Modigliani and Mirvish

It was at David Mirvish Books that I bought one of my favourite biographies, Neil Baldwin's Man Ray American Artist. The store, on Hogtown's Markham Street, which David's father, the irrepressible Honest Ed, once suggested could be turned into a Venice-like canal - he may have been joking - closed a couple of years ago and I realize I still miss the place. That's because in today's Sunday Star I read Peter Goddard's praise for Modigliani: A Life by Meryle Secrest, exactly the kind of book browsers could find in David Mirvish Books in surroundings that were unhurried and unobtrusive.

Much of what's in Modigliani: A Life will be known by those of us who are interested in the artist, I expect. Still, Goddard says Secrest's book is written in clean, clear prose, free of all art babble and for that we should be grateful. Just one quibble, though. I recall reading, I forget where and when, that Modigliani fathered a son with a French Canadian woman from Quebec City. The child, called Charles Sirois - I remember that much - flipped when he learned of his paternity and promptly joined an order of monks. I have no idea if the story is true or not. Either way Goddard could have addressed this bit of Canadiana in his review.

AGO: $25 is not an abstraction

My last two visits to the AGO have been pleasant and productive. I didn't go for the art on either occasion. Instead, I swung by the gift shop to buy notebooks, sketchbooks, pencils and erasers at sale prices that barely registered a blip on my debit card. Sadly, I won't be able to say the same for Abstract Expressionist New York, the AGO's quite likely stunning new show that opens May 28. All of the work on display comes from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and offers a chance to swoon over pieces by, among others, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Well, swooning over Rothko may be too mild a reaction. How about prostrating yourself?

But if you do I won't be there to see you. The AGO wants 25 bucks to get in to the exhibition. Where on earth does the AGO think I and others like me who get by on not much can find that sort of cash? Has everyone down there on Dundas West gone nuts?

Of course, such a large admission fee speaks to a common cultural problem, not just in Hogtown but across Canada: too little support for the arts (but uncounted billions for fighter jets) that leaves the barely solvent unable to take part in any significant cultural event, and the masterworks on show at the AGO are certainly that. Art, literature, theatre and the rest are for everyone, as the cultural policies of many countries attest. As a consequence, life in those places is signally different from life in Canada. They seem to have taken to heart, as we have not, the phrase from the great French Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy that appears on our $20 bills. Take a magnifying glass and give it a read.