1
Q
Canada’s 1960s &70s & Development of Canadian Art
A
- Great Depression
- many gave through depression
- 1950s creation of welfare state
- government policies implemented to give security to Canadians
- programs that give guaranteed minimum income
- public education
- employment creation/insurance
- medical insurance - didn’t exist before war
2
Q
The Perfect Wife
A
- during the War Canadian women filled the gap
worked on farms factories offices
- when was was over, assumed women would go back to home
- 1950s was a transformation period as women dont want to go back
3
Q
Baby Boomers
A
those born between 1946 - 1951
explosion in births
youth culture in 1960s
rock n roll in premarital sex drugs etc
women movement late 1960s
Canadian women start to form organizations
feminism becomes one of the most witnessed social movements in Canada
4
Q
Expo 67
A
two islands
67 countries came
celebrated Canada
largest world fairs
helped bolster national pride
- emphasized modernism cosmopolitanism youth and futurity.
5
Q
Pop Culture
A
- commercialized pop culture is evident in bodies of work by Joyce Wieland and Greg Curnoe from he 1960s.
- borrowing imagery, materials, colour schemes and forms of address from the commercial realms of advertising, packaging, movies and comics and then translates them into more meaningful cultural artifacts.
- Canadian art of this time thus has much in common with American Pop Art
6
Q
A
POP ART (U.S.) ANDY WARHOL. LEFT: CAMPBELL’S SOUP CANS, 1962; RIGHT: GREEN COCA-COLA BOTTLES, 1962
repetitions of Campbell soup cans
trained artists in NY
was making a comment consumerisms significant in 1960 - lots of money
money was going into unis & artistic institutions
pop art
7
Q
A
GREEN COCA-COLA BOTTLES, 1962ANDY WARHOL
POP ART U.S>
8
Q
Joyce Wieland 1931 - 98
A
- wife of Michael Snow
- under appreciated female artist in 1900
- in husband’s shadow
- a lot of sexual imagery & humour
- wasn’t taken as seriously with her art
- concerned with feminism & national issues
- involved in film making worked in a variety of media
9
Q
Wieland 2
A
- 1960s her turn to figuration was a reaction against abstract art
- Sometimes multiple stories unfold simultaneously down or across the canvases.
- Wieland used this narrative structure to showcase anxieties about sexuality race and violence.
- beginning in the mid 1960s Wieland’s exploration in paint of a pop idiom was largely replaced by other media, film and multimedia collection.
10
Q
Wieland 3
A
- Wieland actively protested the Amercan war being waged in Vietnam
- such works N.U.C. Patriotism etc
- Plastic was a eye catching material symbolizing the consumerist ethos of American society.
- her solo exhibition was politicized artmaking,
- the artworks featured stichery embroidery handwriting and quilting
- the flag, anthem, and other symbols and signs of Canadianess thus appeared as every handmade objects that corresponded to Wieland’s left wing feminist and ecological view of what the nation might become.
11
Q
A
JOYCE WIELAND, FIRST INTEGRATED FILM WITH A SHORT ON SAILING, 1963, OIL ON CANVAS, 66 X 22.7 CM.
- we are shown three moments of an interracial kiss something that was then virtually taboo on the big and small screens of America.
12
Q
A
JOYCE WIELAND , TIME MACHINE SERIES, 1961, OIL ON CANVAS, 203.2 X 269.9 CM.
13
Q
A
JOYCE WIELAND, MARCH ON WASHINGTON, 1963
14
Q
A
JOYCE WIELAND,
O CANADA, 1970
15
Q
A
JOYCE WIELAND, RAT LIFE AND DIET IN NORTH AMERICA, 1968, FILM STILL
produced landscapes in the form of cloth assemblages photographs, and films (rat life) characterized the Canadian natural environment as lush organic and naturally sympathetic to peaceniks.
16
Q
GREG CURNOE (1936-1992)
A
–from London Ontario
- studied at the Doon School of Art and the Ontario College of Art
- dissatisfied with what he saw as a contradiction between the perpetuation of High Art Culture and Popular Culture
- -interest in the writings and action of the Dada movement
- returned to London in 1960 and set up his own studio
17
Q
Curnoe 2
A
- in this quote, he distinguishes between regionalism and provincialism
- regionalism is the reality of individual and collective living
- provincialism is the uncritical acceptance of imported cultural values
- in his art he works with his own lived experience, his surroundings, his interests, his observations, his family and friends
18
Q
A
, BOWERING WESTMOUNT #5, 1967,
- COLLAGE
- dense, paper
- the selections are of local (London) brands –that locate the work within a specific time and place
- comment on consumerism
- but specific to his home town
- this is the artist’s own world
- it involves the rejection of outside values
- was anti-American – against American foreign policies – especially the Vietnam War
19
Q
A
GREG CURNOE, HOMAGE TO THE R-34, 1968, (COMMISSIONED FOR MONTREAL’S DORVAL AIRPORT)
- R34, became the first aircraft to make an east to west transatlantic flight in July 1919
- this was the time of EXPO 67
- was controversial because many Americans were arriving in Montreal
- the image contains controversial comments on American foreign policy
- airport officials and the Federal and provincial governments wanted it removed
- hidden away in the vaults of the National Gallery – not displayed again until 2003
20
Q
A
GREG CURNOE, VIEW OF VICTORIA HOSPITAL, 2ND SERIES, 10 FEBRUARY 1969-10 MARCH, 1971,
- -text describes the view towards the Victoria Hospital in London from Curnoe’s studio
- -series of painted numbers is a key to events and thoughts recorded over a period of time and listed in a notebook which accompanies the work
- a tape recorder plays a tape of sounds recorded in the studio – amplified by loud speakers set into the plywood support of he painting
- -coloured figures – what Curnoe viewed from his window – weather conditions, light effects, birds, traffic
21
Q
Curnoe 3
A
–his purpose in much of his art has been to awaken Canadians from their apathy towards American cultural and economic presence
- he insists on the primacy of regional identity
- -his own interests lay in popular culture, comic books, advertisements, newspaper reports
22
Q
John Boyle
A
- friend of Curnoe’s
- attempts to raise our sense of national consciousness through the heroes of Canada’s past
23
Q
A
JOHN BOYLE, OUR NELL, 1980, BAKED PORCELAIN ON STEEL,QUEEN STREET SUBWAY STATION, T.T.C.
- most visible public statement is this mural
- uses a technique of baked porcelain on sheets of steel
- presents William Lyon Mackenzie and Nellie McClung in the context of the major buildings in the area
24
Q
ART IN THE 1970S AND BEYOND
A
PHOTOREALISM – artist looks at the world with a detachment that is almost clinical
- Representational painting has centred in the Maritimes with artists such as Alex Colville, Christopher and Mary Pratt
- in Ontario – Jack Chambers, Ken Danby
25
Realisms
- Artists such as Colville and Pratt have contributed to a category of domestic realism, providing a serious reflection on the nuclear family as a social, spatial and ideological unit.
- Another way of categorizing the realisms in Canadian art would be to consider the relative status accorded to photography
26
ALEX COLVILLE (1920-2013) –
- born in Toronto in 1920 – moved to Nova Scotia with his family in 1929
- served in WWII – returned to Sackville, N.B. in 1946 as professor at Mount Allison University until 1963
- -Colville has had a significant impact on a number of other realist artists
- "magic realist"
27
Colville 2
- his work focuses on life and death, inter-personal relationships, human concerns in the worlds of nature and animals
- pays close attention to the people and places he knows best
- -Colville’s process is very slow – it might take years before his sketches were transformed into paintings
- the long process is so that an idea is allowed to build slowly
- the process starts as being a record of an observed scene – to a highly selective conceptual structure
28
Colville 3
- begins with a geometric plan – grid to set out the space and poses and proportions of the figures
- the plan is then transferred to a pressed wood board – the painted surface gradually built up to the final layers of small strokes
- since 1963 he has worked exclusively in acrylic paint
- colvilles paintings imply a psychological space through the tension between people and things that from time to time threatens to erupt into violence.
29
ALEX COLVILLE (1920-2013),
PACIFIC, 1967,
(FIGURE 13.4)
30
ALEX COLVILLE, JANUARY, 1971, ACRYLIC POLYMER EMULSION, 60.9 X 81.2 CM.
- winter scene
- male and female figures
- turned away from each other
- contrasting positions in space
- -despite the distance they have a relationship
- snow show tracks imply that the two figures were at one point standing together
- -painting bears on the fundamental relationship between a man and a woman
31
ALEX COLVILLE, WOMAN WITH REVOLVER, 1987, ACRYLIC POLYMER EMULSION ON HARDBOARD, 56.5 X 28.2 CM.
Again, a story idea is made in each individual’s mind. A naked woman with a gun in her hand stands at the top of the stairs. Maybe she has just come out of a bedroom. Maybe the man whom we do not see has left her? Maybe she’s found out that he’s been cheating on her? Maybe she has already shot him in the bedroom?
The woman is anonymous since we cannot see her face.
Colville has included the viewer again as a voyeur who has just arrived on the scene and who reconstructs the story based on his/her memory
32
Christopher Pratt
- studied at Mount Allison with Colville
- was already an accomplished painter
- strong geometry of his compositions
- cool detatched tones
- difference is that in Pratt’s work the spectator’s position is held away from the observed world
- Colville’s identifies with the spectator who is projected into the image
33
CHRISTOPHER PRATT (b. 1935), LANDING, 1973
In Pratt’s work, the viewer is disconnected from the art work.
- construction of the paintings is very tight, grids of horizontals and verticals
- atmosphere of quiet self-absorption
- does not acknowledge the spectator’s presence
- sharp separation
34
CHRISTOPHER PRATT, WOMAN AT A DRESSER, 1964, OIL ON BOARD, 67 X 78 CM.
-reflection in the mirror does not include us – wallpaper rather than a door
35
MARY PRATT
- Mary, wife of Christopher, is interested in the textural qualities of everyday objects found around the home, especially in her kitchen.
- attracted to the surfaces of objects – to the textures, the fall of light
- her hyperrreal paintings of non-human flesh are striking for how they introduce a disturbing quality into the everyday realm of the housewife.
36
Mary Pratt 2
- women artists had always worked in the home – especially in the kitchen
- Pratt first set up her easel in the kitchen
- her husband on the other hand had a studio of his own
--one of the instructors there was Lawren Harris, former member of Group of Seven who told her that she should give up art herself so that her husband could devote himself to his career
37
Mary 3
they had four children
- so Christopher would paint in his studio and Mary would cook, clean and look after their children
- so with her husband in his studio with his models – Mary had to make do with whatever was around the house to paint
- she works from photographs because she wanted to freeze a moment in time
- so she did not do sketches
- in her case, she used coloured slides which she projected onto a canvas, made a map of it and began painting
38
MARY PRATT, SILVER FISH ON CRIMSON FOIL, 1987, 47 X 70 CM.
39
MARY PRATT, EVISCERATED CHICKENS, 1971, OIL ON MASONITE,
- photograph gives confirmation of reality
- sharply focused on the details
- the canvas was richer in texture than the slide, the colours were more balance and the source of light more clearly defined
- Pratt uses the visual shorthand for the world of Americanized pop culture.
40
MARY PRATT, RED CURRANT JELLY, 1972, OIL ON MASONITE, 45.9 X 45.6 CM.
- rich texture, detail
- study harks back to the pronk still life paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch and French artists whom she studied while at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B.
- so while the art world evolved with Conceptual art and Postmodernism, the Pratts continued with the cool detachment of realism
41
KEN DANBY (1940-2007)
- Danby is another Realist painter, was from Ontario.
- Danby works from slides projected onto the bare canvas
- Danby's work has contributed to a shifting iconography of Canadiana.
- his parade of iconic male types (truck drivers hockey players that first appeared in the 1960s) constitutes a form of social portriature
42
THE RED WAGON, 1966
43
KEN DANBY, GORDON LIGHTFOOT, 1988
44
Chambers
- born in London, Ontario in 1931
- travelled in Europe during the 1950s
- returned to London in 1961
- paintings have a strongly mystic quality
- dependent on familiar surroundings and people important to him
- paintings often seem like dreams – vivid, yet painted with a misted tone
- at the end of the 60s, his painting underwent a radical shift
45
Chambers 3
- paintings during the 70s – immediacy of his surroundings, his family,
- his notion of perception was that it was the means of revealing passage between two united worlds – the physical and the spiritual
- wrote an important essay, “Perceptual Realism”
- his approach came from his own vision and reading, writings of French philospher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the spiritual writings of both western and eastern thinkers
46
Jack Chambers 1931-1978
- worked in many media and styles
- incorporated visual technologies into his painting
- his high-realist paintings seem to investigate how everyday human perception is transformed through interaction with a range of visual technologies including paint on canvas.
- the hyperreal quality of Chamber's paintings makes us aware not of some objective reality but of how perception is constantly being reconfigured.
47
, 401 TOWARDS LONDON #1, 1968-69,
## Footnote
- indirectly uses a source photograph to sharpen the memory of direct perception
- crucial work
- while he was working on it in the summer of 1969 he was told that he had leukemia
- -direct and immediate representation of vision
48
JACK CHAMBERS, SUNDAY MORNING NO. 2 (1970)
49
Artists that belong to pop art/ post modernism
- Joyce Wieland, Greg Curnoe
Realists: Alex Colville, Ken Danby, Mary Pratt and Christopher Pratt.
