Pub Date : 2018-06-01DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0008
Leah Modigliani
The historical evidence of a backlash levied against the Vancouver Art Gallery and the perceived hegemony of the Vancouver School that reached a peak in 1989-1990 is addressed in the conclusion. Diverse groups of artists became critical of the very process of discourse formation that this book reflects upon, and became much more vocal about demanding their inclusion in symposia, exhibitions, and critical writing. Unsurprisingly this backlash dovetails with the rise of foreign investment in condominium development and urban gentrification called “Vancouverism” after Expo 86. The discursive territory of Vancouver photo-conceptualism, built upon the image of a defeatured landscape, became ensconced as an international commercial success just as the public spaces of the city were opened up to the ‘global’ reach of neoliberal capitalism, ensuring that the actual features of the city would be less accessible and more expensive to live in for those artists living there.
{"title":"Conclusion","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"The historical evidence of a backlash levied against the Vancouver Art Gallery and the perceived hegemony of the Vancouver School that reached a peak in 1989-1990 is addressed in the conclusion. Diverse groups of artists became critical of the very process of discourse formation that this book reflects upon, and became much more vocal about demanding their inclusion in symposia, exhibitions, and critical writing. Unsurprisingly this backlash dovetails with the rise of foreign investment in condominium development and urban gentrification called “Vancouverism” after Expo 86. The discursive territory of Vancouver photo-conceptualism, built upon the image of a defeatured landscape, became ensconced as an international commercial success just as the public spaces of the city were opened up to the ‘global’ reach of neoliberal capitalism, ensuring that the actual features of the city would be less accessible and more expensive to live in for those artists living there.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"175 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121661090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0002
Leah Modigliani
This analysis of two of Jeff Wall's most important early photographic transparencies highlights the fact that his subject matter can be understood as a male artist's control of what is imagined as female-gendered physical and theoretical space. The initiation and subsequent extension of this operation in European and American critical discourse about his work is discussed in relationship to anthropological research on settler colonial societies’ territorial conflicts; specifically settlers’ need to develop cultural narratives that rationalize their control over other populations within a given geographic area. Such an approach contrasts with the prevailing commentaries by other critics, some of which are discussed at length (Donald Kuspit, Arielle Pélenc, Kaja Silverman and Michael Fried). These critics’ analyses of Wall’s work downplay or ignore the feminist subject matter in the work in favour of discussing the images' relationship to the avant-garde potential of technical reproduction or to the history of modern painting.
{"title":"Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979) and The Destroyed Room (1978): colonizing the space of gendered discourse","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This analysis of two of Jeff Wall's most important early photographic transparencies highlights the fact that his subject matter can be understood as a male artist's control of what is imagined as female-gendered physical and theoretical space. The initiation and subsequent extension of this operation in European and American critical discourse about his work is discussed in relationship to anthropological research on settler colonial societies’ territorial conflicts; specifically settlers’ need to develop cultural narratives that rationalize their control over other populations within a given geographic area. Such an approach contrasts with the prevailing commentaries by other critics, some of which are discussed at length (Donald Kuspit, Arielle Pélenc, Kaja Silverman and Michael Fried). These critics’ analyses of Wall’s work downplay or ignore the feminist subject matter in the work in favour of discussing the images' relationship to the avant-garde potential of technical reproduction or to the history of modern painting.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131144289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0003
Leah Modigliani
This chapter discusses the importance of landscape painting in the formation of early twentieth-century Canadian national identity, in particular the Theosophical aspirations and quest for the genius loci of the Group of Seven painters in Ontario, and Emily Carr in British Columbia. Jeff Wall’s published texts that describe the influence of Carr on his peers’ work, and their desire to work outside of the problematic of colonialism, necessitates this examination. Historian Lorenzo Veracini’s discussions of the many narratives utilized by settler colonial societies to authenticate and rationalize their rights to indigenous land are introduced in relationship to the discursive framing of texts that supported and documented Lawren Harris and Carr’s paintings. The national and regional legacy of spiritually-infused landscape painting was antithetical to young artists and intellectuals like Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace, who came to maturity in the late 1960s, and who were committed to revealing man’s alienation from his industrial environment through Marxist-informed critiques of capitalism.
{"title":"Emily Carr and the legacy of Commonwealth modernism","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the importance of landscape painting in the formation of early twentieth-century Canadian national identity, in particular the Theosophical aspirations and quest for the genius loci of the Group of Seven painters in Ontario, and Emily Carr in British Columbia. Jeff Wall’s published texts that describe the influence of Carr on his peers’ work, and their desire to work outside of the problematic of colonialism, necessitates this examination. Historian Lorenzo Veracini’s discussions of the many narratives utilized by settler colonial societies to authenticate and rationalize their rights to indigenous land are introduced in relationship to the discursive framing of texts that supported and documented Lawren Harris and Carr’s paintings. The national and regional legacy of spiritually-infused landscape painting was antithetical to young artists and intellectuals like Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace, who came to maturity in the late 1960s, and who were committed to revealing man’s alienation from his industrial environment through Marxist-informed critiques of capitalism.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132134446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0006
Leah Modigliani
Vancouver artists’ concerns with discourses of theatricality and female gendered spaces are argued as important links between the defeatured landscapes of the 1968-1971 period and the development of large narrative photographs after 1975. The importance of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades to this historical thread are covered in detail, including the documented impact of his work Étant donnés: 1. La chute d/eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage(1946-66) on Jeff Wall’s transition towards the tableau format. Using Étant donnés as a fruitful formal and conceptual segue, the feminist content in several of Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace’s works from the mid-to-late 1970s are analysed. This demonstrates how both artists actively integrated feminist theory and ideas into their visual work, even as they directed critical attention away from it by instead stressing their works relationship the history of European avant-garde critique within modernism.
温哥华艺术家对戏剧性话语和女性性别空间的关注被认为是1968-1971年期间的景观景观和1975年后大型叙事照片发展之间的重要联系。马塞尔·杜尚(Marcel Duchamp)的现成品对这条历史线索的重要性被详细介绍,包括他的作品的文献影响Étant donnsams: 1。La chute d/eau, 2。关于杰夫·沃尔向画面形式过渡的《Le gaz d’日新月异》(1946-66)。本文以Étant donn为切入点,分析了20世纪70年代中后期杰夫·沃尔和伊恩·华莱士作品中的女权主义内容。这展示了两位艺术家如何积极地将女性主义理论和思想融入他们的视觉作品中,即使他们通过强调他们的作品与现代主义中欧洲前卫批评的历史的关系来引导批评的注意力。
{"title":"The 1970s and the gendered spaces of the counter tradition","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Vancouver artists’ concerns with discourses of theatricality and female gendered spaces are argued as important links between the defeatured landscapes of the 1968-1971 period and the development of large narrative photographs after 1975. The importance of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades to this historical thread are covered in detail, including the documented impact of his work Étant donnés: 1. La chute d/eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage(1946-66) on Jeff Wall’s transition towards the tableau format. Using Étant donnés as a fruitful formal and conceptual segue, the feminist content in several of Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace’s works from the mid-to-late 1970s are analysed. This demonstrates how both artists actively integrated feminist theory and ideas into their visual work, even as they directed critical attention away from it by instead stressing their works relationship the history of European avant-garde critique within modernism.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122431419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0005
Leah Modigliani
Chapter 4 recounts the emergence of the theory and practice of a “Defeatured Landscape,” the name given in 1970 to a new urban semiotic that would constitute photo-conceptual artists self-defined counter tradition to those cultural practices deemed uncritical, expressionist, and mythical that were explored in Chapter 3. NETCO’s Ruins (1968) and Portfolio of Piles (1968) are examined as important precursors to the defeatured landscape. Dennis Wheeler, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and Christos Dikeakos’ art and writing are discussed as examples of defeatured landscapes in relation to their influences: American conceptual artist peers like Dan Graham; Concrete Poetry; awareness of the vehicular landscape; and Surrealism and its legacy in the psycho-geography and dérives of the Situationist International. This history is set against two contrasting examples: the real political conflicts of land development and associated financial speculation going on at the same time in the city; and an accounting of the erotic female bodies who often populate the otherwise defeatured landscapes of the photo-conceptualists. These examples show how the social politics of public space in Vancouver are left out of avant-garde representations of the city through the discursive framing of a landscape not so defeatured after-all.
第四章叙述了“特征景观”的理论和实践的出现,这个名字在1970年被赋予了一个新的城市符号学,它将构成照片概念艺术家自我定义的反传统的文化实践,这些文化实践被认为是不批判的,表现主义的,以及第三章探讨的神话。NETCO的《废墟》(1968)和《堆的组合》(1968)被认为是景观特征的重要先驱。Dennis Wheeler, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace和Christos Dikeakos的艺术和写作作为与他们的影响相关的特征景观的例子进行了讨论:美国概念艺术家同行如Dan Graham;具体的诗歌;对车辆景观的意识;以及超现实主义及其在心理地理学和情境主义国际运动中的遗产。这段历史是以两个截然不同的例子为背景的:土地开发的真正政治冲突和相关的金融投机同时在城市中进行;以及对女性身体的描述,这些女性身体经常出现在照片概念主义者描绘的风景中。这些例子表明,温哥华公共空间的社会政治是如何被排除在城市的前卫表现之外的,通过对景观的话语框架,毕竟没有那么被破坏。
{"title":"Establishing the theory and practice of a defeatured landscape","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 recounts the emergence of the theory and practice of a “Defeatured Landscape,” the name given in 1970 to a new urban semiotic that would constitute photo-conceptual artists self-defined counter tradition to those cultural practices deemed uncritical, expressionist, and mythical that were explored in Chapter 3. NETCO’s Ruins (1968) and Portfolio of Piles (1968) are examined as important precursors to the defeatured landscape. Dennis Wheeler, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and Christos Dikeakos’ art and writing are discussed as examples of defeatured landscapes in relation to their influences: American conceptual artist peers like Dan Graham; Concrete Poetry; awareness of the vehicular landscape; and Surrealism and its legacy in the psycho-geography and dérives of the Situationist International. This history is set against two contrasting examples: the real political conflicts of land development and associated financial speculation going on at the same time in the city; and an accounting of the erotic female bodies who often populate the otherwise defeatured landscapes of the photo-conceptualists. These examples show how the social politics of public space in Vancouver are left out of avant-garde representations of the city through the discursive framing of a landscape not so defeatured after-all.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129179731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0007
Leah Modigliani
The international and local feminist avant-garde of the 1970s is discussed in Chapter 6. Vancouver women’s rejection of canonical art history, their development of alternative distribution and exhibition systems for promoting artwork, and their psychoanalytic critique of the male gaze all implicitly challenged the legitimacy of the theoretical and historical project of Vancouver photo-conceptualism. These threats would thus be selectively integrated into the new male-authored photography. Historical and contemporary critical responses to Marian Penner Bancroft and Liz Magor’s work are also analysed, which through contrary-example further establishes the male-gendered character of avant-garde discourse formation in Vancouver.
{"title":"Feminist theoretical and visual challenges to modernist representation","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526101198.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The international and local feminist avant-garde of the 1970s is discussed in Chapter 6. Vancouver women’s rejection of canonical art history, their development of alternative distribution and exhibition systems for promoting artwork, and their psychoanalytic critique of the male gaze all implicitly challenged the legitimacy of the theoretical and historical project of Vancouver photo-conceptualism. These threats would thus be selectively integrated into the new male-authored photography. Historical and contemporary critical responses to Marian Penner Bancroft and Liz Magor’s work are also analysed, which through contrary-example further establishes the male-gendered character of avant-garde discourse formation in Vancouver.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133683016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-04-06DOI: 10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0004
Leah Modigliani
Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace’s rejection of ‘home’ and ‘homeland,’ and the primacy of the manifesto as an important polemical tool in framing one’s work, are explored in Chapter 3 in relation to Wall’s art history master’s thesis on the Berlin Dada group, which established “myth” as an anti-critical cultural practice that was broadly applied to much of the cultural activity then active in Vancouver. Vancouver’s seeming “lack of history,” the existence of back-to-the-land intentional communities living outside of the urban centre, the proliferation of other performance and media based art groups, and the influence of visiting American artist Robert Smithson’s earthworks are all examined as cultural expressions deemed a-historical or romantic by photo-conceptualists.
{"title":"Myth and the ‘home culture concept’","authors":"Leah Modigliani","doi":"10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7228/MANCHESTER/9781526101198.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace’s rejection of ‘home’ and ‘homeland,’ and the primacy of the manifesto as an important polemical tool in framing one’s work, are explored in Chapter 3 in relation to Wall’s art history master’s thesis on the Berlin Dada group, which established “myth” as an anti-critical cultural practice that was broadly applied to much of the cultural activity then active in Vancouver. Vancouver’s seeming “lack of history,” the existence of back-to-the-land intentional communities living outside of the urban centre, the proliferation of other performance and media based art groups, and the influence of visiting American artist Robert Smithson’s earthworks are all examined as cultural expressions deemed a-historical or romantic by photo-conceptualists.","PeriodicalId":119226,"journal":{"name":"Engendering an avant-garde","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130941219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}