The other day I found a number of old Canadian Art magazines on sale for $2 each. I bought them, and found this questionnaire in the April 1966 issue. It’s interesting, reading over the questions how some remain relevant today and others, not so much…

My vintage copies of Canadian Art. Image: VoCA

On the following page were answers to some of the questions by the leading artists of the day, including Jean McEwen, Clive Daly, Guido Molinari, Doris McCarthy, Joyce Wieland, Christopher Pratt and Iain Baxter. I’ll reprint some of their answers in an upcoming blog post.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your replies to some of the questions. Pick just one, or several and comment below!

Button created by Iain Baxter’s N.E. Thing Company Ltd. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Active 1966-1978. Image: flickr.com

1. Do you think art criticism can be useful? If yes, to whom especially?

2. What should art criticism contain?

3. What do you feel is the role of the art critic today?

4. In your opinion, what constitutes the minimum training, academic or otherwise and experience in the visual arts that would equip a critic to fulfill his role?

5. Assuming art criticism has some value, in which of the following media is art criticism most necessary? (Check one only)
a. Newspapers
b. Quarterlies
c. Television
d. Art magazines
e. Radio
f. Other (specify)

6. Art criticism should be directed to reach (check as many of the following as you believe necessary)
a. Artists
b. Museum and public gallery executives
c. Private collectors
d. Other (specify)
e. Other critics
f. Students
g. The general public

7. Do you feel that sound critical reviews (good or bad) have an influence on artists’ work and its direction?

8. Do you feel that sound critical reviews have an influence on the buying public?

9. Do you feel that sound critical reviews have an influence on art appreciation generally?

10. Whether incompetent criticism praises or condemns, do you believe that unsound critical reviews ultimately damage and artist with his public? If so, why?

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Have you seen Beyonce’s new video Who Run the World (Girls)? I havent’ been able to get it out of my mind. Check it out HERE.

A promo image for Beyonce’s new video Run the World (Girls). Image: cdn.idolator.com

While pro-women statements have been popular in pop music for a while, (the Spice Girls and Girl Power wasn’t so long ago) with Beyonce’s video I sense an attitude of female fierceness that I haven’t noticed in mainstream pop before. It made me wonder what ‘Girl Power’ has turned into, and what its eventual impact might be. Feminist writers – like Susan Hopkins in Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture – have in recent years been identifying and deconstructing the links between ‘Girl Power’ and the notion of the female warrior.

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Toronto design collective Public Displays of Affection is bringing the ‘eat local’ concept of community supported agriculture to design. Their brand of community engaged design involves their members – mostly young furniture designers and artists including the up-and-coming Brothers Dressler, Dennis Lin (whose studio I visited last year) and MADE – working with local organizations and communities to build furniture and design interiors.

For Edmond Place, Henry Salonen and Adriana Romano’s chair of reclaimed wood shipping pallets with cushion crafted from pre-loved jeans.

PDA was founded by Jeremy Vandermeij, Katherine Ngui and Parimal Gosai, who met at Ryerson University while studying interior design, and Adam Harris, who had studied graphic design at George Brown College. I sat down with Jeremy, Katherine and Adam on a rainy afternoon at the Gladstone Hotel:

VoCA: I’m interested in this idea of very local, community engaged design. How did you come up with the concept for PDA?

PDA: It came from our interest in filling this need we saw of trying to bring contemporary design into communities that didn’t have it. It was the idea of getting people involved in their own projects that made sense in a wholistic way.

When we started, we wanted to do workshops in design in the community, simple projects for those people who didn’t think they were practicing design. We would show them that they were, in fact practicing design all the time.

We were wanting to find a way of practicing design outside of the industry. That idea brought us to the Edmond Place project, our first project. That kind of engagement made sense. It’s important to avoid the psychology of a handout. Being involved makes it more meaningful to the people we are doing it for.

That was on the clients mind before we approached them. It’s do-it-yourself, or rather educating, taking action, rehabilitation through the work. We were looking for a place to do that kind of thing.

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Rumour has it that the newly released Creative Capital Plan, which makes a strong case for Toronto’s art and culture sector as a significant industry and revenue generator, may be short-lived.

Image: ocad.ca

The report, headed up by Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 Scarborough Centre), Chair of the City’s Economic Development Committee, is billed as a partnership between the City and the arts and culture community, and provides recommendations to update the City’s last culture plan from 2003.

In 1998, the newly amalgamated City had a Culture Plan drafted “to help guide the city’s cultural development for the next decade.” The first plan focused on larger cultural initiatives – and we now have the Ballet School, the Canadian Opera Company, OCAD University, the ROM and the Art Gallery of Ontario to show for it.  The new report recognizes the value of small arts operations as well as the need to connect them with like-minded organizations and their initiatives.

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I thought I’d share with you a photograph that was recently given to me. It’s quickly become one of my favorite things.

It’s a photograph of Andy Warhol examining a Polaroid. It must have been taken in the early sixties, and it was taken by a friend of mine, a German art collector, whose daughter Warhol was doing a silkscreen of.

Image: VoCA

In the photo, one of several taken surreptitiously by my friend, Warhol is examining a test, soon to become one of his famous silkscreen portraits. Click HERE to read more about the process he used to create the portraits.

The critic Arthur Danto wrote, in The Nation in 1989: “I think eventually people competed to be portrayed by Warhol because that appeared to give them instant immortality of the sort usually enjoyed only by the greatest of stars or the most celebrated products, as if they were also part of the common consciousness of the time.”

Which, of course, they were.