Failed Utopia a Pioneer in Modernism Transformations
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The Left Atrium Failed utopia Until Feb. 6, 2000, the Art Gallery of Windsor (www.mnsi.net/~agw) features Le Détroit, a new film installation and exhibition of pho- tographs by Canadian multimedia artist Stan Douglas. Drawing on years of research in the Detroit area, Douglas examines the social conditions that give rise to the decay of modern cities, of which De- troit is an extreme example. His colour photographs expose the processes by which historical memory is overwritten by social change and the encroachment of nature upon the urban landscape. Inspired by the city’s long-standing association with machines and industry, the film installation is an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House and Marie Hamlin’s 1883 chronicle, Leg- ends of Le Détroit, a compilation of oral histories that circulated among people of aboriginal and European descent living in the re- gion between the mid-17th and early 19th centuries. Douglas rein- terprets the conventions of popular media — in this case, horror movies and electronic music — to explore the impact of technology Stan Douglas, Michigan Theatre, 1997/98. C-print, on the social imagination. 45.7 x 55.9 cm A pioneer in modernism Transformations Assembling Sounds: the Drawings and Illustrations of Bertram Little known until recent years, Claude Cahun (1894–1954) Brooker is at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (www.wag.mb.ca) is currently the focus of a great deal of international atten- until Jan. 2, 2000. Brooker (1888–1955) played a significant tion. The first Canadian solo exhibition of her astonishing role as an artist, musician, writer and champion of the arts self-portraits, Don’t Kiss Me: Disruptions of the Self in the Work in Canada between of Claude Cahun, is at the Sherwood Village Branch of the the two World Dunlop Art Gallery (www.dunlopartgallery.org) in Regina Wars and has been from Dec. 17 to Jan. 30, 2000. Born Lucy Schwob, Cahun described as the was a poet, actress, sculptor, photomonteur and sometime- country’s first ab- associate of the French surrealists who gained some notoriety stract painter. His as a political and sexual revolutionary. Like Cindy Sherman move away from and other contemporary artists some 50 years later, Cahun representational art explored how the body is read according to cultural codes. toward abstraction Using costumes, masks stemmed from his and theatrical make-up desire to express to challenge normative spiritual ideas and views of women, she to unify painting postulated a new con- with other arts cept of identity that left such as poetry and room for ambiguity music — interests and the unknown. he shared with his Ernest Mayer During World War II friend Lawren Bertram Brooker, Sounds Assembling, she was arrested by the Harris, unofficial 1928. Oil on canvas, 112.3 x 91.7 cm Nazis for openly resist- leader of the ing their occupation of Group of Seven. Presented in tandem with an exploration the Isle of Jersey. Much of his painting and writing in Sounds Assembling: Bertram of her work was de- Brooker in Winnipeg Collections, this exhibition of graphic stroyed and she was work features 70 abstract drawings, nature studies and illus- sentenced to death. trations — work that Brooker considered as important as Fortunately, the war Jersey Museums Service and Presentation House Gallery his painting. Sounds Assembling, his most famous piece, rep- ended before her sched- Claude Cahun, Self-Portrait, c. resents a spiritual journal through time, space and sound. uled execution. 1927. Black and white photograph CMAJ • DEC. 14, 1999; 161 (12) 1569 De l’oreille gauche Photography of place Art of persuasion To mark the millennium, the Southern Alberta Art As e-technologies revolu- Gallery (home.uleth.ca/~saag) invited Toronto photogra- tionize our habits of com- pher Geoffrey James to create a photographic portrait of munication, we might for- the city of Lethbridge. James made four visits to the Leth- get the important role that bridge area over a 12-month period and produced more diverse and often ephemeral than 250 images. His large-format black and white pho- print media have played in tographs of the city’s rural and urban landscape record defining the 20th century as what curator Joan Stebbins describes as the “uneasy al- the age of mass communica- liances” between culture and nature. She writes: “His pho- tion. Until Jan. 3, 2000, the tographs document a specific moment in time, but hold Art Gallery of Greater Vic- within them an acute awareness of the meaning of that toria (aggv.bc.ca) presents moment — an interval caught between the past and the Propaganda, Advertising & present. In the Graphic Arts in 20th Century Lethbridge pho- China, an intriguing collec- tographs, James tion of graphic materials Fabric advertisement, 1920s shows us some- produced in China during thing entirely the 20th century. The exhibition includes woodblock prints, new about our propaganda posters, advertisements, firework labels, joss pa- place; something per, decorative wrapping and luck-bestowing New Year’s Eve that we can’t see prints from private collections and the gallery’s own holdings. until he shows The woodblock prints bear the imprint of Soviet-style social- us, because it is ist realism; the advertising posters flog products ranging from too familiar.” perfume and cosmetics to alcohol and cigarettes. While cul- The Lethbridge tural and historical markers give these artifacts an intrinsic in- Project exhibition Geoffrey James, Chinese National terest, they may also lead viewers to pay more attention to continues until League, 1998. Silver gelatin print. 40.6 × the aesthetic appeal and persuasive power of the print media Jan. 15, 2000. 50.8 cm. Collection of the artist that surround us today. Vancouver, Varley, Vanderpant A sense of place infused with a sense of mystery inspires two exhibitions on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery (www.vanartgallery.bc.ca). Until Jan. 23, 2000, Visions of Paradise: Varley in British Columbia presents for the first time in more than 40 years the major works created by Group of Seven founding member Frederick Horsman Varley during his Vancouver years (1926 to 1936). The portraits and landscapes from this period reflect not only the nationalist and anti-classicist motivations of the Group of Seven but Varley’s growing in- terest in theosophy, Eastern mysticism and the psychological interpretation of colour. Continuing until Feb. 13, 2000, The Rhetoric of Utopia: John Vanderpant and his Contempo- raries explores another anti-establishment strain in the development of Canadian art. Like many of his contemporaries on the West Coast, painter and photographer John Vanderpant rejected the colonial aesthetics that dominated the art scene in the 1920s Frederick Varley, The Cloud, Red and 30s in favour of a modernist aesthetic. Mountain, 1927–28. Oil on can- His strikingly optimistic work asserted the vas. Art Gallery of Ontario, Bequest beauty of both natural and architectural John Vanderpant, Lilies, 1935. Silver bro- of Charles S. Band, Toronto, 1970. forms and thus the potential for the harmo- mide print. Vancouver Art Gallery Acqui- © Estate of Kathleen G. McKay nious coexistence of nature and technology. sition Fund 1570 JAMC • 14 DÉC. 1999; 161 (12).