Cinematic photography, theatricality, spectacle: The art of Jeff Wall

This dissertation examines developments in the field of art photography through a close examination of the work of Vancouver-based artist, Jeff Wall. It is concerned in particular with the development of \u27cinematic photography\u27, a practice which draws together the conventions of theatre and image in the creation of a pictorial tableau. This practice attests to the inherent tensions of the post-68 era with regard to the legacy of modernism, the onset of post-modernism and the fading viability of the avant-garde imagination. The critical reception of Jeff Wall\u27s art rightly emphasizes the heritage of sixties vanguardism rather than the established tradition of modernist art photography. This dissertation demonstrates the way in which Wall\u27s \u27postmedium\u27 return to pictorialism is also intended to work against sixties experimentalism, and, in particular, against the iconoclasm of Conceptual Art. It reviews the means by which the artist\u27s position builds from cultural Marxism, the historical avant-garde, and from that trajectory of critical postmodernism which championed theatricality. Central to this study is the claim that older practices of representation, such as theatre and drama, play a crucial role in shaping the art photography of the post-68 era, and Jeff Wall\u27s work in particular. While dominant interpretations of Jeff Wall\u27s art have explained the rejection of sixties experimentalism as a strategic return to the \u27painting of modern life\u27, I argue that the discourse of theatricality which dates from the sixties and seventies, both pro and con, is a more productive means by which to understand the widespread return to narrative pictorialism which has occurred in contemporary art. Following ideas developed by Michael Fried, T.J. Clark and others, this dissertation connects the emergent discourse of theatricality as it occurs in the art world with social theories which address the increasingly spectacular forces of consumer society, finally returning to the formative role played by Enlightenment debates about the value of modernity as a culture of representation. Aesthetic experience is offered to the contemporary spectator as the site of an ongoing contest between the critical force of negation and the formidable appearance of progress

As if the oceans were lemonade : the performative vision of Robert Filliou and the Western Front

This thesis examines a cultural community in Vancouver during the 1970s, focussing on the group of artists, poets and musicians active in the formation of the Western Front. While the Front is still active today my research is focussed around the initial formation of the Front community, from its inception in 1 973. The Utopian and countercultural artistic practice which developed there during the early seventies has made a significant contribution to recent Canadian art. I examine the Western Front through the presence of French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, as he figures prominently in the written history of that period and provides a critical point of entry into its activities. In the Vancouver scene Filliou operated as an emblem of Utopian possibility, representing art as an imaginary space in which to develop ideas about social transformation. The pivotal concept of this thesis relies on what Filliou referred to as "la Fete Permanente" or, alternately, as "the Eternal Network". I use this dual term as a means of comparing emergent cultural politics, examining the implications carried by the French usage of la fete versus the North American usage of the network. In the first section of the text Filliou's ludic artistic strategies are situated within the performative praxis of the Fluxus movement, which had become active in New York and Europe in the early sixties. I also try to show the way in which his commitment to la fete relates to the widespread counterestablishment protests which, in France, were to culminate in the Events of May, 1968. In 1973, when Filliou made his first visit to Canada, the Western Front was being promoted by its members as an important "node" on an emergent "network" of global artist connections. I examine how the idea of "network consciousness" was seized by members of the Western Front as a means of speaking within the dominant logic of media culture. The distance which separated the Front from the Fluxus generation was, so to speak, a ricochet through the "new" space of orbiting communications satellites. While my consideration of la fete versus thenetwork stresses the contrast between oppositional strategies as they were articulated in Europe and North America, the thesis also draws attention to the strong alignments between Filliou and the artists at the Western Front. I argue that the prominent position given to Filliou by its members was a signal of their collective resistance to the technological imperative which guides media culture. One sees, through Filliou, that during the early seventies the Western Front made a valiant attempt to construct a network which would align the banal sophistication and glamour of Hollywood with the intimacy of a bohemian community. These artists, including Filliou, integrated decadence and festive abandon into their artistic practice as a means of asserting their difference from the conventional middle class values being advanced through the mass media. In the final section of the thesis I use the building of the Pompidou Center in Paris as a symbol of the international shift which announced the dispersal of these counter-cultural, bohemian ideals. By the late seventies, both in Canada and in France, the visionary promise upheld by "the Eternal Network/La Fete Permanente" was compelled to assume a new and more resilient configuration.Arts, Faculty ofArt History, Visual Art and Theory, Department ofGraduat

Johannes Zits, Thecla Schiphorst, Charles Rea : Altered Visions

A catalogue documenting a series of solo exhibitions curated by S. Edelstein, which focus on the subject matter of space and its relation to the body. Includes two texts by Hogg (on the paintings of Zits and Rea), and a text by Sava (on Schiphorst's multi-media installation). Topics discussed include: relations between digital technology and kinesthetic experience, the domestication of painting and homosexual identity. 10 bibl. ref

Agile Course Design: Teaching & Learning with the OIRT Instructional Design Team

Concurrent Session

Robert Filliou : From Political to Poetical Economy

In this anthology of writings on or by Filliou, Sava adresses the French artist's Canadian connection (especially to the Vancouver video scene), while Robertson, Craig and Bull provide personal accounts. Filliou's text is a transcription of segments from videotapes where the artist expands his propositions and principles. Includes a videography, a chronological sketch of the artist's relations to Canada, and a chart characterizing institutional practices in Canadian art between 1968 and 1988

6 New Vancouver Modern

A catalogue made to accompany an exhibition of contemporary works - paintings, installations, sculptures and photographs - by six Vancouver-based artists. Texts by six authors draw attention to various ways in which the artists address themes of excess and waste by appropriating pop culture, abstraction and hybrid media. Subjects of regionalism/internationalism, identity/community and technological progress are discussed in relation to post-war modernism and apocalypse. Includes artists' pages. List of works. Biographical notes. 69 bibl. ref