Joyce Wieland | Reason over Passion

Joyce Wieland

Reason over Passion

1968

Quilted cotton, 256.5 x 302.3 x 8 cm

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Joyce Wieland reported had high hopes for Pierre Trudeau when he became Canada’s 15th Prime Minister, in 1968. She and her then-husband Michael Snow hosted a reception for the Liberal leader at their Chambers Street loft in New York City, and were impressed by his knowledge of avant-garde cinema, dance, jazz drummers, etc. 

Inspired by Trudeau's notion of “Reason over passion” ("that is the theme of all my writing,” he declared) she promptly stitched the phrase into this celebrated quilt work, which ended up in Trudeau’s home (stories differ as to whether the work was gifted to, or purchased by him.). A decade later it was almost destroyed in a domestic spat [see below].

The following year Wieland released a film of the same name, which was screened in the Directors' Fortnight program at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. The phrase (at least in online searches) is more strongly connected to her now, than to him. 

Later disillusioned by the Liberal leader, Weiland has claimed that both the party and the artwork were jokes at Trudeau’s expense. Certainly conflating reason over passion with a bedspread would seem to support her later assertion. 

“Not long after getting home, on a terrible evening full of misery and rage, I attacked a priceless quilt by Joyce Wieland, a piece of art that hung on the sitting-room wall and one that Pierre particularly loved. Stitched on the front, neatly and smugly (it seemed to me then), were his favourite words: “Reason over Passion.” I seized a pair of scissors and cut the words off. Taking a box of pins, I then switched the words round, so they read “Passion over Reason.” I was in one of my manic phases, and I had concluded that the only way to make Pierre Trudeau listen was to desecrate art.”

- Margaret Trudeau, Changing My Mind, 2010