Benjamin Chee Chee

Kenneth Thomas Benjamin Chee Chee (born March 26, 1944 in Temagami , † March 14, 1977 in Ottawa ) was a Canadian artist of Native American descent whose short career ended by suicide.

Life

Benjamin Chee Chee was born in Temagami on Lake Temagami in the northeast of the Canadian state of Ontario . His parents were Angus Chee Chee, a tourist guide from the Ojibwa tribe , and Josephine Roy, a housekeeper from the Algonquin tribe . His father died in a car accident when he was two months old. He grew up on an Indian reservation on Bear Island, an island in Lake Temagami. He had little contact with his mother, as she had to support the family and left Benjamin with friends while he worked. One of his best childhood friends was Hugh McKenzie, who later became an artist under the patronage of Chee Chee. At the age of twelve, Chee Chee, who had behavioral problems and was known to the police, was put in a home by the authorities, St. Joseph's Training School in Alfred near Ottawa. The separation from his mother and the later search for her became a central element of his life.

In 1965 he moved to Montreal . Through his lawyer friend Frederick Brown, he made the acquaintance of the painter couple Dorothy and Henry Robertson "Robin" Watt, who connected him to the Montreal art scene, taught him and gave him a job as a warehouse clerk. In 1972 he moved into an apartment in eastern Montreal with his girlfriend, a French-Canadian , and set up his own studio. Some smaller Chee Chees shows were not very successful. On Brown's advice, he moved to Ottawa in 1973. There Brown introduced him to the gallery owner couple Marie and Pierre Gaignery, who in the same year held a chee-chee solo exhibition in their gallery Nicholas Art Gallery, at which all of the works on display were sold. As a result, his level of awareness rose steadily.

Chee Chee suffered from alcoholism, depression, and an inability to make long-term human bonds, and he felt a victim of anti-Indian racism in Canada. He was open about his situation; His trademark was the phrase " My name is Benjamin, and I have a problem. " (German: "My name is Benjamin, and I have a problem.") from the film The maturity test as a conversation starter. In 1976 his girlfriend left him because he became violent under the influence of alcohol. It was around this time that he started consuming marijuana and mescaline . In July 1976, after years of searching, he was able to find his mother and brought her to Ottawa. In 1977 solo exhibitions took place in Halifax , Ottawa, Toronto , Vancouver and Winnipeg .

On March 1, 1977, Chee Chee delivered 18 images, now known as the Black Geese Portfolio , to his then exhibition manager in Ottawa. He then visited a restaurant he frequented, where he got drunk and rioted, after which he was arrested by the police. Chee Chee used his shirt to hang himself in his prison cell and died in hospital three days later. His grave is in the Notre Dame Catholic Cemetery in Ottawa.

As a result of the suicide, the prices for Chee Chees plants rose sharply. Even limited-edition art prints, which cost a few hundred US dollars during his lifetime, fetched prices of nearly $ 10,000.

plant

Goose in Flight (1977)

Chee Chees work is attributed to the Woodland School of Art, a painting style of Native American painters from the Great Lakes area . In contrast to the work of other painters of this school such as Daphne Odjig or Norval Morrisseau , Chee Chee's work is influenced by abstract art . Chee Chee was nonetheless a member of the informal group of Woodland painters, and Morrisseau is named Chee Chees as a role model and source of inspiration by the Art Canada Institute . His first works were colorful, abstract compositions of geometric motifs applied using the stamp printing process. By 1976 he developed his specific style: minimalist, linear depictions of birds and other animals, often characterized by grace and movement. He used a greatly reduced color palette and the emptiness of the canvas as a design element. His preferred materials were acrylic paint on canvas and gouache on paper. The museum curator Elizabeth McLuhan, daughter of Marshall McLuhan , put forward the thesis that the Black Geese portfolio in particular , which shows geese in their social context, is a symbol of the family that Chee Chee was looking for but never found. The works captured the "vitality, dignity and whims" of wild animals. In a catalog of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery accompanying the exhibition, curator Janet Clark drew parallels between Chee Chee's work and that of modern abstract artists such as Jacques Hurtubise . Chee Chee himself explicitly saw himself as an artist from the Ojibwa tribe, not as a general Indian artist, and accepted the classification of his work as modern art.

reception

There were numerous obituaries in the Canadian media after Chee Chee's death. The daily newspaper The Globe and Mail described Chee Chee as "unique among his contemporaries" because he did not limit himself to the representation of myths and legends like Morrisseau and his epigones, but developed his very own style. In the Vancouver Sun , editor and writer Wayne Edmonstone put forward the thesis that Chee Chee had been pressured by his agents to produce art for sale, which led to burnout and ultimately contributed to his death. The state broadcaster CBC broadcast the production The Life and Death of Benjamin Chee Chee in 1980 . The Canadian poet Patrick White claimed in a 1992 monograph on Chee Chee that Chee had developed an "abstract, linear and expressive" style that made him money, but did not satisfy him artistically.

In 1983 the Thunder Bay Art Gallery in Thunder Bay bought over 50 of Chee Chee's works, initially showing them as a solo exhibition and since then in a permanent exhibition together with works by u. a. Daphne Odjig and Jane Ash Poitras .

Exhibitions

• 1991: Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay: Benjamin Chee Chee: The Black Geese Portfolio, and Other Works
• 1983: Thunder Bay National Exhibition Center, Thunder Bay
• 1982: Glebe Community Center, Ottawa
• 1976: Evans Gallery, Toronto
• 1973: Nicholas Art Gallery, Ottawa

Chee Chee's works hang in the Canadian Museum of Civilization ( Gatineau ), the Glenbow Museum ( Calgary ) and the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto).

literature

• Alvin L. Evans: Chee Chee: A Study of Aboriginal Suicide . McGill-Queen's Press, Montreal 2004, ISBN 978-0-7735-2687-7 .
• Patrick White: The Benjamin Chee Chee Elegies . General Store Publishing House, Renfrew 1992, ISBN 978-0-919431-56-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ CapandWinnDevon.com: Chee Chee, Benjamin. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 13, 2017 ; accessed on November 12, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Evans, p. 21
3. ↑ QuillandQuire.com: Chee Chee: A Study of Aboriginal Suicide. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Evans, p. 12
5. ↑ FindaGrave.com: Benjamin Chee Chee. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Evans, p. 25
7. ↑ Native-Art-in-Canada.com: Benjamin Chee Chee. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
8. ↑ ACI-IAC.ca: Norval Morrisseau. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
9. ^ Benjamin Chee Chee ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
10. ↑ Redkettles' Blog: Looking Back: Benjamin Chee Chee. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
11. ↑ Evans, p. 35
12. ↑ Janet E. Clark, Robert Houle: Benjamin Chee Chee: The Black Geese Portfolio and Other Works . Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay 1991, ISBN 978-0-920539-37-8 .
13. ↑ Evans, p. 35
14. ↑ Evans, p. 38
15. ↑ GlebeReport.ca: Tribute to Chee Chee - literature's celebration. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
16. ↑ TorontoPublicLibrary.ca: Benjamin Chee Chee: Paintings and prints in the collection of the Thunder Bay National Exhibition Center and Center for Indian Art. Retrieved November 12, 2017 . 
17. ↑ TheAG.ca: History. Retrieved November 12, 2017 .