The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” – for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

I came across THIS link from the art:21 blog today – in it, Anna Milandri talks about what’s been going on, art-wise, in Berlin recently.

Baby Ghost From the 1900s Says Beat It With Your Chain, 2009, by Berlin-based Montreal painter Wil Murray.

New York’s Triple Canopy put together six evenings of art-related discussion, including one titled “Print and Demand” in which several publications, including Berlin’s 032c(a great issue, btw) and Vancouver’s Fillip, where they discussed the changing nature of print and online publishing.

It seems that some intriguing ideas came out of the discussion, including the idea that readers – and particularly commenters with something to say – should consider contributing.

I agree, and I welcome contributions from regular commenters on VoCA. Whether you agree with my posts or not, it’s the only way to get a real dialogue going among this community of readers. Of course, I’d be happy to feature perspectives other than my own.

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There seems to have been a lot of talk about the democratization of art lately.  Recently in the Globe and Mail, columnists Russell Smith and Lynn Crosbie have both offered their thoughts on recent developments in the cultural sphere.

Jan Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1658-60. Image: navigo.com

In THIS article, Smith focuses on an online movement known as “folksonomy …or social tagging. It has created software that permits anybody to look at various museums’ online collections and label each image with as many descriptive keywords as they like.”

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Michelle Kuran has written an excellent article on the state of Canadian art criticism, in the Ryerson Review of Journalism. Read the article HERE.

Young, and determined critic Naja Sayej. Image: torontoist.com

Though Ms. Kuran did contact VoCA for our perspective, we were out of town and didn’t manage to make the interview happen.

Quoting everyone from R.M Vaughn to Artstars’ Nadja Sayej to Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes and Eye magazine’s David Balzer, the article is an interesting insight into the ‘criticism-by-omission’ that dominates today, and not only in Canada, of course.

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Here’s a fascinating article by Ben Lewis from Prospect magazine. It’s definitely worth reading.

In it, he presents the case for “compelling parallels between much of the contemporary art of the last two decades…and French rococo, a movement that extolled frivolity, luxury and dilettantism, patronised by a corrupt and decadent ancien régime.”

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. Image: rawartint.com

“Boucher’s art represented the degradation of the baroque school’s classical and Christian values into a heavenly zone of soft porn, shorn of danger, conflict and moral purpose. Similarly, (Damien) Hirst’s work represents the degeneration of the modernist project from its mission to sweep away art’s “bourgeois relics” into a set of eye-pleasing and sentimental visual tropes.”

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Marshall McLuhan’s poetic description of photographs as “dreams that money can buy,” begins the catalogue text for the 2010 CONTACT photography festival in Toronto.

A view of the exhibition by David Rokeby. Image: VoCA

The 2010 festival, on throughout May in various venues across the city, celebrates the media legend – wonderfully and appropriately – on the 30th anniversary of his death.

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There’s so much happening in the Canadian art world, it can be difficult to keep up with it all. Here’s a reminder of some places you can hear excellent talks, watch videos and read thoughtful commentary.

On OCAD’s website, check out videos from their excellent speaker series, including talks by the critic Hal Foster, Jamelie Hassan and Vandana Shiva.

Jamelie Hassan, Wall with Door, 1977. Image: canadianart.ca

Also, Filip, the Vancouver-based art publication, has some excellent podcasts, including THIS one from last year by the writer Diedrich Diederichsen on Judgment, Objecthood, Temporality.

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We hear that national critic Sarah Milroy and Toronto ‘Gallery Going’ writer Gary Michael Dault are going freelance at Canada’s largest-circulation national newspaper the Globe and Mail, leaving a big dark hole where the visual arts writing used to be.

Image: dspace.mit.edu

However, R.M Vaughn, the writer/artist/poet/critic who currently writes a film/celebrity interview column for the paper, will take over the Toronto coverage with a weekly column titled The Exhibitionist, (starting May 8th) but we can’t imagine that he’ll be there for too long. He seems to be a busy guy, showing his short videos around the world, among other things.

Rumour has it that certain not-for-profit arts organizations are unhappy about this lessening of coverage, enough to be discussing what to do about it and how to take matters into their own hands.

Stay tuned for more on this one…