John Brown Archive

If one thinks of time spatially, there seems a great distance between July, my last update, and January, the current update. However, experientially, when one is submerged in work, six months flies past like it were a matter of seconds. Part of the reason for the long delay is that most of the detective work for the catalogue is over. While I still have a few slides to go through, I think that, barring the unexpected discovery of a trove of as yet undocumented paintings, the catalogue is more or less complete. The main task now is to complete my series of critical essays. In that regard,I am happy to report that I have completed and posted the fifth of a planned six essay cycle. The newest essay, “The Architecture of Dread” focuses (as the previous essay did) on works of Brown’s final period. I have one final essay planned, on the still evolving at the time of his death Grimm series. I do not want to put a strict time frame on the writing of it (I hate missing deadlines, so I will not impose one on myself), but I would like to complete the whole series by May or June. We shall see.

I close with three requests. First, I want to ask anyone who remembers any conversations with Jack about the Grimm series– how he conceived it, what, if any, principle unified the 90 or so paintings that make it up, how he thought about it in relation to his other works, both aesthetically and thematically- to please get in touch and share whatever information you have (jnoonan@uwindsor.ca). Jack himself left almost no written reflections on his work, so I have to rely on friends and colleagues testimonials to give some historical substance to my arguments.

Second, Jack’s studio at the time of his death contained a number of paintings and drawings, on both paper and panel. The recent paintings I sent to his gallery, but I still have many of the older drawings and works on paper in my possession and would like to start returning them to the world. In the aftermath of Jack’s death they felt as a living presence and I wanted to keep them close to me. However, art, like people, has to live and breath in the world. I am going to make a number of them available for purchase for a very reasonable price. If you are interested, please contact me at the email address above and I will send you .pdfs of the available works.

Finally, if anyone knows of a small press that would be interested in releasing a print version of the essay cycle that I am working on, please send me their information. For a number of reasons I have decided against pursuing publication through a Canadian university press, but I would like to see a print version if one could be arranged (not for the sake of my own vanity or career, but because Jack’s work deserves the sort of permanent public presence a book would confer).

Thank you for visiting the archive and please spread word of its existence.

I have happily been able to return to my critical work and have now published the first of two essays on Brown’s final period (2003-2019). This first essay explores what I regard as the high point of Brown’s achievement, the large, heavily worked paintings comprised by the Thing, Nothing, Something Series, the Future Dates series, Towerversion 1 and 2, and two of his final paintings, Abandoned Desert Town and Poe. I regard these paintings as unique in twentieth twenty-first century painting: if there are more formally original and aesthetically powerful paintings in existence I would be most pleased to know where I can see them. Despite their extraordinary, complex beauty there has been little critical or public museum interest in them. Please share this essay as widely as you can in an effort to begin to correct this art historical oversight.

I will now set to work on the final two planned essays on Brown’s career and hope to have at least one (“The Architecture of Dread: Brown’s Final Period 2”) completed by the end of summer. With any luck I will also finish the final essay: “The Grimm Anomaly” by September.

As always I am interested in feedback and information relevant to the archival mission of the site.

Today marks the third anniversary of John Brown’s death. Constructing the archive has been a source of bittersweet joy to me. It has been a way for me to discharge the debts that I accrued over a lifetime of connection to Jack. He opened up artistic and intellectual worlds that I would never have had access to otherwise. More importantly, it serves as a public repository of his work and a still growing resource for its critical reception and interpretation. My duties at the university have occupied most of my time since the summer, preventing me from further developing the archive. While most of the photo-cataloguing of Jack’s body of work is complete (unless I uncover a thus far hidden source of new documentation) there is still work to do building out the photo record of Jack’s studio practice, adding as yet un-catalogued reviews and critical notices, and completing my planned five part series of critical essays on his career. I plan to return to these projects in earnest this spring and summer, so please visit regularly to stay abreast of updates. I am heartened that people are finding their way to the archive and being reminded of Jack’s monumental contribution to 20th and 21st century Canadian painting.

Finally, after a busy winter term in which I had to teach 3 courses for the first time in a number of years, and a spring spent reading the proofs and indexing my latest book, I have had time over the past month to return to work on the archive. The biggest addition is a new page devoted to a discussion of Brown’s evolving process and practice. As with everything in the archive, this page is a work in progress. If you knew Jack and discussed his practice with him and have insights into it that are not discussed in my overview, please contact me and I will revise the page and credit whomever has important ideas to share.

I have also continued the detective work necessary to make sure that the catalogue of Brown’s works is as complete as possible. I am happy to report that I have found images of 1 further Grimm painting and 4 later works of his partner Herb’s Sigman’s handwriting. I have continued to go through slides and archival materials. This research will lead to further additions to the Works on Paper and Ephemera pages in the near future.

I have also been hard at work on the third paper of a planned 5 essay collection exploring all phases of Brown’s career. This piece focuses on his middle period that begins following the Human Head’s series (1989) and runs to roughly 2002. I hope to have it posted in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you once again for visiting and I am always happy to receive new content that you might have.

Preparations for a return to teaching kept me busy writing lectures over the past two months. Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that I was able to complete my essay on the Human Heads Series. I have also added three new pdfs of reviews of that pivotal show. . Time will continue to be scarce until April. Once I can devote more time to the project I will begin a new page devoted to Brown’s practice and process. His Cd records meticulously record the way he created his later works. I will also soon commence work on the third of the five planned essays. I also have commitments from other artists in his circle to contribute critical essays. Stayed tuned in the coming months for these new developments.

Archival work has continued but at a much slower pace. Most of my time the past three months has been consumed trying to meet a publisher’s deadline. I have now submitted the manuscript, but I now have to focus my energies on preparing for the three classes I will have to teach in January. I will devote what time I have left over to building the archive, but no major additions can be expected until spring.

My research on his CD collection of photographs of his works in progress has allowed me to revise my cataloguing of the Grimm series. I have photographic records of 72 of the 97 Grimms. I have photographs of 18 other paintings that are almost certainly Grimms but which lack definitive numbering and dating. Assuming that I am correct and they are all Grimms, the catalogue now contains 90 of the 97 paintings. However, I also discovered that some of the numbers changed between their execution and their showing. This discovery lends support to my concern that Brown painted over some of the missing Grimms, making it most likely that the record is as complete as it is going to get.

I have also begun work on the second in the series of five planned essays on the development of Brown’s work. With any luck, I should finish before the new year.

Time flies when you are juggling a number of projects. Here it is one week into November and I am scrambling to post October’s update. Thanks to Jack’s brother Joe and his wife Lisa, the remaining slides are being scanned. Those slides continue to be a treasure trove of early drawings, including three exquisite grease pencil renderings of factories. These pieces are clearly reminiscences of the smelters that dominate the landscape of the mining towns that surround Sudbury. Sadly, these drawing no longer exist. I am glad that the slides exist so that their history can be documented, but disappointed that the originals have been lost to time.

My most recent trip to 401 Richmond to continue the process of sending the paintings that remain in storage to Jack’s gallery has turned up two paintings the existence of which I had not previously been aware. I missed the existence of the first (it was stacked behind others and I did not notice it on my previous excavations) and I did not think that the second was Jack’s. His former assistant and studio mate Matt Janisse helped identify it as one of Jack’s. I will be documenting both this month. I also hope to complete the documentation of the early works on the remaining slides. By November the cataloguing should be largely complete.

I have been unable to find time to further develop the second of the five planned essays on the historical development of Jack’s work. I hope to re-engage with that project towards the end of this month.

I have not been able to work on the archive as much as I would have liked. I have a number of writing projects which are nearing completion and I have had to confine my focus to finishing them. I have continued to research the CD’s Brown used to store images of his work and these examinations have uncovered a couple more paintings which are most likely Grimms. I have also continued to look through his extensive slide collection and have discovered a number of early paintings and drawings which i will scan and post, hopefully this month. There remains the immense task of going through his external hard drives. As my schedule slows down over the next weeks I hope to be able to complete the catalogue of his paintings and works on paper. Once that main task is complete I will be developing new pages devoted to documenting his practice and process. As always, if you have information that should be included in the archive, please contact me: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca

Over the past month I have continued my research on Brown’s slides and CDs. I have discovered what I am certain are 8 of the Grimm paintings for which I had previously lacked images. Unfortunately, Brown was more meticulous about creating photographic records of his paintings than he was about labelling the slides and naming the photos on the CDs. I am not able to determine which of the missing Grimm’s the slides depict, but there is no doubt (or almost no doubt) that the newly added photos represent Grimm paintings. Given the fact that precise titling and dating is not possible at this point I have included them in the subsection of Suspected Grimms that follows the section of known and dated Grimms.

I have also added previously uncatalogued drawings (discovered on the slides) and, thanks to Brown’s brother Joe, two uncatalogued paintings from the transitional, mid-1980’s period of Browns career, a number of new paintings from his student days at OCA, and, most excitingly, the only known landscape that Brown painted, from 1983.

I have not been able to devote as much time to completing the research because I have been busy trying to finish some philosophical work. September is always a busy month for academics, and there are still dozens of slides and CDs to examine. I hope that September will yield images of the still 12 missing Grimm’s and more early career drawings. Nevertheless, while there remain some Grimm’s, Ping’s and 4 Mouth series paintings for which I lack images, I am confident that the catalogue now includes all Brown’s major paintings and works on paper. I want to catalogue to be complete and exhaustive so I will continue to hunt for images of those works, but I am confident that nothing essential is missing at this point.

With the help of my friend and Windsor photographer Doug MacLellan I have begun the process of transferring some as yet catalogued images from slides to .jpgs. I have also begun systematically working through the dozens of CD’s on which Jack stored images of his work, both finished pieces and in the process of development. The research on the slides and CDs has paid off: I have discovered 2 uncatalogued Grimm’s, several more likely Grimm’s, about a dozen drawings that I had not yet catalogued, numerous student paintings, as well as colour photos of paintings for which I had originally only had a black and white. All the new material has been posted on the appropriate pages. I have also posted part one of an essay by Marc De Guerre, currently a documentary film maker and a long time friend and collaborator of Brown’s The first part of the essay focuses on their time together at OCA. The second part will focus on their emergence into the professional art world in the stable of young artists assembled by Carmen Lamanna in the early 1980s.