The Age of Creativity

Art, Memory, My Father, and Me

Emily Urquhart

• Publisher: The Walrus Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781487005320
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

A moving portrait of a father and daughter relationship and a case for late-stage creativity from Emily Urquhart, the bestselling author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes.

"The fundamental misunderstanding of our time is that we belong to one age group or another. We all grow old. There is no us and them. There was only ever an us." — from The Age of Creativity

It has long been thought that artistic output declines in old age. When Emily Urquhart and her family celebrated the eightieth birthday of her father, the illustrious painter Tony Urquhart, she found it remarkable that, although his pace had slowed, he was continuing his daily art practice of drawing, painting, and constructing large-scale sculptures, and was even innovating his style. Was he defying the odds, or is it possible that some assumptions about the elderly are flat-out wrong? After all, many well-known visual artists completed their best work in the last decade of their lives, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne among them. With the eye of a memoirist and the curiosity of a journalist, Urquhart began an investigation into late-stage creativity, asking: Is it possible that our best work is ahead of us? Is there an expiry date on creativity? Do we ever really know when we've done anything for the last time?

The Age of Creativity is a graceful, intimate blend of research on ageing and creativity, including on progressive senior-led organizations, such as a home for elderly theatre performers and a gallery in New York City that only represents artists over sixty, and her experiences living and travelling with her father. Emily Urquhart reveals how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives, and tells a new story about the possibilities of elder-hood.

Notes

Prologue: Still Life

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The Earth Returns to Life

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Slivka, Rose. “Introduction” in Elaine de Kooning: The Spirit of Abstract Expressionism, Selected Writings. New York: George Braziller, 1994.

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Vastokas, Joan. Dialogues of Reconciliation: The Imagination of Tony Urquhart. Canadian Matrix Series, organized by the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, and co-sponsored by the Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ontario, 1989.

Transforming Chronologies: An Atlas of Drawings, Part One (exhibition). January to April, 2006, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Hughes, Robert. “Triumph of the will: He was old, deaf and virtually broke. But a new exhibition of Goya’s last works shows that nothing could dampen his creative spirit.” The Guardian, April 12, 2006.

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King, Ross. “Claude Monet and the Old Age Style.” Huffington Post, March 2, 2019. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ross-king/claude-monet-water-lilies_b_15107052.html.

King, Ross. Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies. Toronto: Anchor, 2017.

Munsterberg, Hugo. The Crown of Life.

Smiles, Sam. “Unfinished? Repulsive? Or the work of a prophet?: Late Turner.” Tate Etc. 15 (Spring 2009). http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/unfinished-repulsive-or-work-prophet.

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Hill, Kelly. “Senior Artists in Canada” (report). Hill Strategies Research, 2010. https://hillstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/1970/01/Senior_Artists_full_report.pdf.

White, Tracie. “Eye diseases changed great painters’ vision of their work later in their lives.” Stanford Report, April 2007. https://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/april11/med-optart-041107.html.

Ehrlich White. Renoir.

Levin, Gail. Lee Krasner: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Utermohlen, Pat. “William Utermohlen.” September 2006. https://www.williamutermohlen.org/index.php/9-about/essays/4-pat-2006.

Hester, Micaela (Public Relations Program Manager, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe). Personal correspondence with author, May 19, 2017.

Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.

Kastenbaum, Robert. “The Creative Impulse: Why It Won’t Just Quit.” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 15:2 (Spring 1991): 7–12.

King and Queen

Simonton, Dean Keith. “The Swan-Song Phenomenon: Last-works effects for 172 classical composers.” Psychology of Aging 4:1 (March 1989): 42–47.

King, Ross. Interview with author. April 17, 2017.

Kardosh, Robert (Director, Marion Scott Gallery, Vancouver). Interviews with author. June‒October 2017.

Mackenzie, Hugh. Show 88 (exhibition). Bau-xi Gallery, Toronto, September 10–22, 2016. www.bau-xi.com/blogs/exhibitions/hugh-mackenzie-show-88.

Urquhart, Emily. “Portrait of the Artist as Father,” in Sandra Martin, ed., The First Man in My Life: Daughters Write About Fathers. Toronto: Penguin, 2007: 227–238.

Corkboard

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Table of contents

• The Walrus Books
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue: Still Life
• The Earth Returns to Life
• King and Queen
• Corkboard
• House Among Trees
• Untitled
• Raft of the Medusa
• Articulated Lair
• Starry Night(s)
• The Runner
• Cross-Stitch
• The Wreck of Hope
• Sun in an Empty Room
• Epilogue: Sunset
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• About the Publisher