Prelude to the Afternoon of a Moose

Introduction:

Charles Pachter, artist, humourist, critic and designer, has been called "a contemporary Renaissance man."

Many of you in this audience are here because Charles and his computer invited you on relatively short notice. Welcome to The Empire Club's magic-lantern show, which our television audience will be sharing.

Some visuals the TV audience won't see are the colourful cards and brochures on your tables. They are all part of the Pachter package, which is wrapped up in the whimsical title, "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Moose."

Facetious as this may sound, Charles Pachter is no lightweight. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto-he was top of his class-and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. His degree from France is signified by a diploma from Les Ecoles Superieures de Preparation et de Perfectionnement des Professeurs de Francaise et des Etrangeres.

As for the rest of his life story, let us hear it-with audio-visuals-from the entrepreneur of Canadian artists, Charles Pachter.

Charles Pachter

1947. At age four, I was chosen to play a lost boy at the

Canadian National Exhibition in a National Film Board "Canada Carries On" movie called Johnny at the Fair. I roamed freely around the Ex, shook hands with Prime Minister Mackenzie King, kissed skater Barbara Ann Scott, and got my first closeup look at a pet moose and its owner, Quebec woodsman Joe Laflamme.

1962. At 19, I left Art History classes at the University of Toronto for Paris, enrolled in a school for foreign French teachers at the Sorbonne, took a job as a cafe waiter near Rouen, drew at night at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, discovered the streetscapes of Montparnasse, and moved to Corsica where I lived in a tent by the sea.

1964. As part of graduate studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, I illustrated the poems of Margaret Atwood. We had been summer camp counsellors together in Haliburton, she as "nature" instructor, I as arts and crafts. We were young Canadians working in the U.S., discovering our identities in the process. I printed our first folio of eight poems and lithographs, The Circle Game, on an antique letter press on handmade paper which I made from chopped blue jeans and pillow cases.

1966. My first studio in downtown Toronto was in an old bicycle-repair shop on Shaw Street. I left home, a CANOE, (Child Acculturated North of Eglinton). The multicultural street life, so different from the '50s suburbs I knew as a child, was invigorating, and reminded me vaguely of Paris. I immediately set up a lithography workshop where I illustrated and printed the works of Canadian poets Alden Nowlan and John Newlove, introduced to me by Atwood.

One of the things I discovered while in the States was how little the Americans knew about Canada. Back home, I observed that, as little as they knew about us, we didn't know that much more about ourselves. But we knew a lot about them. Imprinted with a possibly exaggerated sense of Canadianstyle glamour from my short career as a four-year-old film star at the CNE, I grew up motivated to celebrate what was here. I sought out the work of other Canadian artists and writers. I encountered a mostly cool culture. If you were inclined to celebrate things that were here, you were often up against an entrenched attitude of philistinism. Many were stuck in the belief that glamour meant other. Other Places, Other People, Other Art.

1967. Twenty years after Johnny at the Fair, I was determined to be part of Expo '67, the fairest of them all. I spent a year in Montreal as a curator of the International Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture. Part of my job was to bring meals to the great sculptor Alexander Calder, who came to Expo to supervise installation of his monumental stable. The rest of the time, I devoured the excellence of the architecture, the national pavilions, the site. 1 was convinced that Canada had finally become glamourous.

1968. Pierre Trudeau was elected Prime Minister. Back in Toronto, I exhibited new lithographs at Gallery Pascal in Yorkville, and bought my first house. Without formal architectural training (which might have constrained me), I gutted and rebuilt an old wreck on Shaw Street. I discovered the pleasure of reconstructing interior space organically. The approach was similar to working on a painting. Light sources, scale, proportion, and colour were as important in constructing living space as on canvas.

1969-70. As assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of Calgary, I discovered the West. An urban middle-class Easterner thrust suddenly into wide open spaces, I could not help being overwhelmed by the Prairie skies, the new light, the mountains, the magnitude of everyday vistas. It fed my romantic notions about Canada, and I began appropriating images of the Dome Car of the CPR, Mounties, cowgirls, grain elevators, and Chinook arches.

1971. Back in Toronto again, I pondered something closer to home as an objet d'art. The sleek streetcar, the familiar Red Rocket, became my inspiration. In a series of screen prints, collages, and constructions, it glided, hovered, floated, sank, and flew.

1972. I flew 2,000 miles north to Cape Dorset, Nwr in the dead of winter to teach lithography to the Inuit. With temperatures of 40 below zero, I lasted two weeks before coming down with pneumonia and pleurisy. Back to southern Canada for a frustrating period of hospitalization, by summer I was sufficiently recuperated to head east to the Gaspe peninsula in time to witness a full eclipse of the sun. The St. Lawrence River valley in July was a joy to drive through, and I soaked up the verdant landscape and sparkling waters, images I would later put to good use in the studio.

Back in Toronto, I began working on what was to become a notorious series of paintings. Recollected memories of childhood royal visits, triggered by news that the Queen was coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake to open the new Shaw Festival theatre led me to start sketching Her Majesty in Canadian settings. Several images came in succession. Procession Through Landscape featured a disembodied glove seen from inside a limousine. This arose from childhood memories of sitting on my father's shoulders, waiting impatiently in the street for the then Princess Elizabeth to ride by in a limousine. When the entourage finally passed, all I remember seeing was a glove.

The Visitation (1972) is my updated version of a medieval religious altarpiece. Here the two winged and haloed figures are the monarch, Elizabeth II, standing on a dais in the middle of a field with her loyal subject, Mrs. E.P. Taylor, curtsying ceremoniously while a moose grazes benignly in the background as the majestic St. Lawrence flows by.

Another large canvas, Rite de Passage portrays a bejewelled Queen in full regalia waving from the back of a CPR caboose hurtling through a stylized Group of Seven forest at night.

From these exploratory images, the signature painting emerged. Noblesse Oblige, now commonly called Queen on Moose, features Her Majesty taking the salute on mooseback. The two monarchs have developed a symbiotic relationship in a Canadian context. The first reactions to this painting were hostile. Many called it irreverent. One shocked monarchist wrote me a letter suggesting I should go back where I came from, which was north Toronto. Another exclaimed: "It's a disgrace. If the man feels this way, he should keep it to himself." And so on.

My dealer at the time chose not to show the series, so I devised my own opening to coincide with the Queen's arrival at the Shaw Festival. Since I lived on Shaw Street, I turned my house into a gallery, organized a garden party on the lawn with assorted friends appropriately dressed to pour tea, and called the event "The Other Shaw Festival." The result was a barrage of local and international press coverage. Headlines such as "Canada in Royal Rage over Queen on Moose" appeared in newspapers worldwide. This whimsical fantasy, with no offense intended, had suddenly become outre. It struck a nerve. And Canada had a new folkloric image.

1973 was the beginning of the era I call "Ten Loft Years." Having quickly outgrown the house, I bought an old factory on Ryerson Avenue near Queen Street West, renamed it the Artists Alliance Building, moved to a three thousand square foot loft on the top floor, rented studios to fellow artists, started a co-op gallery called Artery and became a janitor, landlord, consultant, renovator, mediator, event organizer, and restaurateur. As one building filled up, I acquired a neighbouring one by borrowing against the new value of the previous one. In seven years, the Artists Alliance expanded so successfully that by 1980, the company employed six people and managed a dozen neighbouring properties with fifty tenants.

Queen Street West with its second-hand shops, ethnic eateries, and spacious old warehouse, was being rediscovered. A new "village" was in the making. Our co-op gallery was making headlines with such taste-making shows as The Ugly Show where famous and unknown artists alike there invited to submit the worst work they had either made or found, and The Stunning Show which was a parody of exclusive high society black-tie art auction fundraisers.

Tenants and friends of Artist alliance grew into an extended family. Summer weekends were spent at an old rambling farmhouse and one hundred-acre retreat in Oro Township north of Barrie, called Oro Fixation. Canada Day was always a special event. Escaping from hot lofts, the Queen Street troupe of painters, writers, filmmakers and assorted hangers-on would arrive in camper vans with kites, Frisbees and picnic baskets, arranging themselves spontaneously in groupings from Luncheons on the Grass accompanied by butter tarts and cider bought from neighbouring church bakes sales. Memories of these casual clusters led to a series of paintings which I completed a few months later. l found and renovated an old fur factory at Queen and Soho, renamed it the Soho Loft Gallery, and opened an exhibition called Figures in a Landscape in the fall of '79, my first commercial success on my own.

Soon the novelty of loft life faded. I found large open spaces great for impressing friends and ideal for parties, but difficult to heat in winter, and impractical to live in. So I went looking for an alternative. A house seemed too small, a factory building too much trouble.

By chance I fell upon a decrepit blacksmith shop and grocery store in a lane just west of the Grange. It was boarded up, uninhabited. I knew immediately I had found the home I wanted. Transforming the hundred-year-old wreck into a spacious residence and studio proved to be a monumental hassle, but it was worth it. A year later, l had at last created an all-purpose environment where I could live and work comfortably and undisturbed, a block away from the burgeoning Queen Street scene.

Next I bought and refurbished the elegant old Remeny House of Music Building on Queen Street West, opened a permanent loft gallery on the third floor, hired a director, and resumed work on a major opus I had waited eleven years to complete. The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Atwood's epic poem recounting the life of the renowned nineteenth-century Canadian immigrant was the inspiration for a deluxe illustrated folio I had conceived in 1969. With some creative financing, i.e. funds raised through leveraging real estate holdings, l was finally able to realise this expensive project. Spanish master printers Manuel and Abel Bello Sanchez were hired to do the silkscreens. Day and night, I drew and they printed in an old warehouse on Niagara Street. This labour of love was completed in nine months and exhibited first in November 1980 at the new Ring Gallery (and later at the Art Gallery of Ontario during Bicentennial year, 1984.)

At the height of this activity, I got involved in a restaurant project with a group of well-meaning investors that would later prove to be my undoing. A large old clothing store at Queen and Portland with a beautiful but neglected nineteenth-century Chateaux-of-the-Loire facade became my new obsession. After a year of major renovations, Gracie's opened in the fall of 1980, a 200-seat glitzy restaurant with four appropriately decorated versions of "theme" dining rooms variously called the Mississauga Room, Rosedale Room, Don Mills Room, and Forest Hill Room. (The signs were interchangeable, depending on your whim.) Gracie's quickly became the gathering place for a growing crowd of filmmakers, painters, writers, TV producers, and loft denizens, mixing it up with business tycoons, socialites and the curious. People didn't come just for the food, often unpredictable. Being there was entertainment enough.

Further expansion came a year later with the construction of the iGA Gallery across the street from Gracie's. Renovation of the four-storey twenty-thousand-square-foot building at 567 Queen Street West was the most extensive project undertaken. With the support of two sympathetic business partners, I transformed a former supermarket into the largest and bestequipped private commercial gallery in Toronto. Rivalling anything on West Broadway in New York, it boasted a computerized lighting system, sixteen-feet-high walls, and stateof-the-art loading and storage systems. It was also very glamourous.

Meanwhile, back at the studio, in a parallel burst of energy, I began to paint a series of large canvases based on a recurring memory from the Oro farm. One summer night, after building a flimsy flagpole out of two-by-fours hastily nailed together, I attached a small rayon flag to the top, manoeuvred the unwieldy mast into a fence posthole, lay down in a hammock to survey my handiwork as the sun was setting, and watched the flag unfurl slowly in the breeze, rocking back and forth like a primitive mobile at the top of its slender stem. The effect of wind, light and motion struck me immediately. Months later, I had completed several painted variations of this ephemeral image.

One painting led to another. I found myself swept along by the possibilities. I could have continued ad infinitum, but I eventually became "flagged out." I began by preparing for an exhibition of these new works at the yet-to-be-completed IGA gallery. The opening was finally set for November 7, 1981, which turned out to be the day after Prime Minister Trudeau had announced to the nation that the Constitution was coming home. It was a grand coincidence. The Painted Flag opened on a Saturday night with tout le Toronto in attendance. Champagne flowed. Thirty large canvases were splendidly mounted and lit in a gleaming new gallery that looked as mystical as a Ming tomb. It was quite a spectacle. After the opening, exuberant crowds gathered across the street at Gracie's. Celebrations continued through the night. Queen Street had come of age.

But there was trouble ahead. By mid-1982, the economy plunged into a full recession. Interest rates doubled. The restaurant foundered. Many tenants went bankrupt. As mortgage rates rose, real estate values fell. Banks recalled loans. Mortgage companies repossessed properties in default.

Forced to sell all the pearls in the Queen Street necklace at distress prices, I agreed to liquidate everything in order to keep house, studio and sanity. First came the rummage sales followed by the inevitable bankers' meetings and lawyers' lunches, where deals were struck and debt-repayment plans devised.

One by one the buildings were sold. By 1983 the Artists Alliance, the IGA Gallery, Gracie's, the Ring Building, the Soho Loft and the Oro farm were gone. And the rest were soon to follow. My ten loft years were coming to an end. The coachhouses and bakeries, side-alley warehouses and factories lovingly converted to arts uses, housing painters, publishers, photographers and designers, theatre and dance companies, rehearsal halls and film studios, were all sold to pay back bank loans. My offices were dismantled, loyal staff let go, paints stored away, partnerships ended. Confused, dejected but still intact, I came home to the refuge of my studio to confront the emptiness. And started to paint again.

My luck changed when the Reichmann brothers purchased three Flag paintings for the lobby of the Stock Exhange Tower of First Canadian Place at King and York Streets in late 1983. This auspicious placement taught me the importance of having works displayed strategically in public. The Queen Street years were behind me.

I began to see the whole city as potential show space. From 1984 to 1987, I hung seven solo exhibitions around Toronto. I found willing hosts with excellent public viewing space, which guaranteed my work would be seen by large numbers of people for extended periods. Six months on the walls outside Movenpick Restaurant, two months at Queen's Quay Terminal, four months at the Ontario Science Centre, followed by The Arts and Letters Club, Gallery Moos, The Alliance Franc-aise, and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute put my work out there. In between, I was invited to participate in an exhibition in London called "Vestiges of Empire" where Queen on Moose made her English debut. A poster presented to Buckingham Palace was received with gracious aplomb by Sir Philip More, Head of the Household, who commented, "Actually, it's rather a good likeness." "Of whom?" I asked. "Of them both!" he replied.

Back home, I was inspired by an AGo exhibition, The Mystic North, a survey of international influences on the Group of Seven. I started a new series of paintings in which I appropriated some "hot mush" impressionist brush techniques common to the Group of Seven. Into this context I injected some local historical events and some visual puns. Simcoe's Reward and Cold Comfort reinvent the arrival of counterrevolutionary Loyalist soldiers in Ontario, knee deep in mud on the cold and windy shores of wavy Lake Ontario, circa 1793, bound and determined to begin a new life in a steadfastly British colony north of the new American republic. A formal double entendre painting depicts a contemporary condominium interior with a couch in front of sliding glass doors looking out on a turbulent wilderness lake. Its title is Davenport and Bay.

A trip to the Orient in 1985 had a particular effect on me. My goal in painting has always been to reduce an idea to its simplest form. In Japan, I was awed by the visual purity of design everywhere, and by the harmonious blending of contemporary and traditional culture. It confirmed everything I had been striving for in my work. Back in the studio, I did a painting of six Canadian Supreme Court judges called The Supremes. This was a formal expression of an idea about the prominence the media give to law and government in Canadian life.

A visit to The Golden Temple in Kyoto caused me to reconsider a tent form I had been exploring in several paintings based upon Mrs. Simcoe's description in her famous diary of "The Canvas House" brought from London to house the Simcoes in the wilderness at York, later Toronto. A variation of this image later became the theme for a painting commissioned to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Stratford Festival. (Stratford's first theatre was a tent). The title is To All !n Tents. In French, En Tentes Cordiales.

Another painting called simply Float depicted an outboard motorboat at the end of a dock. A horizon line in the distance anchored the objects to a finite reference point. On returning from Japan, I removed the horizon line. The air and water were absorbed into one atmosphere. The boat and dock were released from gravity to hover in space. A much better painting emerged.

By 1986 1 had been painting nonstop for three years. The routine was now pretty well established. At times I missed the problem-solving and responsibilities of the old real estate empire.

I came to revel in the solitude, in walking into the studio without leaving home. Often days, a week, would go by without my seeing anyone. I found myself grazing in between painting instead of sitting down to a meal. I would usually eat standing up, in front of an unfinished work. On good days, I felt this routine was a privilege. On bad days, it was a trap. Up in the morning, coffee, into the studio. Paint. Clean up. Graze. Nap. Study the painting. Revise. Destroy. Repaint. Graze, etc. But I knew when I had done a good piece of work. I felt the elation. I danced a little jig. Still, the isolation could be depressing.

One day the real estate agent who had seen me through the Queen Street years called to tell me about an old apartment building she wanted me to see. Not interested, I said. I'm painting. But it's just across the lane from your studio, and it looks out on the park, she said. She continued dangling the bait. It's a mess. It needs everything done to it. Nobody could redo it like you. And you're right next door ...

I was hooked. Three years after vowing never to touch another old building, I bought the worst of all possible dumps and began the struggle to transform it into elegant living space overlooking historic Grange Park. Tenants, neighbourhood committees, historical societies, building inspectors, politicians, activists, all had a go at me.

I had forgotten about the day-today trivia, the paperwork, the bureaucratic obstacles, the delays, the opponents, the cost overruns, the financial stress, the fights with tradesmen, the disappointments, the compromises. But a year later, as the project nears completion, and the newly designed, painstakingly rebuilt Beverley Arms welcomes its first occupants, I think it was worth it.

And now, back to the studio ...

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Dr. Harold Y. Cranfield, M.D. FR.C.P.(C), a Past President of The Empire Club of Canada.