Lot 43: Bertram Charles (B.C.) Binning 1909 - 1976

Bertram Charles (B.C.) Binning 1909 - 1976 Canadian oil on burlap on board Device for Receiving Aesthetic Response 16 3/4 x 11 1/8 inches 42.5 x 28.3 centimeters signed and on verso titled on the Art Gallery of Toronto label Provenance:Private Collection, Ontario Exhibited:Art Gallery of Toronto, Women's Committee, Sixth Annual Sale of Paintings and Sculpture, November 7 - 16, 1952 B.C. Binning, a pioneer modernist artist and educator, was a pivotal figure in the West Coast scene - at the University of British Columbia he was a professor at the School of Architecture, founding head of the Fine Arts Department and developer of the Fine Arts Gallery. Binning's impulse toward abstraction developed from a 1948 series of works based on maritime themes, in which appear the abstracted shapes of hulls of ships, rigging, buoys and portholes. Works such as this playful yet formal painting are taken to an even greater degree of abstraction in which shapes float or are anchored in a loose grid of lines. The work shows the influence of the surrealist atmospheres of Joan Miró and Paul Klee, and Binning experiments with form, space, colour and texture, sparking an aesthetic response in the viewer. Binning's title, Device for Receiving Aesthetic Response, implies that the painting is capable of drawing the viewer's response into it. This delightful painting embodies Binning's dichotomy in his work, his wit and joy versus his cool classicism, the intellect versus the arising unconscious.