Bas Continuo #1, 1976

The Artist, May-September 1976 David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, September 1976-January 1977 Jay Lyons, Calgary, January 1977-6 June 2013 Christopher Varley, Toronto, 6 June 2013 Mayberry Fine Art, Winnipeg Private Collection, Winnipeg Private Collection

Jack Bush not only had an eye for colour, which is the cornerstone upon which he built his reputation as a Colour Field painter, but also for design. He was, after all, an award-winning illustrator and art director in the advertising arts for forty-one years. In terms of composition, Bush’s abstract paintings are dynamic, teetering between beautiful to curiously eccentric. That teeter (he in fact named one of his late canvases "Teeter") is what holds the viewer’s attention, and Bush knew it. While Bush repainted, cropped, and even destroyed many of his early abstract expressionist paintings in the 1950s, he returned to a heavy hand in editing his paintings in the early 1970s. In 1972, for example, he altered no fewer than eighteen paintings. He painted over, painted new, and made even the most minor adjustments–such as eliminating a two-inch dot–all of which made a big difference to the final look of the painting. Sometimes, for Bush, a painting “worked” better if it was divided. This was the case for "Bas Continuo #1". This painting was originally executed on a larger canvas, which the artist subsequently divided into two separate pieces. The counterpart to this work is "Bas Continuo #2". In its original state, simply titled "Bas Continuo", the painting measured 55 by 83 inches (139.7 x 210.8 cm); after the cut, "Bas Continuo #1" was the larger canvas of the two, leaving "Bas Continuo #2" as a relatively narrow painting, at just under 30 inches wide (76.2 cm). This smaller canvas is now in the collection of York University, donated by Joan and Martin Goldfarb. As well as being cropped from its original composition, "Bas Continuo #1" was also rotated; the three slender strips of colour projecting from the slab of red had once pointed downward, but after the crop the cut edge became the bottom edge in its final state, leaving these streamers to point up and to the left. It is not certain when Bush altered the original painting, but it must have occurred sometime before September 1976, when he sent "Bas Continuo #1" to the David Mirvish Gallery. In the lexicon of musical terms, "basso continuo" is the bassline in Baroque music that provides harmonic structure, which is often spontaneously composed by the performers. The title for this painting, and the term’s connotation with improvisational creativity, is apropos of Bush’s keen ability to pivot and make highly effective changes in his own work. Bush did not leave any clues as to why he felt compelled to turn one painting into two, but it is a testament to the extent to which the artist went to make the composition just right. This painting will be included in Dr. Stanners’ forthcoming "Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné". We extend our thanks to Dr. Sarah Stanners for contributing the preceding essay. Sarah is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Art History while writing the forthcoming "Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné". From 2015 to 2018 she was the Chief Curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Co-Curator of the 2014/2015 national travelling exhibition, "Jack Bush", Co-Author of the resulting 2014 exhibition catalogue ("Jack Bush") and guest curator and author of "Jack Bush: In Studio", organized by the Esker Foundation in Calgary.