Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of Her Majesty's official loyal opposition in response to the unfortunate passing of Mr. Riopelle.
Yesterday we honoured Herb Gray who, in his own way, brought a very special character to politics in his devotion to Canada.
Today, as we think about Jean-Paul Riopelle, we recognize that in Canada, no matter what the arena, we have some giants. Clearly, from the research I have done on Mr. Riopelle, he was just exactly that.
I would like to take just a slightly different tack to an ordinary approach. I would like to look at some of the techniques, the technical aspects, of what he brought to us. I am reading from The Canadian Encyclopedia where it states:
Under the influence of surrealism, with its emphasis on the “liberation of the human spirit,” Riopelle moved from figurative painting to the gestural abstractions for which he is now famous. After WWII, against the growing standardization and depersonalization of industrial capitalism, Riopelle's paintings were characterized by personal improvisation and “raw” gestures that attested to the uniquely human process by which they were made. To increase the spontaneity of his art, he used several experimental techniques: supple gestural brushstrokes...; the controlled drip technique of squeezing paint directly from the tube onto the canvas...; and, in the early 1950s, the use of the palette knife to create mosaiclike surfaces of paint--a hallmark of his later style.
The reason I read from this rather technical description of art--and of course art cannot be broken down simply into techniques-was to show the creativeness of this individual.
I would concur with the minister of heritage that truly Canada has lost a giant in the field of art. He was certainly a tremendous credit to all of us as Canadians. Our country mourns his loss.