La légende des artistes, 1976
Documentation of the installation La légende des artistes and of the Corridart case. Exhibition view of Françoise Sullivan. The 1970s, 2021, Galerie de l’UQAM
Photo: Galerie de l’UQAM
La légende des artistes: boitier sur Norman Bethune, «Nord-Est Université McGill», as part of the Corridart event, Montreal, 1976
Photo: Louis-Philippe Meunier (city of Montreal Archives)
Françoise Sullivan’s personal papers
Hommage aux maisons où naissent les légendes, as part of the Corridart event, Montreal, 1976
Unknown photographer
Françoise Sullivan’s personal papers
La légende des artistes, 1976
12 panels and 6 display cases made of wood, steel and glass, including photographs, photocopies, texts and objects
Outdoor installation created for Corridart during the Montreal Olympic Games with the assistance of David Moore and Jean-Serge Champagne
Photo: Louis-Philippe Meunier (city of Montreal Archives)
Preserved fragments and documentation. Françoise Sullivan’s personal papers
Artwork and documentation
La légende des artistes (1976) was conceived by Françoise Sullivan for Corridart, a mammoth outdoor exhibition to be presented along Sherbrooke Street during the 1976 Montreal Olympics. To develop this walkabout of a different kind (it is the exhibition visitors who were to do the walking), she located the houses on Sherbrooke Street and neighbouring streets where Montreal artists, writers and intellectuals had lived and worked. She conducted thorough research on her “legendary heroes” (Émile Nelligan, Paul-Émile Borduas, Claude Gauvreau, Norman Bethune), gathered and combined various artifacts that paid tribute to them, and arranged everything in glass display cases along Sherbrooke Street. The work had only a brief existence. The fate of is well known: the municipal authorities judged it inappropriate, and by order of the mayor, it was dismantled in the night even before the games opened.