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Maxwell Bates's writings reveal a tremendously complex artist knowledgeable and with opinions on a great range of subjects: his upbringing, Calgary's early art history, naive painting, the human condition, the nature and purpose of art, the role of architects in public art, the Massey Report in 1957 and much more.
Bates's Biographical Notes give invaluable insights into his early artistic influences and interests in literature (especially Russian novelists), literary criticism, psychology and philosophy. W.L. Stevenson's and Bates's extraordinary quest for self-expression (leading quickly to modernism) in Calgary in the late '20s is elaborated in "The Painter W.L. S.: a Memoir". A sample poem from this period, "The Kite", reveals Bates's early interest in the theme of bondage and freedom.
A member of the Twenties Group in London, Bates writes an important article on Naive Painting affirming its more emotional content and "intensely individual" nature. During this period Bates suggests also that "No Man Is Wholly Bad."
Three selections from this period illustrate Bates's Prisoner of War experience in Germany and the profound effect it had on him.
24 selections from this period reveal an intensely committed artist and art critic with a wide variety of interests (the Massey Report 1951, Journal of Thoughts 1957) and a deep sense of humanity (poems "The Tiger" and "Intimations"). For instance in "Some Problems of Environment", Bates identifies "conventional religion" as a problem for Canadian prairie artists: "Those creeds that are fundamentalist and ultra-protestant, [have] tended to destroy the aesthetic reaction to life....A sterile puritanism is not ground in which the arts can grow. Only materialism can flourish." For Alberta's 50th, Bates gave valuable insights into the art of Roloff Beny, Illingworth Kerr, Frank Palmer, W.L. Stevenson, Janet Mitchell, Elva Fredering, Luke Lindoe, Marion Nicoll, George Weber, Jack Snow, Roy Kiyooka, Ron Spickett, George Mihalcheon and Greg Arnold in his article "Some Reflections on Art in Alberta".
Five years after its completion, Maxwell Bates reveals the meaning of his painting Midnight Crucifixion, 1961 and elaborates upon the iconography of scarecrows and crucifixions in "Meaning of Scarecrow." He declares "No artist worth a damn has ever avoided reality" in "Memorandum on Art". He suggests again in 1970 that "Man is manipulated by forces over which he has no control" and explains what he really learned from his POW experience in "A Wilderness of Days". Bates humbly suggests his artistic contribution in his koan-like poem "Life Work".
Bates asserts that those artists who are mystical in nature approach the question of value in "The Question of Value in Painting". In "Constructivism and Biederman's aesthetics" Bates calls for an expression of feeling beyond "the Platonic aesthetic and Pythagorean number." |
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