This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.
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Author: Ruth Skinner, Sessional instructor, School for Advanced Studies in the Arts & Humanities, Western University
Facing American tariffs and taunts of becoming the 51st state, Canada can look inward for inspiration, humour and reassurance.
On social media, many arts figures or associations have shared versions of Canadian artist Greg Curnoe’s (1936-92) Map of North America.
As seen on accounts that include the Arts Canada Institute, the Banff Centre’s Derek Beaulieu, filmmaker Stephen Broomer, the Embassy Cultural House, the Curnoe estate and others, the map erases the United States from the continent. It re-imagines the longest border to lie between Canada and Mexico.
Curnoe’s Map of North America, first created in 1972, is inseparable from his hometown of London, Ont. The work, artist and city offer valuable insights for navigating this new relationship with our nearest neighbour. My recent doctoral dissertation explores the cosmopolitan outlook of London’s artists and arts publishers, both historic and present. This includes their incisive commentary on Canada-U.S. relations.
London as test market
London is a leading test market for Canadian and American retailers. This is thanks to its moderate size, demographic composition and proximity to major cities, highways and the border.
Test marketing involves localized experience with a concept or product before incurring large-scale expense. A landmark example for London was the development of Wellington Square, North America’s first enclosed shopping centre, in 1961.
A 1967 cover of the London arts publication 20 Cents Magazine satirically celebrated this “test market” status. It also chided the reader: “Are you getting your share of the business, for fair?” Artists of London have long played with the local flavour of their city, and the city has a distinct arts scene.
Distinct arts scene
Curator and author Barry Lord profiled the city in a 1969 Art in America feature entitled “What London, Ontario Has That Everywhere Else Needs.” Lord positioned London as “younger than Montréal, livelier than Toronto, vying with Vancouver in variety and sheer quantity of output [and] in many ways the most important of the four.”
This scene included the burgeoning London Regionalist movement — an art movement of which Curnoe was a feature — and the birth of Canadian Artists’ Representation (now Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens). Lord lauded London artists as “indelibly Canadian, and perhaps among the first global villagers.”
Nationalist with wicked humour
What would Curnoe make of the present dynamic between Canada and its closest neighbour?
“I think he would be fired up,” says Jennie Kraehling, associate director of Michael Gibson Gallery, which represents the Curnoe estate.
Kraehling continues: “Greg would be making a lot of statements, and I think he’d be very passionate. Just knowing his devout patriotism, his interest in the local and his pro-Canadian sentiments, I think that he would be trying to get a movement going.” Rather than anti-American, however, Kraehling describes Curnoe as a nationalist with a wicked sense of humour.
As the late journalist Robert Fulford wrote in a 2001 column, in the early 80s Curnoe noted: “My work is about resisting as much as possible the tendency of American culture to overwhelm other cultures.”
Social critique
Historian Judith Rodger emphasizes Curnoe’s Map as “tongue-in-cheek” even as it levies sharp social critique. Observing the negotiations between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico that would lead to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Curnoe revisited the work through the 1980s and 1990s in lithographs and clay.
Curnoe’s Nihilist Party of Canada (NPC), an absurdist political movement formed in 1963, advertised regularly in 20 Cents magazine. One ad encouraged the reader to “STOP the American takeover of Canada,” and to “Stop Pollution, Stop Killing, Stop Exploitation … Get off your Butt – Do Something! THINK NEGATIVELY.”
Rodger notes that despite its strong politics, the party had “no platform and no candidates.”
The NPC preceded the Nihilist Spasm Band, an internationally lauded, multi-member noise band that inspired a second generation of artistic collaboration. Members have included performers John Boyle, Murray Favro, John Clement, Bill Exley, Art Pratten, Aya Onishi, as well as the late Hugh McIntyre, Archie Leitch and Curnoe.
The track “Destroy the Nations” opens their 1968 No Record album. It begins with Pratten railing: “Destroy the nations! Destroy America! England is dead! Destroy America! AHHHHHH!” The NSB’s performance is a howl against imperial servitude and corporate greed.
In a city forever mimicking the topography and titles of an older London, and so close to the U.S., Ontario’s Londoners are aware of an implied second-fiddle position. Yet Curnoe volleyed his pro-Canadian attitude at the border, just 200 kilometres south. In one of his bicycle series paintings, Mariposa 10 Speed No. 2 (1973), the words “CLOSE THE 49th PARALLEL ETC.” are emblazoned across Curnoe’s bike’s top tube.
Canada, U.S. markets and fine art
Yet the situation is not entirely insular, nor is it comparable with the “Buy Canadian” encouragement seen at supermarkets, liquor stores and other retail outlets today.
Canada’s art market is, in the words of Mackenzie Sinclair of the Art Dealers Association of Canada, “a fragile ecosystem.” Canada’s GDP (including its art) is deeply integrated with the U.S.: many Canadian artists have American dealers, show in American galleries and use American-made materials.
With ongoing threats of American tariffs and export restrictions, Canadian collectors and galleries are abstaining from American art fairs and seeking stronger connections with European markets. Canada’s only international art fair, Art Toronto, is fostering a special new partnership with Mexican galleries, enacting a version of Curnoe’s Map of North America in real time.
Curation about nationalist rhetoric
Curnoe’s nationalist perspective is an important one right now. However, nationalism can quickly devolve into dangerous and exclusivist rhetoric.
Until recently, London-based artist Angie Quick was in a group exhibition curated by Andil Gosine for Washington’s Art Museum of the Americas. The show was abruptly cancelled. Speaking with the Globe and Mail, Gosine speculated this was due to due to the museum pre-emptively bending to the new political order in D.C. in light of the exhibition’s queer perspectives.
For Quick, this cancellation signals a transnational warning. She notes that The Museum of the Americas is an arm of the Organization of the American States, a regional organization that brings together North and South American governments including Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
The call to cancel, she says, far exceeds a phenomena happening only in the U.S.:
“It is a reminder of what role funding has in liberation politics when it comes to the arts. And as we [Canadians] like to other ourselves from the U.S. it’s just as important to remember we are just as much at risk to nationalism dictating values in the arts.”
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Ruth Skinner has received funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the London Arts Council (LAC).
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Read the original article: https://theconversation.com/stop-the-american-takeover-of-canada-inspiration-and-humour-from-a-london-ont-art-movement-252980
Ruth Skinner, Sessional instructor, School for Advanced Studies in the Arts & Humanities, Western University, The Conversation
