The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, 296 Pp

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RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review

Leah Modigliani, Engendering an Avant-Garde: The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, 296 pp. 41 b/w illus. £ 80 (hardcover) ISBN 9781526101198 Christine Conley

Volume 44, Number 1, 2019

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1062157ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1062157ar

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Publisher(s) UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Association d'art des universités du Canada)

ISSN 0315-9906 (print) 1918-4778 (digital)

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Cite this review Conley, C. (2019). Review of [Leah Modigliani, Engendering an Avant-Garde: The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, 296 pp. 41 b/w illus. £ 80 (hardcover) ISBN 9781526101198]. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 44(1), 105–107. https://doi.org/10.7202/1062157ar

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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Ray Ellenwood, Professor Emeritus and Senior 16. Françoise Sullivan, Musée d’art contempor- of feminist political and cultural Scholar at York University in Toronto, is an award- ain de Montréal, October 20, 2018 to January 20, agitation ? winning translator and author of Egregore : A History 2019. Curator : Mark Lanctôt. 286-page catalogue. of the Montréal Automatist Movement. In 1998, he 17. Julian Rosefeldt, Manifesto. October 20, While this question forms the crux organized a symposium, exhibition, and concert 2018 to January 20, 2019. Curator : Lesley John- of the text, successive chapters elab- at York University to celebrawte the fiftieth stone. No catalogue. orate an extended discourse analysis anniversary of Refus global, and he continues 18. Partitions, October 20, 2018 to January to write and publish extensively about the 20, 2019. Curator : François LeTourneux. No of how international critical acclaim Automatistes. catalogue. has embraced Vancouver photo-con- — [email protected]

1. For a much more detailed account than I can offer here, see Sophie Dubois, Refus global, His- Leah Modigliani toire d’une réception partielle (Montréal : Les presses Engendering an Avant-Garde : de l’université de Montréal, 2017), or François- The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Marc Gagnon’s Chronique du mouvement automatiste québécois, 1941–1954 (Montréal : Lanctôt Éditeur, Photo-Conceptualism 1998). Manchester : Manchester University 2. See, for example, Philippe Dubé, « Quand Press, 2018 le culte occulte, » Le Devoir, July 8, 1998. 3. As a sign of the general acceptance of Refus 296 pp. 41 b/w illus. global as a historically important document, con- £ 80 (hardcover) ISBN 9781526101198 sider the fact that Françoise Sullivan, one of the signatories, was invited to read from the text during celebrations in Quebec City to mark the 250th anniversary of the battle of the Plains of Abraham Christine Conley (see Jérôme Delgado, “Borduas, héros oublié ?”, Le Devoir, February 20, 2010.) 4. Borduas, les femmes automatistes et Refus global, at the BAnQ Vieux-Montréal, September In Engendering an Avant-Garde, Leah ceptualism as a continuation of Euro- 11,18 and 25 from 13 :30 to 15 :30. Modigliani examines the absence pean investments in and perspectives 5. François-Marc Gagnon et l’histoire de l’art au of women artists in Vancouver on the modernist avant-garde — with Québec, held at the Musée de l’imprimerie du Québec on October 19, from 9 :00 to 14 :30. photo-conceptualism, from its incep- frequent analogies to nineteenth [Editor’s note : Professor Gagnon died March 28, tion in 1968 to its identification as the century French painting, for instance, 2019. See the memorial note in this issue.] “Vancouver School,” a global brand in the case of Jeff Wall — rather than 6. La tendresse des nuages (Fernand Leduc), Gal- erie Catalogue, Montréal, August 25 to November that emerged in early 1990s writing considering how the specificity of 10, 2018. Curator : Pierre Bourgie. about Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace and Vancouver production might illumin- 7. Marcel Barbeau : en mouvement, Musée nation- variously encompassed Ken Lum, ate the global possibilities for that al des beaux-arts du Québec, October 11, 2018 to January 6, 2019. Curator : Eve-Lynne Beaudry. Christos Dikeakos, Rodney Graham, project as a social process. Modigliani 240-page catalogue. Roy Arden, Arni Haraldsson, and Stan claims this exclusionary dynamic par- 8. This part of his work is well described Douglas. Modigliani positions this allels the “exclusionary structure of by Rober Racine in “Danser la peinture,” one of the essays included in the catalogue of the self-declared vanguard within a critic- settler colonial populations’ need to exhibition. al discourse generated by the likes of control territory,” hence her under- 9. Not surprisingly, that exhibition made Andreas Huyssen, Johanne Lamou- standing of art discourse as a “trans- little or no mention of Riopelle’s Automatist past, in part because he himself tended not to give it reux, T. J. Clark and Griselda Pollock, fer narrative” (17) linked specifically much importance, but also because it was not who have revealed how the historical here to the absence of local inhabit- relevant to the period of his relationship with avant-garde perpetuated patriarch- ants, including Indigenous peoples, Joan Mitchell. al privilege through dichotomous in the “defeatured” landscape of Van- 10. Françoise Sullivan, The modern.toronto, Toronto, September 20 to November 17, 2018. thinking (the feminine as alterity) couver photo-conceptualism. Curator : Paul Bradley. that situated “women or others as The first chapter focuses on Wall’s 11. We have since learned that this gallery is oppositional to the mission of a early transparencies Picture for Women closing, which is a shame because it was certainly an attractive exhibition space. self-selective male group identifica- (1979) and The Destroyed Room (1978) to 12. Françoise Sullivan, Galerie Simon Blais, tion.”(9) Her study considers how consider how the feminist content Montréal, October 10 to November 24, 2018. Cur- this dynamic was manifest in Van- of these works was overlooked due ator : Paul Bradley. No catalogue. 13. Refus global — 70ième anniversaire, Galerie couver photo-conceptualism. Male to the hegemony within art history Simon Blais, Montréal, September 6 to October 6, artists, consciously engaged with of “patriarchal experiences of pub- 2018. No catalogue. the concerns of the historical avant- lic space and theoretical knowledge 14. Les Automatistes en trois temps, Galerie Michel Guimont, Montréal, September 23 to Oc- garde, explored social alienation in production” (16) over feminist critical tober 23, 2018. 36-page catalogue. the urban landscape in the absence approaches, such as Laura Mulvey’s 15. Refus global : 70 ans, Québecor espace of female agency, yet maintained “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin- musée, Montréal, October 2, 2018 to January 9, 2019. Curators : Simon Blais, Paul Bradley, Claude images of women in their work. How ema.” Reviewing analyses of these Gosselin. 24-page catalogue. did this happen during a period works by prominent critics Donald

racar 44 (2019) 1 : 99–122 105 ⇢ Leah Modigliani, Engendering an Avant-Garde : The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism British Crown’s contractual promises groups, and visiting artists such as to Indigenous peoples. Robert Smithson were dismissed as Kuspit, Arielle Pélenc, and Kaja Silver- A related strategy was the disloca- ahistorical and romantic. Notably, a man, Modigliani counters their reluc- tion of Indigenous art works from significant proportion of the artists tance to acknowledge the violence their sites of origin to museum collec- singled out for their lack of criticality of representation that is spelled out tions. Disconnected from the speci- were indeed women, including Liz in Wall’s back-lit photos. Picture for ficity of land and embodied subjects, Magor, Marian Penner Bancroft and Women reveals the vectors of vision such artifacts could be displayed and Joey Morgan. that position woman as object of promoted as remnants of a bygone Chapter four concerns the “Defea- the gaze, yet Wall clearly retains con- era, rather than living cultures, and tured Landscape” of photo-concep- trol of the camera’s shutter release. promoted for their aesthetic qualities tualists in the 1970s, who garnered Similarly, The Destroyed Room stages a independent of symbolic or ceremon- international recognition and com- scene of violent destruction against ial value. The presentation of Emily mercial success in tandem with the an absent woman in what is visibly a Carr’s paintings alongside Indigenous opening up of Vancouver to inten- stage set constructed by the artist. Not visual culture in The Exhibition of Can- sive capital investment and develop- documentary then, but what ? Fan- adian West Coast Art : Native and Modern in ment after Expo 86. Dan Graham’s tasies of control ? The author argues 1927 at the National Gallery of Canada Homes for America (1966–67) and the that both photos visualize “struggles is presented as an exemplary moment depopulated suburban photographs over social and artistic space between in this appropriation of Indigenous of N. E. Thing Co. (NETCO), a collab- genders” (8) for, indeed, these works aesthetics into the fashioning of an oration of Iain and Ingrid Baxter, are were contemporaneous with bur- “imagined community of Canadian identified as important precedents geoning debates in Vancouver on the nationalism.” (67) While Carr’s view for the defeatured landscape, while fate of modernism under the com- of the Indigenous people she encoun- the artists’ navigation and naming bined pressure of critiques by femin- tered in her field trips was decided- of urban space is connected to the ists and other exogenous groups. ly more sympathetic and respectful formal concerns of concrete poetry, The following chapter provides than her contemporaries, after her the perambulations of the Baudelair- the necessary historical context for death in 1945, any departures from ian flâneur, the Surrealist encounter conceptualist approaches to land- the nationalist script were obscured with the marvellous and the dérives of scape in Vancouver and draws upon by the romanticizing of her work and the Situationist International, whose critical writing by Robert Linsley, herself as an intuitive, eccentric out- strategies of détournement and psy- Scott Watson and others to illuminate sider, though never, apparently, a cho-geography were performed by how colonial interests intersect with genius. By the time Jeff Wall and his way of the ubiquitous automobile. gender. The formation of a nation- contemporaries were considering a Modigliani punctuates her account alist school of painting was shaped critically engaged photographic prac- with a parallel commentary on the by the desire to forge a uniquely tice shaped by conceptualist debates status of women within this process, Canadian identity apart from British in the 1960s, Carr’s reputation as principally, the invisibility in critical traditions, while furthering the col- an icon of West Coast Expressionist writing of Ingrid Baxter’s contribu- onial project of rendering Indigen- painting and national cultural treas- tions to NETCO as an artist, not a wife, ous populations invisible. Ignoring ure had reached its apogee, rendering and the insertion of erotic images the innovations of the urban-based her artistic approach to the specifi- and fantasies of women as chance contemporary avant-garde, Group city of the region and its Indigenous encounters within photo-conceptual- of Seven members and Emily Carr residents — what Wall later dismissive- ism’s “urban semiotic.” The point is embraced the spiritual possibilities ly termed the “hegemonic inner land- well made for a process of artistic for- of Theosophy — a philosophy anti- scape”— anathema (79). mation in which there was no space thetical to the rise of Communist The following chapter considers for female photo-conceptual artists. sympathies associated with the influx how the pushback of young concep- The following chapter focuses of non-British immigrants to urban tualists against Carr and the tradition entirely on Wall and Wallace, arguing centres — and produced landscapes of regional landscape painting, as for the continuity between the early emptied of human presence altogeth- well as prevailing notions of “home” conceptualist photographs and the er. Modigliani expands on how settler in the local Vancouver scene, was larger photo works that emerged in colonial theory illuminates the cor- spurred by Wall’s MA thesis on Berlin the late 1970s. Here, Wall’s study of respondence of these pictorial strat- Dada. In contrast to European critical Duchamp’s Étant donnés (1946–66), to egies with the project of sovereignty, strategies, the approach to land and which he had privileged access in as settlers worked to wrest control location by non-urban hippie cul- Philadelphia during his PhD research, over land without honouring the ture, performance and media-based is viewed as a bridge between

106 Reviews | Recensions conceptualism and the return to pic- integration of the feminine into the Cultural Activities and Events in Van- torialism in The Destroyed Room, with “creative masculine bachelor-subject” couver : 1970–1990” and Marcia Cros- emphasis upon mutual connotations involved the “theoretical/feminist” by’s “Construction of the Imaginary of sexual violation. The argument rather than the “maternal/feminine” Indian,” as an intervention into devel- here is that Wall and Wallace, specif- (202) strain that characterized earlier oping regional histories of art. But ically in the latter’s extended photo- modernists, fending off unwanted by this time the critical edge of local graphic installations An Attack on Liter- criticism of their avant-garde gambits photo-conceptualist photographers ature (1975) and Image/Text (1979), were and assuring institutional and market had been subsumed by an outstand- attuned to current feminist debates support. ing level of international success on representation and engaged with This assimilation, though, did commensurate with intense local real the dynamics of male-female relation- not include the significantly aligned estate development and global expan- ships in charged ways effectively over- production of women such as Mar- sion of art brands compatible with looked by critics. ian Penner Bancroft whose photo- neoliberal values. The book could Despite the extended contextual- graphic series, engaged with local well have ended there, but Modi- izing of Vancouver art and history Vancouver sites and incorporating gliani chose to end with a reading of that will certainly broaden its reader- text and sculptural aspects, were Jeff Wall’sThe Giant (1992) as a feminist ship — the emergence of a West Coast not unlike the defeatured landscape tableau, a conclusion that confounds school of painting, the careful tracing photos of her male peers. Her use of feminist analyses of the nude in rep- of visiting artists and other commun- the medium to negotiate subjective resentation and seems to me need- ities’ activities as they intersect with experiences of the urban environ- lessly conciliatory. That said, this is the artists under discussion, and the ment, however, disqualified her from an admirable work that brings dispas- debates within the community in being associated with their concep- sionate clarity to persistent hegem- relation to art institutions, especial- tualist strategies. Reviews and cata- onic structures in the art world. ¶ ly the shifting role of the Vancou- logue essays failed to discuss her work ver Art Gallery — the text to this point beyond the local and the person- Dr. Christine Conley is an art historian and independent curator with expertise in issues of still feels like a book about Jeff Wall. al, rendering her work irrelevant to feminism and gender, the ethics of difference, Indeed, it is an adaptation and expan- larger artworld concerns. These are cultural translation, political violence, and sion of the author’s PhD dissertation the pitfalls that Liz Magor navigated armed conflict. on Wall. In this extended discussion, in her attempts to elude perceptions — [email protected] his work remains paradigmatic of of her work as “romantic” or “senti- the central thesis, notwithstanding mental” or being about nature rather the attention paid to Ian Wallace and than a mediation of the environment Aki Odehi : cicatrices de la Terre-Mère Christos Dikeakos. through material processes shaped by Centre d’exposition de Val-d’Or Shifting gears, the final chap- phenomenological concerns. At the 22 juin au 26 août 2018 ter engages entirely with feminist same time, the controversy sparked commissaire : Sonia Robertson challenges to this narrative. It sets by her photo series Fieldwork (1989) out a welcome chronicle of diverse over the appropriation of Indigenous activities in dance and performance, cultural practices marked a collision filmmaking and experimental video, between a modernist art discourse production spaces such as Women that married formal innovation to in Focus, Reelfeelings and Womens social progress and the politics of rep- Julie Graff Inter-Art Society, influential guest resentation, where those left out of speakers, programs at the VAG, com- the picture claimed their space. munity-building festivals and the This is a deeply researched and Durant l’été 2018, l’exposition Aki critical voices of Avis Lang Rosenberg carefully argued account of how Odehi : cicatrices de la Terre-Mère pré- and Sara Diamond, among others. avant-garde formations have con- sentait au Centre d’exposition de While these developments took place tinued to marginalize women’s artis- Val-d’Or un projet de performances parallel to the activities of the avant- tic production even during periods of réalisé l’année précédente dans la garde under discussion, Modigliani feminist agitation, though any one of région de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue claims male photo-conceptualists the chapters could be a stand-alone sous la direction de l’artiste et com- assimilated feminist critiques of rep- reading at the graduate level. In her missaire innue Sonia Robertson, avec resentation in the 1970s that emerged conclusion, Modigliani’s considers la collaboration du Centre d’amitié from psychoanalytic discourse and the publication of Vancouver Anthology autochtone de Val-d’Or. L’exposition from theories of the gaze and sexed in 1993, which includes Carol Williams Aki Odehi, « lieux de cœur » en langue subjectivities. In other words, this “A Working Chronology of Feminist anicinabek, a été conçue en deux

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