CANADIAN ART IN TWENTIETH - Hardcover

MURRAY J

3.92

13 ratings by Goodreads

9781550023329: CANADIAN ART IN TWENTIETH

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1550023322 ISBN 13: 9781550023329

Publisher: Dundurn, 1999

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Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century is a survey of the richest, most controversial and perhaps most thoroughly confusing centuries in the whole history of the visual arts in Canada - the period from 1900 to the present. Murray shows how, beginning with Tonalism at the start of the century, new directions in art emerged - starting with our early Modernists, among them Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. Today, Modernism has lost its dominance. Artists, critics, and the public alike are confronted by a scene of unprecedented variety and complexity. Murray discusses the social and political events of the century in combination with the cultural context; movements, ideas, attitudes, and styles; the important groups in Canadian art, and major and minor artists and their works. Fully documented, well researched and written with clarity and over four hundred illustrations in both black-and-white and colour, Murray's book is essential for understanding Canadian art of this century. As an introduction, it is excellent in both its scope and intelligence.

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Review:

"This stylish, sure-footed survey of Canadian art as it moved through our century will delight those who know the subject well and pleasantly educate those who are new to it. Joan Murray's knowledge and intelligence make her the perfect guide for a tour of Canadian Modernity."

(Robert Fulford)

Synopsis:

This is an intimate biography of an artist who became a legend after his death, but who in his private life stands revealed as a troubled man who was, in many ways, his own victim. Joan Murray's new biography is part detective work, too: she investigates his beliefs, and the origins of his great masterpieces, and provides a convincing description of the possible circumstances of his death. The art of Tom Thomson represents one of the high points of Canadian modernism, which flourished in the first two decades of this century. During his brief career, lasting just five years, Thomson evolved a highly intense, naturalistic style, introducing formal innovations and challenging the idiom of the tonal landscape of painters popular in his day. Thomson's idiosyncratic expressionist landscape art reflected the intellectual and psychological climate of pre-World War I Canada. It developed against the complex cultural background that produced the poets Bliss Carmen and Duncan Campbell Scott and, later, the painters of the Group of Seven.

Despite his short creative life, and only half a decade of mature artistic activity, Thomson, a superb designer, produced an extensive body of work -- more than thirty canvases and three hundred oil sketches -- in a remarkably personal style, characterised by unusual colour combinations and strong patterns. Through it he conveyed the existential dimension of nature, making Algonquin Park -- its trees, waters, and winds -- the principal subject of his work.

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