Engendering an Avant-Garde: The Unsettled Landscapes of Vancouver Photo-Conceptualism

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Description

Engendering an avant-garde is the first book to comprehensively examine the origins of Vancouver photo-conceptualism in its regional context between 1968 and 1990. Employing discourse analysis of texts written by and about artists, feminist critique and settler-colonial theory, the book discusses the historical transition from artists' creation of 'defeatured landscapes' between 196871 to their cinematographic photographs of the late 1970s and the backlash against such work by other artists in the late 1980s. It is the first study to provide a structural account for why the group remains all-male. It accomplishes this by demonstrating that the importation of a European discourse of avant-garde activity, which assumed masculine social privilege and public activity, effectively excluded women artists from membership.

Reviews

This scrutiny of the shibboleths supporting Vancouver photo-conceptualism, more commonly reiterated than scrutinised, is telling. Modigliani opens up the possibility of new thinking rather than closing it down. For this reason, and because of her confident command of materials and sources, the book will reach the international audience avid for writing about the Vancouver School, its protagonists, photo-conceptualism, conceptual art of the late 60s, feminist deconstruction, regionalism v. internationalism and more.
Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, The University of British Columbia

This is a deeply researched and carefully argued account of how avant-garde formations have continued to marginalize womens artistic production even during periods of feminist agitation, though any one of the chapters could be a stand-alone reading at the graduate level.
Dr. Christine Conley, RACAR 44 (2019)

'Engendering an Avant-Garde insightfully expands upon earlier critical photo-historical anthologies [] and offers compelling evidence of the need to broaden the scope of the critical treatment of Vancouver art history.'
Prefix Photo Magazine

Author Bio

Leah Modigliani is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art at Temple University.