Steve Martin curates Lawren Harris exhibit at the AGO

Comedian Steve Martin has been an art lover and collector of fine art for decades. Now he'sco-curator of an exhibition at the ArtGallery ofOntariotitledThe Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, featuring more than 30major paintings by the revered Canadian painter and co-founder ofthe Group of Seven.

Martin spoke with exhibitionco-curator Andrew Hunter, the AGO'sFredrikS. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, in an onstage conversation at the AGO Tuesday to launch the show, which openson Canada Day.

"I always thought it was going to be a big hit," Martin said ofthe exhibition.

"I've always felt, just wait 'till they see these paintings all in one room."

Canada through an American lens

The travelling exhibition comes to the AGO viathe Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where it debuted lastfall. It also had astopat the Museum of Fine Arts inBostonbefore landing in Toronto.

Group of Seven paintings are front and centre in thehearts and minds of Canadiansfor their representationof the country'sruggednorthern landscape and for thesense of nationalidentity they imbue.

Butthe showing at the Hammer Museum markedthe first major exhibition ofHarrisworksin the United States. That show includedsome of his most significant paintings.

It was the director of the Hammer Museum, AnnPhilbin,who first asked the comedianto curate aHarris exhibition many years ago.She, like most Americans, hadnever heard of the artistuntil Martin introduced her to him.

As Martin tells it, "I do own a couple of small panels that I bought through the years that I just really like. In fact, that's how this whole thing got started.Ihad a small panel hanging in our house and Annie Philbin was over, and she said, 'Who's that?' And I said 'Don't get me started,'and here we are."

'I thought I discovered him'

Martin finally agreed to take on the project, hopingtomakeHarrisas famous in the U.S. as the Canadian iconis at home.

"I thought I discovered him, then I realized Canada knows all about him," Martin toldCBC'sWendyMesleyin an exclusive televisioninterview earlier this month.

"I felt a little foolish. I thought he was unknown."

The fact that few Americans seemed aware of Harris's work, while Martinhadadored himfor decades, finallyspurred the comedian on to take on the job as curator.

Over a period of several years, Martin travelledacross Canada to choose the right pieces for his exhibition.

"These pictures really haven't all been together ever. These are his masterworks collected from all across Canada."

Abstract idealized images of Canada

Martin said he first saw Canada's North when he went to the Yukon on afilm shoot. There, thelandscape reminded him of aHarris painting.

"I washelicopteredto the location and would fly through these mountains.I thought:`This isLawrenHarris,'" he toldMesley.

"Oftentimes,you know, a painter will paint a landscape and you think, 'That's not really what it looks like.' And then when you actually go see the landscape, you go, 'Oh, I see.He actually did paint it exactly like it is.'"

Martin has collected abstract expressionists such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, as well as work by Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Hopper both of whose work he says remindhim of Harris's paintings.

While the Hammer Museum's version of the showprovided an initial introduction to Harris'smasterworks for an American audience, in Boston, his paintings wereshown alongsideAmerican abstract artists.

"In Boston, we were able to bring Harris together with the important early American artists like Georgia O'Keeffe and Marsden Hartley," Huntersaid during Tuesday's chat.

"And the work really held up, really strongly."

Martin also discussed the progression of Harris's oeuvre from realism to abstractionismover time.

"If you look at Harris's work you will see paintings of specific places.He's looking at the scene and painting it or maybe doing a drawing and taking it back to the studio. Butthen later, you see formal pictureslike Isolation Peak,which are non-existent places that he's composing. Andthen you see a painting like the Imperial Oil picture and it's just theory," Martin said.

"It's like the theory of a mountain and that's where the Idea of North comes from."

Thosesparse, austere, emptynorthern landscapes have helped shapeCanada's sense of identity, even as the majority of Canadians today live in cities far to the south.

Updated for Canadian audiences

The AGOexhibition has been expanded for a Canadian audience readilyfamiliarwiththe paintings of Harris.There are anadditional 20 works thatfeature the artist'searly career that serve tosituatehim as a Toronto artist.

Paintings from the 1910s and early1920s, includingscenes of the Torontoneighbourhoodknown as the Ward, show Harris'sinterest insocial realism. He later abandoned this in favour of abstract northern landscapes, far removed from people and city scenes.

Harris's"bold vision of the North, the one that so many people love, really comes out of this place," according to the AGO's Hunter.

"It is really something that emerges out ofbeingin the city and being confronted by what was a deeply troubling situation for many people living in a fairly rough and gritty, emerging modern city."

Artistic contemporaries

The expanded exhibition in Toronto also includeshistorical work of several photographers,Harris contemporaries who also documented the Wardin Toronto in the early 1900s.

"It was a tough, emerging modern city that was really hard on working people and really hard on newcomers,"Hunter said.

"Harris dealt with that in his work. Hewrote about it in his poetry. He spoke quite openly about being troubled by the human conditionthat he saw.

"And where some artiststhe path they would have chosen was to stay on this path of social commentaryHarris ends up moving more into the spiritual approach. Hisresponse to these conditionswas to look for another path and that path was in something that was more transcendent, more spiritual "

Beyond Harris

The Toronto exhibition also features work by several contemporary Canadian artists, including four commissions, that further explore the idea of the Canadian identity and landscape.

Anique Jordan's print series94 Chestnut at the Crossroads,according to the exhibition catalogue, is"a powerful image of resistance against the violent systemic erasure of blackhistories and bodies in the city."

Landscape on film

The exhibition'sprologue and epilogue servepartly as a critique of Harris,but also a critique of Canada and thestories that we've consistently told, said Hunter.

"I think the challenge for Harris is that in choosing that path for veryparticularreasons, it also opens him to criticism for,in asense, that kind of cleansingor erasurethat happens in hiswork [and]can also be seen as an ignoring of a wider culture."

Another of the contemporary pieces is a specially commissioned film byToronto directors JenniferBaichwaland Nick DePencier. Itis surreal visually, recalling Harris's northern landscapeswhilealso examining the human impact on our planet.

Idealized vision of Canada

Hunter offers a final perspective on the enduring contribution Harris made in shaping our idea of Canada.

"Harris was very successful in the teens and 20s in supporting an argumentfor a Canadian art, a very nationalist perspective," he said.

"That really stuck. And that stuck even at the point later when Harrismoves off into producing many of the works that you see in this exhibition, which are about something more spiritual and more transcendant."