|
ABSTRACT
Case Study: Michel Foucault, Critical Modernism,
and Writing on the Visual Arts in English Canada
Timothy D. Clark
1991
During the late 1960s, and early 1970s translations of the
work of a number of important 20th-century French and German intellectual figures began to
appear on the English speaking market. One of the most prominent of these figures was the
French critical historian Michel Foucault. His work was to play, by the late 1970s and
1980s, both marginal and central roles within the production of a number of writers who
began to write on the visual arts in English Canada.
A prominent sociological feature of this group of writers
was the sense of frustration and exclusion that a high proportion of them felt, in regards
to their respective interests, within a number of university art history departments in
Canada. Given the fact that these departments did not offer the type of critical and
analytical methodologies that this group wished to study, most of these writers were
forced to look to the outside of their departments in an ad hoc search for alternatives.
At least one of these alternatives was provided by the critical histories of Michel
Foucault, whose production, in conjunction with the work of other French and German
writers, would have a profound effect on writing on the visual arts by the1980s.
This occurred because each writer could develop
argumentative frameworks whereby they could autonomize their interests from the
exclusionary art historical discourses that they had encountered in university.
Furthermore, this group of writers produced writings on art history and criticism that
merged aspects of descriptive modernism with revised critical modernism.
Running virtually parallel with the appearance of this
group was the massive expansion and development of the institutional context that
supported writing on the arts in Canada. This expansion, which was largely the product of
post-war federal and provincial policies on arts funding, would also provide alternative
institutional contexts that could support each writer’s efforts to autonomize their
respective interests.
Return to the Main Listing
of Theses or
use your browser's BACK button to return to the previous page
| 