Curatorial notes
Sarah Joncas painted "Rite of Spring" using oils, although the exact date remains unknown. The image is awash with the visual codes of fairy tales, in which a beautiful woman is laid out as if dead, only for life to spring from her seemingly inert body. This Canadian artist made this work at a time when old-fashioned painting had become marginalized by the institutions of the art world. This counter-cultural move is emphasized by the image, which harks back to a pre-industrial, rural world of folklore and myth. It conjures up stories of Persephone and other harvest deities who undergo symbolic death and rebirth. The pomegranate seeds are a direct allusion to that ancient Greek myth. We might see the artist's activity as an allegory for the position of painting in contemporary culture; its apparent death may only be a prelude to its re-emergence. Cultural historians might study publications from this period, exhibition records, and critical writings to fully understand the nature of the debates surrounding the status of painting.
