Sunday, December 2, 2007

Open Letter to the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society

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>>> Revised on December 2nd, 2009 - click HERE!--









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"Norval Morrisseau Collage" - compiled by Spirit Walker
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Dear Committee members of the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society,

My name is Spirit Walker ( my personal name can be available by contacting me at spiritwalker2008@gmail.com ). I am the BLOG Master of the NORVAL MORRISSEAU BLOG that addresses different issues of the Art of Norval Morrisseau. I have recently confronted Mr. Bryant Ross, who is the gallery director of Coghlan Art Studio/Gallery, by asking him indirectly how could he make such statements that all the paintings for sale on eBay are fakes? He has replied to me with quoted comment below:
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"Hi, my name is Bryant Ross and I am the director of Coghlan Art Studio and Gallery. I am the individual you refer to. My warning on E-bay is not meant to scare anyone. It is meant to inform the public about the status of the Morrisseau paintings on E-bay. I am doing this at the request of the artist himself. Out of all the paintings that I have displayed on my web site you had no trouble picking out the 2 fakes. I bought these 2 paintings from a dealer from Winnipeg. When Morrisseau told me that they were not his I realized that I had been ripped off and I took them off the market. I have since donated them at my own expense to the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society to use as example of the fake paintings. It has never been stated that all the galleries in Canada have fake paintings. But there are many fakes in the marketplace. You seem to think that the motivation in this is money. The fact is that Norval Morrisseau does not want his legacy to include these fake paintings."

I have a special request for your organization that many of the readers of this BLOG would like to read about. Can you please verify that you have received these two paintings from Mr. Ross as he stated in his correspondence directed to me. These two paintings that he considers fake are at the top left corner and at the bottom right corner of my posting titled "Norval Morrisseau Collage" compiled by myself (click on image above to enlage it for closer examination). I presented these two paintings in question for the public to see how they compare with other paintings that are in my opinion original works of Norval Morrisseau.

Thank you,

Spirit Walker


Note: Committee members of NMHS are as follows: -

* Viviane Gray - Indian and Inuit Art Centre, Dept. of Indian Affairs & Northern Development;
* Lee Ann Martin - Curator of Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art, Museum of Civilization;
* Elizabeth McLuhan - Dept. of History, University of Winnipeg;
* Dr. Ruth Philips - Professor of Art History;
* Greg Hill - Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada;
* Richard H. Baker - Barrister and Solicitor.

They can be contacted at norvalmorrisseauheritage@gmail.com -

MISSION STATEMENT: "The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society was established at the request of Norval Morrisseau to research, document and preserve his artistic achievement and protect the integrity of his art. It seeks to achieve this mission by establishing and maintaining a registry of his works, publishing and updating a catalogue raisonne of his artistic output and providing the necessary expertise to authenticate his art."

/The paintings in this posting are authentic works of © Norval Morrisseau/

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bryant Ross claims to have donated the 2 supposedly fake paintings to the NMHS. Am I missing something or did I see at least one if not both of them up for auction just after they came off his website?? Does anybody else remember these pieces - I think they were then up for auction on one of the Live ebay auctions from a seller out west - the one with the fish didn't sell if I recall - Am I missing something or has the untouchable Bryant Ross been caught selling what he considers fakes to the unsuspecting public??? Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

Anonymous said...

Did the NMHS ever respond to this letter? Did you have better luck than anyone else in actually getting a reply?
KHVH

Anonymous said...

Tonight, Saturday 08 April, 2008 on APTN we celebrated the NAAF. A young woman sang a song of going west. This brought tears to my eyes. I came west, but always when we move, even if to breathe, we feel the river of our spirits moving. So when we came to a close with Norval Morrisseau, suddenly his Shamman was here and brought us to this place to thank Norval, and all the many spirits forever singing in his art ...and through our humble human hearts. Thank you, Norval.

Spirit Walker said...

Up to date NMHS has not answered to the open letter I directed to them more than four months ago...

X-Ray said...

These paintings have been presented at Seahawk Auction in BC.

Auction search on "Morrisseau" at the auction dates June 18, 2005 and November 5, 2005 at http://www.seahawkauctions.com/

Results
June 18, 2005
"Lot # 83 : Original Norval Morrisseau Painting "Upper and Lower Worlds" 84"x 35" Good Condition with Some Cracking Estimate: $ 10000.00" was sold for Sold For CAD$: 3200.00

November 5, 2005
"Lot # 125 : Norval Morrisseau Original Painting on Canvas "Water Spirits" 56"x 48" Good Condition with Minor Crack Estimate: $ 10000.00" was not sold.

This text is posted here and in the Blog's posting: "Morrisseau History Detective Stories (Part I)" (April 11, 2008).

X-Ray

Spirit Walker said...

More than a year has passed and Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society has not answered yet!?

The reason behind these controversies which are shaking Norval Morrisseau's Art World is due to the fact that individuals and galleries that were closely associated with the artist have been spreading false statements that paintings of a certain style were not done by Norval Morrisseau's hand. Particularily those paintings from the 1970's presented on this blog and that have been offered for sale for more than three decades in galleries all across Canada. I could understand that they are trying "to harness" the secondary market; but discrediting a large body of work by Norval Morrisseau shows great disrespect to the artist and their actions cannot be tolerated. In my opinion they are harming the Norval Morrisseau art market and consequently his legacy.

I am dissapointed that Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society is not honouring their mission statement which states:

"The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society was established at the request of Norval Morrisseau to research, document and preserve his artistic achievement and protect the integrity of his art. It seeks to achieve this mission by establishing and maintaining a registry of his works, publishing and updating a catalogue raisonne of his artistic output and providing the necessary expertise to authenticate his art."

Why are they silent? Is their silence approval for what has been presented by individuals in question? If they truly care in "protecting the integrity of Norval Morrisseau's art" they would need to speak up. Their silence is hurting the legacy of the man they are supposed to protect and the longer they wait to publish a public statement regarding this matter presented herein, the longer the legacy of Norval Morrisseau will suffer.

Thank you for the attention.

Sincerely, Spirit Walker