“Beaver Tales: Canadian Art and Design” runs to Dec 6. Tue-Fri noon-5pm; Sat noon-4pm. University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College. 416-978-1838.
www.utac.utoronto.ca.
“Beaver Tales: Canadian Art and Design” aims to show, and to define, Canadian design through the historical and contemporary manifestations of what most people now see as thin, nationalist clichés. It accomplishes this not by skirting blandness — in fact, it is quite open about the simplicity, the homeliness of our traditions — but by suggesting that there has been a quiet, steady and reasonably successful effort to make a generic natural symbology our very own.
The exhibit is divided into six sections: “Geese,” “Evergreens,” “Trilliums,” “Antlered Animals,” “Beavers” and “Maple Leaves.” Curators Rachel Gotlieb and Martha Kelleher want to demonstrate that these entities have, in the past and present, entered our design lexicon both as motifs and as forms in and of themselves. Thus in “Antlered Animals” we get a fun-but-elegant mid-19th-century chiffonier topped with a carved moose, which stands near Todd Falkowsky’s Antler Coat Rack from 2006, in which the antler is the design.
Such juxtapositions are fascinating, but don’t necessarily come off as absolute. Some of the most memorable pieces in “Beaver Tales” have absorbed aesthetics from elsewhere: Thoreau McDonald’s shamelessly Arts-and-Crafts suite of furniture for friend Doris Huestis Mills; or the wonderful early-to-mid-20th-century textiles, such as Elizabeth Wilkes Hoey’s Trillium pattern from the ’50s (pictured), which reflect trends in, among other things, the American market. One might point out that this hybridity is found in most venerated design traditions. One might also point out that, as a nation, we have always made a point of keenly and deferentially studying other people’s business.