The Royal Art Lodge
The Royal Art Lodge is a collaborative art group with the most recent members being three Canadian artists: Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, and Neil Farber. The artists all hail from the University of Manitoba, where they met and began doing their artworks. In total, there have been nine people that worked in and around the group on the art.
The group was founded in 1996 by Dumontier, Dzama, Farber, and some other students. Each piece that they made had around three different artists working on it, each artist building on what the one before them had done. This led to their drawings having a loose, almost random feel. They were able to draw simpler designs with captions that portrayed an existential, and much of the time humorous, tone. For example, the drawing of a goat with the caption, “At the doorstep with some literature that may interest you,” on the surface is humorous in that it depicts a goat that seems to be here to sell you a book. However, a deeper thought about the work shows a satanist version of evangelism that really cuts against assumptions by showing a commonly satanic symbol of a goat offering literature presumably about satanism.
It is works of art like this that make The Royal Art Lodge so interesting. Many of their artworks use limited colors and very simple backgrounds. This causes the viewer to really focus on the subject of the drawing and the caption itself, which is often written on top of the image of the drawing. Due to their breaking up in 2008 they are no longer working as a collective anymore, however, many of the former members of the group still make solo art. For example, Marcel Dzama is still working on drawings and paintings that exhibit worldwide.
The Royal Art Lodge has artwork that varies in style, tone, and subject because of the multitude of artists who became members of the group. They have a very unique and existential feel while simultaneously being very approachable for the average person.
Works Cited
“Espacio Minimo.” Artmap.com, artmap.com/espaciominimo/exhibition/the-royal-art-lodge-2007.
“Life After Winnipeg’s The Royal Art Lodge.” Ballast, 27 Nov. 2019, ballastmag.com/2012/10/life-after-winnipegs-the-royal-art-lodge/. Al-art-lodge-2007.
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