Steve Martin, Wild and Crazy Art Curator

At Boston’s MFA, the comedian Steve Martin has curated an exhibition of the great Canadian artist Lawren Harris’s work—which incorporates, he said, ‘the self, the soul, an exhalation of mankind.’

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The first time the comedian Steve Martin came across the work of renowned Canadian landscape painter Lawren Harris, he thought he’d stumbled upon an unknown.

Martin explained as much in Boston on Friday afternoon for a preview of The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, an exhibition that he himself curated.

Martin elaborated on his longstanding love affair, and the cultural resonance of Harris’ work, alongside Cynthia Burlingham of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Andrew Hunter of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the MFA’s Taylor Poulin.

Martin will appear again on Saturday at the museum with artist Eric Fischl, and The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. 

“I’ve had a long fascination and interest in American Modernism and American landscape painting in the 19th century and early 20th century,” Martin said. “When I saw Lawren Harris (who lived from 1885 to 1970) I actually mistook him for a Rockwell Kent, an American painter of the same era and same subject matter. But I thought this was the best Rockwell Kent I've ever seen.”

“Actually, I thought, 20 years ago, ‘Oh I’ve discovered somebody!’—not knowing that he was already Canada’s most important artist.”

After having spent some time evangelizing about the grandeur of his modernist landscapes—largely of the icy shores of Lake Superior, the Arctic, and the Rocky Mountains—the Hammer asked Martin if he might be interested in curating a show.

His first instinct was “of course not,” Martin said. But Harris’ relative anonymity here in the States convinced him it would be worth it. 

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