1.15.2020

Contemporary Canadian Art : VISA 3003 Robin McDonald

 January 8 Introduction

1970s in a complete rejection of modernism & minimalism, identity movements come out and the beginnings of NeoLiberalism shaping the means to contemporary art ( since the last 50 years ).

Conceptually producing meaning to contemporary work.


January 15th

Georgio Agamben  " What is the Contemporary "
Lynda Jessup, Erin Morton & Kristy Robertson

January 22

Eve Tuc and K.Wayne Yang " Decolonialization is not a metaphor"

January 29

Alice Min Wai Jim " Global Art Histories in Canada"

February 5
Blair Fornwald and Gary Varro " On the Record "

February 12th

Katarzyna Marciniak
Yaniya Lee Anxious Territory : The politics of natural citizenship in Canadian Art Criticism

Reading Week

February 26th

Andrea Fatona : Claiming Space
Henry Heng Lu : Whose community is it
Erin Silver : Whatever Happened to Queer Queen West

March 4: Hohannah Householder

March 11:
Christine Ross
Jason Edward Lewis



Truth and Reconciliation

The funding and granting system, the effects of the political policies, the effects of work eg. TRC Report.

June 2, 2008 on indigenous students and their families, held through public and private meetings across the family.

Calls to Action :

Truth and Reconciliation 

#79 June 2017, 94 calls to action in regards to Canadian and indigenous peoples.

We call upon the federal government ni collaboration with survivors, aboriginal organizations and the arts community to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration
#88 We call son the Canada Council for th e Arts to Establish as a funding project... ECT.


This initiative called reconciliation, is the Canada council open to Inuit, Indigenous and Metis artists were invited to submit proposals for government funding.

May 2016, June 2016 ( Calls for proposals )

The Indigenous Culture Fund 

The wide scope of the fund basically funded the support for language support, learning ect. that supported Indigenous things.

The opportunity for cultures to be restored and movements for the government needed to do in order to support the movement.

3. 5 million went to 3.2 million in 2016

Indigenous Culture Fund
Support Rally in response to these cuts

Cited grants and programs that funded learning that were at sake of the funding that had gotten cut


Aulan Couchie : Agressive Assimilation 2013

" our cutulrue should be worth more to Ontario then just a commodity, they do not realize what they had cut " - Aulan Couchie

The Refugee Crisis 

Led to a sustainable housing crisis, lack of jobs ect. the representation of the populace of the governmental standards and the fluctuation of immigration rates.

Refugee convention in Geneva granting asylum, and the artwork revolving around the immigration artists.

Ann Hirschh and Jeremy Angrier SOS 2019 ( Safety Orange Swimmers) 2019


Questionable means to eg. empowering displaced peoples, drawing attention to the crisis, showcasing the human side of the story.

Tania Canas, RISE Arts Director/ Member
10 things you need to consider if you are an artist - Not f the refugee and asylum seeker community - looking to work with our community :

1) Process not product
2) Critically interrogate your intention
3) Realize your own privilege
4) Participation is not always progressive or empowering
5) Presentation vs. representation
6) It is not a safe- space just because you say it is
7) Do not expect us to be grateful
8) Do not reduce us to an issue
9) Do your research
10 ) Art is not neutral.

Climate Change

Climate pereort issued by Stats Canada
World leaders met at climate change conference to discuss  issues at hand.

Many individuals took the opportunity to bring artists across the world to take the space of transit spaces offered critique of consumerism, capitalism and climate change.

Vancouver based magazine adjusters, Naomi noted they handed a megaphone to the corporation and then took the megaphone away to find out what was happening inside


Neo Liberalism Austerity and Precarity

Ladies International Deadbeat Society, Do les with more / do more with more Fuse Magazine





Friends of ChinaTown 


The notices emplaced by the government describing the changing of the neighbourhoods that are made to be gentrified. 

Note Tea Base : Events and organization revolving around the contemporary issues being described though the contemporary movement.

How does the contemporary feel ? 

Bridget Moser,  Asking for a friend 2013 

Simultaneously worry and anxiety about the future and the current and what will happen next and then fundamental knowability. 


Ken Lum, Come Join Us 2009 




Visit to the AGO 

International contemporary art fro the 1960;s onwards in order to identify trends in --- Materials, subject matters/ engagement to the audience/ geography/ artists. 

JANUARY 15th Contemporary Canadian Art Week 2 
 Defining Canada Canadian & Contemporary Art 

NGC : Stan Douglas will be representing Canada at The Venice Biennial 

Historically used the Venice biennale to represent abroad & internationally 

May - November 2020/2021 



Where was the work from - who was the work by 

Observations on the fifth floor at the AGO the permanent collection. 

- Tendency towards conceptualism & abstraction 
- An engagement with current social cultural - political issues or context
- An interest in the politics of identity 
- An interest in the unique potentials of new materials 
- A rejection traditional arts economies and object based systems of value 

What is Modern art? 
What is Postmodern Art ? 

Cubism and Abstraction 

Alfred H Barr Jr Cover of 

Concepts that get mobilized through economic and monetary means to diversion. 

Modernization - Refers to the transition from a premodern or tradition society. Technical and economic progress.

Industrial Revolution 
- The primary consumer class. 

Modernity
- Predates the earliest moments of industrial ixaonin that happens even as early as the renaissance.

Chararistics of Modernity
- expanding imperialism rise of the nation state 
- industrial and consumer capitalism 

Important topics and events 

- War 
- Fascism 
- Time 
- Psychoanalysis 
- Attention to form, style and materials, 
- Authorship and originality 
- Urbanization and the city, the flaneur 
- Alienation 

Munch's Scream is a canonical expression of the great modernist thematic of alienation, anomie. 

What was the experience of modernity by radicalized people, a turn away from tradition, a rejection of traditional format. 

Modernism - A style or trend in art, literature, poetry ect 
Modern Art - major artistic movement 1860-1970
SubMovements - experience of politics 

Valued experimentation, exploration of paint and canvas, devaluation of form and field. 

The Modern Artist : visionary forward, future looking 

Impressionism 
Post-Impressionism 
Fauvism 
Cubism 
Expressionism 
Futurism 
Surrealism 
Dada
deStijl 
Bauhaus
Colour Field Painting 
Pop Art 

Minimalism emerged in the New York Art world in the 1950's 
Severed from origins, Frank Stella - nothing beyond the artwork 
Postmodernism - departing from modern art, social shifts in the 70's & 80's

Analized unilateral shifts, shifts are always contingent and subject to the ideological blindspots, subjectivity in different truths, death of the author, the artist themselves are the highest priority 

The viewer had very little power, emphasis on multiplicity and hybrid through unilateralism, mass cultural objets and media stars blurring the boundaries. No hierarchy of culture and therefore one of the highest influences of pop art. 

Everything has been done already, performance, video, sound and a movement away from the painting and sculpture. Eg, Sherry Levine on Walker Evans as a commentary on originality, shot levignes work to perpetually provoke meaning to originality 

The work by Richard Prince, the work by postmodernism appropriating from advertising. Sampling from appropriation, taking from pre-existing images and to comment on the earlier ideas of appropriate context. Re-appropriation of selfies as an exhibition of the work as his own. 

Common or lowbrow culture 

Barbara Kruger, untitled - dissatisfaction with the narrow commentary on postmodernism and the market for art became greater then ever before. 

Cindy Sherman - untitled film stills, created between 77' and 81' developed notoriety around various settings in various films of the50's and 60's moving furniture around in the apartment shot in the lobby ect. Presented as Hollywood iconography, figures of these stereotypes. 

Postmodernism- interest in identity, diffracting from the male-dominated industries, movement towards protests and revolutionary ideologies, lgbq, subordinated groups that lacked representation that opens up a door to the freedom that has the topics that display the freedom of representation. 

The western cannon of art history becomes subject to attack, that are seeking ways of creating art history that is not entered around the cannon. 

Another chararistic of postmodernism, fusion of art and celebrity, e.g. Jeff Koons and Lady Gaga, society of the spectacle, ultimately it becomes about catching attention, catching money, ect. 

Two strategies and tactics that are used over and over again, pastiche genre conventions and boundaries, however unlike parody it is a neutral act and subversive impulse, aware of itself as a representation and not of the original.

Parody E.g. Kent Monkman studying paintings that create the differentiation through indigenous peoples in representation through parody. 

In postmodernism, through some ways this is the contemporary and in some ways it is not. 

Giorgio Agamben - What is the contemporary 

" Contemporariness is then, a singular relationship with one's own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time keeps a distance from it. More precisely, it is that relationship with time that adheres to it, through a disjunction and an anachronism. " 

He sees not an emptiness but an absence of activity. 



To be contemporary is to be simultaneously situated in the future, studies of genealogy, studying the present and also the past. Eg. Fashion trends in the past that refuture pulls in influences and assemblage and define what is truly contemporary. 

How it engages with the past and the knowledge of the past, and anything else with the reading that creates the polarization. He talks about opacity and contemporariness. He does not totally allow you to enter the definitive means to the term because he does not actually enter the term itself. 

Decolonial Aesthetic Week 3: Wednesday 22nd  

History of colonization : Residential Schools : Human Trafficking 

Fuse Magazine : https://e-artexte.ca/id/eprint/25209/1/FUSE_36-4.pdf ( 7 years ago ) Ran for about 38 years. Note above : Second last issue, austerity problems with the Canadian government, lack of funding. Made it impossible to pay contributors and made it impossible to work. Last issues.

List of contributors, cultural producers contributions, writers, produced in collaboration with the ffadgie organization ? Conference on the colonial aesthetic. shaan Turerns note text from this week's readings.


To start, Carla Taunton and Leah Decter and the adaptor in this issue of Fuse anti colonial politics and indigenous artists and artists based resistance strategies, anti colonial interventions. To interrogate ones own understanding of colonialism. What that means. An example that Richard hill offers, Greg Curnores deeds, deeds abstracts, deeds nations, Curnoe was known as a London regionalist work revolving around London Ontario. Anti-Colonial Politic. History of 38 Weston, home address & studio in London Ontario. Submitted manuscript based on research of the address. Occupancy of that one plot of land.

In a contemporary practice/ academic practice. This university notes that the land acknowledgement is part of the syllabus and is part of the rhetoric. Addresses the territories and the peoples. The bowl, which is southern Ontario. The idea of behind this treaty, share this territory and the responsibilities of the land and of the inhabitants and to keep the peace.

Treaties were initially premised upon, indigenous peoples were recognized were equals and allow for a period of time for peaceful settlement. Treaty promises land title," as long as the sun shines and the river flows " that has to be quoted have been largely not honoured. Indigenous peoples are being displaced and misrepresented.

The concept of treaty in relation to art- often we don't think of treaty as part of the artistic relationships that we build. Recently ( NascadU ) began a 3 student initiative Guided by Carl Taunton to being the Treaty Space Gallery as a response to The TRC Report, explores the way treaty education spaces exist on university campuses, the space, the furthest wall is painted white and mission statement is in black vinyl text from ceiling to floor. Consider the notion of treaty as Abstract, Conceptual and Contemporary forms. Thick red band stretches over the wall and onto the floor, one way in which students at NASCADU have been working together to make a space and exhibition that is a de-colonial stetting with a de-colonial aesthetic. Art that is engaged with de-colonialization.

Basic Terminology

Settler Colonialism : Distinct type of colonialism, functions by replacing indigenous society that has a distinct identity. Replacing indigenous populations by settler society. Not a matter of coming into a land defining and stating ones rule, although mores by creating a new society on top of the pre-existing society, a structure not an event.

Settler-colonialism via


( Internal colonialism ): Bio-political and geo-political domestic orders of the imperial nation. Yang and Tuck describe this as bio-political and geopolitical events. Modes of control, prisons, ghettos, policing to ensure the white elite. Present day strategies, divestments, surveillance and criminalization = Structural and interpersonal.

External Colonialism : The expropriation of fragments of the post-colonial world, transporting and exporting them so that colonizers would be marked as discovering the new world. Everything that is encountered by the settler is recast as a natural resource that is theirs for the taking.

Yang and Tuck ( 2012 ) Defining settlers as making a new home on the land. They write that in order for settlers to make this their home, when they use the word settler they talk about settlers like people of colour, even from other colonial contacts. Contended as the concept of settler that people come to these territories where they can and cannot be understood that can be part of the settlement. The process of settler colonialism land and the relationship to land is the owner to his/her land & property as an example of the continuation of what was read last week Jessup, Morton, the importance of the definition of liberalism to historical and contemporary Canada. Notion of property and ownership as Canada as political and geographic and nationality through understanding arts and its economies.

Colonial aesthetic : renaissance art, excluding indigenous art as an element of craft.

Illustrating the various elements of the in text through artists who represent various ideals of the de-colonial politic. Through the enlightenment most


Uncovering various systems

Kapwani Kiwanga, Positive Negative ( morphology ) 2018




Investigations take shape through the investigation of materials : e.g. soil that portrays political and social meaning. Site specific work  Nepaskin territory negotiated with the government, contentious site for the gallery location Darrjt Juliet negotiated with various governments of Canada  ( the gallery ) a portion of soil in front of the museum was placed inside of the gallery. A bucket and shovel was placed inside the gallery so that viewers could take parts of the soil and replace it back outside of the museum.






What is Decolonization

Decolonization which sets out to change the order of the world is obviously a Fanon is a racist and critical race philosopher from France.



”Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. But it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know, is a historical process: that is to say it cannot be understood, it cannot become intelligible nor clear to itself except in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give it historical form and content.”

Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 1963


Setting out in the lecture impossible task to define the de-colonial aesthetic, Fanon's text reemplicates that there is no way that we could actually identify the actual aesthetic. Yang and tuck delineates the idea as poststructural, non performative gesture. What it does is set out to delineate the delineate the idea. Grounded in the repatriation of the indigenous lands. 


Relations to land, differently understood and reenacted. Here we might offer a symbolic gesture of repatriation. What it means to repatriate and what it means to become recognizant. For Yang and Tuck that was symbolic, the understanding of how land reappropriation is enacted. Decolonialization is like an empty gesture that is used as lip service that suggests that institutions are preforming wrk that they might not be doing. Empty signifier and there is an empty gesture a sign that does not have anything attached to it. 

Toronto Bienalle  
Never Settle, by the New Red Order, Collective based in NYC Ojibway, Northern Michigan and Alaska. 

The work acts as a recruitment video for white settlers as allies, an invitation video for testimonials for recruited members.  Co-opted by non indigenous people to feel virtue. 

" No one told me that I was supposed to care" 
" I know this is isn't about me, but for me it is."
" I don't even feel guilt anymore." 

Large scale installation, video. Poking fun in a cheeky way, humorous way in which decolonization is mobilized as a metaphor. The kind of impact that the large scale room is extremely intense and is part of immediately gets back to Tuck & Yang pointed in relevant part of the critique that the art world and the universities means to decolonization. 
The settler moves to innocence strategies, without giving up land power or privilege.

Know the many that they've listed, this plain Indian and the indigenous to get this idea across, when Eve Tuck tried to say something immeasurable. The audience missed her observation. 

The work of liberal arts education taught students to be indigenous, the reality of the settler colonial erasure. Everything about the governmental state works to erase and consume indigenous communities. 

Emily Carr 

Because she is more 20th century, she provides a helpful example of the foundations of the settler indigenous identity are able to preform. Born in 1871 BC, during her lifetime she witnessed many changes. The provinces indigenous population changed to 6:1 ration settler : indigenous population. Part of her education moved to SanFran and then to London to teach children's art classes, then later to Paris to work in Fauvism and Impressionism. 
Fauvism has an influence that we can see in the indigenous other, has a primitivist underpinning, the idea that the best art and the most creative expression can be found outside of modernity and western peoples and the true connection to creativity. 

For Carr this confirmed her belief through BC and western Canada, the carvings she saw needed to be recorded and reproduced. The paintings have been celebrated through ethnographic convention, authentic indigenous past, exaggerate politic practices of indigenaiety and she was framed as an additive to the indigenous communities. 1907 + 1912 produced nearly 200 paintings of First Nations subject. Rejects ethnographic past, framed as an ally to the indigenous peoples, no appreciation for this type of imagery. Not appreciated as an artist, Carr was seen as a misfit until 1927 when the NGC made her a modern figure where 31 of her works were sold.
Still ethnographic were appreciated and were entirely national in character. 

Moraine and other sculptors were about, in 1927 Indiana affairs put out their assimilationist list which sought to irradiate indigenous peoples ( Duncan Campbell Scott ) who wanted to " get rid of the Indian problem"( ... )

Legislation made it mandatory for indigenous children to attend residential schools, made it illegal for potlatches and other indigenous gatherings, to collect lands, to illegalise any action to rebuttal against the movements to take place, ect. Pigenholing them in a number of ways. 


NGC was expropriating and representing Canadian indigenous culture as a legacy. 

Carr past away in 1945, the world saw growth in land rights residential school system and calls for indigenous sovernigty and social justice movements. 
 Lecture given in 1990, combating Columbuses 500 year anniversary: Marcier Crosby questioned how Carr could have possibly had an understanding of indigenous heritage when there are more then 600 First Nations on the west coast alone. If she did form a deep bond with the indigenous then it was to act as a container for her Eurocentric ideals. 

Ultimately she shared the view of her time that the indigenous were going to vanish, sympathetic white people to document and preserve what is left of these cultures. Best artist to represent this work, even better ( according to tom Thompson ) then the indigenous were able to represent themselves. 

Government was denying a voice in affairs, NGC was representing indigenous culture romantically and aesthetically while the whole objective would eliminate the body politic. 



Tuck and yang note settler fantasies the feeling and the sense of belonging. 
Carr was seen as a sentimentalist in comparison to the people who were more hostile. The only way that settler colonialism could reproduce itself. 
Stinson, the stereotype of indigenaiety. Cowboy, shaman and the character he has created, " The shaman exterminator " created for burning-man. Recurring performance persona, along with buffalo boy and the lord of the planes. 




Duane Linklater states that Canada and the states have stopped their colonization of the indigenous people and they haven't, there are many forms of colonization that are functioning today and will probably function tomorrow. 


Reconciliation is concerned with rescuing settler normality. 



Decolonizing the mind is the first step " - Fanon

Shan Turian 34:40 David Garneau 
Only about the re-apropriation of the land social justice works, messy reapropriation of the land and moves the canonical view away from the settlers and returned to the indigenous peoples. How settler colonialism is on the body, settler colonialism is realized through the body. Develops this notion of decolonial aesthetic. 

Turnians goes on about the meaning of decolonization itself, colonialism and what is on about the body, and develops through the decolonial aesthetic. Turians grapples to deal with deolonial aesthetics, concept that makes space for the narraritive. Different ways from knowing outside the specific knowledge in circles through the indigenous peoples of Canada, e.g. making demands of the colonizer. Legitimacy of knowing what is outside specific notions of various cultures. Colonization of two fronts. 


"

How the colonial aesthetics could function, in a few ways. In order to call attention to confront and oppose what is colonial aesthetic. Colonial aesthetic is that which sustains and supports hierarchy of fine and applied arts that are specific to European renaissance arts and excludes indigenous productions which applies them as craft. 


Minimal and abstract expressionism, those two movements push enlightenment philosophical and definitions of the extreme. Disinterested, and to the point where the extremity is emotionless and unfeeling. 

History of art, as to who can create art and what art means. Art that exists outside of society, ceremonial and functional use which was denied the category of art and moved to the category of craft. 

Museums, speaks to this history of non-indigenous objects that are eliminated status of art. versus indigenous objects, ethnographic object or craft that move towards the museums. 


Many artists that respond directly to this history, this history of the exclusion of the indigenous and non white artists that create the category of indigenous and non indigenous backgrounds. 

Library of misrepresentation and of various narratives. Books found in thrift stores, garage sales, ect. Historical accounts of civilization misrepresentation of stereotypes ect. 


Incommensurability. 

In 2018 the exhibition of Nova Scotia, Alison had intervened the history of the books. Intervention where she beaded shut a book of Indian crafts from the late 20th century. Crafts interpretation of indianness. Truthful representation of indigenous practices. 


Another work

Ursula Johnson 
Examines ideas of ancestry, and cultural practice Imigma artist. Baskery, traditional techniques with non functional forms. Three components, the grand hall that holds latrines etched with sandblasted images made by her great-grandmother. Used to label the diagrams, objects themselves are not in the latrines, tactic of display. 



Reversal of the colonial gaze. The contemporary displays of people in contemporary ideals, what is the dominant narrative. Taking these stereotypical objects and commodities and placing them into latrines in order to showcase traditional indigenous works to create separate. 



Gerald McMaster

2018/ 2019 AGNS refers both to indigenous and cultural practices how practices have been treated in indigenous contexts. Often make wood grass bark and quills, objects that wear out, demands a process of constant renewal.


Jordan Bennett


Collecting objects in museums, intricate patterns in the older pieces are extended by who actually creates paintings and sculptures put directly onto the wall in order to further aestheticcise that image that creates the materials. Sobey Art Award 

Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter (Kablusiak)

Soapstone carving, traditional practice re-appropriating contemporary objects in a satirical movement. Different discourses in general neutrality. 




Indian Act : To administer Indian affairs that the native population would denounce their native identity and join the Canadian state.

Installation of the Indian Act : Nadia Myre





Week 4: Contemporary Canadian Art History

Quebecois: People in the province of Quebec and people who are French Canadian. Quebecois that forms a nation, conceptualized in the 1960's ( secondary to French Canadian ), became the dominant term at that point. Redefine Quebec citizenship based on the linguistic criteria, on the other hand Quebec sculptural policy painters writers poets and actors, homogenous majority in ethnic difference in favour of nationalist identity Franco Quebecois as a homogenous majority as the idealist national identity. Different ideals from the state & from the arts councils who support the body of artists and work. 2019, Leah Sandals published an article after the editor became aware Lettres du Quebec ( Quebec arts council ) were not accepting recognitions from Metis artists for a new recognition for indigenous peoples. Not representing Quebec identity although there are debated positions in what the Quebecois identity is and what the Metis identity is. Montreal based Metis artists, under this program, ( section 35 of the Canadian constitution ) are not recognized as indigenous under the Quebecois classification. The funding body noted that they would not recognize the Metis in the funding program literally in 2019. It speaks to the way that the different body is at play in the gatekeeping communities. Kelp ?


There is also the term French Canadian, a group of people who trace their ancestry based in the 1600's. Not all Canadians are traced through French heritage. Francophone ( French as first language ) commissioner in 2009, French as official language and at home. Many artists who identify as francophone who live outside of Quebec e.g. provincial quarters that identify as French Canadian. Different histories that come to play in the contemporary moment that identify as francophone.

History as Quebec in the 20th century, arts in the 20th century. The society underwent a number of different changes in the 1940's and 1950's. Increasing middle class, graduating from educational factors and middle classes. There was also the espesticos in politicizing labour rights, people from Montreal went to espestos to strike. The consciousness of Quebec society was greatly effected.

Alongside the workers strike there was a new type of Quebec that was emerging, this was all despite Mourice Debussye's ideals for the province of Quebec ( premier for 4 years in the 30's 1944- 1959) A very strong patron of traditional catholic tradition and private property rights. Also quite opposed to communism, separatism and non conservative trends. Passes away in 1959 ( in office ) directs Quebec in direction. In 1968 there is an official languages bill, French and English become national languages as part of Canada. By the late 20th century economic conditions improve although in the 90's a revisitation of separatism, as the Quebecois wanted their own state.

In the 1990 there was the OKA criss, when Mohawks neared the township of OKA in the expansion of a golf course over native cemeteries. City council in OKA the city did not listen or take action, it began as a peaceful blockade although the township tried to officially remove the blockade. A large number of Police officers reacted violently with tear gas and tried to remove the blockade, an officer was killed in the resistance of the Mohawk warriors which evoked police sentiments and increased anti-indigenous racism and mobilized a political moment.

* On the heels of the 1989 massacre, female students were killed by a male student who was explicitly anti-feminist. Widely politicized by the media and is now becomes a leftist vein in Montreal and Quebec.

Similarly 2012 university students in Mntl protested tuition prices, society has changed drastically with recent debates in how to define identity within the vices of diversity. Ethnic diversity concentrated in Montreal, changing population in Montreal and elseware. The contemporary is interested in dealing with the fraught layers within Quebec and within other spaces.

20th century modern Quebec, a lot of this is coming from a different perspective. Important to know about the predecessors and the importance of this lineage which develops into a legacy.

When we talk about francophone art, it eclipses this discussion. it hi lights Quebec artists when we talk about French art in Canada. This is particularly true from modern art history. Automatistes dominate the scene, the biggest figure of the Automatistes was Paul Emile Bourdois 1945 village not far from Montreal. Childhood was very difficult, he was not often able to attend school. Warhol, Lautrek, e.g. removed from society that is therefore more influential element to society.

Laduc's decoration projects. These projects allowed him to make a living from art, allowed the school to open after 1943, upon graduation Leduc send him to Paris to help rebuild decorate churches that were being rebuilt after world war 2 France. Bourdois returned to Canada the depression made it impossible to find work decorating churches.

Andre Breton, Canadian surrealist, French poet & artist, leader of surrealist group and manifestos, developed the method of Automatism. Reflects the influence of the conscious mind, allowed forms to emerge making lines on paper. A mode of art making that suppresses the mode of the subconscious mind, allowed forms to emerge making lines on paper, the notion of abstraction and automation. Similar to surrealism, with charcoal using other colours at random that worked with the initial colour that paired well. Conscious and the subconscious mind to allow for the mind to make art freely. Guash paints and oil paints, background, dry, objets onto. Paintings to be read as landscapes with background and foreground, connections of teachings and networking. Network of formation led to group, at first the activities of the group led to modern art through quebecologists. The first automatste exhibition took place at a small Montreal gallery in a working class neighbourhood, very well received. Within Quebec there was a desire to show European art forms, showed work Bourdois, Riopelle, Barbout, Fernand Leduc, Jean Paul Rosseau.

Winter 1947, first show as le automastistes, inspired by bourdois painting Automatisme 1.47. Montreal group show to publish a catalogue and write their own manifesto. Ciricling around Quebec at the time, premiered at a banned bookstore ( books that were dispelled by the church ). encouraged splendid anarchy, denounced Catholic Church and fostered xenophobia due to detachment from morality. Bourdois was fired from his teaching position. Despite petitions he never regained his position at the school. Highly politicized group. 20:20 TBC