What’s Up Yukon article on Oh, Canada
Hi there folks,
If you’re interested, you can find my What’s Up Yukon article on Oh, Canada here: http://www.whatsupyukon.com/article-view.cfm?ArticleID=1481.
It was hard to only write about 500 words! I also wrote an essay on fly-in fly-out curating which I might post here if I thought anyone were interested in reading it.
All the best, Nicole.
Less Stuff, More Story: Tips for Academics Addressing a General Audience
Fires made of bones. Extinct plants germinated from seeds thousands of years old. Exciting stuff, or so you’d think.
As we walked back out into the snowy night from the National Archaeology Day talk at the Beringia Centre by Norm Easton[1], the people I talked with agreed that the content of the talk had been interesting, but the talk itself was boring.
I had been excited to attend, because I had recently read an article by Dr. Easton[2] and had enjoyed his writing. Listening to his talk inspired me to reflect on obstacles for academics writing for – or speaking to – a general audience.
Since academic writing occupies an elite hierarchical position, I think academics underestimate the challenge of writing for a general audience. They don’t realize it’s a different rather than a lesser skill.
You would think a highly trained, exceptionally fit dancer would be able to walk. But most dancers I know can’t walk very far. Their specialization makes some more common skills inaccessible to them. I have never been able to do the splits, myself. But my partner Dean brought his GPS to Rome and even on a restful day we covered more than twenty kilometers. I wonder if an academic is something like a dancer.
Dr. Easton’s talk contained too much information and not enough story. It was a tour of twelve or so sites with little connection between them. It amounted to a list. “I sat down and read the phone book. It was gripping and I learned a lot about my community…” said no reader ever, or at least very few. Even The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a famous book of lists, intersperses poetic lists like “Things that make the heart beat faster” with stories.
People like stories. People also like The Nutcracker, for reasons I can’t fathom. The framing story is silly and gets little time. Most of the show consists of a sequence of unrelated dances by mushrooms or sugar plum fairies that in no way advance the plot. In structure, Dr. Easton’s talk resembled The Nutcracker but without live strings.
My friend Brett Dillingham (www.brettdillingham.com) is a storyteller who teaches children and others around the world how to make and tell stories. He would tell us that a story has four parts – beginning, problem, solution, and end.
If Dr. Easton had told us about fewer of these sites, but as stories, his talk would have been gripping. In the beginning of each story, he could give us the context for each item of research. Ideally we’d also meet some kind of main character, possibly the researcher, with whom we’d have some sympathy. The research question becomes the problem, and the adventure of seeking answers becomes the meat of the story.
Like the first sentence of this blog post, a talk without a story is like a list, like a sentence without a verb. It fails to move.
[1] From the Yenisei to the MacKenzie – A tour of archaeology sites of greater Beringia at the end of the Pleistocene
[2] Easton, N. A. (1990) “Lower than the Angels” – The Weight of Jim Logan’s Art. Canadian Journal of Native Studies. Vol. 10, No. 1: 134-141.
Aboriginal Authenticity in Las Vegas
A necklace of wolf claws? I reach out to touch it. The tag says they’re “replica” claws.
“It’s all real,” trumpets a voice from deep in the store. A bearded, blonde guy in his fifties comes out. “That’s what’s so great about it. It’s all real.”
I walk out to look at galleries, wherever I am. It’s a kind of research, looking at what’s offered for looking at, and thinking about it. When I spotted this place, it seemed relevant to thinking about Yukon Art History and First Nations.
I’m no expert on Southwestern art, but it’s easy to identify stuff made for tourists. I guess that’s unsurprising for an “Indian Craft Shop.” It’s jammed, mostly with jewelry. I wonder about the role of women in the culture of the tourist trade. That’s a lot of wrists, necks and ears, willing to buy and wear little bits of stone.
The dolls look strange to my eyes, with square and cylindrical wooden heads, and glued-on clothing. I see beadwork woven on a loom, but the bare threads tell me it’s not carefully done. I didn’t look too closely at the Christmas balls covered with a sandy substance with stylized images stenciled on.
The shop owner rhymes off the tribes of the Southwest whose work appears in the gallery. He shows me how each piece is signed. “I make them sign it. I won’t buy it off them unless it’s signed,” he says. “Some people come in here saying they’ve seen this stuff at Walmart, but this stuff here is real.” I see signatures and certificates of authenticity but no legible names. Forcing an artist to sign an object seems like a strange perversion of the respect for the individual artist that the signature signifies in the dominant culture.
Back in Vegas, we walk across the freeway on an overpass, from casinos to casinos, some open, some under construction, some standing empty. Between us and six lanes of passing car lights streaming by underfoot, chain link extends the concrete barrier, curving in at the top. I think it likely the chain link was added later to stop jumpers who had lost too much. It’s easy to feel lost here.
Then a friend appears between the ersatz neon fireworks. The waxing crescent moon sails independent of the electric lights, the rest of its circle promising the light that will fill and wane again, no matter who goes in and out of business. I think of how Raven stole that moon and put it up there, so it belongs to everybody. Even if somebody plants a flag there, the light isn’t theirs. If you can go outside, if it’s not cloudy, if it’s the right time, it’s yours. It’s mine. It’s ours. Even here, because of that moon, I’m home.
I would be much more lost without Mrs. Angela Sidney, and Julie Cruikshank who wrote her words down, and all the other storytellers whose words give us that story.
Thank you.
the moon as I remember it over the neon of Las Vegas
Other shows of “Contemporary Canadian Art” in the US in the 30’s and 40’s
I’m quite excited about the “Oh Canada” show at the MASS MoCA. It’s billed as as the biggest survey of contemporary Canadian Art produced outside the country. With 105 works by over 60 artists, it is pretty big. I think perhaps it’s been awhile since there was a feature show of contemporary Canadian Art in the US, but it’s not the first time.
I realized recently reading a book about Emily Carr that there were quite a few shows of Canadian art in the US in the 1930’s and 40’s.
I’ll only list the American shows here; there were also shows in Europe.
The Canadian Group of Painters had a show at Atlantic City (NJ) in 1933. In 1939 The Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Canadian Group of Painters exhibited at the New York World’s Fair.
At the Corcoran Galleries in Washington DC, the American Federation of Arts presented a show called “Contemporary Canadian Artists”, a show of 59 works, in 1930. It toured to Providence RI, Baltimore, St. Louis, and apparently many other US cities.
In 1932, the International Art Center of Roerich Museum in New York presented an “Exhibition of Paintings By Contemporary Canadian Artists.”
In 1942 the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, mounted a travelling show called “Contemporary Painting in Canada”, and also sometimes “Aspects of Contemporary Painting in Canada.” It included 67 works by 37 artists, and was exhibited in 18 centres from coast to coast, including The Detroit Institute of Arts and The National Gallery of Canada in ’43 and ’44 respectively.
In 1944, Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven Connecticut showed “Canadian Art 1760-1943,” a show of 77 works which included 2 Emily Carrs.
1946 saw “Painting in Canada – A Selective Historical Survey” in Albany NY at the Institute of History and Art.
1947, “Canadian Women Artists”, the Riverside Museum, New York.
I’ve taken all of this information from “Emily Carr: The Untold Story” by Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, (Hancock House Publishers Ltd, 1978). She was a friend and sketching partner of Emily’s and not trained as an art historian, and some of her take on the story seems a bit personal. But she also seems like a stickler for detail, and I imagine her data is pretty sound.
When I consider that these were only shows that included Emily Carr, it seems like a lot of them to me. I wonder what has happened along these lines in the decades since. I imagine there have been fewer in recent years. Is that true? As always, open to and interested in your insights and knowledge.
Cheers, Nicole.
Oh Canada at MASS MoCA – add cosmopolitan to provincial vs regional
http://www.canadianart.ca/online/features/2012/05/31/oh-canada-mass-moca/
I can’t wait to go see this show late this coming September.
But for the moment I think the reviewer has given me a new word that’s very useful. Like many Canadians, especially in places that are far from large southern centres, I wrestle a bit with questions of provincialism vs regionalism – the first being the feeling that you’re in the sticks and therefore irrelevant, the second, being comfortable with where you are and making art that arises from the experiences, logic and intuition of that place. But it seems also good and healthy to know about art from wider spheres as well. The Yukon art world boasts a more cosmopolitan world view than say Peterborough, Ontario in many ways. More people here read “The New Yorker”. More French is spoken, and German as well.
Who counts as part of the art world?
Who counts as part of the art world?
I have this perhaps foolish and idealistic notion that in making art, I’m offering it to everyone. I think there are barriers to access, but perhaps fewer in the Yukon than in other places. Of course there’s the remoteness of the Yukon, and so I show outside the Yukon as well.
Obviously, not everyone will respond to it. But I strive to find points of common ground, to make art that everyone can reach. That you don’t need a degree in cultural theory to decode.
I find that while lip service is paid to this notion in contemporary art circles, it’s not in practice a really current idea. Increasingly, an MFA is the qualifying degree for an art career, and working as a teacher at a university is considered a credit rather than a day job. The resulting artwork is created for an audience within this necessarily urban, institution-dependent circle.
I’d love to have my work exhibited in the National Gallery. But I’d rather lots of people saw it than the right people, I think. And since many curators looking at it wouldn’t see it as contemporary, perhaps it won’t get there.
I challenge myself on this. I wonder if I’m provinicializing myself, living in the Yukon. Am I failing to challenge myself enough intellectually by failing to take part in an MFA program? The most common argument for an MFA program I hear, is that it’s time to really focus on your art.
But I do that, and I find I can have that time for much less money than an MFA program. What is the post secondary art industry up to? Who benefits? What is being sold to whom? Is an MFA a way of buying artist status? Does one simply imbibe trendy ideas there that, like the waves in which Caravaggio was embraced, and then eschewed, and then embraced again, are fleeting and of little value? If I took part in such a program, would I just start making art that only that privileged circle would “get”? Is it the new Academy? Or does it impart some kind of rigour and discipline that really are necessary as a precursor to an art career?
As usual, more questions than answers. But I think that can be good. Again, if anyone’s reading this, your responses are welcome.
All the best, Nicole.
A few started questions about the sociology of “The Art World” in Canada
Sociology of “the art world” in Canada. A few questions to begin.
- How big is it? The circulation of Canadian Art is less than the population of the Yukon. And yet it’s a big dispenser of status in the art world.
- Canadian Art Magazine – unlike newspapers, no place to respond to articles. I wonder if a response place might make the dialogue more lively, and allow readers to challenge writers when they write things that are poorly thought out.
- Who counts as part of the “art world”? What exhibits or exhibiting places count as places where “real artists” show?
What is an artist? Post 1
Hello readers,
Here is an online article by Sarah Thornton, the Economist’s chief writer on contemporary art, from the Canadian Art Magazine.
It sets out as its goal to answer the question, What is an artist?
I have a number of contentions with this article. But first, let’s test if it achieves what it sets out to do.
To me, if we’re going to define the term “artist”, it would have to include emerging artists, and bad artists, and commercial artists – just like the definition of a circle would have to include blue circles, and circles made of grass, and so on.
After awhile, Thornton arrives at her definition. But she does not define an “artist.” She defines “contemporary artists”, and “people that society treats as artists.”
“Contemporary artists are ideas people who aspire to originality and make works that they hope will be seen in a museum. More specifically, I argue that the people that society treats as artists are professional thought-provokers who earn the right to be taken seriously through (a) insistent artworks, (b) convincing interpersonal and mediated communication and (c) opportune art-world affiliations.” (from the article linked to above.)
So she does not answer the question “what is an artist”, not really.
It’s hard to know where to start with this.
So the hope that one’s work will be seen in a museum is the qualifying trait of an artist? What about site-specific installations? Are they not art?
I’m not sure what an insistent artwork is, but I suppose I can kind of imagine it…though the term remains vague. It doesn’t really bestow the kind of clarity that Thornton promised us up front.
Are artist statements what Thornton is referring to in (b)? Do blogs count? So artists have to write? Or can the communication take place through the art itself?
And finally, in (c) – pity the poor ersatz artist who does not or does not yet have opportune art-world affiliations. And, who counts as a member of the art world? And, so, does an artist become an artist the moment she is taken on by a major gallery, where she wasn’t an artist before?
As her example of a non-artist, earlier in the article, she recounts a tale of an artist creating a set of landscapes for a seaside hotel, damning him for his “meek” ambitions. But doubtless this is not the only thing this artist has ever done. Is someone disqualified from being an artist the moment one does something to earn one’s living at it, even if the next week one takes that money and does something fabulously original? What about teachers at post-secondary institutions? They’re doing things to earn their living, teaching, lecturing, grading, filling in forms. Does that disqualify them?
I’d love to hear what other people think about this.
All the best, Nicole.
Review or press release journalism?
Canadian Art Magazine has a page listing art events in Alberta and the Yukon in their print magazine. Browsing it this fall, I came across a tiny mention of the Yukon Arts Centre show down at the bottom of the page in 8 point type.
This February, they actually wrote an article about a show at YAC, which was great. It’s good for all Yukon artists to have the Yukon arts scene acknowledged in a national forum.
But the author was never within 2000 km of the show. This is just a spin off the catalogue essay, with no critical thought invovled.
Here is my review, which is based on experiencing the show itself, and engages critically with some of the assumptions in the catalogue essay.
Welcoming your thoughts, all the best, Nicole.
Two theatre reviews
Hi there folks,
Here are two reviews I wrote for What’s Up Yukon.
The Guild’s The 39 Steps.
And Moving Parts Theatre’s Peer Gynt.
It’s exhilerating to go out to a show and hit send to the editor that night.
More soon, all the best, Nicole.
Nicole Bauberger 