As I gather my favourite additions to the bookshelf this year, I’m reminded of Umberto Eco’s quote, “Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."
This year’s round-up corrals more than a dozen excellent books, some aimed at a wide audience and some of special interest. As Eco suggests, I can return to each in the way I return to the kitchen, to seek various kinds of nutrition.
Jack Bush Paintings: A Catalogue Raisonné is a comprehensive four-volume set weighing in at approximately 40 pounds, successfully reaching the ambitious goal of documenting each painting in the long career of this masterful Canadian colourist. In terms of scholarship, Dr. Sarah Stanner’s research and writing is meticulous and engaging. And in terms of design, Barr Gilmore’s vision is brilliant. The published edition of 500 is available, although the special edition, encased in a bright yellow metal slipcover, sold out quickly. If this publication raises the question, “Who is the audience for high end art books?” the response comes as a surprise. Collectors and institutions as hoped, but also individual artists.
At the other end of the accessibility spectrum, the Art Canada Institute’s mandate is to promote “the study of an inclusive, multi-vocal Canadian art history” to as broad an audience as possible with free on-line resources and affordable publications. Launched in 2013, they add to the roster of on-line publications each year, occasionally producing print versions. They assign the most knowledgeable writers to write about individual artists and specific fields. This year, Takao Tanabe: Life & Work by Ian Thom is available in print. The three most recent on-line releases are Carl Beam: Life & Work by Anong Migwans Beam; Betty Goodwin: Life & Work by Jessica Bradley; and Eli Bornstein: Life & Work by Roald Nasgaard.
Tracings: Writing Art 1975-2020 by Ian Carr-Harris, is this year’s release in the series Text/Context: Writing by Canadian Artists from Concordia University Press. The invaluable series has brought us the writings of Ken Lum, Colin Campbell, Liz Magor and Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald. As the promotional overview promises, the anthology of more than 50 essays by the multivalent Carr-Harris will “reveal a literary love of language and a nuanced and investigative mind at work.” Ian Carr-Harris responded to the launch of the book with the current exhibition, Ian Carr-Harris: Tracings at Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto.
The publishing arm of the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research has reprinted Medicines to Help Us, Traditional Métis Plant Use by Christi Belcourt with an additional set of large study prints. The booklet is a resource guide, replete with traditional knowledge about 27 plants with images, notes, and the use of Indigenous languages. Based on details of Belcourt’s painting of the same name, it is also a wonderful entry into Belcourt’s world as an artist. Seen in six major museums across North America/ Turtle Island, Radical Stitch is considered one of the most significant exhibitions of contemporary Indigenous beading, and the beautiful catalogue, co-published by the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada does justice to the eye-popping show.Curve, Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast, curated by Dana Claxton and Curtis Collins for the Audain Art Museum may also come as a revelation. The accompanying catalogue illustrates the carvings of 14 artists with excellent photographs, texts and interviews that reveal their stories and connections. This is a welcome publication that celebrates women carvers spanning generations from the early twentieth century to the present.
J.E.H. MacDonald Up Close: The Artist's Materials and Techniques emerges from a very different kind of research, the forensic analysis of the paintings by Group of Seven artist, J.E.H. MacDonald. It’s a fascinating detective story recording the findings of conservation scientist, Kate Helwig, and conservator, Alison Douglas as they sought to determine the authenticity of paintings attributed to MacDonald.
This year, three bilingual catalogues that accompany major solo exhibitions stand out for the contribution they make to a fuller understanding of each artist’s career.
Nancy Tousley’s discerning essay in Michael Smith: Sea of Change that accompanied the exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery is the deepest investigation of the work of this senior Montreal-based painter in print to date. The monographic catalogue, Jinny Yu: At Once, surveys the Ottawa/Berlin based artist’s work over the last decade opening with recent luminous abstract paintings on aluminium shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario (and upcoming at the Guido Molinari Foundation) and ending with the painting/audio installation, Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating?, which she exhibited during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.
Kapwani Kawanga: The Length of the Horizon, a joint publication of Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Copenhagen Contemporary, marks the first major institutional mid-career survey exhibition of this astonishing artist. The book provides a comprehensive review of a decade of seductively beautiful, often monumental, multimedia work that is underscored with consideration for the impact of power. It’s an excellent primer for the immersive installation, Trinket, commissioned for the Canadian pavilion at this year’s 60th Venice Biennale.
Toronto-based artist and filmmaker Annie MacDonell explored the history of psychedelic trials and other strategies for reorienting a sense of self in the multi-dimensional exhibition, Annie MacDonell: The Beyond Within. Installation and films made collaboratively with Maïder Fortuné provided the framework for inventive narratives and characters with fluid, shifting identities. Five Canadian public galleries (the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, SFU Galleries, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Illingworth Kerr Gallery) and Art Metropole co-produced the catalogue of the same name, Annie MacDonell: The Beyond Within. At the conclusion of the tour, the writers folded documentation from the host venues together with scripts, stills and interviews, allowing the experience of the complex exhibition to be smartly reflected in the experience of the catalogue.
When Geoffrey James was honoured as a Canada Council Laureate in 2012, he commented in a video that he was reborn as a digital photographer and took to the street with “the invisible cloak of being older.” After more than a decade, Canadian Photographs: Geoffrey James is the outcome. His singular observations of public spaces in cities, small towns and rural waysides as he criss-crossed Canada are carefully sequenced, evoking a Dickensian sweep of our time and place.
Watch for these two publications in 2025:
- Joyce Wieland: Heart On edited by Anne Grace and Georgiana Uhlyarik, published by Goose Lane Editions with Art Gallery of Ontario and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
- Charles Gagnon: The Colour of Time, the Sound of Space, essays by Roald Nasgaard, Olivier Asselin and Michiko Yajima Gagnon, edited by Monika Kin Gagnon and published by Figure 1 Publishing.
This round-up of art books is remarkable for quality, ambition and nuance — and for Canadian content. Congratulations to Canadian artists, writers, educational and cultural institutions, galleries and publishers, and thanks to audiences and readers for your continued interest. ■
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