Canadian Art Research Articles

Artists, Society, and Activism: The Federation of Canadian Artists and the Social Organization of Canadian Art

The Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA), established in the wake of the 1941 Kingston Conference, became a central institution through which Canadian artists attempted to reorganize their relationship to society. In particular, members of the FCA built on a series of more long-standing concerns about the problematic relationship between art and society under conditions of modernity. The FCA's goal was to bridge the gap between the arts and life and, as such, it served as a focal point through which the artists debated the character this new relationship should take. Looking first to contribute to Canada's war effort and then post-war reconstruction, the FCA ultimately instituted a series of policies that lead it away from its original objectives even while it maintained a discourse critical of the fractured and alienating nature of modern life and culture.

Ethical Considerations in Art Therapy

:Art therapists, counsellors, and mental health professionals who utilize arts-based interventions encounter many, sometimes unexpected, ethical issues (Moon, 2000). Because it is crucial that these professionals enter into an open dialogue about potential ethical dilemmas, this article discusses several areas that have unique implications in the art therapy field (the therapeutic space and art materials, the rights of artwork, the use of art techniques by other professionals, and art therapy research). In doing so, it references the ethical codes of the two national art therapy associations in North America - the Canadian Art Therapy Association’s (CATA) Standards of Practice and the American Art Therapy Association’s (AATA, 2011) Ethical Principles for Art Therapists. Where possible, it considers the larger community of mental health professionals by referencing the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association’s (CCPA, 2007) Code of Ethics. Future directions are discussed.

Humanities

Humanities

Emily Carr, an Introduction to Her Life and Art by A. Newlands

Newlands, Anne. Emily Carr, an Introduction to Her Life and Art. Toronto: Firefly Books, 1996. Print. Engaging, attractively formatted and printed with an eye for good reproduction quality, Emily Carr, an Introduction to Her Life and Art places the images of Carr’s paintings within pages with a satisfying field of white space in equilibrium with a judicious amount of text. A well chosen selection of Carr’s most accessible and emblematic works adeptly capture both the variation of the expression, different periods and subjects of focus during Carr’s career as an artist. Newlands commits much of the text to an insightful level of historical and personal context for Carr’s life and experiences, enhancing the accessibility of the images and providing the reader with a robust understanding of the changing focus and techniques in Carr’s work and its significance to Canadian culture. Photographic images of Carr at her most iconic and living in her assortment of strange shacks in the forest (best secret hideouts ever) are sure to capture the imagination of younger readers. A very astute editorial choice was made to enhance the young reader’s understanding of Carr’s work and her commitment to learning and practice by including the more casual sketches and illustrative journal entries that Carr made throughout her life. The inclusion of these more unstructured and personal images contribute to a strong sense of the consistency of the creative impulses that motivated Carr and of her personal perspectives and level of commitment to her work. It is also a constructive way to introduce younger readers and artists to less formalized and accessible modes of expression and a deeper understanding of the effort and diverse mediums and approaches inherent in the individual creative process. Newlands, a skilled and dedicated art educator who has devoted her talent to promoting Canadian art and artists, doesn’t hesitate to use awestruck, personalized and poetic language in discussing Carr’s life and work. Her enthusiasm for her subject is evident, clearly communicated and compelling. Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Matilda Roche

Theosophical Influences on the Painting and Writing of Lawren Harris: Re-Imagining Theosophy through Canadian Art

Abstract: Lawren Harris (1885–1970) was a prominent painter in Canada and the United States. He was instrumental in the forming of the Canadian Group of Seven in 1920, and in the 1930s he helped to organize the Canadian Group of Painters and the Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico. Harris worked to promote the development of the arts in Canada, and he became an influential figure whose paintings are currently quite popular and valuable. In 1924 he became a formal member of the Toronto Lodge of the International Theosophical Society. He was a committed and active theosophist, and he published a number of essays and contributed to radio broadcasts on the topic. He was influenced by theosophical beliefs and ideas throughout his life, so much so that one might say that he re-imagined theosophy through Canadian art. This paper explores the nature and role of theosophical ideas in the visual art and writings of Lawren Harris. It clarifies and analyzes the way in which he drew upon theosophical theory in relating art to spiritual transformation and liberation, and in the development of his views of the soul, the artistic process, and intuitive and mystical experiences. It also illustrates how theosophical beliefs and ideas influenced and informed some of Harris's paintings. The paper also reflects in the conclusion on the nature and significance of Harris's thought and painting as a possible response or option to contemporary materialist theories of art, drawing briefly on related ideas espoused by Wassily Kandinsky and proposed in modern art therapy and practical theology.

Theosophical Influences on the Painting and Writing of Lawren Harris: Re-Imagining Theosophy through Canadian Art

Lawren Harris (1885-1970) was a prominent painter in Canada and the United States. He was instrumental in the forming of the Canadian Group of Seven in 1920, and in the 1930s he helped to organize the Canadian Group of Painters and the Transcendental Painting Group in New Mexico. Harris worked to promote the development of the arts in Canada, and he became an influential figure whose paintings are currently quite popular and valuable. In 1924 he became a formal member of the Toronto Lodge of the International Theosophical Society. He was a committed and active theosophist, and he published a number of essays and contributed to radio broadcasts on the topic. He was influenced by theosophical beliefs and ideas throughout his life, so much so that one might say that he re-imagined theosophy through Canadian art. This paper explores the nature and role of theosophical ideas in the visual art and writings of Lawren Harris. It clarifies and analyzes the way in which he drew upon theosophical theory in relating art to spiritual transformation and liberation, and in the development of his views of the soul, the artistic process, and intuitive and mystical experiences. It also illustrates how theosophical beliefs and ideas influenced and informed some of Harris's paintings. The paper also reflects in the conclusion on the nature and significance of Harris's thought and painting as a possible response or option to contemporary materialist theories of art, drawing briefly on related ideas espoused by Wassily Kandinsky and proposed in modern art therapy and practical theology.

The Representation of First Nations Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Canadian art galleries have long been criticized for their poor inclusion of First Nations art, especially historical works. In November 2008, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) opened new Canadian art gallery halls, with 2,000 new acquisitions donated by Ken Thomson. The AGO hired Gerald McMaster, who has tried to make historical First Nations art a key element of the story of Canadian art, as its first Aboriginal curator of the AGO’s Canadian art department. This article reviews several historical events, and the politics and discourse of the representation of First Nations art at the AGO, to examine the success of this new venture, especially in terms of its public appeal.

Age–price profiles for Canadian painters at auction

We conduct an empirical analysis of the effect on the auction price of a Canadian painting of the age of the painter at the time of creation of the painting. We consider over two hundred artists, active over the entire history of Canadian art, who are pooled in the estimation of a hedonic regression in which a polynomial function in age enters as a regressor along with several other control variables. We consider the possibility that the age–price relationship has changed over time by: (a) estimating separate age–price functions for three generational groups of artists—those born before 1880, between 1880 and 1920, and after 1920 and thus coming of age in the world of post-war ‘contemporary art’ and (b) estimating a parameterization where the shape of the age–price profile is permitted to change continuously depending on the year of birth of the artist. Our principal result is that artists born more recently tend to ‘peak’ earlier in their careers than those of previous generations.

Cumulative clinical pregnancy rates privileging elective single embryo transfer: a mathematical model from the quebec (Canada) publicly-funded in vitro fertilisation (IVF) program

To estimate the cumulative pregnancy rates in women commencing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment in the new publicly-funded IVF program in Quebec, Canada. Simulation model based on a prospective cohort. Data from fresh IVF cycles performed between August 2010 and February 2011 were submitted to the Canadian ART Register (Quebec) (CARTRQ) by the four assisted reproduction centers in Quebec. Estimation of the cumulative pregnancy rates per cycle started were calculated based on the clinical pregnancy rates of frozen embryo transfer (FET) seen in our clinic during the same time period. From 2403 started IVF cycles, 2247 (93.5%) underwent oocyte retrieval. Embryo transfer was performed in 1,942 (81%) cases, from which 943 (49%) were eSET. The clinical pregnancy rate (CPR) per oocyte retrieval was 26.3%. The multiple pregnancy rate (MPR) was 5.2%; all of which were twins. Frozen embryos were available in 45% of the cases, with significant differences by groups of age (< 35 years: 63.82%, 35-39 years: 41.80%, >40 years: 21.49%; P<0.001). The average number of frozen embryos was 3.8, similarly distributed by groups of age (P=1.0). In our simulation model, cumulative clinical pregnancy rates per oocyte retrieval increased by each cycle of frozen embryo transfer (FET #1: 38%, FET #2: 49.7%, FET #3: 56.9%, FET #4: 64.0%). However it must be noted, only women aged < 35 will have enough frozen embryos to undergo three or more FET. Prior to publicly-funded IVF, the CPR in Quebec was 42.9% with a 27.2% MPR and only 1.6% eSET rate. With the introduction of publicly-funded IVF the eSET rate increased to nearly 50% but a drop in CPR was seen (26.3%) However considering the available frozen embryos the cumulative CPR per oocyte retrieval could be 64%. Differences in the proportion of available frozen embryos according to maternal age are determining factors that influence success.

Dynamic price dependence of Canadian and international art markets: an empirical analysis

Although the market for Canadian paintings is now of substantial magnitude, with several works having recently been sold for well over a million dollars, it remains true that with very few exceptions, the works of Canadian painters are bought and sold only in Canada and seem to be held only by Canadian collectors. This market can thus be viewed as largely local, and it is therefore not clear whether there should be any linkage between price movements for Canadian art and those for the mainstream international market in old master, impressionist, and modern art. This article investigates the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long-term trends as reflected in the co-integrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in terms of short-run co-movements as represented in correlations. The possibility that the local market “follows” the international one is also considered through an analysis of Granger causality. For Canadian art prices, we use a new hedonic index that has been computed using an updated version of the dataset of Hodgson and Vorkink (Can J Econ 37:629–655, 2004), while for the international prices, we use an index provided by Mei and Moses (Am Econ Rev 92:1656–1668, 2002).

How much is that big sign on the window? Ron Terada's Translations.

This paper focuses on the language-based work of Vancouver artist Ron Terada, who has turned the ephemera of exhibitions--posters, titles and advertising--into the very substance of some of his projects. Much of his work exploits the economic structures on which the art world relies. Perhaps most audaciously, his exhibition Catalogue at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver in 2003 put the printed support at the very heart of the show. The names and logos of the sponsors for Terada’s project were all that appeared on the walls and windows of the gallery. In essence, the catalogue was the show. Terada is perhaps best known internationally for his appropriation of public signage. The replication and relocation of the highway sign “ENTERING CITY OF VANCOUVER” into an art gallery wittily stakes a Terada claim in what has been referred to as “the Vancouver School” of artists. At the same time, the sign alludes to the distortions generated by cultural compartmentalization in parochial narratives of Canadian art and literature and implicitly questions the validity of defining art by region in a globalized world.

Strategic Decision Making in Arts Organizations

Despite the growing economic and cultural importance of artistic institutions, relatively little is known about how aesthetic concerns and the demands of artistic production influence administrative roles. In this article, we investigate the strategic decision-making process in a varied sample of Canadian arts organizations, concentrating on the issues that emerge as crucial for the organization and the individuals and groups that participate in the decision-making process.

Dynamic Price Dependence of Canadian and International Art Markets: An Empirical Analysis

Although the market for Canadian paintings is now of substantial magnitude, with several works having recently sold for well over a million dollars, it remains true that with very few exceptions, the works of Canadian painters are bought and sold only in Canada and held only by Canadian collectors. This market can thus be viewed as almost exclusively local, and it is therefore not clear that there should be any linkage between price movements for Canadian art and those for the mainstream international market in old master, impressionist, and modern art. This paper investigates the presence and nature of such time series dependence econometrically, both in terms of long term trends as reflected in the co-integrating relationship between Canadian and the international market, and in terms of short-run co-movements as represented in correlations. The possibility that the local market follows the international one is also considered through an analysis of Granger-Causality. For Canadian art prices we use a new hedonic index that has been computed using an updated version of the data set of Hodgson and Vorkink (2004), while for the international prices, we use an index provided by Mei and Moses.

Age-Price Profiles for Canadian Painters at Auction

We conduct an empirical analysis of the effect on the auction price of a Canadian painting of the age of the painter at the time of creation of the painting. We consider several hundred artists, active over the entire history of Canadian art, who are pooled in the estimation of a hedonic regression in which a polynomial function in age enters as a regressor along with several other control variables. We then consider the possibility that the age-price relationship has changed over time by: (a) estimating separate age-price functions for three generational groups of artists - those born before 1880, between 1880 and 1920, and after 1920 and thus coming of age in the world of post-war contemporary art; and (b) estimating a parameterization where the shape of the age-price profile is permitted to change continuously depending on the year of birth of the artist. Our principal result is that artists born more recently tend to peak earlier in their careers than those of previous generations. As pertaining to artists born after 1920, this result is consistent with the findings of Galenson (2000) for modern American painters, but we find that the phenemenon applies over longer periods of art history.

Voyages: Revisiting Quebec's Delegation to Avignon

Voyages: Revisiting Quebec's Delegation to Avignon Virginia Preston (bio) Among the most high-profile events on the international circuit, the Avignon International Festival influences production and touring projects worldwide. For a season that began with deep cuts to federal support of Canadian arts programs abroad, the 2009 edition of the Avignon International Festival in southern France was notable for unprecedented participation by artists from Quebec and Canada. The seeds of this showcase were planted when Hortense Archambault and Vincent Baudriller, the festival's artistic directors, entered into a dialogue with the artistic director of the National Arts Centre French Theatre Wajdi Mouawad in 2007, later naming him associate artist for the festival's sixty-third season. Quebec's delegation to Avignon in 2009 included theatre and dance projects, a film, graphic arts, and a spoken word performance. French audiences and critics were quick to note interdisciplinary approaches among Montreal companies, specifically their folding together of choreographic, visual, and text-based elements. Though the festival's focus on Quebec might seem to reflect an outburst of recent activity, artists, including choreographer Lynda Gaudreau, argued that the programming offered a window into long-standing features of performing arts practice in Montreal, notably hybridity and collaboration between artists. Click for larger view View full resolution Sébastien Dodge, Christiane Pasquier and Guy Pion (l-r) in Denis Marleau's Une fête pour Boris. Photo by Stéphanie Jasmin Works by Quebec artists at the festival offered distinct aesthetic worlds—from marathon, open air cycles reminiscent of Greek tragedy, to intimate cut-ups for film and voice. Denis Marleau's striking production of Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard's Une fête pour Boris (1968) offered crystalline, facet-cut performances with precise, Beckettian rhythms. Parsed with deft theatricality and craft, Marleau's actors delivered text as measured as fine musical interpretation. In a bravura performance as the Good Woman, Christiane Pasquier interpreted a role that, like Beckett's Winnie, is a remarkable challenge for female actors at the height of their abilities. A chorus of quasi-robotic automatons ended the production in a notable staging of the uncanny—performing syncopated, pre-recorded repartee with the unexpected vividness of live dialogue. The work's technological accomplishment disclosed rather than concealed itself through choreographed glitches, offering a discomfiting coexistence of organic and machine presences on stage and destabilizing senses of the live. Mouawad's Le sang des promesses (The Blood of Promises) began with three major works from his repertoire—his 1999 Avignon contribution Littoral (1997), Incendies (2003), and Forêts (2006). The sequence played from dusk to dawn in a vast outdoor theatre at the Popes' Palace. Near the end of the festival, Mouawad premiered the fourth and final part of the sequence at a fairground outside Avignon. Mounted inside a massive white cube in an industrial exhibition space, Ciels (Skies or Heavens) proposed an extraordinary dispositif, enclosing the public on all sides with raised, narrow stages. Framed like cinema screens, the performances taking place [End Page 98] within these windows shuffled between film, theatre, and painting references as they enacted a contemporary, Oedipus-like story with an acute, political edge. Click for larger view View full resolution Mouawad's Littoral at the Palais des Papes. Photo by Thibaut Baron Commissioned by Avignon for the idiosyncratic dance series Sujets à vif, Montreal choreographer Lynda Gaudreau's Out of the Blue transformed an unusual convent courtyard into a species of pop seascape. The project took place in a daytime, outdoor venue with unique architectural properties—a statue of the Virgin Mary and a palm tree popping spryly through the irregularly-shaped dance floor. Gaudreau's choreography presented gestures in mid-flight, without clear origin, and full of playful rearrangements. The dramaturgy, as encapsulated by Gaudreau's title, investigated abrupt, ludic shifts, strange entrances, and unexpected endings—the choreographer's unusual response to the web-based Interview Project by Austin and David Lynch. A finely calibrated citation of pop art, Gaudreau's witty study transformed the venue with minimal elements. Working in collaboration with vocalist and visual artist Dominique Pétrin (singer of the Montreal rock group Les Georges Leningrad), sound artist Anne-François Jacques and...

Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art (review)

Reviewed by: Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art Dana MacFarlane (bio) Martha Langford . Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2007. vi, 342. $55.00 Martha Langford's study of the importance of memory in contemporary Canadian photographic art employs the terms of a children's game - Scissors, Paper, Stone - to suggest some of the ways in which ideas about memory are implicated in the production and reception of photographic images. Beyond their imaginative suggestiveness, these terms [End Page 458] act as a conceptual scaffold for readings of a diverse range of visual work and texts. This is an ambitious book with ambitions for Canadian art, examples of which are beautifully represented in a large number of high-quality reproductions. As such this book will remain an important point of reference for the study of Canadian art, photography, and new media for years to come. Langford's selection of artists is bold, revealing the variety and richness of contemporary photographic work in Canada. What connects the various works of art gathered here, apart from their Canadian origins, is the way in which they are thought not just to thematize memory, but to reactivate it; as Langford insists, 'a rehearsal of memory must be conducted through the work.' What this means is articulated further when she states that she has looked 'for evidence that the activation of memory was anticipated by the artist and felt by others besides myself,' and further, that the 'spectator must be prompted visually to seek signs of mental activity and recognise the shift from the here and now into the realms of memory.' Inevitably such ambition brings its own challenges. It is not clear how these threads of intentionality and reception can be woven back together again through the act of criticism. Langford attempts something like this through exegeses of a wide range of philosophical, sociological, and art historical scholarship juxtaposed with her own, more personal, speculative excurses. On page 73, after a discussion of Donigan Cumming's work, Langford cites Jonathan Crary's analysis of 'attention and distraction,' glosses Nietzsche's 'species of history,' refers to Linda Bishai's use of Nietzsche, and then moves on to William Connelly's call for 'critical responsiveness.' Such a compressed textual space is typical in a book that covers too much ground too quickly, leading to rather superficial analyses. More seriously, and despite the intention to problematize received ideas of the relationship between memory and photography ('those who equate memories and photographs are not sane'), memory instead risks being hypostatized: we are told that 'memory itself is at a crossroads'; we wander through the 'realms of memory'; 'memories' are 'expressed photographically'; 'memory is close to history, to truth'; 'the expression of memory . . . is the very picture of mobility.' It may be that these are just turns of phrase - ways of emphasizing the complexity whereby memory is conceptualized, but in a book that draws on a vast body of literature, nearly all of which could be said to be concerned with exposing the construction of meaning, identity, social agency, and gender through language, this tendency to essentialize memory is worrying. Furthermore, Langford's own glossing of the terms she is using remains imprecise: 'Photographic work can be defined as participation to the best of its capabilities in whatever is going on'; or again, 'unconscious emulation, otherwise known as memory.' [End Page 459] Although the works themselves never become mere illustrations of philosophical theories, it is not clear in what way a desirable critical distance between the texts and work is created. A healthy disregard for aspects of the scholarly apparatus creates its own problems - the arbitrariness of the way in which texts and images are brought together only admits a partial coherence through Langford's authorial voice. This results in a seamless, open-ended, and yet curiously claustrophobic textual space in which the opportunity to open the discussion to broader but relevant issues is sometimes lost. While there is no mention in the title of the nationality of the artists - an omission that might lead one to expect the avoidance of narrow nationalistic categories - there is little...

Plural public funding and Canada's contemporary art market system

This article address public funding, free markets, and contemporary art in Canada as shaped by forces integral to the formation of Canada as a nation state and its continual development. Canada has a network of publicly funded institutions in support of contemporary art. Public funding for the arts is direct and plural: it operates at three levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – and is distributed by government departments and arts councils. Canadian institutions in receipt of public funding relevant to contemporary art include art schools, artist-run centres, non-collecting exhibition venues and art museums. A perception that this creates and maintains a circular system for contemporary art that is co-ordinated via state funding is reconsidered. In addition, it is misleading to consider a boundary divide, with state and not-for-profit sector organizations separated from private and commercial ones. The role of art market intermediaries, namely contemporary art dealers (or gallerists), who are responsible for representing artists and promoting their work for the first time (on the primary art market) to collectors, is integral. It also represents one measure of the overall health of Canada's contemporary art market system. Attention is drawn to the situation where few contemporary art dealers based in Canada have the economic resources to compete in the international arena, with one consequence being the adoption of non-Canadian dealers to represent leading contemporary artists from Canada. The emergence of a generation of aboriginal artists living and working in Canada is another development, one that speaks to the hybrid representations of Canadian identity.

Art education in Canada: reflections from scholars impacting the field

This study discerned trends in contemporary Canadian art educational research through interviews with key scholars at leading Canadian universities. The art educators interviewed included Fiona Blaikie, Roger Clark, Kit Grauer, Rita Irwin, Jan Jagodzinski, Anna Kindler, Cathy Mullen, Harold Pearse and David Pariser. Canadian art education is noteworthy for alternative research practices that include arts-based research, arts-informed research and a/r/tography. In the interviews, Canadian scholars discussed their contributions towards the field and its evolution from the trajectories of social theory to descriptive research. In addition, they brought to light current debates about the validity of arts-based research and visual culture studies.

Public art in Canada: critical perspectives

Arguably, public art is experienced daily by more people than most offerings in galleries, yet our notion of what constitutes public art is surprisingly limited. Public Art in Canada broadens the critical discussion by exploring public art's varied means of engaging with public space and the public sphere. Annie Gerin and James S. McLean have assembled contributions from new and established Canadian scholars, curators, and artists. Each contributor enlivens our understanding of public art as a practice and its place in the social and aesthetic formation of which it is a part. As a result, the book provides an overview of the current debates in the field of public art that are informed by the theories and critical literature of art history, communication studies, cultural studies, sociology, and urban studies. The rigorous essays and original works of art collected in this volume present a compelling demonstration of the strategies, aesthetic and otherwise, used by artists to elicit intellectual, sensual, or emotional responses that can only be obtained through artistic practices in public places. Public Art in Canada is a major contribution to the study of Canadian art and culture.

Inter•Cultural•Performance

When Canadian Theatre Review published its special issue on Chinese Canadian Theatre in 2002, Jean Yoon opened her leadoff article with “Gee, you know, I’m not Chinese. I’m Korean.” Situating herself within “an Asian Canadian arts scene – one that is fluid, vibrant, and inclusive” (emphasis in original), Yoon criticized CTR for focusing so narrowly on a single, atomized community in Canada, potentially ghettoizing it and fragmenting fragile intercultural solidarities within a no longer first-generation Asian Canadian community that neither remembered nor cared about ancient histories of tension between the homelands. She called for a look, first, at “the bigger picture” (5). Since then, one play has been produced in Toronto that focuses on the potentially divisive topic of the Nanking Holocaust of the Chinese by the Japanese in 1937 (Marjorie Chan’s a nanking winter), and another (Diana Tso’s Red Snow) is in development. Seven years later, neither seems controversial or threatens solidarities within an Asian Canadian theatrical community that is now, perhaps not incidentally, well represented through the efforts of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, founded in 2002 – the year Yoon’s article appeared.