It is the purpose of this paper to examine the continuing manifestations of nature in Canadian art since the time of the Group of Seven. It has been the writer's endeavour to handle the available material in such a manner as to show not only the persistence of the nature theme, but also to show that the changes in the expression of this theme have followed basically the general trends in Canadian art since that time. Whenever possible, relevant comments by critics and writers of the period have been included so that works may be considered in the opinion of the acknowledged authorities of the day, as well as to a degree in retrospect. Pertinent comments by artists concerning their work and their attitude to art, as it relates to the general subject, are also included. In the past fifty years Canadian artists have responded to their environment in countless ways, and many meaningful interpretations have resulted. In addition to traditional landscape expressions which reflect our most familiar conception of nature, manifestations of responses to other aspects of nature are included. Nature is thus taken, for the purposes of this paper, in a wider meaning to include a number of conceptions of the physical world and its phenomena: a number of aspects of the world not made by man. In the opening chapter the facts concerning the establishment of the landscape tradition in Canadian art are reviewed. There is consideration also for the question that is rarely posed, as to why the strong sense of nationalistic pride of members of the Group of Seven found all but exclusive artistic outlet in interpretations of the rugged Canadian northland. During the Thirties the Canadian lanscape remained as the main theme of Canadian artists, and imitation of Group methods was rampant. However, in the works of some artists, it is noted that subject matter becomes more intimate and the statements more personal. The avant-garde Montreal painters in the Forties sought to replace the prevailing obsession with landscape, with works derived from School of Paris influence. Although these artists were to spurn the prevailing devotion to typically Canadian subject matter, the presence of nature, perhaps unconsciously revealed, is apparent in many of their works. Following the innovations in Montreal, School of Paris influences spread across Canada during the Forties and early Fifties, and many interesting landscape abstractions evolved. In many instances the French 'manner' was consciously applied to the traditional Canadian 'matter'. With the adoption of methods of the New York Abstract Expressionists, following the mid-Fifties, Canadian artists frequently expressed themselves in the form of 'gestural' landscapes. The Canadian environment is no longer the prime inspirational force in such subjective works, but there seemed to be a resistance to eliminate all suggestion of nature. There are lingering references in many works to the once all-powerful theme, but the landscape references are most frequently general and universal, rather than specific. A group of artists are considered who have turned from international influences and have maintained a commitment to 'realistic' art. This group have frequently combined landscape and figure in their work in order to express a meaningful human situation. Their vision is intense and their realistic approach to subject matter often borders on the surreal. When man is not depicted directly his presence is implied: landscape is a setting for a human situation. In a totally different vein are a number of works that would seem to realize in plastic form aspects of the 'new landscape' of our time. Due to the advancement in science and technology new orders of magnitudes, both microcosmic and macrocosmic, have become part of man's visual and mental experience and have stimulated his imagination. Artists struck by the wonder and mystery of the expanded conception of nature have enriched our experience with a wealth of imagery. In the Sixties the widening commitment towards formalism, which has been accompanied by an increasing denial of all subject matter, has taken its toll on the declining landscape tradition. In the majority of hard edge works the connection with nature is emphatically broken. On occasion, however, it is noted, that with the employment of certain elements, landscape overtones are to a degree apparent -perhaps as a result of a nostalgic tendency on the part of a romantic viewer, or as a lingering attachment towards landscape on the part of the artist. In either case the approach is subjective, stemming from a committed habit of association. A number of significant artists of the Sixties have consciously retained an association with nature. These artists are primarily involved with new attitudes and techniques, and have brought about drastic changes in the presentation of traditional landscape subject matter. Theirs is not so much 'new landscape' as landscape transformed. Frequently these statements are three-dimensional, and seemingly reflect a desire on the part of artists to achieve a more concrete form of expression in line with a present trend toward literalism in art. Essentially this group of artists have concentrated on the details of traditional landscape - interpretations of clouds, waves, earth, streams, etc. They have approached these details, however, in a universal sense as idea, rather than as specific topographical detail. It is this general, non-specific approach that would seem to hold meaning for these artists. A climax in the involvement of artist with 'actual materials', 'actual colour' and 'actual space' is seen in the current involvement on the part of some artists in Earthworks. Here the elements of the natural world provide not only the inspiration, but the media as well. In Canada this is not a major trend, but merely one further manifestation of interest in the world of nature. It is suggested that this urge to create in outdoor natural situations is surely, perhaps unconsciously, a form of reaction against the existing technologically-dominated urban society. The Canadian landscape tradition as established by the Group of Seven has not flourished since the Forties, but within the broader nature theme (of which landscape is a part), many artists have found a powerful motivating force. Undoubtedly the world of nature will continue to be a deeply influential factor for a number of artists in the future as they endeavour to come to terms with ever-changing world situations. The forms their expressions will take, however, one could not possibly predict. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.). / Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/30). Written for the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

Traditional mythological themes have been repeatedly depicted in contemporary Inuit art since the late 1950s. This thesis examines the portrayals of the female sea spirit or Sedna and the male moon spirit in sculpture and graphics by contemporary Inuit artists from three Arctic art "communities": Baker Lake, Cape Dorset and Povungnituk. Analysis of the mythological depictions has led me to conclude that artists have tended to employ two distinct styles of illustration to represent these deities. These two types are iconic and narrative. Introduced by the first generation of contemporary Inuit artists working in the late 1950s these types functioned as tangible expressions of the unique nature and role of each deity in Inuit culture as these were perceived by the Inuit artists, and involved a complicated process of integrating both traditional and "alien" elements. Subsequent generations of artists have retained these prototypes and continued to incorporate elements based on these two influences. The complex evolution of Sedna and Moon Spirit imagery reflects the role contemporary Inuit mythological art has come to play as both a medium of communication to non-Inuit and a historical and cultural repository for the Inuit. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--Queen's University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic format.

My thesis is centered on poetics of the body in contemporary feminist art. Poetics, understood as the languages, materials and forms of composition, underscores the symbolically and socially mediated body so rendered, rather than its biological, anatomical, or otherwise 'natural' definition. A feminist poetics is at once a politics, and a creation, of language. I proceed through a close reading of a number of artworks by Canadian artists. These works 'resist' representation, foregoing a biologically grounded figuration to propose in more allusive terms the psychic and conceptual impulses through which the body is apprehended or might be imagined. / Influenced by the writings of Luce Irigaray on the structural isomorphism between logos, the phallus, and a privileged masculine model of subjectivity, the thesis investigates the construction within feminist art of alternative and contestatory poetics of the body potentially productive of other knowledge-effects. / Situating my investigation within the context of numerous 'figurations' of the subject that have emerged in recent feminist theory, I propose that feminist art practices provide a corollary contribution, in material form, to the theoretical project of thinking 'difference' beyond dualism. / I identify three modalities of practice that 're-make' the body/embodiment vis a vis a 'phallomorphic' model of identity, unity, self-sameness: (a) the body in/of language, as the imbrication of the two identified by Julia Kristeva through the category of the semiotic; (b) morphologies of the body as the imaginary body produced through an interweaving of the body's form, psychic dispensations and social/symbolic inscriptions; (c) constructed spatialities in which the material spaces of exhibition sites become enacted metaphoric spaces, and foreground the potential and import of spatial representations in the production of personal and social experience. / I argue that the forms, materialities and spatialities specific to visual art can serve to constitute analogues for the materiality of the body. The thesis considers the artworks as embodiments: at once material, textural and spatial 'bodies' of art. / Interdisciplinary in scope, this thesis brings together visual and textual sources drawn from contemporary art and the literatures of feminist (and) poststructuralist theory, cultural studies, postcolonial theory and the field of art history and criticism.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-135). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-114). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

In December 1927, Emily Carr's paintings were shown for the first time in central Canada in an exhibition called Canadian West Coast Art - Native and Modern. This event was held at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and marked a major turning point in Carr's career, for it brought her acceptance by the intellectual and artistic elite with their powerful networks of influence, as well as national acclaim in the public press. To this point, art historical writings have tended to focus on the artist and her own experiences, and in the process, the importance of this experimental exhibition in which her work was included has been overlooked and marginalized. This thesis attempts to redress this imbalance by examining the exhibition in detail: first, to analyze the complexities of its ideological premises and the cultural implications of juxtaposing, for the first time in Canada, aboriginal and non-native artistic production within an art gallery setting; second, to consider the roles played by the two curators, Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery, and C. Marius Barbeau, chief ethnologist at the National Museum; and third, to indicate the ways in which Emily Carr's works and those of the other non-native artists functioned within the exhibition. During the 1920s, both the National Gallery and the National Museum were caught up in the competitive dynamic of asserting their leadership positions in the cause of Canadian nationalism and the development of a national cultural identity. In this 1927 exhibition, these issues of nationalism, self-definition and the development of a distinctly "Canadian" art permeated its organization and presentation. The appropriated aboriginal cultural material in the museum collections that had languished within storage cases was to be given a contemporary function. It was to be redeemed as "art," specifically as a "primitive" stage in the teleological development of the constructed field of "Canadian" art history. In this elision process, the curators relegated the native culture to a prehistoric and early historic past, suppressing its own parallel historical and cultural development. The exhibition also presented the native objects as an available source of decorative design motifs to be exploited by non-native artists, designers and industrial firms in their production of Canadian products, underlining the assumption of the right to control and manipulate the culture of the colonized "Other." Emily Carr"s twenty-six paintings, four hooked rugs and decorated pottery represented the largest contribution from any single artist. In their interpretations of the native culture, Carr and the other non-native artists were also engaged in a "self-other" definition, and had filtered their perceptions through the practices and conventions of western art traditions, especially in the use of modernist techniques. In the context of the exhibition, the artistic production by the fourteen non-native artists, including Carr, was caught up in a reaffirmation of the ideological and cultural positions of the two curators and the institutions they represented. The alternate discourses that could have been provided by the native people remained unheard. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

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