- Repository Number
- Location
- Artist
- Title
- Date
- Medium
- Technique
- Dimensions
- Description
- Provenance
- Inscription
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SC0169-HRO-PA-1
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Newnham - Building B - Level 4 - Between B4066 & B4068
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Robert Houle (b. 1947)
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Untitled
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1984
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Painting
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Mixed media on paper
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55 x 53.8 cm
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“The land and sky that make up two profoundly abstract spaces are for Robert Houle his symbolic field.
Such a space, so dynamic, the cosmological centre of the universe, is where all directions meet in perfect symmetry. This principle, this truth is the spiritual core for all Plains cultures, to the extent that before any important event takes place prayers are invoked so that everyone and everything from all directions—east, south, west, north, above and below—come together at the meeting point, the space that is the centre. It is this spatiality that Houle’s aesthetic embodies.” (Gerald McMaster)
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This work by Robert Houle, with its landscape references, straddles two of his major series: the Parfleche of 1983, where the bisected paper suggests the Prairie division between land and sky, and his The Place Where God Lives series, 1989, in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The latter reference is to a spiritual and pilgrimage site in Manitoba, Houle’s province of birth. The water washing ashore on the Narrows of Lake Manitoba, Houle relates, makes the sound of “ke-mishomis-na-up” meaning “our ancestors”. This is said to be the voice of Manitou. To the Saulteaux, this sacred place is known as Manito-waben, the “divine straits” otherwise known as “the place where god lives.”
In the 1970s, Houle’s painting showed an affinity with the spiritual and sublime qualities of Abstract Expressionism. Since the mid-80s, he has tilted towards post-modernism. In 1982 Houle wrote: “Whether or not the work is a non-objective painting existing purely as an aesthetic object free of any ceremonial performance, there will be a presence of ritualistic will.” As an artist, Houle bridges two traditions, native and Western modernism/post-modernism. (David Phillips, Seneca Polytechnic)
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Purchased at auction from Waddington's on March 8, 2012. Purchase made possible through the generosity of the First Peoples @ Seneca.
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Signed, bottom right, Houle 84
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