Jori Smith: A Contextual Analysis

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Jori Smith: A Contextual Analysis
Abstract
The author points out that Montreal artist Jori Smith (1907-2005) has long lingered in the shadows of her contemporaries, little recognized by scholarship or academic investigation. Smith was a painter, watercolourist, draughtswoman and muralist, and a central figure in the Montreal art scene of the 1930s. A founding member of the Eastern Group of Painters and Contemporary Arts Society, Smith is best known for her portraits created while living in the Charlevoix region of Quebec. The author maintains that she was an important painter whose contribution to the development of modernism in Quebec and Canada art has only recently resurfaced and been publicly acknowledged. The author argues that her decision to bridge both linguistic communities in Quebec informs her work, making her a unique subject of study from both professional and social perspectives. Smith fully integrated herself into French Québécois culture, living and painting in a community to which she was not native, leaving us with a visual and textual record of great historical value. As her work straddles both linguistic solitudes of Quebec, the author maintains that it poses interesting questions on the role of the artist as ethnographer and the role of portraiture as the embodiment of greater social meanings than mimetic likeness.
Type
Master's Thesis
University
Carleton University
Place
Ottawa, ON
Date
2004
# of Pages
vii-124p.
Language
en
URL
Citation
Tierney, Cara. “Jori Smith: A Contextual Analysis.” Master’s Thesis, Carleton University, 2004. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/001/mq99003.pdf.
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