Résumé Les Organisme, a Vocation Culturelle Qui Exerce Leurs Activités
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Résumé Les organisme, A vocation culturelle qui exerce leurs activités au Canada depuis la Deuxième guerre mondiale ont désormais suffisamment d'ancienneté pour être soumis à une analyse historique. La revue d'art artscanada (1943-1982), est identifiée, dans cet ouvrage, A un organisme dont les origines et l'épanouissement mettent en lumière les modalités de constitution et d'exploitation ayant régi les organismes canadiens à vocation artistique et les politiques ayant conduit A leur création, auxquelles ils demeurent par ailleurs liés. Centré sur les principes directeurs de la revue et sur la façon dont celle-ci s'est intégrée au système de soutien artistique, c:et ouvrage est en fait une histoire critique et une "herméneutique" qui aborde l'organisme en question comme un texte pouvant être lu et interprété et qui implique que le commentateur reconnait sa propre participation à la construction d'une représentation de l'organisme. En outre, cette herméneutique propose des moyens permettant aux intervenants de la communauté artistique de percevoir les organismes culturels d'aujourd'hui comme des espaces englobant l'appartenance et des codes qui confèrent une signification. Ab.tract The cultural support·or,anizatione eatabliahed in Canada since the Second World War have reached a ata,e of aaturity which makes the. now available for hietorical analyai •• The art publioation artacanada (1943-1982) ia identified, in this work, aa an inatitution whose ori,in and developaent can be viewed aa illuminatin8 the ter.a of formation and operation which have shaped national arts or,anizationa and the policies which brouJht them into bein, and to which the y reaain related. ( Fooussin, on the framework which supported the ma,azine and the way in which the ma,azine itself conatituted a portion of the art support system, the work forme a critioal hi.tory and an "institutional heraeneutic" which treats the institution as a text which can be read and interpreted, and whioh iapliea that the commentator must aoknowled,e his own participation in the construction of a representation of the institution. Furthermore, this hermeneutic su"est. ways in which on,oin, institutions can be related to by partioipant. in art communities as spaces which encloae aeabership and oodes which ,rant meanin,. UNDERSTANDING ARTSCANADA: HISTORY, PRACTICB AND IDBA by •• Robert Graham Graduate Proaram in Communications McGill University, Montréal September 1988 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the dearee of Master of Arts (0) Robert Graham 1988 ii Table of Contenta Abstract Preface l Acknowled.eaenta iii Introduction 1 1 - The Organization (of Associations) 12 II - Creativity and Industry 25 III - Art and Education 35 IV - The Periodical Medium 48 V - The Support and Appropriation of Art 58 VI - Art and the Institutions of Art 72 Conclusion 84 Appendix 1 - Canada Council Funding 89 Appendix II - Table of Articles 92 Bibliography 127 ( iii Preface • Acknowledle.~nta The followin. work is an interpretative atudy of an institution which in ita nearly fort y yeara of exiatenee, occupied a place in a rioh network of interoonnectin8 conoerna. As an instruaent of public oultural poliey, it was the expression of one way"the Canadian state oould f~lrther its vision of its responsibility for oulture. As a communications study, the topio of a ma8azine is a natural one. And certainly the collected issues remain the oore data, as a reoord of the institution's primary public funotion. But, 1 found, a oommunioations study of an institution requires that aIl of its activities be understood oommunicationally as the transmission or prop08ation of oertain ideas by certain means. Thus, the narrative history of the institution is also basic - especially as the early participants are now dyin. and their me.ories of our past risk .oing unrecorded - but a.ain, it alone is unsufficient aa a communications aocount. What 1 have attempted is a readin, of the institution as a meeting point of a cluster of communicational lines, some of which '0 far back in ti.e and laterally in space. Such a cluster describes the context of the phenomenon, with context understood not as the atmospheric surround but as that which permeates the institution's formation. This approach demanded of the research a broad standard of relevancy, but was crucial ...... to my purpose. Communications studies has a rather .on.rel ( iv aenealoay which has tended to weaken its perception as a discipline. Vet l consider it the insiaht of communications to identify as its domain the ways in whicb entities of difference meet and en,a.e and transfora their differences into affinities. Readina aodern art history and aesthetics, socioloaical studies, political memoirs, commercial practices, etc. as beina aIl of a piece is to brina linkaae ta that which had been considered entirely disparate.' This representation, then, should be read as like a monta.e for the suggestiveness of its combined elements and for the pattern of its shape. * * * * • The author of any work is inevitably helped by othera,.and l am no exception. The University of Toronto Library provided me access to its collection of Alan Jarvis papers, the National Gallery to its archive. The Canada Council provided helpful funding. Those participants and observera who spoke with me and who offered their thou,hts and memories include Robert Ayre, Thelma Mary Ayre, Frederik Eaton, Timothy Porteous, F.R. Scott, Marian Scott, Humphrey Carver, Anne Trueblood Brodzky, Tony Williams, Paul Arthur, Barry Lord, Elspeth McConnell, R.H. Hubbard, Harry Mayerovitch, André Bieler, Mi.i Taylor and Robert Fulford. Donald Theall and Hu.o HcPherson were particularly contributing, and David Crowley bas been, from the beginnina, a constant advisor. l am arateful to each of ( them. ----~------ -- Introduction Normal soc 1010gy, after Durkhe lm, p laced 1 ns t i tut 1 nnH "Il t the center of soc i ologlca 1 a t ten t Ion. They cons II tu te the mlll n bUIlding blocks of soc let y . "1 The metaphor 0 f tht'" bUll dl ng block and its visIon of SocIety as put togethrr ln a klnd of kIt, has become rightfully suspect as thp hypostatlznd representatlon of a device whose functional workingR are available for observation, descriptIon and explanatlon as if they were components of Il machIne. Yet 1 would like ta redeem ~he primary inslght of the constructed form of the instItutIon (etymologlcally, ta plllce, ta arrange, ta build and also ta instruct ln a method) and join it with thllt approach to the social sciencps WhlCh is called hermeneutic. This 'lnsti tutionai hermeneutic' is consti tuted hy Il numhl~r of key orientationai stances: flrst, that institutions nrp prlmarI1y spatIal. The concepts of space, place, vollJmf', shape, reglon, confIguratIon, territorIal deflnltlon, etc. provide us with descripti"e tools for the way that institutIons contain, pxclude, absorb, expel and genprally operate to normalize social behaviour in thelr power ta providc context and ta grant acknowledged meaning to individual communIcatIon. ~1ost. importantly, the borders of any InstitutIon are th!! si tt"'S of thpi r interactIon wi th the generlll society th"~y inhabl t and U1P. thresholds of thelr Openlngs. Any IndlviduaJ 2 organization thus has the spaoe it oooupies, makes olaias upon, and the Inegative space' of exolusion, defined but not oooupied by the institution, which surrounds it and whose shape is determined by it. The ne.ative sp~ce of an institution ia that whioh nor_ally it is silent upon, and some of these silences are as ~ignificant as what the institution utters. Morphology, as the description of the ohanles of the institution's shape provides a comprehension of the institution's historical experienoe and also its ability or inability to adapt and to develop. S~cond, that the description of institutions oan be architectonic., which ia to say, the composed design plus the idea or formula which created it and the method of its construction. The relation between the "shape" of an orlanization and its "idea" finds oo_on link in the etyaolog,. of the word "meaning" (something whose recovery hermeneutics has been much about); as Albert Hofstadter notes, "the word Imeaning' therefore means that whioh ia had in mind. intended. purposed. desi.ned."' Plato's version of lidea' was based on the figure of the image the craft•• an has in his mind of the object he intends to make. Idea, thus, has the quality of intention, anticipation and projeotion of the end result and the praotical means of its attainment, for the oraftsman as he dreams his object is also imaginin. how he will make it. ( Thirdly, that the identity of an institution is not tound in its tangible expression, or its appearanoe, but in the pattern 3 which formed it and of whioh it is the oarrier. The A.e~ioan economist Kenneth Arrow calls this pattern the oode: ••• history matters. The oode is determined in acnordance with the best expectation. at the tiae ot the fir.'s crea~ion. Binoe the oode ia part of the firm'a or more aenerally the oraanization'. capital .•• the code of a ,iven organization will be modified only aJowly over time. Bence, the oodes of organizationa starting at different times will in general be different even if they are oompetitive firms.· For Roland Barthes, the paradox of structural identity was best illustrated in the account of the Arlo: A frequent image: that of the ship Arlo (luminous and white), each piece of which the Araonauts aradually replaced, so that they ended with an entirely new ship, without having to alter either its name or its forme The ship Arlo is highly useful: it affords the alle.ory of an eminently structural objeot, created not by genius, inspiration, determination, evolution, but by by two modest actions (which cannot be cau,ht up in any mystique of creation;: substitution (one part r~places another, as in a paradi,.) and nomination (the name is in no way linked to the stability of its parts): by dint of combinations aade within one and t~e same name, nothing is left of the orilin: Arlo is an object with no other cause than its name, with no other identity than its form.