“Quebec”

Oil on canvas

118 x 105 inches

2016

Quebec

“Rising from the bottom of the canvas, as though from the depths of hell—and Adam Miller is a kind of Virgilian guide through the seething disorder of Quebec’s history—are scenes and figures alluding to the conflicts that marked the end of the 20th century in what was informally recognized as “a distinct society,” and finally formally recognized as “a nation within a united Canada.”  The former event occurred in 2003 during the administration of Jean Chretien (1993-2003), the latter in 2006 during the administration of Stephen Harper (2006-2015)—both Prime Ministers are pictured in Miller’s masterpiece.  But it was to no avail, for nobody quite knows what it means:  once French and still largely French speaking and Catholic Quebec remains an anomaly—dare one say a sore thumb, a stumbling block, even an Achilles heel?—in Canada, largely English speaking and Protestant however much a so-called “mosaic” of peoples (as distinct from the “melting pot” that the United States supposedly is).  Quebec’s peculiarly problematic presence in Canada—it’s technically part of it but emotionally not of it, uncomfortably in it however benefitting from it (it has the second largest economy in Canada)--signals the peculiarly problematic character of Canada itself.  

For Quebec’s repeated pursuit of independence and separateness—its perpetual rebelliousness in ostensibly peaceful Canada--threatens Canada with disintegration and diminishment, much as Catalonia’s threatens Spain with disintegration and diminishment, and Scotland’s threatens Great Britain with disintegration and diminishment.  However frustrated, the longing for independence remains an ideé fixe in the minds of many Quebecois, Catalonians, and Scots.  Catalonia and Scotland are also distinct societies and nations within a united nation, and all also have their own language—their mother tongue as distinct from the tongue of the father nation of which they are a part (increasingly more in name than in attitude), the conquering nation that incorporated them (in what they came to experience as a sort of Procrustes bed or straightjacket).  It is the root of their independence, as it were, not to say seemingly radical difference—absolute “Otherness”—all the more so because it is the language of the minority, the loser, the conquered:  alienation has been built into them by history. 

However wealthy Quebec, Catalonia, and Scotland have become—however much they have been granted power and privilege in the present, as though in compensation for their defeat in the past --they continue to suffer from an inferiority complex.  Hence the superiority—the upper hand---they imagine they will gain by overturning history—achieving independence, going their own way, no longer answerable to the greater authority of the nation to which they belong, no longer dependent on its largesse to survive.  The separatist movements in Quebec, Catalonia, and Scotland are part of an ongoing, global movement for autonomy and decolonization, self-determination and freedom—a climactic rebellion against the conquerors that absorbed, dehumanized, exploited, trivialized them for its own ends.  (Even Texas has threatened to secede from the “oppressive” United States, as though there was no advantage in being part of it and that it had taken advantage of Texas.)”

 -Donald Kuspit