If you have entered Montreal from the South Shore in the last month, you may have noticed that there is something different about the landscape. As nature turns gray, Montreal has acquired a touch of color that feels good. Françoise Sullivan’s mural is a colorful quilt that can be seen from afar.
There were a lot of people on a small stretch of rue Saint-Christophe which faces the Damiers 2023 mural. Its official address: 801, Sainte-Catherine Est, but it now belongs to all passers-by who see it up close or by far, with its 108 meters height, making it the most imposing in Montreal. It includes 33 colored squares on this concrete wall.
Françoise Sullivan was there, moved by the many tributes paid to her, but also very impressed by the work done by the MU muralists. “Is it scary being up there? », she asked Julien Sicre and Arnaud Grégoire, the site managers. The two muralists admitted that yes, in front of the artist who praised their bravery. “You are brave too,” replied Arnaud Grégoire spontaneously, with lovely complicity.
The mural is part of a collection started by MU in 2010 which pays tribute to Montreal’s cultural builders, all artistic disciplines combined – including Michel Rabagliati, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Alanis Obomsawin. Two works in this collection are immense. The one dedicated to Jean Paul Riopelle – Magnetic art, produced by Marc Séguin, rue Milton near McGill University. And the other, the Tower of Song, which represents Leonard Cohen in the city center. It is now a flagship work in Montreal.
As you can imagine, you don’t arrive overnight to paint such an area. A project of this magnitude requires patience and skill.
When the mural tribute to Riopelle was being created last year, the people of MU approached Mayor Valérie Plante, who gave her support to the Sullivan project a few months later, while she was sitting at the same table as Françoise Sullivan, at the ball at the Museum of Fine Arts. All that remained was to find a wall.
“I am a wall hunter,” says Michel de la Chenelière, president of the MU development committee. The Place Dupuis hotel belongs to the Hyatt group, but discussions were held with the owners of this establishment who now live in Montreal.
Funding was complicated, admits MU executive director Elizabeth-Anne Doyle. It is not yet finished. The total project will cost $300,000, provided by the City, the Ville-Marie borough, Tourisme Montréal, among others.
Françoise Sullivan is one of the signatories of the Refus global manifesto and the founders of the automatism movement, alongside Borduas and Riopelle. She has a long career in visual arts and has had a career as a dancer and choreographer.
MU wishes to project video images and photos of Françoise Sullivan’s performances in a subsequent phase of the mural, which would be a first for the organization.
The colored frames would become screens.
“We were looking for a place that would be meaningful for Françoise,” says Elizabeth-Anne Doyle. We chose this place which is close to the School of Fine Arts where she studied.
The MU organization is housed in the Jeanne-Mance residences, not far from Place Dupuis. “We ourselves are residents of the Latin Quarter. We live here, we consume here. We too, since the pandemic, have been very concerned by the way in which the neighborhood is deteriorating and the situation of vulnerable people around here,” says Elizabeth-Ann Doyle. MU thinks it can contribute to revitalization.
The coloring took two weeks, from the model, to painting the shapes on the wall. There were color changes once the rectangles were painted on the wall, often ordered by Françoise Sullivan herself, who followed the progress of the work.
“Colors speak in abstractions,” explains Corinne Lachance, production manager, for MU. The layout inevitably had to be adjusted. For example, squares are left to the concrete on the wall. In Françoise Sulllivan’s paintings, these squares are pale gray. But the concrete is darker than the paintings, which requires revisiting some of the colors once they are already applied. The sun and the brightness also change the perspectives. The same pink can have two prints.
There was also a pink rectangle that Françoise Sullivan found too faded once on the wall. She asked for it to be changed.
