John Brown Archive

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.

I began working through the dozens of CD’s containing photographs that Brown took of his work. The excavation has proven fruitful. I have discovered 5 images of paintings that I had not seen before but from their appearance and context would seem to be 5 of the missing Grimm series. The pictures were on a CD with other late Grimm paintings. They were not titled, but the other paintings on the CD have been catalogued in the Grimm series. I cannot be certain, and have posted them with the other possible but not proven Grimms. The discovery gives me confidence that there are more to be found on the CDs, the hard drives, and the slides which I have not yet but will soon study.

The pictures of those five paintings were the only addition to the catalogue this month. I discovered two more reviews of Brown’s work, which I have posted on the reviews page, and added the first of my five (planned) critical essays on Brown’s work. The essay focuses of the influence of the Sudbury landscape on his early drawings. Critical feedback on the argument is always welcome.

Major Works

With a few minor exceptions, I have completed the cataloguing of Brown’s known and accounted for major paintings and works on paper. In order to be included in the catalogue there had to be either photographic evidence of the work or a record of its having been exhibited. There are some missing pieces of some important series (Autopsy Paintings # 3,#4, and#6, Ping B,C,D, and J; Portrait of Frankenstein and Lazarus #2 and 4 and Grimm #3,4,6,7,14,19,20,21,49,50,51,52,53,66,67,68,70,71,72,76,85,88,89, and 90) for which I have no photographs or any record of their having been exhibited. I will not list any of these works in the catalogue until I find evidence of their existence. In the case of the Grimm paintings especially I wonder if some of the missing were not painted over or otherwise re-worked and renamed. As businesses reopen I will be able to have his slide collection converted to digital prints. I am confident that at least some of the missing works will be found.

There are also source materials that I have not yet started to document. I will begin this work over the summer.

Catalogue of Existing and Accounted for Works:

Drawings and Works on Paper: 381 (144 drawings and sketches, 2 drawings (1986) for which photographs have not yet been found but which I know exist, 237 stills for the video project).

Paintings: Note: I count early panel paintings composed of multiple panels but intended as a single work as one painting. 483 (201 listenspiritlisten, 282 large scale works).

Ephemera and Juvenalia: 79 experiments, sketches, and studies and 24 items of juvenalia.

There are still a fair number of experiments and other ephemeral works to catalogue. There are also more pre-OCA works in his brother’s possession that need to be photographed and included. I will continue this part of the project but wanted to prioritize completing the catalogue of major works.

This month has been devoted to photographing and cataloguing the dozens of early drawings and studies discovered in brown’s Richmond Street studio. I have documented about 85 at present and have perhaps 20 left to document. I also discovered a series of very poignant sketches of men, never intended for exhibition, but too important to ignore. I will be posing those this month. Once those remaining drawings have been posted, the major work of archiving Brown’s output from 1980-2020 will be complete. There is cross-referencing between the record of exhibited works and the catalogue, and some detective work to be done to try to find photographs of works that I know exist but as of yet have no photographic record. (As I noted in my last update, this detective work will be aided by the slides I discovered. I am waiting for photo shops to reopen so that i can have them converted to digital prints for inclusion in the catalogue. I am confident that by the end of May I am confident that the archive will be nearly complete.

The process of deciding where to catalogue these early works (in the main catalogue or with the ephemera has prompted me to re-think the organization of those pages. I am thus panning a major re-organization of the catalogue. I am going to divide it into three pages: Paintings, Works on Paper, and Ephemera, Working Sketches, and Juvenalia. Most of the early drawings and studies will be moved to the Works on Paper page. Only obviously working sketches will remain on the Ephemera page. There are also some security upgrades to be performed on the site to make it both more secure and accessible. I will attend to those over the next two months.

I am always open to contributions. I myself am working on a series of essays that will cover the major periods of Brown’s career. The first, on his early drawings, will be posted in the next 2 or 3 weeks. If you have material to contribute, pleas contact me at jnoonan@uwindsor.ca

This month I completed the closure of Brown’s 401 Richmond Studio. It was an intensely sad moment for myself, my brother, and a few close friends and colleagues of Brown’s that were able to come to say good-bye. It was also, like all moments of closure, a time for joyous reminiscence and celebration.

As I noted in previous updates, the studio contained numerous drawings, sketches and experiments that I need to classify and post. The task is well underway but there are many dozens of items to pour over so it will take a few months to add all the new work. Since many were undated, I have to rely on conversations with his colleagues and my own eye to decide on dates. In the cases of undated studies for paintings whose dates I know the determination was easy; in other cases where I had to make a stylistic judgement the decision was more difficult. Although I know Brown’s work well, I am a philosopher, not an art historian, and not a philosopher much interested in problems of classification.

I have also had to make decisions as to whether to include these works in the main catalogue or in the ephemera section. My criteria were as follow. I included in the catalogue any drawing which: a) was a study for a known painting, and/or b) named and dated by Brown, and/or c) in my considered but imperfect judgement looked complete, formally and aesthetically. I classified as ephemera any work which was clearly : a) a quick sketch of an idea and/or b) an experimental working out of an idea but which was not exhibited because not yet fully realized.

In addition to the drawings, sketches, and experiments I also have Brown’s source materials: photos, medical books, etc. Once I have finished classifying and cataloguing the remaining art works I will post a selection of the source materials.

Finally, I also brought home 4 hard drives full of pictures of works in progress as well as dozens of slides of his major works. The slides are particularly important because they will allow me to fill in some blanks in the catalogue as well as to replace some of the black and white with colour photographs. I will have to get the slides converted to digital pictures so it might be a few months before missing paintings or better photos appear, but I hope that by summer I will have completed, with a few exceptions, the catalogue of Brown’s work from 1982-2020.

I once again close by inviting anyone who has any information about works not yet catalogued to contact me at: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca.

A February ends I have two significant updates to report. First, my request to two of Jack’s close friends to post my request for photographs of missing works has borne some fruit. I now have pictures posted on the Catalogue of three Ping drawings. This addition is a significant step forward, as they are the first photographs of the Ping series I have tracked down. Thank you to Rebecca Garrett and Caroline Azar for posting my request and to James Gunn and Richard Gorman for sending me pictures of the work.

Second, I will be returning to Toronto in mid-March (as soon as the lockdown restrictions are lifted there) to complete the closure of Jack’s studio. I know that there are dozens of small drawings still there as well as a filing cabinet full of papers and a hard drive. I will photograph and post the drawings on the Ephemera page. I am hopeful that the material in the filing cabinet and on the hard drive will contain records of the works for which I yet have no visual record.

I am also in the early stages of work on an essay on the influence of the industrial landscape of 1960’s and 70’s Sudbury on the drawings of the 1980’s that first brought critical and curatorial attention to Jack’s work. It is the first in a series of essays that I have planned.

March should see significant additions to the archives. While I am not looking forward to closing his studio door for the final time, I do look forward to filling in the remaining blank spaces in the archival record of his work.

Thank you for visiting, and, as always, if you have content to contribute, you can email it to me at: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca