Howdy!
It seems that there has been at least a whole week where I haven't gone off and ranted about White Cubes and I need my fix. This one started when I thunk that besides doing the local art review round up, it would be sorta cool to also do an international art review round up. You know focusing on the Montreal or Quebecois or Canadian artists who are written about in international publications.
Well, guess what? There ain't much.
On the Artforum website, when I search for the word "Montreal" I get these seven results: Third Asia-Pacific Triennial, January 2000; STAFF STRIKE AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA, 07.06.01; Shirin Neshat, September 2001; Edouard Vuillard, January 2003; Gran Fury, April 2003; Anthony Vidler on Gordon Matta-Clark, Summer 2003; Brian Massumi on Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Amodal Suspension, November 2003. If I go slightly further afield and search on "Quebec," I get no results. Trying an even larger area, "Canada," gets 14 results. For comparison "warhol" get more than 100, "Boston" gets 23, and "Viginia" (not known as a hotbed of contemporary art) gets six.
Similar stuff happens at the Art News, Art Newspaper, Art in America, Frieze, Art Press, Juxtapoz, Flash Art, Art Monthly or just about any other international publication you can find. (if you are aware of something written somewhere that I might have missed, please let me know). So then I thought ok, lets scale it down slightly. But unfortunately, the national publications such as Canadian Art, Border Crossings, C Magazine, Mix Magazine or the provincial publications such as Esse, Vie des Arts, Espace or Parachute don't have much if any internet presence. Which is a sorta long winded way of saying that Canadian Artists get no respect Either at home or abroad.
The one publication that supposes to do stuff about making and breaking local artists world wide is supposed to be Parachute. But methinks they might be duplicitious.
Quoting liberally from their press kit:
As stated in PARACHUTE's first editorial, the objective was to "allow artists, critics and art administrators to express themselves freely within our pages, in order to identify the issues pertinent to todays art."
In addition, it was imperative that Québec and Canadian art be given the opportunity to decompartmentalize, to escape from its narrow regionalism, to acquire a broader vision that would help it to integrate internationally.
Then scrolling up slightly,
Subscribers: 1,200
Circulation: 5,000
But then further down the page they state that they have a circulation of 4,000. Hmmm, perhaps business isn't good? And this is my main point of contention. How can anything that is read by 5,000 people even assume to be more than just a drop in the bucket? For them to state "PARACHUTE may well be the best-read and best-appreciated Canadian journal abroad. It has served as an indispensable tool for curators from here and abroad who are preparing exhibitions and seeking information on Canadian art." C'mon gimme a break. If you want to say the same thing with a slightly less positive spin, try this: PARACHUTE is not read by a single person in Canada so we have been forced to give it away in countries where they don't understand either of our languages to people who appreciate really thick spined magazines on their bookshelves because they make them feel impo'tent.
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