Bertram Charles Binning's depiction of British Columbia coastal scenes in his
drawings and paintings of the mid 1940s to the early 1950s present images of sunlit
seascapes in recreational settings; they are scenes of leisure and pleasure. The concern
for leisure and pleasure was central to the artist's modernism, even after he began
painting in a semi-abstract manner around 1948. In this particular construction of
modernism, Binning offered pleasure as an antidote to some of the anxieties he observed
in postwar culture.
Binning also thought that art could contribute to life in a direct way. In the mid to
late 1940s, Vancouver saw a series of artistic community projects which explored the
possibility of art as a social force; the Art in Living Group, of which Binning was a
member, believed that art could have a therapeutic value in relation to housing projects
and community planning. In certain ways, the Art in Living Group was a response to
rapid changes in the social matrix of Vancouver.
Binning's personal artistic practice, however, appears to have existed outside of
what was embraced in his participation in those community projects. His essentially
personal, self-authenticating expression in the form of drawings may be seen to resist the
idealism of his more 'public' production, that is, his own idealism, his demand for an art
thoroughly harmonized with the public sphere. Moreover, in this more personal body of
work, his choice of leisurely scenes, rendered in a style reminiscent of Matisse, can be
seen as far removed from the urban tensions of the time. It also seems to suggest that the
leisure-and-pleasure idealism which finds expression in these works was not only class-and
gender- specific, but also antithetical to his strong desire to democratize art.
Binning's preoccupation with personal expression took a turn when he shifted his
concern from representational drawings to semi-abstract paintings. The shift coincided
with his career move to the University of British Columbia as a professor of Art History
in 1949. From then on, Binning's interest in regional cosmopolitanism became more
pronounced in his work. In this sense, it is significant that Binning looked for guidance
to Herbert Read's ideas about modern art and art education. At the same time, his
reputation expanded beyond the West Coast. In 1954, Binning was chosen to represent
Canada at the Venice Biennale.
Binning's particular modernism, as represented by this range of work, all of which
presents a pastoral version of Utopia , was in some ways profoundly at odds with the social
circumstances of the time. Why was the interest in leisure and pleasure significant to his
practice? What did it mean to promote this kind of idealism in the local context? And in
what ways did it relate to the international art scene — for example, to the work of
Matisse or to contemporary concepts of art? My thesis addresses these questions by
situating Binning's work both regionally and internationally.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9147 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Yamanaka, Kaori |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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