Marc Adornato is a Canadian, Ottawa-based painter, sculptor, and video, sound, and performance artist who creates works drenched in controversial socio-political themes and embellished in dark humour. He is most known for his 2014 performance piece #MyProtest of which he cycled around downtown Ottawa during rush hour while wearing a gas mask, leading to RCMP suspicion and to an inconclusive investigation; and for his 2015 submission to the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, “Arbie Goes Rogue,” which featured a laid-off RBC employee (Arbie) burning down an RBC bank, in response to the job sourcing scandal of the time.[1]
As part of Adornato’s, “I’ve Got Some Bad News,” solo exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery in the summer of 2016, his Ruined Landscape series consisted of twenty-five-plus artworks of vintage landscape paintings from thrift stores and antique shops, re-appropriated to include a message of environmental concern and political commentary. What once was a painterly snapshot of serene Canadian landscapes, reminiscent of works from the Group of Seven, has been transformed to reflect the postmodern condition; trees, mountains, rolling hills, nature — destroyed by human accident.[2]
De-aestheticizing the entire discourse of art history, Adornato rethinks human engagement with the natural world, simultaneously presenting the aftermath of human involvement and a glimpse into the past. It is through his appropriation of the traditional method of painting and use of binarisms that Adornato brings to light environmental politics and encourages viewers of his work to take on active, rather than passive, roles. In this paper, I will conduct a thorough analysis of how Adornato’s Ruined Landscapes series raises issues of originality, authorship, and authenticity through examination of a specific work, “Gas tanker rolls over on highway near Calgary, spilling 25,000 litres into wetlands,” (Figure 1) as well as highlight its significance within the Canadian socio-political context.
Figure 1 – “Gas tanker rolls over on highway near Calgary, spilling 25,000 litres into wetlands,” Marc Adornato, from the Ruined Landscape series, 2016, “I’ve Got Some Bad News,” solo exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery
Formal Qualities
In this specific work, we see a traditional landscape painting with a stream in the centre leading towards a mountainous scene, atmospheric perspective with more vibrant hues in the foreground and paler tints in the background, and spruce and tamarack trees framing either side, the warm palette indicating a mid to late autumn season. “Landscape art,” says Ecaterina Lia Hantiu, “whether in painting or literature, can record stories that are not only personally important to the artist, but also important to a community or culture… a valuable communicator of history [and] an important part of strengthening personal and collective identities.”[3] But three elements disrupt the stillness and welcoming aspects of the picturesque moment — an overturned gas tanker, two figures in hazmat suits, and extending out of frame is yellow caution tape with the text, “QUARANTINE AREA – CAUTION – STAY OUT.” Hantiu then explains how, “the presence of man,” like in prose fiction and Adornato’s works, “changes the basic dichotomy ‘good – bad’ into a more complex union of elements.” This idea of purity associated with nature is corrupted by the presence of human civilization. And as vast and spacious as nature is [supposed to be], the idea that it can be closed off or labelled as an area to refrain from, is something of a paradox. There is no ‘in’ in nature; it is all ‘out,’ and it may have been more accurate to say, “STAY AWAY,” but then there would be a loss of one of the work’s inherent message of contaminated purity.
As well, its title, “Gas tanker rolls over on highway near Calgary, spilling 25,000 litres into wetlands,” is also appropriated. Adornato collected this exact title from a CBC News headline from January 20th 2015, with the subtext, “QEII closed in both directions most of Tuesday as hazardous materials crews clean up,”[4] which is depicted in the painting with the hazmat suit figures and the caution tape. And on front of the gas tanker truck is the logo of Shell Canada Limited, a Canadian specific company, an inclusion that also politically remarks on corporate destruction of land, further corresponding to the current issue of the Dakota Access Pipeline of which Enbridge Energy Partners and several banking institutions have financial ties to. Directly onto the vintage painting, Adornato has painted in these elements that don’t belong, highlighting a natural and artificial binaristic relationship. We will revisit this interaction within a later section, but for now I will address the parallel between the old and the new.
Originality
As previously mentioned, the works of the Ruined Landscapes series are re-appropriated vintage paintings that were altered to emphasize new meaning and address postmodern concerns, an instance of old and new. If we look briefly at the vintage painting of “Gas tanker rolls over on highway near Calgary, spilling 25,000 litres into wetlands,” we must first acknowledge its history, its existence, prior to its re-appropriation and separate from that of its current state. The gap in between the work being painted and being in Adornato’s possession is essential for understanding its originality. The painting wound up in a consignment shop, maybe by its painter, or maybe someone else, but in either case, the work was lost, abandoned, forgotten. And the act of Adornato intentionally seeking to possess the lost work and redefine it within the contexts of contemporary art and politics, is analogous to the Canadian landscape then and the Canadian landscape now (environmentally, politically, and artistically) — a transcendence of time and space. But what happened to the original painting? Has it been demolished, or lost once again? Moreover, this gap between the old state and new state that I mentioned earlier, is a part of Adornato’s intended meaning; that if the Canadian landscape’s new state exists as a result of human accident, could the incidence have been prevented and could the old landscape state be conserved?
There is nothing to dispute in regards to comparing the original state of the painting and its current state in that the physical work is of the same entity, but the issue determining the pertinent state. Walter Benjamin describes that in the age of mechanical reproduction the pertinent state of traditional works that becomes eliminated during reproduction, is the aura (all that went into deeming that piece of work as a unique piece of work, the artist who painted it, the time it was painted in, its purpose, meaning, medium, etc.). Any reproductions of a work created to meet the expectations of a new audience causes the original work to be reborn, but in a different context.[5] Of course we are not speaking of a work that has been copied, thus denoting two discriminate works, but because the old work and the new work exist within the same entity, I think it is applicable to say that Adornato has successfully ‘transformed’ the aura of the painting. And this raises the concept of a semiotic merging of a signified/signifier binaristic relationship, one of four fundamental depth models in contemporary theory, of which the signified is the original painting (traditional landscape) and the signifier is the work that refers to the original (postmodern landscape).[6]
Authorship
In one sense, Ruined Landscapes can be likened to that of a Dadaist ready-made, a case in which an artist takes an already existing object, modifies it, repositions it, and/or reclaims it in order to engage viewers with new meaning and challenge the purpose of art as a whole, coined by Marcel Duchamp with his 1917 “Fountain.” Yet in another sense, executional aspects of this series are similar to that of Mark Landis, a man who forged several famous paintings spanning the course of thirty years and donated them to various museums and galleries, unbeknownst of their authenticity.[7] But the aspect that removes Adornato from the category of forgery is the lack of intention to deceive the public as to the origin of the work, of which Adornato gives credit. In the bottom right-hand corner is Adornato’s signature, a plus sign below, and below that, the signature of the original artist. With this small remnant of the old, Adornato brings his piece to an entirely new level of understanding. The plus sign reveals Adornato as not the artist of the work, but a co-artist, half of a collaboration with someone he did not know, never met, who may not still exist, but created the work in a previous time. And, if Adornato is admitting only partial responsibility for the work, we must then explore the consenting aspect of that collaborative relationship, the equity between the two artists, how the artistic licenses are shared between them, whether they bare equal weight of authorship. I would argue, that Adornato isn’t even to be considered an artist of the work, as the majority of the aesthetic labour was done by a person concerned with the aesthetic properties of the Canadian natural landscape, and instead propose that Adornato is to be considered an author, where his contribution was more of an edit or update, low in aesthetic contribution, but high in socio-political meaning. In “Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art,” Sherrie Irvin postulates that there is a difference between an author, forger, and artist, with the first as one with intent to create meaning, the second as one with intent to copy and deceive, and the third as one with intent to create art. While it is possible, however, to employ both the roles of artist and author, author and forger, any other combination or all three,[8] I believe Adornato’s primary role is that of the author.
Authenticity
Rolands Barthes describes in, “The Death of the Author,” that when considering the current state of a work, the history and experience of the author is also considered, and both are judged in terms of a before and after, “in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child.” He then goes on to illustrate the opposite that a ‘modern scriptor’ exists in the same time as the work that, “there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now.”[9] If we follow this to be true, then the original artist of Adornato’s painting is also an author, not necessarily of the painting or any tangible text, but in a representation of the narrative that existed then, a father of the original, a grandfather (or mother) to the current, with Adornato holding the role of ‘modern scriptor’. And the concept of representation raises the issue of voice: if we have two author-types within the same work and that same work is not the same now as it was then, who is speaking? What voice are we listening to? As the only constant element in this issue is the idea of Canadian landscape, it would seem, then, that we are meant to listen to the voice of the landscape. A common theme in traditional painting, landscape paintings existed as an appreciation of natural aesthetic, to appeal to the human eye, much like the male/female-culture/nature debate. Adornato’s re-appropriation returns the voice to its owner, transforming the objectified into a subject and revitalizing the autonomy of nature by forcing us to take on the role of victim or perpetrator — a call to action.
While the aesthetic properties of the work are borderline authentic, the concept and overall message are not only entirely different, but also completely new and present, where the original painting virtually lacked any meaning; it was simply a depiction and an admiration of Canadian nature. Friedrich Jameson speaks of this notion of the waning of affect where there is a lessening of emotion and intent to provoke feelings within postmodern art, and instead shifts towards ideas, concepts, and theories meant to transform societal issues at hand.[10] And this introduction of art taking on a role of intellectual property rather than aesthetic one, is directly aligned with debates of appropriation in contemporary theories and leads me to conclude Adornato’s Ruined Landscape series is in fact original, authored, and authentic, and indicative of human mistreatment of nature within Canada.
Works Cited
[1] “ADORNATO (1977 – not dead yet),” from Adornato.com. Retrieved online April 1, 2017. http://www.adornato.com/ruined_landscapes.php
[2] “Ruined Landscapes (2016),” from Adornato.com. Retrieved online April 5, 2017. http://www.adornato.com/ruined_landscapes.php
[3] Ecaterina Lia Hanțiu. “Expressing Canadian Identity through Art: The Group of Seven’s Impact on Literature and Music,” in Romanian Journal of English Studies, 8, (2011): 293-94.
[4] “Gas tanker rolls over on highway near Calgary, spilling 25, 000 litres into
wetlands,” from CBC.ca. Updated Jan. 20, 2015. Retrieved online Apr. 2, 2017. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/gas-tanker-rolls-over-on-highway-near-calgary-spilling-25-000-litres-into-wetlands-1.2919687
[5] Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, (New York: Schocken Books, 1968): 223.
[6] Friedrich Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in The New Left Review, no. 146. (1984): 62.
[7] See the documentary about Mark Landis, “Art and Craft: How a Master Forger was Found Out,” at PBS.org. http://www.pbs.org/pov/artandcraft/video/art-and-craft/
[8] Sherri Irvin, “Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art,” in British Journal of Aesthetics, 45, no. 2, (2005): 132-33.
[9] Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977): 145.
[10] Friedrich Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in The New Left Review, no. 146. (1984): 63-64.
