Performing the Archive: the Metcalfe Fonds 1970-73
By Dan Starling
The Eric Metcalfe archive, located at the UBC Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, is synonymous with the life of the artist. The archive contains the artist’s self-referentially catalogued drawings, graphics, photographs, and correspondences that are contained in a series of file folders, photo albums, framed pictures and binders. These fonds encompass the build-up and height of Metcalfe's alter-ego Dr. Brute and his world, Brutopia. Included in his practice are a network of ideas and influences from the art community of Vancouver, across Canada, and through North America and Europe. Eric Metcalfe the artist is constituted through the activity of collecting and is contained in the documents of that process.
As a result, Metcalfe branded his mark on collective consciousness. The archive chronologically begins with an early sketchbook of Metcalfe’s from 1957, titled Look At This Series. The cartoon drawings depict violent sexual encounters and establish the methodology that Metcalfe would expand later in Brutopia (Return to Brutopia, 7). A personal release for Metcalfe, these comics were related to the time in which he grew up. The abundance of brutality in these comics was influenced by the Cold War rhetoric circulated in mainstream comic books at the time; comic books had increased the content of sexual imagery when servicemen read them during the Second World War. Tarzan, one of the first comic book characters, appeared in 1927, donning the leopard print loincloth (Savage, 4). In true colonialist fashion, Tarzan ruled over the black jungle serving as a metaphor for white dominance in America. Africa was viewed as a place of marginal importance by the superpowers. Metcalfe’s character of Dr. Brute grew out of this milieu.
It took the political and social upheaval in the 1960s for Dr. Brute to appear,
changing the landscape with his signature leopard print. The civil rights movement
violently displayed the real fight against the racist environment perpetuated
on the pages of comic books. As a result of these events, another cat with less
recognizable spots was the chosen symbol of the Black Panther Party. This attack
on white middle class values did not stop at the issue of race. Traditional
attitudes towards gender, sex and social structure were also called into question.
The ubiquity of the leopard spots and their ability to literally cover all parts
of society made them a poignant tool for a charged social comment. By choosing
the leopard print as his trademark, Dr. Brute could not help but reference its
conflicting tradition as symbol of domination and resistance.
The brutality Metcalfe sensed by the intellectual straightjacket of 1950s culture
was transformed by the freedom he felt in this new revolutionary climate. Metcalfe’s
Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde routine, with the alter ego Dr. Brute, morphologically displayed
the intellectual backlash against conservative society. One can pick out of
the archival images his evolution, a man changed by environment [Figure 1].
Early incarnations of Dr. Brute succumbed to a standard set of attributes adopted
by Metcalfe in the late 1960s [Figure 2]. The character was a compilation of
contradictions. By wearing a tuxedo and using the title of “Doctor”,
Brute claimed a refined superiority, while at the same time the leopard spots
called up an exotic notion of the primitive shaman or witch doctor. He carried
a kazoo saxophone, aligning the artist with the marginalized origins of African
American jazz. Dr. Brute blurred the lines between Brutopia and utopia, banality
and brilliance, civility and brutality, fantasy and reality.
Most of the artists with whom Metcalfe was associated also adopted altar egos.
Michael Morris became Marcel Dot, Vincent Trasov - Mr. Peanut, Kate Craig –
Lady Brute, Glenn Lewis – Flakey Rosehips, Hank Bull and Patrick Reandy
– H.P., Robert Fones – Candy Man, Gary Lee Nova – Art Rat
(Hand of the Spirit, 1). This group of artists shared the desire to melt life
and art together as one. Their attitude toward their roles was at times absurd.
However, the characters were also used to make serious political and social
comments. Vincent Trasov took his character of Mr. Peanut into the 1974 Vancouver
mayoral campaign (O'Brian). Dr. Brute regularly appeared with Mr. Peanut as
well as the Peanettes dancers, commenting on the fakery of politics. The construction
of alternative realities was one component of a vast array of practices in which
these artists engaged.
In the late 1960s artists Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova contacted
Ray Johnson in New York, which lead to Vancouver becoming a major centre for
mail art (Wallace, 172). Morris and Trasov obtained a mailing list and created
the Image Bank network by sending out Image Request lists. Metcalfe joined this
project and was a major recipient of leopard imagery, postcards and correspondence
(Wallace, 172). The archive contains the leopard postcards that were mailed
to Metcalfe from artists working in the United States and around the world.
Championing the kitsch fascination with leopard print, Metcalfe renounced the
Greenbergian notion of the supremacy of the artistic avant-garde that had dominated
the art world for decades. This followed the general trend in art, away from
high-minded aesthetic concerns to an art where the idea is paramount and politically
engaging. Lucy Lippard describes this as the “dematerialization”
of the art object (Lippard, 5). This philosophy quickly became the dominant
yet disparate force behind contemporary artists in the late 1960s. How to adequately
represent the political atmosphere of the time was a challenge. Internationally,
society’s faith in the institutions of art and education was at a critical
breaking point.
In May 1968, Paris students demonstrated against the disillusionment they felt
because of growing unemployment and inadequate university facilities (Sava,
26). A year later in New York the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG) demanded
the resignation of the Rockefellers from the board of trustees at the Museum
of Modern Art and the Art Workers Coalition (AWC) demanded equal representation
for women and minorities (Lippard, 11-12). In North America and Europe there
was growing resentment for the war in Vietnam. In 1970, after four students
were shot by the National Guard students boycotted, closing 400 campuses in
America .
Locally, in the late 1960s the Vancouver Art Gallery, under the direction of
Tony Emery, was sympathetic to experimental art and held shows by the Intermedia
art group of which many of the future Western Front artists were part. Ian Baxter
and The N.E. Thing Co. had been instrumental in registering Vancouver’s
position as a cutting-edge climate for contemporary conceptual artists (Wollen,
74), embracing the use of electronic telex technology . Because of Vancouver’s
geographical isolation and the idea-based nature of this new artwork, it was
more important for artists to keep in contact with other artists who could understand
and react to these changing issues . By the early seventies these artists were
looking for a way out of their dependence on the gallery system and a means
to expand their influence.
Benefiting from the prosperous economic period of the early seventies, the government
of Canada gave large sums of money to artists through the Canada Council . “Culture”
officially became one of the most heavily funded areas of governmental expense
. Eric Metcalfe personally received grants from the Local Initiative Program
(LIP) and was able to maintain his art based on continued funding . As a result
of this funding, the artist run institution became a phenomenon across Canada
. In 1971 and 1972 respectively, A Space in Toronto and Véhicle in Montréal
were opened. In 1973, Eric Metcalfe, Michael Morris, Glenn Lewis, Kate Craig,
Maurice van Nostrand, Martin Bartlett, Henry Greenhow and Vincent Trasov became
the founding members of The Western Front in Vancouver . These were serious
artists who believed that making their art in an artist run centre was not only
different but also it would be superior to the gallery system. The artist run
centres made it possible for young artists to exhibit without precedent at the
beginning of their careers . This became the institutionalization of the idea
of the alternative society.
By the time French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou visited the Front in August
of 1973 the Fronters were entrenched in a system of collaboration. Filliou’s
“Eternal Network” and Art as Life philosophies were easily embraced
because they were already part of their conscious practice . Filliou gave an
international banner to the alternative society making it possible for ideas
to be assimilated. The Decca Dance in 1974 brought together approximately one
thousand like minded people form all over North America to Los Angeles and was
for Filliou a celebration of Art’s 1,000,011th birthday [Figure 3]. Sharla
Sava stated that because the Western Front artists shared Filliou’s art
as life philosophy they also shared his rejection of electronic technology .
On the contrary, electronic technology was already an integral part of their
lives and their use of this medium only increased as video equipment became
available through funding. Video art also found a home in Video Inn artist run
centre that had a strong connection to the Front .
According to Alvin Balkind, Vancouver has always been physically disengaged
from heated politics . Because of its position artists have used Vancouver as
an “everyplace” to make universal comments about the world . Contemporary
Vancouver artists such as Roy Arden, Stan Douglas, and Jeff Wall have dealt
with a vision of place , a theatrical society where problems are confronted.
The alternative society, such as Brutopia, was one starting point for the creation
of place as a region of public awareness where images substitute for the real
world of experience.
The idea of life and art appealed to Metcalfe and influenced his decision to
create an archive of his alternative society. In addition to the social contexts
of the fifties and sixties it was theorists like Marshall McLuhan who influenced
how Metcalfe and many artists thought about how the media worked as an environment.
McLuhan stated that “environments are invisible. Their ground rules, pervasive
structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception” . He concluded
that the “counter” or “anti” environments of artists
helped regular people see and interpret the world clearly. With this knowledge,
Metcalfe built up his anti-environment, Brutopia through the manipulation of
media images, forcing leopard print into all areas of society.
In the act of claiming leopard print, Metcalfe stamped Dr. Brute’s name
on everybody’s commodities and consciousness. One could not help but think
of Dr. Brute if they were to see leopard print. This projected on society the
contradictory qualities of Dr. Brute. The most significant project in the Eric
Metcalfe archive is the Leopard Realty series. Its main component is the media
image files; collected from magazines such as Playboy, Esquire, LIFE, and National
Geographic. The folders are divided into ten subcategories: Application, Women
in Leopard Skin, The Leopard, Pornographic, Anthropological, Couples or Groups,
Children in Leopard Skin, Women and Leopards, The Hunt, and Other Cats than
Leopards. These images show the scope of how leopard print existed within media
culture. Serendipitously, the leopard print conspicuously makes its appearance
in an IBM advertisement [Figure 4]. The leopard spots were a symbol of shared
consciousness just as technology was a symbol of shared information.
The traditional symbolic meaning of leopard print is of the exotic, of nature
and of femininity. This collection documents the vast amount of these images
in circulation: “The Leopard” contains many images of leopards in
and out of their natural habitat, the “Anthropological” section
contains images of African tribesmen wearing leopard pelts. The ability of Western
audiences to consume and own these images perpetuates the exploitation of the
animals as commodities and the white male dominance of women and minorities.
The media offers the viewer the ability to consume images as commodities, while
simultaneously presenting a certain packaged world-view.
Archives have been used as tools to confine freedom and reassert dominant political
viewpoints. As Jacques Derrida stated: “There is no political power without
control of the archive, if not of memory. Effective democratization can always
be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access
to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation” . Allan Sekula
has also shown how photographic archives have proved extremely effective at
maintaining a hidden connection between knowledge and power. This can occur
because as Martha Langford has stated, photographs are at the same time too
retentive and too selective in their view of history . The very process of archival
research, going back over a set of historical “facts”, is what enjoins
the past to the next generation. The transfer of these ideas is supposedly seamless
because the archive is believed to stand for or contain the ideas of its time.
However, every time an archive is viewed, there is the opportunity for it to
be reinterpreted. Even though the archival materials themselves may not change,
our idea of the archive and of the world is constantly changing; the archive
always exists in its present interpretation.
Matthias Winsen has noted that the archive is the attempt to build a certain
past for an uncertain future, a way to cope with the passage of time . The artist’s
archive is different because it is more open ended and less interested with
the idea of truth ; instead, it is a way for artists to confirm their power
to create. Warhol’s Time Capsules were the epitome of the idea that an
artist’s life is one grand archive . The artist’s archive only gains
the authority of a historical document in its transfer from the unassuming private
space to the privileged space of the archive. This is what Derrida describes
as the “domiciliation” of the archive . It perhaps does not matter
then, that the Metcalfe archive is not a conventional archive according to the
archival profession. It does not conform to the definitions of uniqueness, authenticity,
impartiality, naturalness and inter-relatedness . The boundary between art and
archive is difficult to define when it comes to archives composed by artists
. The archive is a documentary project by Metcalfe that achieves archival status
when it is stored as an archive in an art gallery. This archive can be considered
a work of art in and of itself because its contents were part of ongoing artistic
projects of Metcalfe and his collaborators. Like the character of Dr. Brute,
the archive contains many contradictions between creation and document, complete
and open ended, original and copy. This art archive deals with the archival
issues of memory and changing issues of interpretation.
Metcalfe critiqued these archival theories through the manipulation of images
and his life as Dr. Brute. To document this process, Metcalfe photographed the
daily activities of Dr. and Lady Brute and their acquaintances. Photos from
the media files were then re-photographed and juxtaposed with Metcalfe’s
own in family photo album style. Metcalfe moved from in front of the camera
to behind the camera, confusing the difference between spectator and performer.
The media images remained in a state of flux with Metcalfe’s own life.
Combining these images, Metcalfe deflated their power by bringing them down
to the satire of his own activities. The “Dr.” mocked hierarchical
society in which these stereotypes perpetuated.
The culmination of the media images resulted in the work Beyond Words (1975)
[Figure 5]. Built up on the shape of the triangle , the viewer is immediately
struck by the intense yellow leopard print against the black and white of the
photographs. The spots are found in every aspect of life: motor sports, fashion,
sex, celebrity, nature, and anthropology. The spots literally move throughout
the image, creeping off of clothing and onto the walls and commodities. Beyond
Words is a visual representation of Metcalfe’s goal to disrupt the structures
of life; this work mirrors Metcalfe’s attempt in his performance.
Another manifestation of Dr. Brute’s performance was his role as an alternative
symbol of sex [Figure 6]. The media has depicted women wearing leopard skin
as a sign of their uninhibited sexuality. Marilyn Monroe wearing leopard print
is the iconic sex symbol, codified by glamour, fashion, and fame [Figure 7].
Metcalfe played with gender distinctions by picturing himself naked on a leopard
print bedspread. In a homoerotically charged image Dr. Brute lays chest down
displaying the defeat of heterosexual male power. The chauvinistic heterosexual
in Dr. Brute shows the fear of feminism and homosexuality. The gun is the symbol
of the insecurity of Western white power. Metcalfe’s wooden replica of
an automatic weapon commented on the absurd practice of allowing little boys
to play with toy guns [Figure 8].
Metcalfe reassessed the traditional dominance of men as Kate Craig’s Lady
Brute actively critiqued stereotypical views of women [Figure 9]. The two worked
as a team, playing off of each other’s creativity. In Flying Leopard (1974)
and Skins (1975), Craig mocked the animalizing effect of leopard print clothing
on women. Feminism became a major political movement in the 1970s and it forced
a renegotiation of gender roles. In conceptual art women found an opportunity
to make artwork that did not have a male dominated history . For this reason,
Craig gravitated towards the experimental use of video, becoming curator of
the Western Front video program in 1976.
The spotted world did not stop there. The archive catalogues in slides Metcalfe’s
finished art pieces. Metcalfe introduced the leopard spots into postcards of
downtown Vancouver progressively displaying their takeover and final engulf
of the city [Figure 10]. The intervention of life continued into the Leopard
Realty Δ’s (1971-73) [Figure 11]. Conceptually painted, adhering
to minimalist aesthetics these leopard spots on painted triangles jumped off
the media pages and into nature . This leopard world would not be complete without
the printed word. Fittingly, Metcalfe painted his own brutalphabet in 1971 [Figure
12]. Metcalfe took his spots to the public sphere when in 1973 he painted the
front of the Vancouver Art Gallery for the Pacific Vibrations show [Figure 13].
Metcalfe also preformed in 1973 with the Brute Saxes at A Space in Toronto.
As artists used more ephemeral media for their work they came to rely heavily
on the video camera to document their production . Dana Atchley produced Metcalfe’s
performance of Dr. Brute and his saxophone in The Boys in the Band (1974) and
a history of Dr. and Lady Brute in Spots Before Your Eyes (1977).
Now, twenty years after most of the archive was compiled it is open to the public
in the Morris and Helen Belkin art gallery. All one needs to access its contents
is an appointment and a pair of white gloves (not unlike those worn by Dr. Brute).
The Morris/Trasov Archive found a home at the Belkin gallery when it was forced
out of its home at the Western Front in 1992. Consciously, Scott Watson built
around this landmark to solidify its importance in the collection . With this
in mind, Eric Metcalfe donated his archive to the gallery for the specific purpose
of scholarly research [Figure 14]. Students and scholars, to further the dominance
of Western thought and art, will mainly use the archive. The fact that this
archive is located in the same city in which it was created makes it accessible
to the community that sponsored its development. For the interested scholar,
Eric Metcalfe, an active participant in that community, can shed light on the
archive’s contents. As Martha Langford pointed out, in the transition
from the private realm to the institutional space of the gallery, the photographic
archive has been stripped of its social function . The archive can now be viewed
without the aid of an interpreter.
The showing and recounting of the archive was in itself another performance
by Metcalfe. In the process of study the scholar now re-enacts Metcalfe’s
archival performance: effectively inhabiting the world of Dr. Brute and Brutopia.
The life of the artist’s alter ego is documented and catalogued so that
an archive of his fictitious world is preserved. In this case, history is art.
Works Cited
Abbott, Jennifer ed. Making Video “In”: The Contested Ground of
Alternative Video on the West Coast. Vancouver: Video Inn Studios, 2000.
Blouin, René. “The Western Front: Alternative Centre”. Western
Front Video Exhibition Catalogue. Montréal: Musée d’art
Contemporain de Montréal, 1984.
Hand of the Spirit: Documents of the Seventies from the Morris/Trasov Archive.
Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Kahn, Ashley, Holly George-Warren and Shawn Dahl eds. Rolling Stone: The Seventies.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
Langford, Martha, Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic
Albums. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001.
Laszlo, Krisztina. Personal Communication. 31 October 2002.
Laszlo, Krisztina. “The Fonds and Creative Licence [sic]”. AABC
Newsletter 11:2. Spring 2001 [newsletter on-line. http://aabc.bc.ca/aabc/newsletter/11_2/fonds_and_creative_licence.html.
Internet. Accessed 14 September 2002.
Lippard, Lucy. “Escape Attempts”. Reconstructing the Object of Art.
Ann Goldstein and Ann Rorimee eds. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.
Lippard, Lucy. Get the Message: A Decade of Art For Social Change. New York:
E. P. Dutton Inc., 1984.
Lippard, Lucy. Six Years: The dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966
to 1972. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. Corte Maderna,
CA: Gingko Press, 2001.
Metcalfe, Eric. Personal Communication. 28 October 2002.
O’Brian, John. FINA 443 Class Discussion. University of British Columbia.
13 November 2002.
Return to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe Works and Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine
Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Sava, Sharla. As if the Oceans Were Lemonade: The Performative Vision of Robert
Filliou and the Western Front. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1996.
Savage, William W. Comic Books and America, 1945-1954. Norman, OK: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Schaffner, Ingrid and Matthias Winzen eds. Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing,
and Archiving in Art. Munich: Prestel, 1998.
Seamon, Roger. “Uneasy in Eden: Jeff Wall and the Vancouver Syndrome”.
Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City. Delany, Paul ed. Vancouver: Arsenal
Pulp Press, 1994.
Sekula, Allan. “Reading an Archive: Photography Between Labour and Capital”.
Visual Culture: The Reader. Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall eds. London: SAGE
Publications, 1999.
Vancouver: Art and Artists 1931-1983. Vancouver: The Vancouver Art Gallery,
1983.
Wallace, Keith. “A Particular History: Artist-run Centres in Vancouver”.
Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics of Art. Douglas, Stan ed. Vancouver:
Talonbooks, 1991.
Wallace, Keith, ed. Whispered Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front.
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1993.
Watson, Scott. Personal Communication. 29 November 2002.
Wollen, Peter. “Global Conceptualism and North American Conceptual Art”.
Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s – 1980s. New York: Queens
Museum of Art, 1991.
List of Figures
Figure 1. Leopard Realty Photo Albums File. Eric Metcalfe Archive, UBC Morris
and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Figure 2. Hlynski, David. Postcard designed by Metcalfe to promote Dr. Brute.
1974. Return to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe Works and Collaborations. Vancouver:
UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Figure 3. Robert Filliou at the Decca Dance. 1974. Wallace, Keith. Whispered
Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press,
1993.
Figure 4. Leopard Realty Media Images File. Eric Metcalfe Archive, UBC Morris
and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Figure 5. Beyond Words. 1975. Return to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe Works and Collaborations.
Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Figure 6. Banal Beauty Inc./Banal Brutality Inc. series. Eric Metcalfe Archive,
UBC Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Figure 7. Leopard Realty Photo Albums File. Eric Metcalfe Archive, UBC Morris
and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Figure 8. Werden, Rodney. Impressions. March 1975. Return to Brutopia: Eric
Metcalfe Works and Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition
catalogue, 1992.
Figure 9. Kate Craig as Lady Brute. Eric Metcalfe Archive, UBC Morris and Helen
Belkin Art Gallery.
Figure 10. Leopard Realty Postcards. 1971-1972. Return to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe
Works and Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue,
1992.
Figure 11. Leopard Realty Δ’s. 1972-1973. Return to Brutopia: Eric
Metcalfe Works and Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition
catalogue, 1992.
Figure 12. Leopard Alphabet. 1971. Return to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe Works and
Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Figure 13. Craig, Kate. Pacific Vibrations. Vancouver Art Gallery. 1973. Return
to Brutopia: Eric Metcalfe Works and Collaborations. Vancouver: UBC Fine Arts
Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1992.
Figure 14. Table of Contents. Eric Metcalfe Archive, UBC Morris and Helen Belkin
Art Gallery.