Resistance isn’t futile
Robert Belton’s Sites of Resistance examines Canada’s visual culture
Conventional art history narratives tend to propagate the idea that important art happens elsewhere, either outside Canada or in limited regions within the country. In Sites of Resistance, a new book that reflects on Canada’s visual culture, author Robert Belton asks people to slow down, look at what’s being done in your own backyard and give it its due.
In its intent, the book bears a strong similarity to the CBC’s recent broadcast of Canada: A People’s History. Belton initially saw the need to address the absence of a cohesive survey of Canadian art. Realizing this was plainly impossible, he instead sought to offer a sampling of visual works, and provide a method of critically viewing works that could be applied outside of the book.
An enclosed CD-ROM is a replica of the book only with more case studies. A Web site (scheduled to be launched in June) will allow readers to interact with the case studies, submitting their own writings and responses.
Belton wanted to avoid producing another canon to replace the previous "greatest hits" of Canadian art. He consciously chose to include examples not familiar to most, avoiding old favourites like the Group of Seven (there are only two examples, one being a photograph by Thom Thompson). In future versions of the book, he hopes to change all the case studies.
Belton distinguishes between art and visual culture. In Belton’s scope, visual culture includes everything from advertisements to Doukhobor quilts to Jeff Wall’s photography.
An instructor at Okanagan University College, Belton sees "the textbook" as a necessary evil, but hopes to subvert the objective status it holds. The result is an anti-textbook of sorts – he sees it as a tool, one which will eventually be discarded when no longer useful. The reader has a much more active role in determining the conclusions they draw from the material.
Sites of Resistance is well intentioned, but in the end, given the ambitious scope, it’s not without flaws. Given the heavy theory content of the first few chapters, and the emphasis on exercises, the book is clearly intended for college or university audiences, so it remains to be seen how it will appeal to a general readership.
The following excerpt – taken from Belton’s definition of "textbook" from the glossary – gives a good sense of what can be expected:
"The traditional textbook, when not enlivened by an instructor who intervenes in its metanarrative, is a troublesome thing in the postmodern era... because it is a single object that purports to be a body of essential knowledge as well as implicitly the principal methodology for dealing with its subject. That is, it is both ‘what to know’ and ‘how to know it.’"
An exhibition at the Nickle Arts Museum is a further extension of the project. Belton selected works from the Nickle’s collection and arranged them based on a sequence of connecting metaphors. Unfortunately, the show relies on rather elementary connections – works by Roy Kiyooka and Attilla Richard Lukacs are situated together because they all feature stripes. Still, it’s a good opportunity to see a selection of the Nickle’s collection. The same can be said for the book – for all its flaws, it’s a great sampling of a rich and varied visual culture. |
