Jack Chambers
1931–1978 · Canadian painter and filmmaker, a key figure of Perceptual Realism
Jack Chambers (John Richard Chambers, London, Ontario, 1931 – 1978) was a Canadian painter and filmmaker whose work moved from surrealist-influenced beginnings toward a photo-realist manner of his own. He is remembered above all for Perceptual Realism, the theory he set out in an essay of the late 1960s, which held that art could reveal the essence of matter through light and material. It remains a reference point in Canadian art history.
Chambers studied in his home city and then spent eight years in Europe, from 1953 to 1961. There he met Picasso, who suggested he keep studying in Barcelona, and his early paintings from that period show the influence of Surrealism. After returning to Canada he experimented with paint application and vivid colour, and by the mid-1960s he was fragmenting forms and bringing a sense of temporal movement into his canvases. Around 1968 and 1969 he painted 401 Towards London No. 1, a view of Highway 401 heading west toward London.
Between 1964 and 1970 he completed six films, including The Hart of London, which Stan Brakhage called one of the greatest films ever made. After a leukemia diagnosis in 1969 he painted more realistically for the rest of his life, often depicting places in London and its surroundings. In 1968 he founded CARFAC after a dispute with the National Gallery of Canada over reproduction rights. His work remains in Canadian public collections and was revisited in a 2012 retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario.