Trends in Canadian Art

Abstract

The question of the kind and value of the relation of Canadian art and culture to the art and culture which impinge on the consciousness of Canadians from without the borders of Canada has been discussed intermittently and with varying bias since the speeches of Lord Lorne in 1879 and 1880 advocating and commemorating the foundation of the Royal Academy. An initial willing cultural tutelage gave way to a period of increasingly assertive national independence in the first decades of the present century, when the still outstanding work of Canadian art was accomplished; The issue continues in hot debate, particularly “on the air,” with the assumption that, in contrast to the nature of scientific, technical, and economic trends, which no one supposes can or should be peculiar to Canada or uniquely Canadian, art should be in some way uniquely representative or expressive of a Canadian spirit, and that what it derives from circumstances that are not peculiarly Canadian is inimical to the development of a genuinely Canadian culture.