Reception

Provenance:
Private Collection, Vancouver

Literature:
Nancy Townshend, Maxwell Bates: Canada's Premier Expressionist of the 20th Century, His Art, Life and Prisoner of War Notebook, 2005, page 42
Notes:
Reception is one of Maxwell Bates's pre-eminent works from his 1960s and 1970s Cocktail Party and Reception series. Bates retired from his work as an architect in the 1960s, and was able to fully focus his energy, humour and intelligence into his art. Inspired by the parties that he regularly attended and diverse social scenarios, Bates masterfully juxtaposed the partygoers to convey the individual character of each. Nancy Townsend writes, "Bates's bold and highly colourful cocktail party and reception paintings of the 1960s and 1970s in Victoria, also about bondage and freedom in the human condition, transcend the constraints of symbolic art of the earlier puppet/scarecrow works. In these meaningful transposition[s] of real-life scenes in Victoria, Bates often exposes humankind's inhumanity to humankind of varying degrees in socially charged settings, and by inference, freedom from this. In these socially engaging paintings Bates takes Expressionism to a new level." Works from this important series are quintessentially Bates, and are rarely available to the market.