Plain text didactics
Abstract Legacies
Paul-Émile Borduas, Jack Bush, Alexander Calder, Sorel Etrog,
Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Kenzie Kiyooka, Robert Motherwell,
Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Françoise Sullivan,
and Victor Vasarely
The University’s art collection houses a number of significant abstract works with focused attention on notable Abstract Expressionist and Automatiste artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Paul-Émile Borduas. It also includes abstract sculptures, drawings, and colour field paintings by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Jack Bush, Robert Motherwell, and Frank Stella. These consequential artworks come to the university by an exceptional gift of Joan and Martin Goldfarb, who are avid art collectors, passionately amassing a remarkable collection that establishes their dedication to the arts and understanding of art’s role as integral to society as it both shapes and captures it. In the early 2000s, the Goldfarb’s donation of over 70 artworks marked the largest and most prominent gifts of art received by York University, acknowledging the importance of art as a pedagogical tool.
The exhibition Abstract Legacies pulls from the University’s collections as a whole to establish this thread as contributing to the academic institution’s vision of itself, breaking from traditional forms of education to embrace new ways of seeing, thinking, and expression. The University’s first art acquisitions corresponded with the opening of the Keele Campus and mirrored these modernist ideals. Noteworthy purchases were geometric abstract prints and paintings by Canadian artists such as painter and poet Roy Kiyooka and painter and musician Yves Gaucher. It also included the purchase of 12 serigraph prints by Hungarian painter Victor Vasarely. Each artist shown here is respected for their experimentation with colour and form. These abstract artworks set the ground for York University’s distinct identity as radically breaking with the stuffy ideals of traditional academics to embrace more experimental and open forms of learning.
As we mark the opening of The Goldfarb Gallery, along with the new Visible Vault, we want to present and delineate this important thread in the University’s collection as well as to grow it, opening it up to fill some of the manifest historical racial and gender gaps.
Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis and Jenifer Papararo.
Exhibition facilitation and production supported by Clara Halpern and Allyson Adley with art installation team for opening exhibitions Uroš Jelić (lead), Phu Bui, Corinne Carlson, Christian Echeverri, Matthew Koudys, Nykyta Kuzmicz, Nadine Maher, Jordan May, Manny Trinh.