The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century

by Foss, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780195421255
• ISBN10: 0195421256
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2010-01-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century charts the developments in Canadian art from the late-nineteenth century to the present with new essays by the country's leading art historians. A comprehensive overview, this volume embraces painting, sculpture, photography, design, video, and conceptual and cross-disciplinary art, as well as studies of art institutions and historiography. With such a remarkable scope, it is truly the first of its kind ever published. Each chapter explores the richness and diversity of Canadian art; topics range from impressionist painting to the multimedia work of contemporary First Nations artists, and from the Group of Seven to video production. Newly commissioned, carefully edited, and with 185 full-colour illustrations, The Visual Arts in Canada will appeal to general readers and students alike. An extensive index, as well as an appendix that list galleries and artist-run centres across the country, make this the definitive resource for Canadian art from the past century. Throughout the twenty chapters, readers will recognize favourite artists and encounter new ones-all of whom play an integral role in the country's visual history. The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century demonstrates what makes Canadian art so visually compelling, so enduringly relevant, and so ripe for study.

Author Biography

Anne Whitelaw is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Her research explores the history of Canadian art institutions in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on exhibition and collecting practices as means of understanding the formation of nationhood and the constitution of taste cultures.

Brian Foss is Professor of Art History and director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University, having previously taught for many years at Concordia University. He has co-curated exhibitions on the work of Mary Hiester Reid and Edwin Holgate and is the author of War Paint: Art, War, State and Identity in Britain 1939-45.

Sandra Paikowsky is a Professor in the Art History Department of Concordia University. She is the publisher and managing editor of the Journal of Canadian Art History / Annales d'histoire de l'art canadien. She has also been director/curator of the Concordia Art Gallery. Her recent publications focus on James Wilson Morrice, art in the Maritimes, and John Fox.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations: Collections Cited
Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Anne Whitelaw: Art Institutions in the Twentieth Century: Framing Canadian Visual Culture
2. Brian Foss: Into the New Century: Painting, c.1890-1914
3. Charles C. Hill: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven
4. Gerta Moray: Emily Carr: Modernism, Cultural Identity, and Ethnocultural Art History
5. Alan C. Elder: Designing Canada
6. Lora Senechal Carney: Modern Art, the Local, and the Global, c.1930-50
7. Sandra Paikowsky: Modernist Representational Painting before 1950
8. Francois-Marc Gagnon: Paul-Emile Borduas and the Automatistes
9. Joyce Zemans: Making Painting Real: Abstract and Non-objective Art in English Canada, c.1915-61
10. . Ingo Hessel: A Culture in Transition: Inuit Art in the Twentieth Century
11. Diana Nemiroff: Geometric Abstraction after 1950
12. Christine Boyanoski: Sculpture before 1960
13. Johanne Sloan: The New Figuration: From Pop to Postmodernism
14. Martha Langford: A Short History of Photography, 1900-2000
15. William Wood: Sculpture and Installation since 1960
16. Jayne Wark: Conceptual Art in Canada: Capitals, Peripheries, and Capitalism
17. Ruth B. Phillips: Aboriginal Modernities: First Nations Art, c.1880-1970
18. Lee-Ann Martin: Contemporary First Nations Art since 1970: Individual Practices and Collective Activism
19. Christine Ross: Experimental Video in Canada and the Question of Identity
20. Laurier Lacroix: Writing Art History in the Twentieth Century
List of Resources
Picture Index / Credits
General Index