\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWJohn Bentley Mays put it, in a reviewof the exhibit of German ExpressionistPrints in the McMaster University Collection:"The difference between thenand now is in the quality of defiance,compassion and vigilance."And yet... although neo-expressionistscourt comparisons with their forerunners,it is, perhaps, a mistake to look for thesame urgency and idealism in their art.Perhaps by doing so the critic, not theartist, falls victim to the desire for Kandinsky'sfirst type of similarity. Perhapsby looking for the reassurance of thecomparatively confident Expressionismof the past, we reveal our own failures.Certainly I believe it wrong to say, asRobert Hughes did in "Upending theNew German Chic" in Time (1982),that the expressionist revival stands fornothing more than the artist's ability "tomultiply saleable relics" of the self.What encourages me about THESCREAM, and neo-Expressionism generally,is not its label, its promotion, oreven its revival of an earlier art. What isvaluable is its energy, audacity, promise.This art is meant to be paradoxical,parodie, and ironically self-reflective;that is why it turns upside down orscreams. To read First Draft's SCREAMat all is to be forced to re-think expectationsabout genre, decorum, artistic influence,and moral parameters of art — allold questions, of course, but ones of perennialvalue, especially in Canada whereart pundits can confidently dismiss neo-Expressionism as insincere because, unlikethe Germans, Canadians have nopast and no present cause for anxiety!THE SCREAM may not be great art,but neither is it "stillborn" retrieval. Asan example of 1980's neo-Expressionism,it casts an ironic eye on itself and uswhen, in a gesture parallel with Baselitz,and utterly unlike Munch, the "collaborators"remind us that after THESCREAM "what you make of the ensuingsilence is up to you."SHERRILL GRACETHREE MOVEMENTSJOAN MURRAY, ed. Daßodüs in Winter. TheLife and Letters of Pegi Nicol MacLeod,1904-194g. Penumbra Press, n.p."OWNING A WORK by Pegi Nicol is likesmelling daffodils in mid-winter" (GrahamMclnnes). Letters reveal their creatoras few other genres can do. Thepersonality, and something deeper, lurksin and between the lines. The letters ofPegi Nicol MacLeod show us a vital,warm, and exuberant spirit who becamea mature artist, yet always remained achild.This carefully edited volume consistsof a short biography, plates of fifty-eightpaintings in black and white reproductions,photographs, notes, and a lengthybibliography. It forms a solid introductionto the life, the letters, and the art ofa painter who deserves to be betterknown. MacLeod was a small-town girl,born Margaret Kathleen Nichol in Listowel,Ontario. She grew up in Ottawawhere she blossomed as something of anexotic in the staid, civil service city. Herbohemian spirit evoked her mother's hostility,and Pegi left home at nineteen forMontreal. In a solid, forty-page Introduction,Murray traces the life throughMontreal, Toronto, New York and Fredericton,to the early death from cancerin 1949. Pegi studied first at the OttawaArt School under Franklin Brownell,then at Montreal's Ecole des beaux-artswith Edwin Holgate. Friends and fellowstudents included Prudence Heward, LillianFreeman and Marion Scott. InMontreal in the 1920's, Pegi was part ofa lively circle of intellectuals and artistswhich included the Scotts (Frank and