Beside himself with pride: Av Isaacs, art dealer extraordinaire. Photo Peter Power. Courtesy Av Isaacs.
It’s no stretch to call Avrom “Av” Isaacs the Jack McClelland of Canadian art. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, Isaacs has discovered and supported some of the greatest Canadian artists of the later 20th century, including Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Greg Curnoe and Mark Prent. Although Isaacs started out modestly in 1950 with a framing and art supply business, by the 1960s, the shop had morphed into the Isaacs Gallery, Toronto’s most cutting-edge art venue, where he’d stage avant-garde concerts and poetry readings in addition to often controversial art shows. The Isaacs Gallery carried on at various locations until 1991; Isaacs stayed in the art game with the Isaacs/Innuit Gallery for another decade.
This summer, Toronto is hosting “Isaacs Seen,” four concurrent exhibitions that celebrate Isaacs both as a dealer and collector. When I visited the affable septuagenarian at his home in central Toronto, he was in an apologetic mood. “You’ll notice that the house is pretty empty,” he said sheepishly, referring to the scarcity of art on the walls. “Sorry about that. Most of it is in the galleries right now.”
A: I didn’t have anything better to do! I wasn’t a very good student and I had to earn a living, so it was an act of desperation, I suppose. And I was aggressive enough to make friends with artists and sell art supplies, sell prints, put their paintings on the walls and away we went! In those days, you moved ahead so quickly – there was no thought of, “Well, what if it doesn’t work?” You just went. There was an expansiveness in the atmosphere that was quite wonderful.
A: Well, I don’t come from an intellectual background. I graduated in poli sci and economics, so I operate on instinct. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t have been better as a social worker, because [as a dealer] you had to examine the artist. Aside from talent, are they going to hang in there? That’s the critical factor. So I would visit their studio over a period of two or three different shows or paintings, and then decide if anything was happening. I also got unasked-for advice from all my artists about other artists.
But the problem was, for every artist you might take on, you’d reject 25, simply because of economics. An artist has to have a show every year and a half, at least, that’s the way I figure it. And when you calculate that out, the most you can handle is 18 or 20 artists, and then your roster is full. So you want to be an artist? Fine… but you’d better be prepared for what you’re going to have to face, the insecurity of it all. Many artists can get teaching jobs, so that helps, but a number of artists have also told me that teaching is a very distracting, enervating occupation. Very few artists I know have stuck to their guns — Mike Snow, Joyce Wieland, Steven Cruise, Les Levine, Bill Ronald — they’re the rare ones — Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe, Rick Gorman… And somehow, nobody starves to death, somehow you make it, and that gives you a much better chance of discovering your own vision.
A: Persistence, persistence. I’m successful because I’ve lasted this long. You just hang in there. Of course, I was a bit of a merchandiser, to be crass… well, that’s unfair to myself. But I also had shows of North American Indian art, African art, New Guinea art, Baluchistan wedding jackets, tent rugs from northern Tunisia. They were never my major operation, but I had to broaden my audience.
Untitled Wallhanging, by Jessie Oonark. 1971. Stroud, embroidery floss, thread, 148.5 x 329.2 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario. Courtesy Textile Museum of Canada. Q: These were also pieces that you really liked. You weren’t just trying to make a buck.
A: Oh yeah, these were things I though were quite wonderful. I mean, if you see my exhibitions at the Textile Museum and Hart House [at the University of Toronto], you’ll see that I had rather odd tastes at times…
A: Well, whatever… and I also found folk art interesting. Greg Curnoe once told me about a wonderful folk artist in his area, so I went to see the guy. He was an old gentleman, sitting on the lawn, rocking away, must have been in his eighties. All around him was scattered miniature farm equipment that he made by hand. Beautiful stuff! So here goes the big city dealer to see this guy, and I say to him, “Look, I’d like to exhibit this. I’ll bring it to Toronto, bring you and your wife to Toronto, put you up in a hotel room and show the stuff.” “Nope! Not interested!” And of course I say, “Why aren’t you interested?” “Well, if you take it away, nobody will come and see me, so why should I let you take it away?” I thought that was wonderful!
Greg also discovered a hermit-like man outside of London, Ontario who made coffee with Carnation milk. Remember it used to come in a tin? Well, he kept the tins and built himself a house with it. The National Gallery bought it – it’s a fantastic piece of folk art.
A: Once. I was selling art supplies, and [an artist] who kept all his money in a jar, someone stole his jar, and he said, “Av, I can’t pay you,” and I said, “OK… I’ll take art lessons!” So I went to his class, did a painting and all it felt like to me was pushing axle grease around. That painting hung for years in the rafters of 832 Yonge Street [in Toronto]. I wish I’d taken it with me, but I left it behind in the rafters. Oh, I did do one other work of art, a drawing, when I went up to [artist] Gord Rayner’s derelict hunting lodge, but I’ve never felt any creative urges.
Detail of Armistice, by Mark Prent. 1978. Mixed media. Collection of William Jamieson. Courtesy University of Toronto Art Centre/Barnicke Gallery. Q: Were there times where you’d show work you didn’t really understand at first?
A: Oh, very often. To be a successful dealer, you have to develop an amazing instinct, because often you can’t understand [a piece]. You can give all the logical reasons why a work is good or bad, but in the end, it’s your instinct. As far as artists getting ahead of me, sure, artists were always getting ahead of me! Mike Snow was a bugger, he was always about two years ahead of me…
A: I don’t think in those terms, I just think whether it gets me or it doesn’t, or whether it’s interesting. You know, El Greco, the great artist, was just rediscovered at the beginning of the 19th century. He’d been forgotten for a hell of a long time, so I have this view that somebody may be a hotshot today, be forgotten about 25 years from now and be rediscovered in 50 years. There’s no final answer to whether somebody will be known or remembered or wondered about. It can be very ephemeral, the whole damn thing. So you go there and enjoy it. As a dealer, you get whatever you can believe in and you go with it.
A: Well, I’d be going to public galleries, alternative galleries and hanging out with a crowd of artists. That’s what happened with me: I started being socially friendly with Joyce and Mike and Graham and all sorts of other people, and so it bled off on me. You need to get right into the mix. As they say in dirty movies, expose yourself.
The Isaacs Seen exhibitions include Gallery ReView at the University of Toronto Art Centre (to August 5); Regarding Av at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto (to August 18); and Closet Collector, at the Textile Museum of Canada, and Two on the Scene: Photographs by Michel Lambeth and Tess Taconis, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (both to September 25).
Sascha Hastings is a Toronto arts writer and the new curator of Design at Riverside at Cambridge Galleries in Cambridge, Ontario.
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