To accomplish what I have started and to die in it feeling I have fulfilled what I have started—to reach a level where I and Manito and the Indian will always keep the Indian Faith alive—to be a great Artist and Preserver of Indian Culture.
–Norval Morrisseau

If the dealer/artist relationship between Pollock and Morrisseau was defined by its rockiness during the 1960s, then for much of the 1970s it could be described as smooth sailing. In 1972, in an interview with James Stevens, Morrisseau explained that he had made up his mind to take more control when he next visited Toronto: “I don’t sit around like I did before, like a dog being cared for on a leash.” His determination to change the relationship he had with Pollock in the 1960s seems to have born results: in a 1975 article, Toronto Star art critic Gary Dault described Morrisseau as a “hard-hitting businessman.” Whatever the change in their financial relationship, Pollock continued to assume a role as a Morrisseau art expert, overshadowing the artist’s own voice in two documentaries produced by the National Film Board, Colours of Pride (1973) and Paradox of Norval Morrisseau (1974), where he confidently explains Morrisseau’s practice to Canadian viewers. Pollock continued to pitch himself as a saviour by noting that he routinely bailed Morrisseau out of jail during the early seventies. Still, the two collaborated on exhibitions and marketing campaigns during this decade that benefited them both. Later, the dealer pushed the marketing of Morrisseau’s art in new directions, with a famous tea party held in Beardmore, Ontario, followed up by the acclaimed coffee table-style art book of Morrisseau’s career, The Art of Norval Morrisseau (1979).

Even as Pollock pushed audiences to consider Morrisseau’s art in relation to abstraction, older perceptions of Morrisseau’s work persisted. When the Royal Ontario Museum acquired eleven Morrisseau paintings from John Sweeney of Red Lake, Ontario, for its collection in 1972, Kritzwiser described that group of art as “decisive interpretations of the folklore the Ojibway artist knows so well.” In 1972 Pollock mounted a retrospective of Morrisseau’s art at his gallery that marked their ten-year anniversary of working together. The exhibition included his recently painting Self-Portrait of the Artist as Christ, 1972, and while the show received mixed reviews, it demonstrates an enduring relationship between the two

For Morrisseau, the period from 1970 to 1975 was punctuated by a number of ups and downs that impacted both the artist and his dealer. Morrisseau struggled with alcoholism and spent several nights in jails in different towns and cities in Ontario. Morrisseau was, however, admitted to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 1972, a sign that the Canadian art establishment recognized him as one of their own. His admission to the RCA no doubt reflected the effort Pollock had expended to reposition the artist’s work.

In early 1973, Morrisseau was sentenced to six months in jail in Kenora, Ontario, after an incident of public drunkenness. On the face of it, this might have been detrimental to his career. However, this extended stay resulted in the creation of a body of work that reflected a growing maturity in his visual storytelling aesthetic. Assigned two cells at the Kenora jail, one that served as his studio, Morrisseau’s stay provided him with the time and space to be creative.

During this time in jail, Morrisseau accused Pollock of stealing some of his paintings. Pollock was acquitted in 1974. It is possible, however, that during his jail stay others may have taken advantage of him. One of Morrisseau’s supporters, Joyce Kennedy, the director of the Lake of the Woods Museum, met with Morrisseau routinely and was concerned about exploitation concerning his art sales. On March 7, 1973, she arranged for Morrisseau to come to the museum on a day pass to view a Midewiwin scroll and other artifacts. She then orchestrated an interview with American anthropologist Lynn Kaufman. During their conversation, Morrisseau admitted, “Jeez, I give away lots of paintings in order to eat and to the guards sometimes. They want to buy them. Sometimes I say, here. If they appreciate it....” Kennedy, concerned about exploitation, suggested he charge for the works. Many of the art works Morrisseau created during his prolific period in jail ended up in private and public collections, sold by Pollock, but also Bob Fox, and a number of prison guards.

Exhibitions and the Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporated

The year 1975 was a blockbuster one for Morrisseau, featuring numerous exhibitions in Canada and France, the completion of several works considered to be among his best, and the formation of an alliance of Indigenous artists. In April 1975, Morrisseau and six other artists answered an open call sent out by Potawatomi artist and entrepreneur Daphne Odjig to bring together Indigenous artists into what would be known as the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc.

Morrisseau first met Odjig in Winnipeg in 1969 and visited her New Warehouse Gallery, the first Indigenous-run gallery and print shop in Canada, often after it opened in 1971 on Donald Street in Winnipeg. Morrisseau also produced some prints at her print shop, Odjig Indian Prints Ltd. He gave her the nickname “Picasso’s Grandmother,” according to Anishinaabe artist Barry Ace (b.1958). (Though Odjig was ironically forty years younger than the Spanish artist.)

The goal of the group, which included Janvier, Beardy, Cobiness, and Sanchez, in addition to Morrisseau and Odjig, was to push back against exclusionary practices that treated the work of “Indian” artists as handicraft. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (and its Cultural Affairs Section) worked with the group to further their cause. Joseph Sanchez, a Pueblo community member who arrived in Winnipeg as a draft dodger during the Vietnam war and the youngest artist in the group, says Morrisseau joined the group despite the opposition of Pollock and Baker in Toronto: “No one could tell Morrisseau what to do. And so he joined the Group despite his handlers.” Called the “Indian Group of Seven” by the media, the artists often showed together in Winnipeg in 1975, often in venues, including Eaton’s and the Hudson Bay department stores, that were outside the bounds acceptable to the art world. Pollock approved of Morrisseau’s involvement in gallery shows, but he did not view all the group’s activities as beneficial to Morrisseau’s artistic career and vetoed ad hoc showings.

The group mounted a pivotal exhibition at Montreal’s Dominion Gallery in April 1975 that brought them significant positive attention and was one exhibition that Pollock approved of. The gallery’s owner, international art dealer Max Stern (1904–1987), did not otherwise show Indigenous art but agreed after prodding by Janvier and the assistance of the artists’ adviser, John Dennehy, who worked for Indian and Northern Affairs. Janvier pushed for a show at Stern’s gallery because, in his words, “Whatever Max shows, goes.” Morrisseau was also keen to be back in Montreal and wrote to Richard Baker that he had painted three strong paintings and assured him Stern was committed to the show.

In 1976 Morrisseau painted Some of My Friends. Featuring dealers, lawyers, and others key to his career, the work signals his growing understanding of the importance of the individuals and networks that helped launch him in the art world. Pablo Picasso’s Cubist rendering of Ambrose Vollard and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting of Paul Durand-Ruel similarly paid homage to their art dealers. Morrisseau, who seldom created portraits beyond representations of himself or his family members and kin relations, rendered his group of supporters integral to his success in his trademark visual style. The horizontal composition is three metres in length and features Pollock, Richard Baker, Eva Quan, Bob Checkwitch, and Tom Muir. Pollock commands the far-right quadrant, presented as a “young Indian brave,” a reinforcement of both the dealer’s Indigenous ancestry and his role as a “brother” to the artist. Eva Quan appears as a female water spirit to convey her importance as a friend to Morrisseau but also significantly as the person responsible for introducing him to the spiritual movement Eckankar. Encapsulated within Quan’s mermaid form, Morrisseau painted lawyer Baker, Winnipeg gallery and Great Grassland Graphics dealer Checkwitch, and his printer assistant Muir. The original painting was also reproduced as a serigraph print through Checkwitch’s Great Grasslands Graphics.

Art Star Marketing

In the late 1970s, Jack Pollock developed further creative means to market Morrisseau’s art, ones that matched his growing fame as a Canadian artist. A coffee table book, The Art of Norval Morrisseau, that included a survey of the artist’s art from the 1950s on was in the works. Pollock’s goal was to create a nudge that would encourage major art institutions to add Morrisseau’s work to their collections.

A more immediate ploy, one that was more performance art happening than marketing event, took the form of a tea party. During the summer of 1978, Pollock and Morrisseau created a national buzz in the press and among collectors that both satisfied stereotypical tropes of the Indigenous artist/shaman and yet challenged those very perceptions. Since the early 1960s, the artist had been collecting china and silver tea services as part of a fascination with all things British. The idea of hosting a tea party in Beardmore provided an opportunity to fuse his dream of a Buckingham Palace-style party attended by guests dressed in fancy dress clothes sipping tea from Morrisseau’s china with Anishinaabe ceremonial protocols. Morrisseau’s eagerness to performatively express a curated shaman-cum-artist identity (one Pollock had exploited to market the artist to collectors and media), led to a party held in late July in Beardmore, some 920 kilometres from Toronto.

Saulteaux artist and curator Robert Houle (b.1947) recounted his experiences related to the tea party as “a throwback to that 1962 exhibition” as he describes the excitement and energy that began the evening prior to the trip to remote Beardmore, when Pollock hosted a cocktail party in Toronto for participants where the conversation “was focused on the new indigenous painting style inspired by the image bank carved, etched, and drawn on the Laurentian Shield.” Pollock invited professional contacts, collectors, art critics, and other potential art buyers to board a DC-3, a Second World War-era plane, for a flight from Toronto to Jellicoe airstrip, followed by a ride on a school bus to Beardmore where Morrisseau, his brother Wolf Morrisseau, and his apprentice and partner Brian Marion awaited their arrival. According to Houle, who at the time was the curator of contemporary Indian art at the then Museum of Man, Morrisseau “looked every inch the shaman, Norval Morrisseau becoming Copper Thunderbird.”

The culmination of Morrisseau’s relationship with Pollock as his dealer was the publication of the seminal The Art of Norval Morrisseau in 1979, co-edited by Pollock and Canadian playwright Lister Sinclair. The impressive coffee-table book offered readers a survey of Morrisseau’s career from 1955 until 1979. The book’s format was one reserved for renowned artists and the publication invited such a comparison. Sinclair purposefully curated works by the artist to help collectors and gallerists better understand Morrisseau’s unique visual language and a series of essays by Sinclair, Pollock, and Morrisseau offered further insights into his art. This genius marketing feat ensured Morrisseau’s entry into art institutions, even if only in the form of the collector’s edition. By creating a high-end portfolio that included a signed book and a selection of prints, packaged in an exclusive leather case with a $1,000 price tag, Pollock signalled that Morrisseau had “made it.” In so doing, he created an object that art institutions across Canada had to have. For many years, the portfolio was the only artwork by Morrisseau listed in the collections of many art museums nationally and internationally. Still, this was a coup for Morrisseau and served as an indicator of a shift that, while slow to come in some institutions, was happening.

Conclusion

Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, Morrisseau’s art practice grew and shifted and so did his relationship with dealers and supporters who helped him throughout this period. During the almost twenty years that Morrisseau and Pollock worked together, Morrisseau continually sold paintings independently of Pollock, a practice typically frowned upon in the art world. The role of gallerist was one that Morrisseau understood differently from Pollock and quite frankly from other artists and dealers in Canada’s art market. Despite this, Pollock played a significant role in Morrisseau’s career.

To be sure, Pollock was not alone in shaping the business side of Morrisseau’s art career. Other allies, including Richard Baker, Bob Checkwitch, Tom Hill, Curtis Jonnie (Shingoose), Elizabeth McLuhan, Daphne Odjig, Pollock, Eva Quan, James Stevens, and Mike Zebryk, played a role in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Galal Helmy took on a similar role. All supported Morrisseau’s efforts to bend the cultural landscape of the Canadian artworld to make space for Morrisseau’s vision.