't think there's a single Australian that doesn't like us.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right. And there were a couple of key, sort of, employment places and institutions that kind of helped foster this cohesiveness. One was a design firm called The Grip.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Because most of these, if not all of them, at some point worked for The Grip as commercial designers, and they had a manager there named Albert Robson that really, or Robson, maybe, who helped sort of foster their outside art, not outsider art, different thing, but just saying like, hey, we love your design work, and you should also do this other stuff, because all boats will rise. And then a place called the Arts and Letters Club, which was a private club, a social club for men, and for artists in particular. So they would get together with other Canadian musicians and writers and actors there. They had patrons there that could, they could get a little juice to help support themselves. And those two places were sort of the nuclei of which they spun around.

• 6:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And there was actually a person who you could kind of point to as the nuclei of the group, in part because he was the oldest of them.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:59Josh Clark?

  Apparently he was a father figure to some of the younger ones. But his name was J E H McDonald. And he was originally born in the UK and he moved to Ontario when he was a teenager. And he was the first one to work at the grip, all the way back in 1895. And by the time most of the other members of the group of seven got their jobs at the grip, he was already head designer.

• 7:23Josh Clark?

  One of the things that kind of differentiated him and made it not surprising, but noteworthy and remarkable that he was kind of the center or the head of the group of seven is that part of being a member of the group of seven was getting out there in nature.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:38Josh Clark?

  In rugged country that was way far away from the cities and really, you know, like most of the people in Canada in, in the towns did not go north at that point. So it was a pretty kind of rebellious thing to do. And J E H McDonald was always kind of frail. He was prone to falling ill very easily. So he didn't make it on all of these excursions and yet he was doing as good a work as any of them, if not better, in my opinion, in some cases.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, his stuff is pretty great. He was a transcendentalist, though. He was, he just got sick a lot. And as we'll see, he died fairly young and he, he kept trying to tell everyone, like, I really love this stuff. I'm not an indoor kid, I promise. I just can't go bushwhacking this weekend.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  We have one more thing about him, too. I don't know if you saw this or not, but he had a painting called Mist Fantasy. That appears in The Shining, in the background.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Uh, which scene, do you know? Is it the famous office interview scene?

• 8:37Josh Clark?

  It's in the fireplace room.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 8:40Josh Clark?

  And then I think it's also, I think it also moves and is in like the main lobby where Mr. Ullman is, is giving Jack like the beginning of the tour.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one of those, uh, uh, from that documentary, that, that probably means something very significant if that painting's moving around.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  That's where I learned about it from I scream 237 and it's E Y E scream 237.com, which man, if you want to deep dive into just miss fantasy and what it means, just start there. Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Okay. Uh, there was another guy named, and these are, we're going to kind of jump around as far as introducing these people, or I guess it's not jumping around because it's fairly chronological.

• 9:20Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Uh, but these are sort of the pre dudes before it was official. Uh, he McDonald's one is a guy named Tom Thompson.

• 9:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Uh, he was, he passed away before the group was officially founded in 17, uh, 1917. It was founded in 1920, like I said, so he was never an official member, but he was a really influential guy, uh, in that he was a one of, uh, just a few native Canadians. He was born, uh, I believe he was born in Ontario, in rural Ontario, big time outdoorsman. Uh, also worked at the grip in 1908. Uh, I don't think I mentioned, I mentioned they were a design firm, but they mainly worked on design for department stores.

• 9:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  So I guess early Canadian department stores and it was at the firm where he met McDonald and they were like, hey, we should like, uh, get together and start going out in the woods and sketching and painting.

• 10:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So apparently Tom Thompson, so he's one of Canada's most famous artists by far. Um, he must've been inherently likable because I read that he hung around the arts and letters club, even though he wasn't a member, they didn't pick him out. Um, all of the members who met him of the group of seven, like took him under their wing because he was a really talented artist, but didn't have any formal training.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:38Josh Clark?

  So he introduced the group of seven to the, to the wilderness that became like the basis of all of their paintings and their whole school. And they taught him in turn formal techniques.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 10:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And his, he actually is, we'll see, he died young at 39. Um, and his career was very short. It was five years, but in that five years, he painted 50 canvases and left behind 400 sketches and he got really good. And sadly he died just as he was really starting to get going.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. That was definitely a sad thing because he was just getting cooking, I feel like.

• 11:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a guy named Lauren Harris, L A W R E N. Uh, he may be the sec- I mean, I don't want to judge how famous they are, but he seems to be pretty famous. Uh, he notably, I think, has sold, um, at auction, the most valuable painting ever from a Canadian artist at 11 million bucks. It was called Mountain Forms, and I like the painting. It looks quite a bit different, I think, than a lot of this other stuff as far as steering away from like a Van Gogh-like, post-impressionistic look.

• 11:49Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Uh, it looks a little more, um, graphic designing, but it's super cool. But, you know, 11 million bucks. I know Steve Martin's a big fan.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Because he went to some show of his I saw on YouTube and was kind of, uh, going on about, uh, his love for Harris.

• 12:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he mounted a touring exhibition back in 2015. Like, he's a big Harris fan.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, super cool.

• 12:08Josh Clark?

  And one of the others, and Harris is a really good example of this. They, a lot of people consider Lauren Harris the first, um, abstract painter in Canada.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:17Josh Clark?

  And you can kind of make a pretty good example that the, um, the group of seven represents the transition from traditional painting to modern painting. They're the kind of portal that it goes through in Canada. And it's really neat to see their early work before they all kind of came together. And then to see, starting about 19, 19, 19, 20, all of them start to kind of resemble one another, even though it's very distinct and different.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:46Josh Clark?

  You can see that kind of through line that really did make them like a cohesive school.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of the point. I don't even think that that stuff is necessarily done on purpose. I think similar sensibilities, hanging out with each other.

• 13:01Josh Clark?

  Ripping each other off.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, ripping each other off. Going to place, you know, the same places, you know, as we'll see, that went on these excursions. And this guy, he was one of the more adventurous ones. He went as far as the, uh, the Arctic to, to paint, you know, in the colder climes, uh, including that 11 million dollar work is at Snowcap Mountain. But he was a rich kid. Uh, he was, um, even though he was born in Ontario, he was a heir to a British fortune from the Massey Harris Company that made agricultural equipment.

• 13:30Josh Clark?

  I think they're still around.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  He didn't have to, you know, there's no other way to say it. He didn't really have to work to support himself as an artist. So he was very free to do his thing.

• 13:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And he was a very dedicated artist, too. So he wasn't just like, I don't feel like doing anything today.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  I'm sure some days.

• 13:48Josh Clark?

  He was also heavy into spiritualism, which was pretty predominant at the time. Remember, I think we did a whole episode on that. And so if you put together McDonald's transcendentalism, Tom Thompson's exposure of everybody to the woods, Canadian forests, and then Lauren Harris's non-religious spiritualism, those kind of form like the ethos? Ethos? I can never remember which one it is. I remember one time I said ethos and we were on a Zoom call with Scott Aukerman and he just kind of said almost to himself, like, wow, you got both vowels wrong.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Did he really?

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he did.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  No way. That's the kind of thing that sticks with you.

• 14:33Josh Clark?

  For sure. I'll never forget it, but I still don't remember which way to say it.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I thought it was always ethos. So according to Scott Aukerman, it would be ethos?

• 14:42Josh Clark?

  Ethos.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Ethos? But if you said ethos, you didn't get both wrong?

• 14:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, so I said, no, ethos, I think is what I said.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Oh, you said ethos?

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's what it was.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Wow, okay.

• 14:55Josh Clark?

  I think that was it. Regardless, I still don't say it right, I'm sure. And if I do, it's accidental.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:01Josh Clark?

  People know what I'm saying.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  You're Josh Clark. We're known for mispronouncing.

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  We really are.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  So before they got together as a group, again, which was 1920, they took a pretty formidable trip in May of 1912, when Thompson and another staff member at the group named Harry B. Jackson took this train from Toronto to the Algonquin Provincial Park, or to Algonquin Provincial Park. There's no D there. And they just started sketching. Again, like you said, at the time, you know, you had to be pretty adventurous to start venturing into those wild climbs. It was, it was rough and rugged territory. So certainly there probably were not a lot of artists doing that. I mean, there were, there have always been Canadian men and women who were like,

• 15:54Speaker 02

  yeah, I'm very comfortable out there and it doesn't scare me.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  But I think artists to be going out there was a pretty radical thing.

• 16:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And yeah, these guys are, they were rebels in their time. You just gotta kind of remember that, even though retrospectively now you're like, what, what's the big deal? But yeah, at the time, this is all very new. It was very big. And also, as we'll see, they were basically making like in-your-face style of art that just was not the taste of Canada at the time.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. They spent a lot of time in that park and specifically Thompson, at a certain point, he was spending, you know, eight months out of the year there. He left in the winter, finally, because it was, it was pretty rough. But he really, really loved Algonquin Provincial Park. And I think they even, like, the, the media initially started calling them the Algonquin School before they settled on a name. And some really beautiful paintings came out of that pre-1920 formation.

• 16:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The Jack Pine is a very, very famous painting in Canada.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 16:58Josh Clark?

  That was by Tom Thompson, I think from 1916 is basically when he started it. But you can really clearly see the Art Nouveau influence that he developed as a commercial graphic designer.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:13Josh Clark?

  Another one is A.Y. Jackson's The Red Maple.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:17Josh Clark?

  I like A.Y. Jackson's work, but I don't like The Red Maple. But it's about equally famous as The Jack Pine in Canada.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  I like that one, too. Again, not for my house, but I would, I would dive into it in a museum with gusto.

• 17:29Josh Clark?

  They would not like that. The security guards would be on you like White on Rice.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Oh, sometimes I just want to touch those.

• 17:36Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Paintings. You can't do it.

• 17:38Josh Clark?

  No. It's like the call of the void.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  It is a call to the void. Yeah, I could either touch the painting in the Guggenheim or pull the gun out of the cops holster. Security at the Guggenheim.

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  So, one of the things that these guys did too, that was pretty smart, is they got out there in the wilderness. But it's not like they set up their easels and were just sitting there painting the final paintings that they showed to the public. They would do kind of sketches. Tom Thompson was apparently very good and prolific at it. I saw that he captured transient moments of light and atmosphere. By making these sketches out in the actual, like seeing the actual thing and then just kind of bringing it back and translating that into the actual finished canvas. And all of them basically did that, but something about Tom Thompson's eye being translated to color and texture in his paintings was really, it was really something.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. One of my favorite things now, and I've noticed this because, did I tell you Emily started painting?

• 18:42Josh Clark?

  No, how awesome. What medium?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Paint on canvas, oil mainly. Dabbled in watercolor a little bit, but she's mainly painting oil on canvas and like, she's good and it's sort of like surprising and annoying. It's like, oh, okay, so you can actually paint. That's, that's super cool. Yeah, but it's, she started, you know, now they make these little travel kits that, or you can do your own in like an Altoid tin of, you know, very small little paint sets that can like fit inside of a notebook. And she takes them along and will just paint little things or sketch little things in, in nature, because that's mainly what she's painting. And we went on this last trip when we went to New York to see Gary Glenn Ross, which was awesome, by the way.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  We went to the New York Botanical Gardens for the first time in the Bronx. We had been to Brooklyn's and I noticed there are artists just everywhere, sitting on benches, sketching and painting stuff around them. And it's, it's just such a lovely thing to witness because it's just so quiet and peaceful and they're creating art inside of, you know, the natural wonder of nature's art and I just, I just love it.

• 19:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I envy that. I admire it too. I've always wanted to be able to at least draw.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 19:55Josh Clark?

  I mean, since I was a kid, I was friends with like artists that could draw, like, like it was, they were just natural talents at it. And I would just try, try, try and take classes and I just couldn't do it.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  I couldn't either. My whole family, my father wasn't, but my mother is an artist and an art major and a painter. My brother could always draw.

• 20:15Josh Clark?

  I believe.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  My sister could draw and I can't draw a stick figure.

• 20:19Josh Clark?

  That's all right. Yeah, I was gonna say, anybody who's seen my, my drawing of a horse on Instagram knows that I can't.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  That was better than what I could do, I think.

• 20:28Josh Clark?

  Oh, also, by the way, if Emily's making art kits out of Altoid tins, that makes her a tinnivator, Chuck.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Well, she's not doing that. She bought a kit, but.

• 20:37Josh Clark?

  From a tinnivator?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I will not be a tinnivator because of that episode.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Can we just get that one off? Can we scrub that?

• 20:45Josh Clark?

  I'm sure we can. Should we also do Scuba Cat?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, those are two that really should go away.

• 20:52Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, we'll, we'll look into that. We'll have to ask Jerry.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 20:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I guess we should. We kind of got away from ourselves, huh?

• 20:59Speaker 02

  All right, let's take a break. We're gonna ask Jerry if we can scrub a couple of episodes, but that means we're gonna have to do two more at the end of our career, of course.

• 21:07Josh Clark?

  That's fine.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Because we don't, we don't want to shortchange ourselves. So, uh, we'll debate all that and then we'll be back to talk more about the group of seven.

• 21:32Josh Clark?

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• 22:41Josh Clark?

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• 23:31Josh Clark?

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• 23:48Josh Clark?

  So I think with the exception, Chuck, of Tom Thompson, all of the rest of the group of seven artists, all of them over the years even, went and studied in Europe at some point or another. They were formally trained. I read that Lauren Harris was encouraged by his math professor to study art in Berlin. I'm guessing then that he wasn't very good at math.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  He edged him in the...

• 24:14Josh Clark?

  You like to draw? You play the piano and all?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Can you do anything?

• 24:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. But when they were trained in Europe, this is the time of the Impressionists. They were trained in traditional conservative landscapes.

• 24:29Josh Clark?

  And they brought all that back, but they found to their dismay that they were having a really hard time translating the European techniques that they had learned to the Canadian wilderness. It just wasn't working quite right. And there was a really big, important turning point that happened in 1912, when Lauren Harris and J E H McDonald traveled to Buffalo, New York to see an art exhibition of Scandinavian artists. And they were just blown away. It completely freed them to create the art that went on to become synonymous with them. And I saw that, I think McDonald said, that these were artists that were not

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  trying to express themselves so much as they were trying to express something that took hold of themselves.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 25:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So these guys were overwhelmed with nature and they were painting the feeling that nature brought out in them. And that's what the group of seven started doing.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's cool. I know Van Gogh was another inspiration in particular from the European school and that a technique that I really love, the impasto technique, where you just goop that paint on there. So you see the brushstrokes and in the case of some of these artists in Van Gogh, and of course, many others, it's, you know, when you get up close to these paintings, don't touch, but you can lean in and get a really good look at just how caked on it is in some places. I just really, really love that.

• 25:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And if you're really sly, you can kind of touch it with the tip of your nose and just be like, oops, I got too close. Sorry. Yeah, that Jack Pine, Thompson's Jack Pine, if you look at the sky or the lake, you can really see his use of that. It's a really cool painting. I'm just gonna say it again.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Agreed. Another, you know, something I've learned a lot more, having known artists in my adulthood, is that a big part of doing your art is just having a space to do it. Not everyone can just set up in their dining room or whatever. And so studio space is cherished and not, it's sometimes hard to come by, sometimes too expensive. And so patrons are very important in that regards. And there was a guy named Dr. James McCallum who built a building along with Harris, I think funded by James McCallum. It was called the Studio Building in the Rosedale neighborhood of Toronto. And that was a real sort of cohesion.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Cohesive thing. Cohesion unit, is that a thing?

• 26:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like a rank leader.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like two units of cohesion when they built that building.

• 27:03Josh Clark?

  For sure, which is not there anymore, unfortunately. I think they built a high-rise apartment over it. They tore it down first and then built a high-rise apartment. But during the time, I think well into the 50s, this was still a thriving artist's studio and it was cheap apartments as well. I saw that Tom Thompson was so broke that he couldn't even afford the subsidized rent for the artist's apartment at the, at the studio. So again, he was so likeable. James McCallum built him a shed out back and charged him a dollar a month for it.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they would, you know, Canadians are known for being nice, but they would bag on them. They'd say, man, you're so broke, you can't pay attention.

• 27:48Josh Clark?

  That's a good one.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  And then they all started coming up with, you know, you're so broke jokes.

• 27:52Josh Clark?

  How have I made it almost 49 years without having heard that one?

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Have you not heard that one?

• 27:57Josh Clark?

  No.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Uh, that's the only broke one I know. But yeah, I introduced Ruby to that whole, uh, that, you know, those kind of jokes, it burns, your mama jokes and stuff that, you know, playground burns. It's pretty fun.

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Your mama's so old, she owes Jesus a nickel? Did you ever hear that one?

• 28:16Josh Clark?

  No. Wow. I really wasn't paying attention on the playground, apparently.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I was, I couldn't make these up, of course. I was, I was just trying to copy the, the great artists of the playground.

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  For sure. But I mean, I still haven't heard them and you, you say them just beautifully.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  I appreciate it. I got a lot more. I'll trot them out here and there, moving forward.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  Okay, good, good. So we talked about Tom Thompson dying and this was a really big deal, right?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  It was. Uh, another big deal was World War I.

• 28:42Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  That came along and, you know, was a big disruption because a lot of, it certainly delayed the formation, the official formation of the group right there in the late 19 teens. Uh, but they, a, a lot of them actually served in the war in some capacity.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  A lot of them worked for the Canadian War Memorials Fund and they were producing art about the war.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Some of which was super cool. Uh, I don't know if we should talk about it now or later, but the, uh, Well, maybe let's hang on to that.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  The dazzle camouflage.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Arthur Lismar stuff. Yeah, we'll hold on to that.

• 29:21Josh Clark?

  It is cool. So yeah, one of the things that I think also cemented Tom Thompson's reputation as one of Canada's most famous artists is that he died under what some people consider mysterious causes. Like this guy was born in rural Ontario. He was an avid outdoorsman. He spent so much time up in the Canada, the Canadian forests, I guess around Algonquin or Algoma. That he would be a fishing guide sometimes. He served as a park ranger. He just, he was just there. So he might as well do that extra stuff. And he went out one day in a canoe. And his canoe was found overturned later that day or the next day. And he was missing. His body was found, I think, eight days later.

• 30:05Josh Clark?

  And he had like a bump and a bruise on the side of his face. And some people are like, well, yeah, he just stood up in the canoe and like fell out and like hit his head and then drowned. And other people are like, you didn't know Tom Thompson then because number one, he would never do something that stupid. And number two, see number one.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's hard to tell how fishy that might have been. It very well could have been an accident, but it's also very easy to say like an experienced outdoorsman like that wouldn't have died that way. But it was officially declared an accidental drowning. Some people theorize that he may have killed himself. If he wasn't murdered because he got his girlfriend pregnant, but I couldn't really see a lot of like solid evidence other than just people surmising.

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was like one or two people over the years who like wrote a book or something like that and kept the whole thing alive.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:02Josh Clark?

  But it was a really big deal to the group of seven. They hadn't even formed yet and they lost one of their members already. And this was the guy who introduced them to the wild. He was inherently likable guy. They were really bummed out about it. But they still carried on. You know, I think at least in part out of tribute to Tom Thompson. But also because they had really come to. Appreciate what he introduced them to.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. That also led to another sort of, if not tragedy, like setback when McDonald was helping to build a memorial cairn at Canoe Lake where he died and McDonald collapsed because, as we said, he was a pretty frail guy, may have had a stroke, but recovered within a few months, well enough at least that he was able to go on this painting trip. You mentioned Algoma in Ontario. They went there. Frank Johnston, who was, he would be another one of the OGs as far as the group members go, and Dr. McCollum, who funded that studio, they all went along on this trip.

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they went on box car journeys because Lauren Harris-

• 32:14Speaker 02

  This sounds so cool.

• 32:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Lauren Harris was so rich, he went to one of the railroads and said, hey, give us a box car, will you? And they said, sure, Mr. Harris, whatever you want. So they took a box car and outfitted it, refurbished it with, to basically turn it into a traveling studio and artist quarters.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like super cool. I mean, it had a stove, it had furniture, and they could move it around to the different rail sightings and hang out and stay, then had a little home base there with some warmth to it.

• 32:47Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And the Wild River was painted there, which is one of McDonald's biggest, most popular paintings, and that was in 1919, and it is very gorgeous as well.

• 32:57Josh Clark?

  It is. I don't remember that one. I had so many tabs open and looked at so much art that I couldn't remember that, but I don't think there was many paintings that I was like, bleh, that's a real dog.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Right. Except for that one painting of the dog, the real one.

• 33:12Josh Clark?

  Right. So by this time, 1919's rolling around.

• 33:19Josh Clark?

  They've been on boxcar journeys. They've lost Tom Thompson. They've gone out in the wild a few times. They've really kind of gotten into this new modernist interpretation of landscapes, specifically Canadian landscapes, to basically create this new art identity of Canada. It's like a nationalistic art movement. And they mounted their first exhibition from at least one or more of those boxcar journeys. And I think there was something like 200 canvases. And it did not go over all that well, actually.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there were some critics who didn't love it. Some people did like it. But that was just a key exhibition because it was their first one as a group. And that was when, and this is in 1919, that's when, within the group, they were like, you know, we should officially like call ourselves a school and form an official, like the Avengers. We need to get together and be an official group because it'll probably just help our reputation, get us a little more press.

• 34:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  In February, March of 1920, they did so. Jackson was not there. He was on one of his sketching trips at the time. And he came home and said that he learned that it had been formed and that I was a member.

• 34:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we haven't met Jackson yet. This is a different Jackson than the one that went on that first trip with Tom Thompson. This was A Jackson.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Well, we introduced him.

• 34:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, we did? I didn't remember that.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Because I almost made the joke that, did they call him A?

• 34:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  But I didn't.

• 34:52Josh Clark?

  Like the Fonz.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, A Y. Jackson, who actually, he lived, I think, the longest. Yeah, he lived all the way until 1974.

• 35:00Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Right old age. He was born in Montreal, had a single mom with six or five other siblings, total six. And as a result, he had to work a lot to support his family. But eventually, he found his way to Europe where he was one of the ones, like you said, that studied, like formally in Europe, which he did in France before he moved back to Ontario in 1913.

• 35:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and thanks to Dr. James McCollum, he was able to move to Toronto because he was not very well off at the time.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:31Josh Clark?

  And McCollum said, how about this, I will buy all of your paintings that you produce in a year to keep you afloat, essentially. And that gave AY Jackson the ability to come to Toronto, start working.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  He painted 600 things.

• 35:44Josh Clark?

  Right, and make a name for himself in time to be able to support himself through his art.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he had that Montreal connection, so he sort of, Montreal artists would, he'd make connections with the group of seven. Again, you know, artists knowing each other and sharing ideas and just sensibilities, ethos, if you will, is a good thing. But he was one of the ones that went over with World War I to fight. He was actually wounded there. And also painted for Canadian War Memorials.

• 36:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, another guy who painted for Canadian War Memorials that you mentioned earlier was Arthur Lismir.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:20Josh Clark?

  He was famous for painting warships that were returning to port that had dazzle camouflage on them, which essentially is like op art painted on warships.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had never heard of this before, had you?

• 36:34Josh Clark?

  No.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  It's super cool. It's a way for, it's not, you know, camouflage in the way that it's supposed to blend in with the sea around it, in fact, far from it. It doesn't do anything like that.

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Like you said, it looks like cool pop art, you know, painted on a warship, like, it almost looks like some weird art installation and not a real thing that the Navy did. But the intention there, again, is not to like conceal it, like it's not there, but to confuse and mislead about like the course heading or something up like that, or like how fast they're going, or, yeah, like I said, where they're headed. And apparently it worked pretty good.

• 37:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they look like disjointed zebra stripes that in, they're in different chunks that don't line up with one another.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's on the actual ship, and he painted paintings of these ships, and they're really cool looking. I love it.

• 37:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and Arthur Lismir is one of those painters whose style seemingly changed overnight around 1920 and really falls into line with the rest of the groups. It's pretty cool.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess we'll go with the last three here. We have Frederick Varley, who lived till 1969, so I think he was the, lived the second longest. He was a schoolmate of Lismir's in England, and I think we didn't mention that they both studied and worked Belgium. And then he reconnected with Lismar after living in Yorkshire and getting married. And he was like, Lismar was like, come on over to Canada, man. And he did so in 1912, went to work at the Grip, like a lot of them, and also painted for the war memorials.

• 38:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was actually embedded in Europe with the Canadian military. So a lot of his paintings that he made during the war were like bombed out villages.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:15Josh Clark?

  I read that he, one of his paintings was a shelled cemetery. To basically say like even the dead can't escape war. It's some harrowing stuff that he produced for sure.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Who else do we have?

• 38:28Josh Clark?

  He was very affected by the war, I should say.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:31Josh Clark?

  To answer your question, who else we have is my favorite by far of the group.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Frankie?

• 38:38Josh Clark?

  Franklin Carmichael.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  And you were saying you wouldn't hang any of these in your home. I would hang a Carmichael, basically any of them.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree, actually. And that's some of my favorite stuff, too. And I might, I might hang some of the other stuff. Maybe I was being too harsh.

• 38:51Josh Clark?

  Hang it all. So he had kind of a more decorative sensibility, I saw it described as. He used more colorful, softer colors. It like, just go look up Franklin Carmichael art and you will just sit there and watch it all day.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did more watercolors than the rest of them, but did work in other mediums. And then rounding out, we have Frank Johnston, born in Toronto, so another one of Canadians' sons. And he worked at the Grip as well. And he's, I think, the only one that actually studied in the United States. He went there for a little while, studied there, did some work there, and then went back to Toronto in 1915. And he was known for his opaque watercolor techniques. So he was kind of, you know, watercolors quicker. So he was pumping out paintings much quicker than the rest of these guys.

• 39:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw he contributed 60 of the 200 canvases that were at that first show.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 39:52Josh Clark?

  He also, this is so artist, he was born Francis Hans Johnston. And later on in life, he compressed that to Franz.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Oh, wow, Hans and Franz.

• 40:02Josh Clark?

  Pretty cool. Yeah, exactly.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe we should take another break.

• 40:06Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  And we'll be back with more art.

• 40:27Speaker 02

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• 40:34Josh Clark?

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• 40:48Speaker 02

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• 40:53Josh Clark?

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• 41:15Speaker 02

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• 41:34Speaker 02

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• 41:46Josh Clark?

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• 41:59Speaker 02

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• 42:09Josh Clark?

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• 42:21Speaker 02

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• 42:37Josh Clark?

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• 43:00Speaker 02

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 43:13Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  All right, so we've talked about 1920 and what happened over and over again. But finally, on May 7th is when the official Unified School opened at the Art Gallery of Toronto with 120 paintings. And this is like definitely when critics kind of, some of them pooh-poohed it. One described some of the paintings as looking like the contents of a drunkard's stomach. And I think this was maybe more just because it was a departure from the traditional art.

• 44:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  They got popular pretty quickly. I think their second show in May of 21 drew about 2,500 people over just three weeks and change. So people got on board pretty quickly.

• 44:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Again, because in part, this is that they were painting Canada's national identity.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 44:23Josh Clark?

  One of the other things, I don't know if I've made that point yet.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  I don't know. Think a few more times. It might get at home.

• 44:28Josh Clark?

  One of the other things that was really big about this, this show, was that the director of the National Gallery of all of Canada bought at least three of their works. His name was Eric Brown. And in addition to basically ensconcing them in Canada's National Gallery, saying like, "These guys are legit. This is the real deal." He put them in other exhibitions that Canada put on around the world. And he would really play a big role later on during World War I and II, as we'll see.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he, you know, he was a patron of the arts. He loved these guys, but he was also criticized at times later by just solely being into these guys. And like, hey, you're not championing the work of women as much as you should, or our Indigenous artists. So, you know, he was criticized for that. That's all I'll say.

• 45:20Josh Clark?

  For sure. So, the group is kind of like rolling by now. They're doing more journeys. They're meeting once in a while to basically set up exhibitions. Franz Johnston leaves, and they're like, well, God, we're the group of seven. We need to get a seventh. They bring in a guy named A.J. Cassin, who used to be Franklin Carmichael's assistant. They're like, okay, let's just break the trend and bring in an eighth member. So they brought in a guy named Edwin Holgate. He was brought in in 1929.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a portraitist, which was a little different from the rest of them.

• 45:53Josh Clark?

  For sure. He had also formed another group in Montreal called the Beaver Hall Group, which is a pretty good group name.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, great name.

• 46:01Josh Clark?

  And then Lemoine Fitzgerald, who you could call The Jinks. He was brought on in 1932. The group broke up in 1933. So The Jinks missed their last exhibition in 1931. And then he was there for their breakup the year after he was brought on board.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's too bad for Lemoine, but he got a brief taste. And then, you know, he lived until 1956, so he was still painting after that. We did mention a woman, Emily Carr, near the beginning, as like, you know, this is a boys' club. But she was never officially a group of seven because of that. But they did feature her works in some of their shows, one in 1927 in particular. And that's when they, you know, they kind of pulled her aside and they were like, hey, you know, you're really, you're one of us. Like, it might not be official, but you're definitely one of us.

• 46:53Josh Clark?

  But don't tell anybody.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Don't tell anyone. And she painted a lot of indigenous villages and stuff like that.

• 47:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  And at one point was doing indigenous art, like hooked rugs and pottery and selling it to tourists.

• 47:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  She like, even way back then was like, wait a minute, maybe I'm appropriating this. They didn't use that word, I'm sure, but she, she stopped doing it. She was like, this is not a culture I'm a part of, so maybe I shouldn't be doing it and selling it.

• 47:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that lady was ahead of even NPR.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Or what's Canada's version of NPR?

• 47:26Josh Clark?

  CBC.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Oh, right, of course.

• 47:29Josh Clark?

  Um, so, all good things must come to an end. And one of the things that I think you can give a nod to the group of seven about is they're like, hey, this thing's run its course, let's just disband. So they actually disbanded. They, they, they had a formal disbanding, I think, in, again, in 1933.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  It was Lemoine's fault, again. Uh, part of it was that McDonald had, um, died in 1932. And again, he was kind of like the guy who was, who, the original, the, the figurehead, I think.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Puppasmer.

• 48:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was part of it. They thought it had run its course, but they were also now starting to get real pushback. Not just them, but also the National Gallery and Eric Brown saying like, you know, there's other, there's other artists in Canada, can we kind of include them? There's other parts of Canada besides the Northern Boreal Forest.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:21Josh Clark?

  And because of that, they actually stepped back, they disbanded the group of seven, and then they regrouped and expanded to the Canadian group of painters, which started out with 28 artists and eventually grew to 61 total over the years. And this one included women.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yes, they, they expanded it greatly at that point. Um, the, one of the reasons that, you know, they're obviously famous because they were, you know, Canadian through and through and what they were doing and where they were living and some of them where they were from. But they, uh, in World War II, the Canadian government, uh, got involved to do this silk screen, uh, program where they silk screen prints of this art and they put them up in their buildings and their government. Buildings and then put them up for sale. And Eric Brown was behind that as well. And that that really just cemented them because all of a sudden people were like buying the stuff and putting it on their own walls as prints.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they were in banks, they were in schools. Apparently Arthur Lismar, one of the original Group of Seven, was in charge in part of selecting images. So, yeah, the Group of Seven was disproportionately represented in this. And that is one reason why they are so enmeshed in Canada's artistic psyche. Like, this is Canadian art. This is the foundation of it. That's a big part of it.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you could get it at the Spencer Gifts all of a sudden.

• 49:45Josh Clark?

  Yes, and you could you could also make an argument that they were selected for this cheap silk screen reproduction because the colors, the bold colors, the shapes, the contours of the whole thing, it was ripe for reproduction through screen printing.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. It looked good on a screen print. Emily Carr was not chosen. In fact, no women were chosen. And I think no artists that painted the coastlines of Canada were chosen. And no work by Indigenous artists as well, or work that depicted their community. So, again, some controversy surrounding that stuff. Obviously, that kind of thing today would be handled a lot differently. But this was, again, back in the mid 1940s when they started the silk screening.

• 50:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but it was interesting that they were still criticized for that kind of stuff, even even back then, you know? People were aware of it for sure.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 50:41Josh Clark?

  But yeah, if you want to waste some time, well wasted, I should say, go check out thegroupofseven.ca. And they have bios and like a lot of selected art. Or just look up these artists and type in artist name, works, and just look at all the amazing stuff that comes up. It's good stuff. I'm glad you you found this one or picked it or it was suggested. I'm not sure.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  I think I had just heard of him. And Olivia helped us out. And it's I love learning more and more about art here later in life.

• 51:13Josh Clark?

  Me too, Chuck.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  In my 50s.

• 51:17Josh Clark?

  Well, since Chuck said he's in his 50s, of course, that means he's just unlocked listener mail.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Mid 50s. When are you 50?

• 51:29Josh Clark?

  I will be 50 the July after next, and I don't care because 40s suck.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:37Josh Clark?

  It's the worst decade, so far at least, but I've heard it just gets better after your 40s, that your life satisfaction dips in the 40s and starts to climb back up and peaks again in your 60s, and that that is comparable to your younger years, the peak of happiness. So we have a lot to look forward to, man.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, just get ready.

• 51:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we're going to be podcasting the whole time.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  That's right. All right, this is a positive correction about fentanyl. By the way, we got some props for just saying fentanyl, not fentanyl.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Josh noted, if you go to prison, you're expected to simply dry out and hopefully recover that way. That is not the case, guys. I teach in a correctional facility in Indiana. I'm happy to report that our prisons give incarcerated individuals, or IIIs, the option to take Suboxone in a controlled environment. At a certain time each day, the II in the program are sent to our medical department and given Suboxone in order to help with their treatment. This has helped those who struggle with addiction, but it's important to note that it can be addictive, leading to potential abuse as well. Suboxone compared with recovery programs has helped a lot of my students, and I've been very fortunate to see some people turn their lives around through this. And we heard from a couple of other correctional workers from different states that do the

• 52:52Speaker 02

  same thing, so it sounds like it's sort of the norm.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's heartening.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great to hear. Additionally, guys, I appreciate that you cleared up some misconceptions about fentanyl. I can confirm that those ideas still impact law enforcement, as our officers are required to wear gloves during cell searches in order to prevent absorbing fentanyl through the skin. Thanks for providing years of knowledge in a relaxed and fun manner. Thanks for coming to Indianapolis. I was at the show, and it was great.

• 53:16Josh Clark?

  It was a good show.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  And that is from Samuel, adult basic education instructor.

• 53:20Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Samuel. You're out there doing God's work. Congratulations to you and thank you for it. And if you want to be like Samuel and gently correct us, we love that kind of thing. You can send it via email to [email protected].

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:54Josh Clark?

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