The atmosphere at Avrom Isaacs’s gallery was unpretentious and it was a place for great conversation.Thomas Szlukovenyi/The Globe and Mail
Can an art dealer change art history? Change a city? Would Paris be the same without the trailblazing art dealers Ambroise Vollard or Charles Durand-Ruel? Or New York without Alfred Stieglitz's legendary gallery 291? And would Toronto be the same, I wonder, without the feisty Winnipegger Avrom Isaacs, who opened his Greenwich Gallery on Bay Street in 1956, moved uptown to Yonge Street in 1961, then down to John Street, finally closing the doors of his Isaacs/Innuit Gallery on Prince Arthur Avenue in 2001.
There were a handful of dealers in Toronto at that time who left a big mark – Dorothy Cameron, Blair Lang, Jerrold Morris, Carmen Lamanna, Mira Godard, Jared Sable – all dealers who in a sense made the Toronto scene, and made art collecting part of life in the ambitious, fast-growing Canadian city. Av's gallery, though, had its own particular vibe, and its own particular contribution to the ecosystem.
Dropping in for a visit, you were sure to encounter something that challenged Hogtown propriety – whether it was the splayed limbs of a Graham Coughtry sex painting (racy stuff back in the day), a display of Inuit art made by artists such as Jessie Oonark and Kenojuak Ashevak (scarcely recognized as artists when Av took them on), floating penis paintings by Joyce Wieland, and Walking Women by Michael Snow, stencilled text paintings and mixed media constructions by the London artist Greg Curnoe, or pictures by the prairie mystic William Kurelek – a schizophrenic visionary who began his artistic career as a framer in Av's basement.
One could also come across, as I did, a display of Sandinista posters (Av had graduated in political science from the University of Toronto), a display of Balochistani textiles, Indian miniatures or a Berber tent rugs. Long before anyone had begun thinking about Toronto as a multicultural community, Av was inviting in a bigger world, a more bohemian world, and he made a place for those cultures here.
The atmosphere at the gallery was down home, nothing swanky; there was lots of payment on instalment and it was a place for great conversation. The stance was argumentative: He picked a fight for freedom of expression and, importantly, for Canadian artists. Av's position was adamant: This was a great country and Canadian artists were the match of any artists anywhere. Av shook his fist at power his whole life, and I admired him for it.
I vividly remember my first few meetings with him, dropping in on his gallery on Yonge Street as a young newcomer to Toronto. He was a master of what one might call surly conviviality. The first few jabs were by way of greeting – usually some adverse reaction to something that had been covered (or had not been covered) in Canadian Art, where I was an editor, or later, at The Globe and Mail.
Sometimes, gratifyingly, there would be gruff affirmation for a job well done. Then would come the deeper conversation, where we would get at the roots of the things we were looking at together. Often I would be emboldened to take a stand on this or that, to look again at something (often not his own artists) and to pick fights of my own. This was encouragement – in the very real sense of giving courage. He did that for a lot of people – mostly, I imagine, his artists.
A few days before Av closed his Prince Arthur Avenue space, a few of us organized a little celebration there. I think I remember that it was a surprise. Richard Harrington's harrowing Arctic photographs were on the walls and there were a few bottles of warmish champagne and a scattering of impromptu speeches. Then, at the moment of truth, the ancient Nobuo Kubota performed an unforgettable spoken-word rant in Av's honour, although there were no words in it – just the guttural groans, squeals, clucks, clicks and chattering noises that only Nobby could produce. The effect was electrifying, a fitting coda to a career of surprises.
Over the intervening years since then I have run into Av a few times – once to look at a Joyce Wieland Time Machine painting that he had in his storage unit, which he was in the process of emptying; once when he reprimanded me and my table for our rowdiness at the Boulevard Café on Harbord Street (quite rightly); and, finally, when I glimpsed him last year on a windy spring day, standing at a street corner near his Charles Street home, waiting for the light to change. Only then did he look a little smaller than I remembered him being.
It has been a long time since I have had the chance to savour Av's bearish charms, but he planted something in me. He was one of those people who made the Canadian art world feel like the very best place to be.