Engendering an Avant-Garde: The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism

291 Pages·2018·21.127 MB·English

by  Leah Modigliani

Engendering an avant-garde
The unsettled landscapes of Vancouver
photo-conceptualism
Leah Modigliani

Engendering an avant-garde
SERIES EDITORS
Amelia G. Jones, Marsha Meskimmon
Rethinking Art’s Histories aims to open out art history from its most basic structures by
foregrounding work that challenges the conventional periodisation and geographical subfields of
traditional art history, and addressing a wide range of visual cultural forms from the early modern
period to the present.
These books will acknowledge the impact of recent scholarship on our understanding of the
complex temporalities and cartographies that have emerged through centuries of world-wide trade,
political colonisation and the diasporic movement of people and ideas across national and
continental borders.
Also available in the series
Colouring the Caribbean: Race and the art of Agostino Brunias Mia L. Bagneris
Performance art in Eastern Europe since 1960 Amy Bryzgel
Art, museums and touch Fiona Candlin
The ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork: Participation from fluxus to relational aesthetics Anna Dezeuze (ed.)
Fleshing out surfaces: Skin in French art and medicine, 1650–1850 Mechthild Fend
The political aesthetics of the Armenian avant-garde: The journey of the ‘painterly real’, 1987–2004
Angela Harutyunyan
The matter of miracles: Neapolitan baroque sanctity and architecture Helen Hills
The face of medicine: Visualising medical masculinities in late nineteenth-century Paris Mary Hunter
Glorious catastrophe: Jack Smith, performance and visual culture Dominic Johnson
Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art histories Amelia Jones and Erin Silver (eds)
Addressing the other woman: Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing Kimberly Lamm
Photography and documentary film in the making of modern Brazil Luciana Martins
After the event: New perspectives in art history Charles Merewether and John Potts (eds)
Women, the arts and globalization: Eccentric experience Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe (eds)
Flesh cinema: The corporeal turn in American avant-garde film Ara Osterweil
Migration into art: Transcultural identities and art-making in a globalised world Anne Ring Petersen
After-affects after-images: Trauma and aesthetic transformation in the virtual Feminist museum
Griselda Pollock
Vertiginous mirrors: The animation of the visual image and early modern travel Rose Marie San Juan
The synthetic proposition: Conceptualism and the political referent in contemporary art Nizan Shaked
The paradox of body, building and motion in seventeenth-century England Kimberley Skelton
The newspaper clipping: A modern paper object Anke Te Heesen, translated by Lori Lantz
Screen/space: The projected image in contemporary art Tamara Trodd (ed.)
Art and human rights: Contemporary Asian contexts Caroline Turner and Jen Webb
Timed out: Art and the transnational Caribbean Leon Wainwright
Performative monuments: Performance, photography, and the rematerialisation of public art
Mechtild Widrich
Engendering an avant-garde
The unsettled landscapes of Vancouver
photo-conceptualism
Leah Modigliani
Manchester University Press
Copyright © Leah Modigliani 2018
The right of Leah Modigliani to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 0119 8 hardback
First published 2018
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or any third-party internet websites referred to in
this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites
is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset
by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited
Contents
List of figures page vi
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1
Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979) and The Destroyed
Room (1978): colonizing the space of gendered discourse 22
2
Emily Carr and the legacy of Commonwealth modernism 49
3
Myth and the ‘home culture concept’ 86
4
Establishing the theory and practice of a defeatured
landscape 114
5
The 1970s and the gendered spaces of the counter tradition 163
6
Feminist theoretical and visual challenges to modernist
representation 192
Conclusion 228
Select bibliography 249
Index 261
Figures
1 Jeff Wall, street view of The Destroyed Room at the Nova
Gallery seen from West Fourth Street in Vancouver, BC,
1978. 22
2 Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978, transparency in lightbox,
159 × 229 cm. 23
3 Jeff Wall, Picture for Women, 1979, transparency in lightbox,
142.5 × 204.5 cm. 25
4 Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Discovery of America:
Vespucci Landing in America, pen and brown ink, brown wash,
heightened with white, over black chalk, c. 1587–89. 60
5 Emily Carr, Guyasdoms D’Sonoqua, c. 1930, oil on canvas,
overall 100.3 × 65.4 cm. 73
6 Tom Burrows, Mudflat Sculptures, c. 1970, 35 mm slide. 100
7 N.E. Thing Co., Ruins, 1968 (reassembled 1990), Cibachrome
transparency, lightbox, 40.6 × 50.8 × 12.7 cm. 116
8 Dan Graham, Homes for America (article for Arts Magazine),
1966–67, printed matter, dimensions variable according to
publication. 118
9 N.E. Thing Co., Portfolio of Piles, 1968, published by the UBC
Fine Arts Gallery. 119
10 N.E. Thing Co., Portfolio of Piles (detail of #42), 1968,
published by the UBC Fine Arts Gallery. 120
11 N.E. Thing Co., Portfolio of Piles (detail #1), 1968, published by
the UBC Fine Arts Gallery. 122
12 N.E. Thing Co., Portfolio of Piles (detail #59), 1968, published
by the UBC Fine Arts Gallery. 122
13 Jeff Wall, Landscape Manual, 1969–70, edition of 400. 124
14 Ian Wallace, Magazine Piece, 1970/2008, magazine pages and
tape, dimensions variable. 125
15 Jeff Wall, Landscape Manual (detail), 1969–70, edition of 400. 139
16 Jeff Wall, Landscape Manual (detail), 1969–70, edition of 400. 140
Figures vii
17 Ian Wallace, Study for Pan Am Scan, 1970, model paper with
silver gelatin print, 15.5 × 19.5 cm, framed. 144
18 Ian Wallace, Untitled (Street Reflections), 1970/91, 5 black-and-
white photographs on paper, 200.5 × 60.1 cm, edition 2/2. 146
19 Dan Graham, Figurative, 1965, printed matter, dimensions
variable according to publication. 148
20 N.E. Thing Co., Territorial Claim – Urination, 1969, collage,
44 × 44 cm. 149
21 Christos Dikeakos, Instant Photo Information (cover), 1970,
artist book, 22.2 × 34.3 cm. 165
22 Christos Dikeakos, still from Street Scans Car Rides, Betamax
video at the intersection of Cambie Bridge and Second Avenue
Vancouver, 1970. 166
23 Marcel Duchamp, Manual of Instructions for the Assembly of
Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau, 2° le gaz d’éclairage, 1966, black
vinyl binder with gelatin silver photographs, drawings, and
manuscript notes on paper and on photographs in graphite,
coloured inks, and paint in clear vinyl sheet protectors. Binder:
115/ × 913/  × 13/ inches (29.5 × 25 × 4.5 cm.). 168
8 16 4
24 Jeff Wall, Double Self-Portrait, 1979, transparency in lightbox,
172 × 229 cm. 174
25 Ian Wallace, The Summer Script II, 1973–74, hand-coloured
silver gelatin prints, 6 panels, overall 119 × 1053 cm. 179
26 Ian Wallace, The Summer Script I, 1973–74, hand-coloured
silver gelatin prints, 6 panels, overall 119 × 1053 cm. 179
27 Ian Wallace, An Attack on Literature I, 1975, 6 hand-coloured
black-and-white photographs, each photograph 123.5 × 174.4 cm. 182
28 Ian Wallace, An Attack on Literature II, 1975, 6 hand-coloured
black-and-white photographs, each photograph 123.5 × 174.4 cm. 182
29 Ian Wallace, Image/Text, 1979, hand-coloured silver gelatin
print, 275.5 × 548.7 cm. 185
30 Ian Wallace, Who Will I Become?, 2010, 243 × 183 cm. 188
31 Marian Penner Bancroft, For Dennis and Susan: Running Arms
to a Civil War, 1977, silver gelatin prints, 20.2 × 25.5 cm
each. 206
32 Marian Penner Bancroft, For Dennis and Susan: Running Arms
to a Civil War, 1977, silver gelatin prints, 20.2 × 25.5 cm
each. 206
33 Marian Penner Bancroft, for Susan/seasons after (detail), 1979,
silver gelatin prints, 31.7 × 22.8 cm each. 208
34 Marian Penner Bancroft, for Susan/seasons after (detail), 1979,
silver gelatin prints, 31.7 × 22.8 cm each. 209
viii Figures
35 Marian Penner Bancroft, TRANSFIGURED WOOD Part I,
View from the Porch, 1984, 7 silver gelatin prints, each approx.
90 × 104 cm. 210
36 Marian Penner Bancroft, spiritland/Octopus Books, 4th Avenue,
1987, silver gelatin print, dimensions variable. 211
37 Marian Penner Bancroft, Mnemonicon (The Screen), 1988, silver
gelatin print on panel, 203 × 307.5 × 4.8 cm. 213
38 Liz Magor, Breast Nest Pressers for the Perching Birds of
Canada, 1976, wood, cotton, metal, paper, twigs, grasses, mud,
91.5 × 243.8 × 20.3 cm. 219
39 Liz Magor, Cheyenne Type, 1989, Selenium tinted gelatin print,
41 × 51.75 cm. 221
40 Arni Haraldsson, The Balsam and The Arbutus, Burnaby, BC,
1992. 239
41 Jeff Wall, The Giant, 1992, transparency in lightbox,
39 × 48 cm. 242