Norval Morrisseau with Ritchie Sinclair (2006) On the opening night of Shaman Artist at the National Gallery of Canada

Norval Morrisseau with Ritchie Sinclair

At the National Gallery opening - 2006

Norval Morrisseau and Gabe Vadas (2006) at the National Gallery opening of Shaman Artist

Gabe Vadas and Norval Morrisseau

addressing those invited to the opening of Shaman Artist

at the National Gallery of Canada in 2006

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Collectors sue gallery over disputed painting

Morrisseau, maybe: Ottawa couple says uncertainty over authenticity of coveted artist's work may cost them dearly; gallery 'stands by the authenticity' of painting

The late Norval Morrisseau, Canada's most celebrated aboriginal artist, was known to be a great painter but a lousy speller. So Mr. and Mrs. Browne of Ottawa were not initially concerned when the Morrisseau painting they bought from Edmonton's Bearclaw Gallery in April 2007 arrived with the following title scrawled on the back: "Grandfather Speaks of Great Ansistrail Warrior."

The painting, supposedly done by Mr. Morrisseau in 1977, is generally known today at the Toronto court house and in various eyebrow-raising websites as Grandfather Speaks of Great Ancestral Warriors. Shortly after paying $25,000 for the 58-inch-by-61-inch neon-coloured painting, the Brownes uncovered some news far more troubling than a spelling mistake.

Mr. Morrisseau himself, according to documents filed in Ontario Superior Court, is alleged to have declared the painting a fake in 2006 in an e-mail to Heffel, an art auction house that was trying to sell Grandfather Speaks on behalf of the painting's then owner, Joseph Otavnik, an Oshawa art collector. These documents say that Heffel then withdrew the painting from the auction.

But is the painting really a fake?

Mr. Morrisseau's word back then, when he was seriously ill with Parkinson's disease, was not accepted as gospel by everyone. So maybe the painting is real, after all. It depends upon whom you want to believe.

The Brownes, who tell their story on a website they created, are not calling the painting a fake but they are concerned about the uncertainty over authenticity and have filed a suit in Ontario Superior Court in Toronto to recover the cost of the artwork from Bearclaw.

"The fact that the painting had been identified by Morrisseau himself as a fake and withdrawn from auction, served to destroy the ... value of the painting to the plaintiff and to any other subsequent purchases," says a statement of claim filed Jan. 15 by Mr. Browne in Ontario Superior Court.

The painting, Mr. Browne told the Citizen, represents "a huge investment for us and the loss of this investment has significant negative implications for us, wiping out a significant portion of our savings."

Bearclaw has yet to file a statement of defence. In an e-mail to the Citizen, Bearclaw director Jackie Bugera declined to comment on the case, except to say: "I remain very confident that we will be successful in defending this claim."

The problems swirling around the Brownes' painting are not unique in the multi-million-dollar Morrisseau art market. More than two years ago, the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, a group of six Morrisseau experts from such institutions as the National Gallery of Canada and Canadian Museum of Civilization, issued a statement warning the public about fake Morrisseaus for sale, especially on the Internet.

The exact number of true Morrisseau paintings and the quantity of fakes circulating is difficult to ascertain, at least in part because of the late artist's erratic life. He spent years as a street person, selling works privately rather than through galleries.

The Brownes' case is not the only one before Ontario Superior Court in Toronto. A defamation suit has been launched by five dealers in Morrisseau works against Ritchie "Stardreamer" Sinclair, a self-described Morrisseau "apprentice" who operates a website, www.morrisseau.com, in which more than 1,000 so-called Morrisseau paintings are labelled as fakes.

Some paintings that have appeared on Mr. Sinclair's website have, at times, been listed for sale by the dealers, including Bearclaw in Edmonton. In support of an affidavit filed Jan. 5 in Ontario Superior Court, Mr. Sinclair has filed with the court notarized statements by Mr. Morrisseau sent to four of the five dealers in the last few years of the artist's life listing specific fakes he said they were offering for sale.

The accuracy of Mr. Morrisseau's statements has not been tested in court nor has evidence been submitted to show how the galleries responded to Mr. Morrisseau's complaints. However, one of the five dealers, Joe McLeod of Maslak McLeod Gallery in Toronto, told the Citizen he withdrew from sale all the paintings questioned by Mr. Morrisseau.

The controversies over the Brownes' Grandfather Speaks began in 2006 when the painting, along with some other Morrisseaus owned by Mr. Otavnik, were listed for auction with Heffel.

According to Mr. Sinclair's Jan. 5 affidavit, Mr. Morrisseau and Gabe Vadas, the artist's "adopted" son and business partner, sent an e-mail Sept. 12, 2006 to Heffel declaring the works to be fakes. The affidavit says Heffel subsequently withdrew the art from the auction. The affidavit also says Mr. Otavnik later placed Grandfather Speaks with Bearclaw Gallery. The Brownes saw the painting on Bearclaw's website and bought it. "We were struck by it," said Mr. Browne in an interview.

Bearclaw is an established Edmonton gallery selling First Nations works since 1975. The gallery's roster of stars includes some of the biggest names in aboriginal art, including Daphne Odjig, Alex Janvier and Jane Ash Poitras.

Ms. Bugera has declined to be interviewed. However, before the launch of the Brownes' suit, Ms. Bugera e-mailed a statement to the Citizen in which she said the gallery "stands by the authenticity" of Grandfather Speaks and another Morrisseau painting Mr. Browne and his wife, also known as Julie Witmer, bought there. Both husband and wife hold PhDs and operate an Ottawa consulting business.

"Over the course of selling Norval Morrisseau works over the past 30 years, Drs. Browne and Witmer are the first customers who have ever questioned the authenticity and provenance of our paintings," Ms. Bugera wrote. "As with any other customer, Bearclaw Gallery has treated Drs. Browne and Witmer in a manner not inconsistent with the standards expected of any other fine art gallery in Alberta."

Ms. Bugera said the gallery was initially prepared to exchange Grandfather Speaks upon learning of the Brownes "specific reservations." That position changed after "the great lengths" the Brownes took to express their "dissatisfaction." The prospect of any "exchange or refund" was removed from the table. After the Brownes launched the suit against Bearclaw, Ms. Bugera said she could not comment on a matter before the courts.

The Brownes say they have been unable to find anyone, including art galleries specializing in Morrisseau works or experts at the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, willing to sign a document saying the painting is real or a forgery.

The heritage society is trying to assemble a list, or catalogue raisonne, of all true Morrisseau works. In the meantime, the group is refusing, publicly at least, to label what is real and what is fake.

In an interview with the Citizen earlier this month, Mr. Otavnik said he had offered to refund the Brownes their money for Grandfather Speaks. But there was a condition.

"They told me that members of the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society called it a fake," Mr. Otavnik said. "I said, 'Perfect; put that in writing and I'll refund your money.' They never did."

The Brownes produced no statement in writing from experts, says Mr. Otavnik, "because I could sue those people."

Mr. Otavnik does not accept the statement from Mr. Vadas and Mr. Morrisseau that the painting is a fake. Some people, Mr. Otavnik says, are declaring painting fakes as a way of "controlling the market."

Reached by telephone at his home in Nanaimo, B.C., Mr. Vadas refused to comment on any aspects of the Morrisseau controversies saying he did not want to unleash more "harassment" against him. Mr. Vadas did invite the Citizen to send him written questions. That was done. But, in an e-mail, he declined to answer any of them.

Authenticating Morrisseau paintings has been complicated by the fact the Art Dealers Association of Canada issued a notice March 13, 2007 saying its members would no longer issue "certificates of authenticity" of the artist's paintings and that the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society is "the sole authority for the authentication of works by Norval Morrisseau." But the society won't issue signed statements either.

So, where are the alleged fakes coming from? Various prominent figures in the Morrisseau art market accuse each other of involvement in the production of forgeries. Then, there are the seemingly wild accusations that organized crime is churning out Morrisseau fakes from "factories" in Thunder Bay, that these "artists" are being paid in illegal drugs and that money-laundering is involved.

The Brownes say they went to the Ottawa police in November with their concerns over the authenticity of Grandfather Speaks and were told not to expect any feedback for three months.

Lawsuits and inflammatory websites abound in the Morrisseau art market. Mr. Otavnik, for example, won an out-of-court settlement against Mr. Vadas for $11,000 after the Heffel intervention in 2006. The settlement, which did not involve the painting eventually purchased by the Brownes, has been interpreted in vastly different ways by the parties involved.

Mr. Otavnik's conversation with the Citizen was peppered with insults directed at many prominent players in the Morrisseau drama. Some of his harshest criticism was directed at the Brownes. He is also no fan of Mr. Sinclair and has launched a suit in Small Claims Court in Whitby seeking damages that he says Mr. Sinclair's website and Kinsman Robinson Gallery in Toronto have done to his business.

Mr. Otavnik is not part of the much larger defamation suit by the five art dealers against Mr. Sinclair, who claims to have worked with Mr. Morrisseau for several years before the artist's death Dec. 4, 2007. However, all five art dealers, in affidavits filed in court, say Mr. Otavnik was the person who first notified them of Mr. Sinclair's website.

A statement of claim filed Dec. 17 in Ontario Superior Court in Toronto by the dealers says Mr. Sinclair's website is "causing real and substantial harm" to their businesses by scaring off customers. The dealers include Joseph McLeod of Maslak McLeod Gallery in Toronto, James White of White Distribution Ltd. of Caledon, Ont., Donna Child of Artworld of Sherway Gallery in Toronto, Sun Nam Kim of Gallery Sunami in Toronto and Jackie Bugera of Bearclaw in Edmonton.

"Sinclair's actions against the plaintiffs have been reckless, vindictive and malicious," the statement of claim says. "Sinclair has made no attempt to examine the paintings in question or to review the plaintiffs' evidence of the authenticity of the paintings. Instead, he has recklessly made bald allegations of fraud based solely on viewing images of the paintings displayed on the Internet. Sinclair has either knowingly posted falsehoods or he has shown a reckless disregard for the truth of his allegations."

The dealers' accusations have not been proven in court and Mr. Sinclair has yet to file a statement of defence. However, in the Jan. 5 affidavit he filed with Ontario Superior Court, Mr. Sinclair discussed his years of working with Mr. Morrisseau in various locations, studying the style and content of his paintings.

"Because of the fact that I am one of the very few people who have worked alongside Norval Morrisseau and I have been trained by him, I am in a unique position to be able to identify methods and aspects of paintings that have been attributed to Norval Morrisseau in order to assess whether they are genuine or not," the affidavit says. "I know things about his brush strokes, his use and choice of paint, his creation of lines, his selection of subject matter and his basic methods, which all serve to distinguish genuine Morrisseau paintings from counterfeits."

Justice Thomas Lederer issued an interim ruling Dec. 8 on the art dealers' request to "close down" Mr. Sinclair`s website. The judge said the website could remain in operation, at least for now, but warnings had to be posted on the site saying that the opinions were solely those of Mr. Sinclair and are the subject of a defamation suit. Mr. Sinclair has complied with that order. The case is scheduled to resume March 17.

Meanwhile, the Brownes' website also contains an image of another supposed Morrisseau painting, Bear and Berries, the couple also bought from Bearclaw. Their research has led them to wonder about the authenticity of that painting as well. Details surrounding Bear and Berries have yet to be posted on the Brownes' website. But stay tuned. This story is far from over.

Paul Gissell

The Ottawa Citizen

January 22, 2009

Norval Morrisseau Shaman Artist at the National Gallery (2006)

Norval Morrisseau Shaman Artist at the National Gallery (2006)

CBC National News Special with Gabe Vadas and Greg Hill

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Pioneer makes his final breakthrough

An ailing, old man in a wheelchair will make history Wednesday when he arrives at the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada and officially ends a long history of apartheid at the country's leading art institution.

Anishnaabe artist Norval Morrisseau, also known as Copper Thunderbird and sometimes called "Picasso of the North," is scheduled to travel this week from a nursing home in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island to attend a landmark exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the National Gallery.

Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist is the first solo show by a First Nations artist ever at the 126-year-old National Gallery. A media preview, attended by Morriseau, is scheduled for Wednesday.

The exhibition of 59 works covering the period 1958-2002 will not be open to the public until Friday.

Expect some surprises. A radically different, more aboriginal approach has been taken in preparing the Morrisseau show.

The exhibition could very well be the final nail in the coffin of institutionalized discrimination against First Nations art, or what used to be called Indian art, at the National Gallery. (The story of Inuit art is different. It has long been shown in the National Gallery, but in separate basement quarters -- a subterranean art reserve far from the Group of Seven or European masters.)

Throughout Canada's history, most aboriginal art was generally considered not as fine art, but something akin to folk art, decorative art or handicraft and deemed worthy of being shown only in museums with mummies and dinosaurs rather than with Rembrandts and Picassos. The National Gallery did acquire some aboriginal art in its infancy but by the early 1900s the collection was turned over to what is now called the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Attitudes at the National Gallery began changing in the 1980s when it started acquiring contemporary, but not historical, aboriginal works. First up were works by Carl Beam. Robert Houle, Alex Janvier and others came later. (Artists of aboriginal origins, including Rita Letendre and Robert Markle, were in the collection before Beam but the style and content of their acquired works were not considered particularily aboriginal.)

Despite being widely recognized as the father of contemporary aboriginal art and despite the pleas of some influential people, Morrisseau did not become part of the collection until 2000. As early as 1972, Selwyn Dewdney, an influential anthropologist and art enthusiast who befriended Morrisseau in northern Ontario early in his career, pressed the National Gallery to buy some of the artist's work. The gallery refused.

"I made a pitch at the National Gallery for inclusion of your work in the permanent collection but encountered deaf ears," Dewdney wrote Morrisseau. "It appears that if you're of Amerindian origin the proper place for your art is a museum!"

The National Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario and others decided only a few years ago it was time to re-integrate historical aboriginal art in their collections. "It makes a lot of sense," Pierre Theberge, gallery director, said in a 2002 interview. "It will give a broader perspective to Canadian art, not just the art of the white settlers but the art of the aboriginals." Theberge said this change in attitude was driven by a larger movement within society to welcome aboriginals into the manstream.

But the apartheid would not officially end until a First Nations artist was finally given a solo show akin to the kinds of exhibitions granted such "white" Canadian artists as Tom Thomson, Christopher Pratt or Emily Carr. The consensus among the aboriginal art community was that Morrisseau had to be the one.

"The aboriginal art community sees him as an icon, both for his esthetic qualities and pioneering qualities," says Lee-Ann Martin, curator of contemporary aboriginal art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Morrisseau was the first Canadian aboriginal artist, creating aboriginal-themed works, to receive adulation within the mainstream art world. His first exhibition, in 1962 at Toronto's Pollock Gallery, sold out. He was about 30 at the time, his exact age being somewhat of a mystery because of conflicting birth records.

Art critics quickly labelled Morrisseau a "genius" but, over the years, they also loaded other, less flattering baggage onto the artist. This exhibition offers a new, more aboriginal perspective on an artist perhaps best known in the Canadian news media during the 1980s for trading art on the streets of Vancouver for bottles of booze.

Morrisseau is now into his early 70s. He suffers Parkinson's disease, has difficulty speaking and no longer paints. But his influence within the Canadian art world remains.

The artist often said he wanted to be "the most powerful shaman in the universe." Some admirers think he reached his goal. But even if he didn't, he certainly had a turbulent, controversial and, at times, magical journey leaping for the stars.

The Ottawa Citizen

January 29, 2006

 

Authenticity Known - Ross Montour on the Norval Morrisseau Retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada

"Shaman Warrior", © 1990s Norval Morrisseau

Authenticity known

Two weeks ago I attended a major retrospective of Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau at Canada's National Gallery of Art. There is nothing 'western' about Morrisseau's art. It grows powerfully and organically out of his own people's Native tradition. It makes no apologies on behalf of its creator - indeed it confronts western sensibilities and announces its own potency. Morrisseau could care less if the 'white man' never declared him credible; he knows his authenticity. Like the great Nanibooshou of his people's legends, Morrisseau shakes his great head, lays down his foot and the leaves fall from the trees. Compare this to European art at the turn of the last century. Photography, a creature of western technology, had only recently reared its head prompting artists to run for the cover of ingenuity. "Something new, something new," became the 'Om' of art. That most deconstructionist of artists Pablo Picasso sheds an interesting light on all of this. When he and others in his circle began co-opting forms from oceanic and African cultures it was an admission of the desperate extremes western artists would go to in order 'break new ground.'
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And while their adoring publics were tittering about the greatness of these new maestros' wild and carnivorous works, the newly reforming masters of orthodoxy continued to mischaracterize the sources of Picasso et al's 'inspiration.' They continued to look down their noses at the 'primitives' (savages) who truly created the source art and their cultures. In Canada, Native artists who painted in styles and forms that grew authentically out of their own cultures had to live with the fact that in their own land their works were 'banished' from the cultural temples of white society - i.e. the major public art galleries. For over 40 years the 'esteemed' Art Gallery of Ontario revealed its ethnocentricity by declaring the works of Morrisseau and others as being fit only to be shown in ethnographic and natural history museums. How barren!
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Back to the Morrisseau exhibition in Ottawa. After viewing the showing, my wife and I decided to take in the works of the permanent collection. Walking through hall after hall of Flemish masters and Italian renaissance masters etc., we stumbled across a room labeled 'New York School.' Entering the room we were immediately confronted by two massive colour field paintings by Barnett Newman. One of these - 'Red Stripe' - was a triptych nearly 20 feet in height. It almost demanded an act of worship be done. I laughed out loud because, for one thing, it reminded me of my first viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Remember the scene at the end when the cavemen come upon the huge blank monolith, the drums pounding out the rhythm in the soundtrack... Enigmatic to say the least! In the end they worshipped nothing. My sincerest thanks for your patience in reading this rant. I make no apology though - I am, after all, a Mohawk.

Ross Montour
Kahnawake, QC, Canada

Source: Robert Genn's "The Painter's Keys"

* The painting in this post: "Shaman Warrior", 48"x23", © 1990s Gabe Vadas