Calgary Art Book Reviews

An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent and Contemporary Art

Mary-Beth Laviolette, Altitude Publishing, 2005; 544 pages and CD-ROM with 197 colour images, index, $39.95

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A History of Art in Alberta 1905 - 1970, Nancy Townshend, Bayeux Arts, Inc., 2005, 304 pages, 50 colour and 21 B&W images, index, $39.95; www.bayeux.com

A History of Art in Alberta 1905 - 1970 and An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent and Contemporary Art together span Alberta’s century — from its inception as a Canadian province through to its present-day status as a centre of visual art production. Conceived as a joint venture when art historians Mary-Beth Laviolette and Nancy Townshend began their research 10 years ago, each book is incomplete without the other. Similarities, however, are mainly focused on the hundreds of artists whose career trajectories overlap from book to book, and the assertions by both authors that Alberta art is regionally unique, highly innovative, and regrettably undervalued in the national context. Laviolette and Townshend share a commitment to chasing down every last shred of material and oral evidence documenting Alberta’s art and artists. Their extensively footnoted texts attest to the depth and breadth of their primary research and provide a strong foundation on which future scholarship can be constructed.

Townshend’s History follows a decade-by-decade progression from the Beaux Arts influences of A.C. Leighton and Henry Glyde to the diversity of art practice in the 1960s, with additional chapters on public art and fine craft. Laviolette’s Chronicle, which covers the period from 1970 to 2000, is divided into thematic sections and draws distinguishing lines between art produced in Edmonton and art made in Calgary and southern Alberta. History has 50 well-chosen colour reproductions plus numerous black-and-white archival photos. Chronicle has no pictures at all. It comes with a 197-image CD-ROM — useful for classroom lectures, but awkward for read-along correlation between text and images.

As someone who has a devotion to Western Canadian art, I wish I could feel more enthusiastic about these important books. Reading them has all the joylessness of being on an extended bus trip with very knowledgeable but phlegmatic tour guides. Chronicle has moments of brilliant writing — in particular, the shabby treatment afforded to Alberta artists by the art doyens in Ottawa and Toronto — however, it sidesteps the promise of energized discovery suggested by its subtitle.

History, on the other hand, begins with clarity but falters after a few chapters and, like a catch-all soup, devolves into a concatenation of biographical data rather than an illumination of the pluralist complexities that characterize Alberta art production.

Art histories are unwieldy beasts. By its nature, art resists logic, coercion and categorization. Art practices contradictorily meander off course into swamps, or race, wild-eyed and harness askew, into oncoming traffic. Trying to tame an art history is a test of perseverance, and success is measured as much by will as by skill. Janson’s History of Art, the most familiar of all our art history books, has just been released in its seventh edition — along with its publisher’s claim that this time they’ve finally got it right. A History of Art in Alberta 1905 - 1970 and An Alberta Art Chronicle: Adventures in Recent and Contemporary Art are first editions and, whatever their shortcomings, are groundbreaking accomplishments.