I've been feeling anxious lately. My dog has a limp that won't heal and the Americans have elected a buffoon as president. So, I was already mentally squeezed between domestic cares and visions of global calamity when some madman shot up a Quebec City mosque.
Practising cultural journalism during times of shocking events or big political news can be a tricky business. Escaping into an intricate plot or relishing an aesthetic experience can seem irrelevant or even callous. But producing stories about artists affected by immigration bans or how best to erect public memorials can begin to feel like a sad case of "Me too, me too!"
Uneasily caught in the middle this week, I decided to stop looking for themes and just find some peace of mind. My steps led me naturally to an art gallery.
I grew up in a family where we went to museums the way some people go to church, with a sense of reverential obligation. Art museums are places I associate with a deep sense of well-being produced by a nourishing combination of intellectual invigoration and spiritual uplift followed by tea in the café.
If it was quiet contemplation I was looking for, however, the Art Gallery of Ontario on a Wednesday afternoon was not necessarily the right place. The Toronto gallery was bustling, full of leisurely older couples, chatty school groups and eager single visitors trying to catch the Mystical Landscapes show before it closes later this month. My view of my favourite painting – Raoul Dufy's The Yellow Violin – was blocked by an art class avidly discussing the piece across from it.
No matter. I knew what I was looking for and it wasn't colourful French primitivism. Somewhere in my foot-sore adolescence, I learned that if you stuck with an art museum beyond Picasso and Matisse, you would eventually come to these remarkable things. They weren't oil paintings or portrait busts; they were large unexplained objects that occupied space with the mystery and majesty of a Stonehenge. They were things that gave me pause … and relief.
But finding 20th-century modernist sculpture at the AGO these days is a challenge. The big rooms at the front, ideally suited to oversized modern art, were taken over by the Thomson Collection's Group of Seven paintings in the 2008 renovation. Meanwhile, the contemporary wing, that shiny blue titanium tower that architect Frank Gehry added at the back, happens to be filled at the moment with temporary exhibits of creative political work, loud videos and colourful installations that weren't exactly what I had in mind.
I was about to give up when I spotted a ground-floor gallery surmounted by one large word: Caro. I hurried over, guessing that would be Sir Anthony Caro, the British modernist sculptor. And there, indeed, were four of the last works he created before his death in 2013: big, aggressive, brown assemblages of rusting steel plates and pipes repurposed from sculptures intended for a median on New York's Park Avenue – until the project was cancelled. Now, the beasts have been brought to the AGO courtesy of collectors David and Audrey Mirvish, who own one of the pieces.
People who dislike modern art are often particularly infuriated by the three-dimensional work: There it is, intruding meaninglessly into their space. "What's it about?" is a refrain I've sometimes heard. According to AGO curator Kenneth Brummel, the Caro sculptures are works about time and decay made by an aging artist eager to remain relevant – that is what it says in the text on the gallery wall.
But I actually love this kind of work because I think it's not about anything. Facing a Caro, a Donald Judd, a Richard Serra, can feel to me like plunging into a pool and swimming underwater. Freed from the world, all you sense is your body moving through water and all you hear is the sound of your pulse inside your head. Contemplating abstract sculpture, you enter a relationship bereft of language, of story and of illustration; you have to simply measure yourself against the object and admire its intrusion. Looking at the Caro sculptures, I glimpsed rotting cars, grand pianos, iron bedsteads and industrial boiler rooms but mainly they just reminded me of themselves. Walking around them, I was forced to slow to their rhythm and consider their rust.
Postwar modernism was born from the darkness of the Second World War. Its pure abstraction represented an idealistic futurism that may have proved naive or even dangerously escapist in the long run, but today it can still present a bracing purity of form that will blow away the cobwebs and ground you on the Earth. Caro's hunks of old steel seemed to scrape away falsehood and counsel humility: I took a deep breath and felt more anchored than I had in days.
When I got home from the gallery, the dog greeted me with a spring in her step. But the buffoon was still president and six people in Sainte-Foy were still dead. What I had was some new energy, some sense of perspective and a timely reminder of why I love the arts.
Anthony Caro: Sculpture Laid Bare continues at the Art Gallery of Ontario until May 21 (ago.net).
Kate Taylor