Borderline Research

Borderline Research Histories of Art between Canada and the United States, c. 1965–1975 Adam Douglas Swinton Welch A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Adam Douglas Swinton Welch 2019 Borderline Research Histories of Art between Canada and the United States, c. 1965–1975 Adam Douglas Swinton Welch Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art University of Toronto 2019 Abstract Taking General Idea’s “Borderline Research” request, which appeared in the first issue of FILE Megazine (1972), as a model, this dissertation presents a composite set of histories. Through a comparative case approach, I present eight scenes which register and enact larger political, social, and aesthetic tendencies in art between Canada and the United States from 1965 to 1975. These cases include Jack Bush’s relationship with the critic Clement Greenberg; Brydon Smith’s first decade as curator at the National Gallery of Canada (1967–1975); the exhibition New York 13 (1969) at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Greg Curnoe’s debt to New York Neo-dada; Joyce Wieland living in New York and making work for exhibition in Toronto (1962–1972); Barry Lord and Gail Dexter’s involvement with the Canadian Liberation Movement (1970–1975); the use of surrogates and copies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1967–1972); and the Eternal Network performance event, Decca Dance, in Los Angeles (1974). Relying heavily on my work in institutional archives, artists’ fonds, and research interviews, I establish chronologies and describe events. By the close of my study, in the mid-1970s, the movement of art and ideas was eased between Canada and the United States, anticipating the advent of a globalized art world. ii Acknowledgements The research and writing phases of this dissertation were made possible through the financial support of a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as support from the University of Toronto, notably through a Stephen Vickers Memorial Award, Avie Bennett Scholarship, and a Kathleen Coburn Graduate Admission Award. A research trip to Vancouver was possible thanks to a University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Travel Grant. I began my doctoral work as a Junior Fellow at Massey College, where I found many supportive colleagues. An earlier version of the first chapter, on Jack Bush, was published to accompany the retrospective exhibition organized by Marc Mayer and Sarah Stanners for the National Gallery of Canada (2014).1 Chapter two, on Brydon Smith, began as paper for the Association of Canadian Studies in the United States biennial conference (2011), and further research was conducted as part of my successful co-nomination with Sandra Dyck, Director, Carleton University Art Gallery, of Smith for a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Outstanding Contribution Award (2014). I first presented material on Joyce Wieland— subsequently developed into chapter five—for a panel at the conference “This is Paradise: Art and Artists in Toronto,” University of Toronto, and again as a public lecture at the National Gallery of Canada (both 2015). Sections of chapter eight relating to General Idea have previously appeared in an essay on the group’s printed matter for Open Studio’s Printopolis (2016), and draws on earlier 1 Adam Welch, “‘New York Hot Licks’: Jack Bush after Clement Greenberg,” in Jack Bush, ed. Sarah Stanners and Marc Mayer (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2014), 63–76. iii work on Marshall McLuhan and correspondence art in Canada, published in Counterblasting Canada: Into the Social and Intellectual Vortex of Marshall McLuhan, Sheila Watson and Wilfred Watson (2016).2 Thanks are due to the editors, curators, and conference organizers of these projects for their part in the formation of these chapters. Earlier still, the prospectus for this dissertation was presented in various talks and conferences, including at the Universities Art Association of Canada, Ottawa (2011), the Bard Graduate Center, New York (2011), the Centre for the Study of the United States Graduate Student Workshop, University of Toronto (2011), the State University of New York Buffalo (2011), and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal (2012). I am grateful to the organizers of these events and for the feedback received from their participants. For granting me interviews and corresponding with me, I thank Anna Banana, Roberts Creek, British Columbia; Fern Bayer, Toronto; Robert Bigelow, Vancouver; John Boyle, Peterborough; Hank Bull, Vancouver; AA Bronson, Berlin; Ian Carr-Harris, Toronto; Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Toronto; Robert Fones, Toronto; Vera Frenkel, Toronto; Garry Neill Kennedy, Vancouver; Suzy Lake, Toronto; Gary Lee- Nova, Vancouver; Glenn Lewis, Vancouver; Gail Lord, Toronto; Eric Metcalfe, Vancouver; Michael Morris, Vancouver; Robert Murray, Unionville, Pennsylvania; Roald Nasgaard, Toronto; Brydon Smith, Ottawa; Michael Snow, Toronto; Lisa Steele, Toronto; Pierre Théberge, Ottawa; Bill Vazan, Montreal; and Dennis Young, Halifax. 2 Adam Welch, “‘Collage or Perish’: Arranging General Idea’s Printed Matter,” in Printopolis (Toronto: Open Studio, 2016), 48–56; Adam Welch, “Dispatches from the DEW Line: McLuhan, Anti-Environments and Visual Art across the Canada–U.S. Border, 1968–1974,” in Counterblasting Canada: Into the Social and Intellectual Vortex of Marshall McLuhan, Sheila Watson and Wilfred Watson (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2016), 86–105. iv Some of these interviews were conducted with Barbara Fischer, as part of research toward the exhibition Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada, 1965–1980 (2010–2012). In 2014 I began working as the associate curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada. There, I am indebted to Charlie Hill, curator of Canadian art (retired); Ann Thomas, senior curator of photographs; Paul Lang, deputy director and chief curator, presently director of the Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg; and Marc Mayer, director and CEO. I am particularly grateful to these last two for allowing me an education leave to finish writing this dissertation. For my final oral examination, Johanne Sloan, Art History, Concordia University, served as my external examiner, and I appreciated her considered questions and thoughts on my project. Steve Penfold, History, University of Toronto, served as a non- supervisory committee member, and it was a pleasure to have Pia Kleber, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto, as the examination chair. I owe much to my generous supervisory committee: Barbara Fischer, Mark Cheetham, and especially Elizabeth Legge, my supervisor. I am grateful for their wise counsel. This dissertation is doubly dedicated: first, to my parents, Peter and Judy Welch, who introduced me to the pleasures of looking and thinking about art, and who have been a constant source of encouragement. And at last, after a decade, this is for my loving and patient partner, Adam Meisner, without whose emotional and editorial support I would never have finished, and without whose companionship I would have been a far less contented writer. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Part I One New York Hot Licks: Jack Bush after Clement Greenberg 24 Two Brillo Boxes, Fluorescent Light, and the FLQ: Brydon Smith at 52 the National Gallery of Canada Three From Metropole to Frontier: New York 13 at the Vancouver Art 100 Gallery Part II Four Go to the Source: Greg Curnoe and New York Neo-dada 145 Five When is a Canadian not an American? Joyce Wieland from New 185 York to the Isaacs Gallery Six Toward a People’s Art: Barry Lord, Gail Dexter, and the 247 Canadian Liberation Movement Part III Seven Surrogates, Copies, and Doubles: Aesthetics of Distance at the 301 Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Eight Decca Dance: Image Bank and General Idea in Los Angeles 356 Conclusion 408 Figures 416 Bibliography 456 Introduction In the inaugural issue of FILE Megazine—the “transcanada art organ” founded in 1972 by the artist group General Idea (1969–1994)—readers were invited to complete the first of what would prove to be many surveys. While better-known solicitations to their mail network circulated prior to the first FILE, including the Orgasm Energy Chart (1970), it is telling that the earliest request in the Megazine asked readers to “locate and draw from memory the Canadian/American border.”1 By invoking memory, General Idea’s “Borderline Research” request also invoked the imaginary: an imaginary that resulted in curious, humorous, and often stridently political responses to their query. Indeed, the range of responses—some eighty-nine are extant in the General Idea archives—tell a far more complex story than the single, overlaid image published in FILE’s second issue (Fig. 1.1). Some responses were decidedly conceptual—Sharon Kulik determined the border by the fold line in her submission, while Ian Murray prophetically responded “art knows no national boundaries.” Others were more markedly geopolitical: Californian Robert Cumming, who conceived the project with General Idea, provided what he called a “Chilean national geographic sensibility,” with “a country squashed along a coastline of a major continent.” Cumming imagines an elaborate system of tariffs and tolls to use the ports or traverse the 1 General Idea, “Borderline Research,” FILE Megazine 1, no. 1 (April 1972): 31. The idea of a “borderline” took on an outsized significance in General Idea’s subsequent practice, as Philip Monk describes it, “a borderline is a place to stage difference—not just differences. It is not just a place where opposites confront each other face to face as if in equal reflection.” Philip Monk, Glamour Is Theft: A User’s Guide to General Idea (Toronto: Art Gallery of York University, 2012), 75. “We began as a mirror of sorts, a transcanada organ of communication within the art scene,” General Idea wrote in the May-June 1972 issue, “a way of looking at the scene and oneself within it.” General Idea, “Artists’ Catalogue,” FILE Megazine 1, no.

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