NEWS FLASH! 
Gallery Moos Ltd. proudly presents Paintings by Suzanne Tevlin (The Weather Series) - Friday, Sep 17th, 2010 - Sat, Oct 16th, 2010 - curated by Rupert Young. In Partnership with the Canadian Stage Company. @ The Bluma Appel Theater 2010 -27 Front Street East, 12pm 6pm Monday-Friday Open to the public

Suzanne Tevlin is an artist, art historian and writer. She has lectured on the history of art at the University of Toronto for several years, as well as at USMC, OCAD, Parsons-Paris and virtually every major Museum in Europe and North America.

She is the author of "The Conspiracy of Silence; Gericault's 'Raft of the Medusa' and the Abolitionist Movement". Send Suzanne your e-mail address if you would like a free down-load of the first chapter. She is currently working on a second book entitled "The Invisible Woman: Searching for The Black Female in Western Art".

As an international lecturer and artist she spent 12 years in Europe during which time she did research and  lectured  at  Le Musee Ephrussi de Rothschild and La Villa Kerylos in France. During her time in France she also founded "The Tevlin Perspective: Art History from the Artist's point of View".

Suzanne has had numerous exhibitions in Paris, Monaco, along the Cote d'Azur and in London, as well as in Canada. She is represented in collections throughout Europe and North America.

Well, here's part of the introduction to my new book "Conspiracy of Silence".
I come from a generation defined and transformed by conspiracies: JFK, and the magic bullet; Marilyn Monroe's "suicide"; the demise of Pope John Paul I.  We loved intrigue. Perhaps it justified the wicked, cynical world of our fathers to our young television enhanced minds. But, fed on cold war rhetoric and space age optimism, we were never happier than when debating the pros and cons of the current cabal.

Paris, during the early 19th century was a time of intrigue and conspiracy, as well. Theodore Gericault's "Raft of The Medusa"  represents just one  conspiracy, started  shortly after the masterworks first presentation to the Parisian art establishment in 1819, and  studiously maintained well into the late 20th by the persistent need of an elitist group to avoid that shabby look of moral cowardice.  The very thought is tantalizing.  Old and dirty laundry hung out to dry. But what was the conspiracy, and  how could it have been hidden for so many years?

Unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1819, Gericault's Raft of The Medusa  (fig.1) is considered to have been the first true expression of Romanticism1. The first socially conscious painting to capture the imagination of its contemporary populace, Gericault presented the world with a dramatic representation of the devastating results of political and moral corruption.

The epic painting, studied by generations of art students, has always been a source of adolescent chagrin.  Gericault's "Raft of The Medusa"  depicts a great dirty pile of semi-naked men, all built like Charles Atlas, perched precariously on a spindly looking raft, schussing along at a mad speed, on an impossible angle, with a bloody great raggedy, old sail made of who knows what.  And atop this pyramid of manly muscle - a black man - looking for all the world  like an ebony apparition from above.

The political scandal and corruption, which created the scenario that allowed the Medusa tragedy, the needless shipwreck and loss of close to 150 lives, due to starvation, cannibalism, mutiny and madness, has always been acknowledged.  Yet, not until 1873 was any  critical mention made of the remarkably provocative, racially integrated grouping on the Medusa2 and the abolitionist sympathy of its creator that must be drawn from its inclusion.  The black angel was relegated to limbo, to exist, in perpetuity, beyond the light.

My first sighting of  La Meduse was projected onto a high school art room wall, in Ottawa, Ontario, by a teacher who was reputed to be a failed preacher. The slide, like everything else in that odd little town, was in black and white. The disenchanted ecclesiastic  may have failed in his former pastoral vocation, but acted as my good shepherd, hustling me, helter-skelter, into an art world about which he had only heard  murmurings, and from which I have  never looked back.

He didn't know much about Gericault, the painting,  the tragedy, or the conspiracy, but he had heard talk of scandal. In those days, scandal was a four letter word, and I wanted to shout it.  After all, we were changing the world.  To me, teenaged Vietnam protester, folk singer, and painter of wildly expressionistic Roualtesque works, scandal was intoxicating. Especially old scandal. I was deeply involved with Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters I seem to remember. Controversy and corruption were somehow more dramatic when imagined in corsets and vintage gowns.

This was to be the seed of a life long interest in the imaging of the non-European in Western Art and has led to my attempt to illuminate the importance of the Abolitionist Movement in the making of The Raft of the Medusa. That, and  the universal blind eye that was turned away from this courageous painting, which should have made many reconsider their stand on the racial hierarchy of the time was nothing short of a conspiracy of magnificent proportion. Indeed, it was a  conspiracy of silence.

       "Conspiracy n. Act of conspiring; combination for unlawful purpose,
        plot; -of silence, agreement to say nothing concerning a matter.
        [ME, f.AF conspiracie, alt. f. OF -ation f. L. conspiratio-onis (as
        CONSPIRE ;  see -ation)]" 3


The 1st chapter downloads will be ready shortly. Let me know if you're interested...S

My work can now be viewed on the London based Saatchi Gallery Online as well as ART BREAK. Both links are below. ARTBREAK has the best images...
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Suzanne+Tevlin/110853.html
http://www.artbreak.com/SuzanneTevlin

Please feel free to send your comments or suggestions to me at
suzannetevlin@sympatico.ca