Modern Vision and National Memory: Jori Smith, the Montreal Avant-Garde, and Charlevoix Painters

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Modern Vision and National Memory: Jori Smith, the Montreal Avant-Garde, and Charlevoix Painters
Abstract
The author examines the Montreal painter and writer Joni (Marjorie) Smith (1907-2005). Building on feminist art historical projects, the author situates Smith's production of the 1930s and 1940s in relation to the wartime and postwar production of the Group of Seven, and to the work of Quebec, Canadian, and international modernists who shared similar convictions about the political value of aesthetic expression. Drawing on Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, the author explores the importance of emotion to the formalism of Smith and other members of the Montreal-based Contemporary Arts Society to argue that political and economic crises fueled their modernist preoccupation with the affective capacities of painting. She also examine Smith's involvement with the ethnological activity of Marius Barbeau in eastern Quebec to consider how nationalism, gender, ethnicity, language and socio-economics informed the production and dissemination of early twentieth century Canadian art.
Type
PhD dissertation
University
York University
Place
Toronto, ON
Date
2009
Language
en
URL
Citation
Aylen, Marielle. “Modern Vision and National Memory: Jori Smith, the Montreal Avant-Garde, and Charlevoix Painters.” PhD dissertation, York University, 2009. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/NR51669.PDF.
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