VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and part three, below.

“Recent Snow”: Michael Snow That/Cela/Dat, 2000. Image: canadianart.ca

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VoCA contributor and artist book collector Bill Clarke is back with a third installment from his collection, this time of books that take the form of exhibition catalogues. Check out parts one and two HERE and HERE, and stay tuned for part four, coming this week.

Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue, 1968. Image: courtesy Bill Clarke.

Bill Clarke edits Magenta Magazine Online, a great new publication which you can read HERE.

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“Maximillian?…No, Maximultimillion” is the response attributed to Lord Beaverbrook, a.k.a Max Aitken, when he was once asked his name.  It gives you a sense of the grandeur with which the Canadian media baron must have swirled about London social circles in the early 20th century.

Lord Beaverbrook. Image: photobucket.com

I noticed, the other day in the Art Newspaper, THIS article about how the UK-based Beaverbrook foundation is having to sell Cherkley Court, the former home of Lord Beaverbrook, for whom the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, is named.

Cherkley Court, in England. Image: exclusiveheritageavenues.com

As you probably know, the Foundation and the gallery have long been locked in a bitter dispute over which paintings belong to whom, and the Foundation needs the money from the sale of Cherkley Court to pay its legal bills. Read more about the ongoing battle, HERE.

For What? One of Frederick Varley’s excellent war paintings, made in 1918 while with the CWMF. Image: warmuseum.ca

While reading an advance copy of Ross King upcoming book Defiant Spirits, about the Group of Seven, I discovered that in 1916, Lord Beaverbrook founded the Canadian War Records Office and the War Memorials Fund, through which many of the Group – A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, and Arthur Lismer – were commissioned to record the war.

The brilliant novelist Evelyn Waugh. Image: blogs.guardian.co.uk

Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. Image: finebooksmagazine.com

I also discovered that as owner of the British papers the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and the Evening Standard, Beaverbrook employed the novelist Evelyn Waugh (one of my favorites) and then lampooned him in one of my favorite films, Scoop, as Lord Copper and as Lord Monomark in both Put Out More Flags and Vile Bodies.

A note: I also found out, in Ross King’s book, that former Prime Minister Mackenzie King loathed the work of the Group of Seven – he thought they were far too outlandish, despite their desire to create a Canadian style of painting.  Plus ca change…

I went to the preview opening of the excellent new exhibition by famed American minimalist artist Sol Lewitt at the Toronto artist-run centre Mercer Union last night.

The installation at Mercer Union. All images: VoCA

Another view of the installation.

Lewitt’s wall drawings, which are painted directly on walls, and for which buyers purchase the instructions, caused quite a sensation back in the 1960s, one collector recalled, because “no one was doing anything like that”.

The exhibition was originally mounted in the gallery in 1981, and was recreated as part of the 30th anniversary year of Mercer Union. Click HERE for a very interesting review of the original show by John Bentley Mays.

There’s also, in the back room, some vitrines displaying books on Lewitt’s work that offer fascinating insight into the work. The catalogues came from the collection of a local collector and are a fantastic compliment to the wall drawings.

How did Sol Lewitt come to show his work at Mercer Union in the first place? The story, as told to me by Mercer co-director York Lethbridge, goes like this:

“One of (Mercer’s) original board members, Michael Davey, had met Sol LeWitt while completing graduate studies in Scotland in the ’70s. LeWitt and Davey kept up correspondence, so when Mercer Union was starting out, looking for diverse programming, Davey invited LeWitt to do a project at 29 Mercer Street (our first gallery space). Given the board was bootstrapping operations, LeWitt agreed to work with the artists on the board to install the work, so he came to Toronto with his assistant and future wife Carol Androccio and completed the drawing in 2 days with help from then board members Peter Blendell, Michael Davey, Jamie Lyons, Robert McNealy, Jaan Pooldaas, Judith Schwarz, Renee van Halm, Cheryl West and Robert Wiens. LeWitt also showed work with the David Bellman gallery, who, I think, helped pay for his travel.”

Some of the catalogues on display.

Apparently, this installation is only the second time the work has ever been shown. It would have been appropriate for the AGO or the Power Plant, but as a former board member of MercerUnion, I’m proud that Mercer is looking so good.

I encourage people to support the upcoming exhibitions spaces in Canada – Mercer’s mandate is to show innovative projects by living contemporary artists, and artist-run centres are essential spaces run by artists for artists that support the exhibition of new work where there isn’t always yet a strong market.

The show will be on July 10 – August 28, 2010, and the opening party is tomorrow (Saturday) from 2 – 5 pm, with a talk by Anthony Sansotta, an expert draughtsman who worked with Sol LeWitt for many years at 3 pm.

Please click HERE for Mercer Union’s website, where you’ll find more info and upcoming exhibitions etc.

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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Toronto artist Micah Lexier is everywhere these days.

A view of Micah Lexier’s installation I Am the Coin, at BMO in Toronto.  Image: iamthecoin.com

Not only did he have new work in a recent show at his Toronto dealer, Birch Libralato, he has a just-opened year-long installation at the Bank of Montreal’s Project Room titled I am the Coin – click HERE to check it out – along with several upcoming collaborations.

-Twelve of One: A Series of Twelve Consecutive Vitrine Displays is on view at Art Metropole, and will change each month over the course of one year. Click HERE for more info.

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Scott Treleaven was born in Toronto, Canada and graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) in 1996.

Scott Treleaven, My Ever Changing Moods, 2009, ink, photographs, watercolour. Image: kavigupta.com

Now based in Paris, he has shown in Chicago at Kavi Gupta, in New York at John Connelly Presents and has had a limited edition book published by Printed Matter Inc.

He is probably best know for his film The Salivation Army (2002), which caught the attention of the Village Voice in 2003, screening worldwide, most notably in the official Art Basel film program in 2004 and at the Museum of Modern Art in 2006.

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What is it about the increasingly popular art that brings together illustration, graphic design, graffiti and cartoons? It’s a huge trend that you might say was begun, in its most recent form, by the American painter Philip Guston in the 1970s, when he abruptly dropped Abstract Expressionism for his own style that he’s now most famous for.

Philip Guston, Story, 1978. Image: artnet.com

Marc Bell, Spore Spredder. Image: comicsreporter.com

Guston made the change because he was looking for an art with more meaning. Speaking of his feelings in the late 1960s when America was at war, he said “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. (I thought) what kind of man am 1, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything – and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. [..] I wanted to be complete again, as I was when I was a kid…. Wanted to be whole between what I thought and what I felt.”

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Just found this on Luxist.com:

Louis Vuitton’s new book: Art, Fashion and Architecture. Image: luxist.com

“A seductive anthology of the famed French fashion house’s collaborations with an international group of elite artists, architects, designers, and photographers, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Takashi Murakami (whose updated LV monogram is featured on the cover) Richard Prince and Stephen Sprouse.”

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Alberta is seeing a lot of cultural action these days.

There’s Santiago Calatrava’s controversial bridge, Lethbridge’s own (and VoCA favorite) David Hoffos with a large retrospective coming up this fall at the National Gallery of Canada, and Nigerian artist El Anatsui giving a talk tomorrow at the Glenbow Museum, courtesy of the Canadian Art Foundation, to name just a few things going on.

Burtynsky’s new book. Image: rsvppost.com

Not to mention the Art Gallery of Alberta, which is currently under construction and set to open in early 2010 with Edward Burtynsky: Oil.

From October 9 – December 12, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design launches 2 exhibitions by an American and an Irish artist, that explore the issues associated with the idea of the North and related ideas of the West.

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