In a short essay titled Clothing as Metaphor, William McElcheran drew attention to some of the central concerns of his distinctive body of work: “My aim is to communicate at several levels simultaneously. Representational elements, narrative qualities, humour, are at the most approachable level…Allegorical, fantastical, religious qualities are hidden in the commonplace.” This statement from the artist feels like a particularly useful point of entry into a sculptural oeuvre that sought both to adorn the spaces where it was featured and to carry a series of messages about the shared experiences of human life. The sculptural works discussed here, importantly, are public pieces, and in their public placement and through McElcheran’s recurring figurative motifs they come to gently mimic the real hustle and bustle of their passing viewership. In doing so the sculptures perform an important public service—monumentalizing the small acts and feelings of the everyday: the perennial commute, the pressures of collective life, the excitements and passing anxieties of the contemporary professional.
McElcheran’s enthusiasm for embedding the profound within the pedestrian is strikingly demonstrated in Great Minds in Conversation as the World Goes By, 1973. This large bronze (just over eleven feet in length), fixed on subtle pillars above the ground was unveiled on June 6, 1973, on the grounds of the John M. Kelly Library of Saint Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. The sculpture is divided into two mural-like sides, with one seen from the library building, and the opposite visible from the street. When the work is viewed from the library (presumably by those making use of the library–rushing students, the migrating professoriate, and all those generally and otherwise curious) the bronze features a crowd composed of ancient and modern intellectual luminaries–highlights include St. Theresa of Avila, James Joyce, and Eugène Ionescu. Whereas on the opposite, street-facing side, the sculpture presents a decidedly anonymous crowd who find themselves interlocked in a larger, shared movement. Through this ingenious use of a simple sculptural division, McElcheran makes a salient comment, namely, that genius and intellect (no matter how impressive) always remain tethered to an individual, to a person, who coheres and is lost within a crowd as easily as the next. The work is both a tribute to the excellence of human endeavor and a reminder of the ever-present anonymity and alienation of the individual. This succinct commentary is characteristic of McElcheran, who routinely leaned on humour, absurdity, and satire in an effort to caution against the toils of modern life. However, just as characteristic, and certainly present in Great Minds in Conversation as the World Goes By, 1973, is the generous quality of McElcheran’s critique–McElcheran pokes serious fun while foregoing the familiar venom common to such social commentary.
The mid-1960’s saw the emergence McElcheran’s businessman motif, a character who would become a recurring figure in McElcheran’s artistic output in the following decades. The businessman, either alone or in groups is a thickset figure dressed in brimmed hats, ties, overcoats and oxfords. Often with suitcase in-hand these ubiquitous men stand, rush in crowds, and engage in animated conversation. This character and his recurrence within McElcheran’s work held a specific importance for the artist, as he explained that the businessman “...replaces the classical hero. All the classical artists were dealing with the heroic and how they could find images for this that were larger than life. I, on the other hand, am trying to find my image for the anti-ideal, my anti-hero. So the whole idea of my businessman is that he is exactly that sort of Everyman, the ubiquitous non-hero.” The businessman makes striking appearances in both Veni Vidi Vici (aka Businessman on a Horse), 1989, and The Businessman, 1980. As the title suggests, Veni Vidi Vici, installed on the grounds of Brennan Hall, St. Michael’s College, has the businessman sat upon a horse, proud and ridiculous in equal measure on his mount, with his left fist held low and balled, somehow recalling some lost nobility that is comically unavailable to a man like McElcheran’s businessman. Perhaps Veni Vidi Vici finds the businessman caught in a daydream, as a figure gazing proudly into the future while not quite knowing how he arrived at the present. The Businessman, 1980, standing alone, holding his customary hat and briefcase among the pale marble and block pillars of Brookfield Place, stares vaguely upward at the huge mass of the building. Here, one is tempted to interpret the businessman’s upward gaze as a kind of awe, however, he seems just as likely to be dumbfounded by the economic and social bustle of the structure he finds himself standing in—regardless, he has showed up, arrived, self-aware but largely untroubled—as befits the tragicomic fate of his character.
Three major works of bas-relief, The Post Industrial Kid (1980), South Wind (1987)–both towering marble pieces in WaterPark Place–and Cross Section (1984)–rendered in terracotta tiles at Dundas Subway Station–exemplify McElcheran’s convictions regarding the interweaving of art, architecture, and public space. McElcheran took the use of public art very seriously and saw the decorative role of artworks as being anything but superficial: “Decoration is to architecture what development is to music. A great symphony cannot be merely the bald statement of a theme…When used sensitively by architects as part of their architecture, the nuances of form, texture, light and shade made possible by these so-called lesser things greatly increase the expression of their buildings.” Through their materials, subject, and execution these pieces grant a grandeur to their human subjects within the enormity of architectural space, thereby humanizing the huge built surfaces of the city that their viewers pass through. Cross Section, again sees McElcheran’s businessman, found here in larger than life profile, navigating a sort of permanently fixed impression of the dense, living crowds of the Dundas Street Subway Station. He presses on with his task among the mass, forever in transit to wherever we all might be going–and in such a hurry.
In The Post Industrial Kid we find McElcheran’s non-hero again, here repeated at least seven times over within the composition in a purposeful, almost comical ad nauseam. The businessman strides ahead at varying angles or speaks hurriedly with versions of himself in the middle distance, and all while a boy remains still and contemplative, set just outside of the mass of the crowd. South Wind seems to act as a conclusion to the vibrancy of the events that had comprised The Post Industrial Kid. The businessman, now alone, bereft of his public, is seen from behind, staring out onto what we can assume is Lake Ontario–his eager steps finally arrested by the barrier of the water.
