I have an idea for Canadian Art
Cc: Mark Carney
Canadian visual art doesn’t have much of an identity. And I’m not talking about the lack of a defining aesthetic or sensibility that comes to mind when someone says ‘Canadian art’; such a debate would require people to be talking about Canadian art. They don’t. The most prominent art movements from Canada are probably the Woodlands School and Group of Seven, but we have an inflated sense of their recognition outside our borders. Remember when you realized that no one else cares about The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or Matthew Good Band? The CanCon effect applies to visual art, too.
I am thinking about the Canadian identity that comes across, globally, in other art categories. In music, most notably we have the conscious singer-songwriters: Joni, Neil, Leonard, Gordon. Very respectable, very on-brand. More recently, we have the mega-stars whose identity could be dubiously summarized as forever teenagers (?): Justin, Drake, Avril, Nickelback, Tate. In acting, our talent for producing goofy white boys is unparalleled: Gosling, Carrey, Reynolds, Aykroyd, Baruchel, Rogen, Cera, Levy, Myers… the list goes on. It feels safe to say that we punch above our weight in the categories above. Could we do the same with visual art?
A proposition for a Canadian art direction that would be new and refreshing on the world stage.
There is a mood waiting to be seized upon that is a natural extension from the actors we have exported to Hollywood in droves: unseriousness. If contemporary art dies (it won’t, but), one warranted cause of death would be its inability to enjoy life. The people are dying for levity and laughter, and Canadians, in our demonstrated unseriousness, have the tools to make humour our national art mandate. We even have a guiding beacon at our disposal for this transition. I hereby elect Canadian artist, icon, and TV personality Hannah Epstein, to take us to the promised land.
Epstein has already provided this service, to some extent, via her project Canvassing Canadians (above), commissioned by CBC Arts. Through it, she surveys everyday Canadians about their interests and tastes in Canadian art. The interviews are playful and unpretentious, and reveal (understandably) that few Canadians know anything about their art scene — but they want to! She never scoffs and always provides bite-sized, approachable education by highlighting a local artist or arts organization. I would love to see more CanCon like this.
Epstein’s work, too, is a pillar of (skilled) unseriousness that Canadian artists could take as inspo. Her hooked rug works often incorporate memes, current events, comic and video game imagery, and classic lowbrow concepts like the snake taking a bite out of an apple between Eve’s legs while Adam looks on in distress. This declarative crudeness is refreshing. The most typical tone for “funny” in contemporary art is a pithy, cynical, meta commentary on the self-seriousness of art or the commerciality of it all — but dunking on contemporary art is not subversive or funny; we’ve heard it a million times. I like that Epstein’s art is silly for the sake of itself; it does not seem overly concerned with making a point.
What do we think, readers? Could Canadians claim a new art identity and offer some much-needed levity to contemporary art? The comedic potential in my tiny list of subscribers alone is impressive; all the funniest people I’ve ever met are reading these words. You know who you are, and almost none of you are making art. Make art!
You are being so real for saying that... I once asked a gallerist in Toronto about their view on Canadian art being represented in international art fairs, like do they find it particularly hard to "sell Canadian arts" to their international buyers and I get a vague response of "there is no such thing as a needed identity for art in Toronto" and that contemporary art is international itself, but I can’t help thinking that this very lack of a distinct “identity” is exactly what defines the scene here. It's almost like the absence itself becomes the presence, maybe somehow it could feel invisible on the global stage but who knows, maybe that is the quiet tension that Canadian artists carry with them: the pressure to be both recognizable and undefined at once.