McCUSKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-03-09 published
Gerald GLADSTONE,
Artist: 1929-2005
Determined and prolific sculptor who won several major commissions
at Expo 67 shot as brightly as a comet through the Canadian art
scene and then gradually burned out, writes Sandra
MARTIN
By Sandra MARTIN,
Wednesday,
March 9, 2005 - Page S9
His name is only vaguely familiar now, but Gerald
GLADSTONE,
a self-taught artist and musician, was a huge force in Canadian
art in the 1950s and 1960s. Short, stocky with curly hair and
a fiery personality, he had a spiritual conception of the cosmos
and our place within it, a vision which he interpreted in monumental
yet dynamic welded steel sculptures.
Born in Toronto in 1929, the year of the stock-market crash that
precipitated the Depression, he was the sixth of nine children
of Ralph and Dora
GLADSTONE. A dynamic, feisty boy, he disliked
the discipline and structure of school. His younger brother Joseph
says his teachers let him do all the class art projects and simply
passed him in other subjects year after year, until he got fed
up and quit at the end of Grade 8 and went to work.
In those days, he was as much a musician as he was an artist.
He taught himself to play the clarinet and formed a jazz band.
He was also a sharp dancer and loved to go jitterbugging with
his sister Rose. "He was very pugnacious, very proud of being
Jewish and very up front about it and it often caused him difficulties
in his social life," remembered his brother David.
He married artist Sheila
McCUSKER when he was in his very early
20s. Allycia, the eldest of the couple's six children was born
in September, 1953. Mr.
GLADSTONE built an easel on a hinge on
the wall over her crib so that he could paint and draw after
he had come home from work and she was sleeping. By his own count,
he had close to 30 jobs in 14 years, eventually working at Rapid
Grip as a commercial artist and attaining the position of art
director with McLaren Advertising before he quit to devote himself
to art.
Mr. GLADSTONE built a shack out the back of their house in the
Beach area of Toronto, "breaking every fire law under the sun,"
according to his brother Joseph and making sculptures that one
observer described as "a blowtorch blending of gramophone speakers,
wheel rims and wire waste baskets." He would work furiously and
when he heard an inspector was coming, he would clean up like
mad, his brother said.
He was one of the group of artists exhibited by Av
ISAACS in
the 1950s that included Michael Snow, Gordon Rayner, Graham Coughtry
and Tony Urquhart. Mr. Rayner remembers "Gerry playing a mean
Dixieland clarinet" at parties. His work did two things at once,
said Mr. Urquhart. "It was expressionistic and at the same time
it was coming to grips with technology. Some of the ones I particularly
liked, partly because I hadn't a clue how he would do them, were
these big sculptures submerged in big blocks of lucite."
"To pick up a welding torch and use it in the service of sculpture
was an avant-garde thing to do" in those early struggling days
when "people were still bashing at stone," observed critic Gary
Michael
Dault.
Mr.
GLADSTONE's sculptures, with their welded
steel rods and whirling discs, looked adventurously modernist
in the all-too-provincial Toronto of the 1950s.
Curator
Dennis
Reid says Mr.
GLADSTONE's cosmic vision was a
great strength. The actual sculptures -- the cones and rods --
read on both a galactic level and on a microscopic one, too,
he says. "That is where their energy lies and I think it hit
a chord in the late '50s and early '60s. It took right off."
In 1959, he received his first Canada Council grant and the family,
which now numbered several children, packed up and went to London,
where he studied at the Royal College of Art. There, he met the
British sculptor Henry Moore and visited him at his studio. Influenced
by Mr. Moore, he began experimenting with figurative work.
Shortly after returning from England, Mr.
GLADSTONE became involved
in Toronto '61, a collective show organized by his younger brothers
Joseph and David. Joseph, who is now a retired elementary school
principal, was heading out to Vancouver to teach. He and his
brothers went around to all of their brother's artist Friends
and collected three or four pieces of art from each of them on
consignment. They boxed the works, shipped them to Vancouver,
held a show and then shipped the work of a number of Vancouver
artists back to Toronto.
After studying in New York on another Canada Council grant and
achieving modest success through a couple of galleries, Mr.
GLADSTONE
moved back to Canada. He was part of the opening exhibition for
The Isaacs Gallery when it moved to its new premises on Yonge
Street in 1961, but he and the gallery soon parted company. "He
was a ballsy guy -- feisty is the word," says dealer Av
ISAACS,
who represented Mr.
GLADSTONE for about a decade.
Although he thinks Mr.
GLADSTONE did some interesting work, he
says he "was a very pushy guy and I just didn't need it."
He was the only artist to net three commissions for Expo 67 in
Montreal. He created Uki, the 12-metre, fire-spewing mechanical
dragon that haunted a lagoon for the Canadian government, a space
column for the Engineer's Plaza and a towering fountain for the
amusement park at La Ronde. His commissions amounted to about
$250,000, but expenses gobbled up most of it, leaving him with
about $35,000, some of which he plowed back into his work --
although he did allow himself the purchase of a black Steinway
grand piano.
He was so hot in 1967 that he told the late journalist Blaik
Kirby in The Globe that the price of his sculptures had doubled
in the previous two years. "People say I'm so lucky, but they
forget that for 20 years I invested more money than I made in
my work," the artist said. "I believed I was an artist when no
one else did, except a few close Friends."
Only three years later, he was penniless again, complaining that
Canada didn't understand him and that the Canada Council was
shunning him. Still, he had an exhibition of his plastic cubes
(many of them borrowed from private collections), and his Downtown
Nudes, a poetic calligraphy of weaving lines on raw canvas, as
the opening exhibition at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts
in downtown Toronto.
From his home in Victoria, Mavor Moore, then general director
of the centre, remembers choosing Mr.
GLADSTONE because "he had
worldwide dreams and the technical skills to realize them, and
at the time my colleagues and I thought his works would give
the launch an exciting cachet. But he managed to alienate many
of his more nationalistic fellow Canadian artists, and the sole
1970 anecdote I recall is Harold Town's immortal summation of
the exhibit: 'Gerry
GLADSTONE is the only sculptor in the world
who can weld shit.' "
And then, this artist who had shot as brightly as a comet through
the Canadian art scene for a decade, burned out. He still had
commissions, but he was no longer a force. Among them were the
Three Graces, a fountain and bronze sculptures for the Ontario
government buildings at Bay and Wellesley streets in Toronto,
Female Landscape, a fountain and bronze sculpture for Place Ville
Marie in Montreal, a fountain and precast concrete sculpture
for a Martin Luther King memorial in California, and a fountain
and sculpture in Canberra for the government of Australia. He
made a six-metre sculpture called Universal Man to stand in front
of the C.N. Tower, but it was damaged when the Sky Dome was built
and found a new home in a parking lot at Yorkdale Mall in the
north end of the city.
He had to hustle because he had only his art to support his wife
and six children. But there were other factors. He moved from
gallery to gallery, having arguments with artists and dealers
and even the Canada Council. He also changed styles, moving away
from his early constructivist welded sculptures to embrace painting
and figurative work. In the process, he seemed to lose his vocabulary
and his energy. Artist Gordon Rayner admired the early steel
sculptures, but he thought his paintings were really like graphic
sketches for sculptures and he didn't much fancy his figurative
sculpture.
Dennis REID, chief curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, thinks
he didn't survive the change in art that happened in the 1970s.
"We all talk about the death of painting, but it was also the
death of any kind of figuration in sculpture, by and large for
that period of time, and the rise of conceptual and performance
art.
By the late 1970s, he had left his wife and begun a new relationship.
With his new partner, Lorraine, he moved to Vancouver hoping
to win commissions at Expo 86, and eventually returned to Ontario
where they settled in Beaverton in the early 1990s. He continued
to make art, although now he was working mainly with smaller
pieces. The Art Gallery of Ontario gave him a small retrospective
in late 2003, linking his current work with his early monumental
sculptures and his plastic cubes. By then, he had been diagnosed
with a rare form of leukemia. Earlier this winter, his spleen
became dangerously enlarged and he went into hospital for surgery.
He died on Monday morning.
Gerald GLADSTONE was born on January 7, 1929. He died of leukemia
on March 7. He was 76. He is survived by his second wife, Lorraine,
six children from his first wife, and several brothers and a
sister.
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McCUSKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-03-09 published
GLADSTONE,
Gerald
Died peacefully at St. Michael's Hospital on March 7, 2005 at
the age of 76 after a very courageous battle against cancer.
Loved and cherished by his children Allycia (Peter), Stephen
(Carmella), Seana (Gordon), Lawrence, Angela, and Brant (Jackie),
and step-daughter Lisa, his second wife Lorraine, his grandchildren
Krysten, Anthony, Aaron, Lara, Jennifer, Gemma, and Alexa, his
sister Rose (Louis), his brothers Henry, Irving (Lillian), David
(Jacqueline), Joseph (Elizabeth) and Leonard (Nicole), and his
many Friends. He is predeceased by his parents Dora and Ralph
and his brothers Russell and Benny. He is remembered fondly by
his first wife
Sheila
McCUSKER.
Gerald was one of Canada's premier
artists. Born and raised in Toronto, Gerald, for over 50 years,
painted and welded a vast variety of paintings and sculptures
that were shown in galleries around the world. He is represented
in many major private and public collections. He created many
public works of art for cities across Canada and internationally.
One of his largest sculptures, "Universal Man", originally created
for and displayed at the C.N. Tower, is currently installed at
the Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto. A major public fountain,
"The Three Graces", commissioned by the Ontario government, stands
in front of the Mowat Block at Bay and Wellesley streets in Toronto.
His "Reclining Female", commissioned by the Royal Bank of Canada,
adorns the upper terrace of Place Ville Marie in Montreal. Gerald
will be greatly missed by his family and Friends. His art, humour,
sound advice, and his discussions related to art and music are
a legacy that continues to enrich us all. The family would like
to thank sincerely the staff of St. Michael's and Princess Margaret
Hospitals for all the wonderful care and attention they gave
Gerald. It is the family's wish that any donations in appreciation
of Gerry's life and work be made to either of those institutions.
A memorial reception will be held at a later time and place to
be announced.
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McCUSKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-12-08 published
CAMPBELL,
Edward
V.
(15 year member of the Newmarket Soccer Club)
At Royal Victoria Hospital, Barrie on Wednesday, December 7,
2005 in his 58th year. Edward
CAMPBELL, beloved husband of Myra
and dear father of Heather
McCUSKER and her husband Fraser, and
Karen BRAMHAM and her husband Stephen. Proud grandfather of Cameron
and Malcolm
McCUSKER, and Ashley
BRAMHAM.
Brother of Norman and
Ian CAMPBELL.
Memorial service will be held at the Roadhouse
& Rose Funeral Home, 157 Main St. South, Newmarket on Saturday
at 11 a.m. Memorial donations to the Canadian Cancer Society
would be appreciated.
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McCUSKER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-12-17 published
COSGRAVE,
Ronald
Everett
Unexpectedly and with much sadness, the family announces the
passing of Ronald on Friday, December 16, 2005 at the Humber
River Regional Hospital - Church St. Site, in his 79th year.
Beloved husband of Heather (formerly
RODRIGUES.)
Loving father
to Jan McCUSKER and the late Bryan
COSGRAVE. "
Grampa
Pipe" to
Keegan and Kiley
McCUSKER.
Friends may call at the Turner and
Porter Yorke Chapel, 2357 Bloor St. W., at Windermere, east of
the Jane subway, on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 from 12 noon until
the time of Funeral Service in the Chapel at 1 o'clock. If desired,
remembrances may be made to the charity of your choice.
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