The artists’ book collection at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is representative of authors and artists working in the medium, including developing artists', publishers, and prominent book artists.
Developed with Art Metropole, Fisher's aim is to expand the artists’ book collection at The University of Toronto
Art in Canada by
Discover the many themes and movements that have shaped Canada's visual arts landscape since 1968. Continuing the storylines from the new Canadian and Indigenous Galleries, this special exhibition invites visitors to experience more than 150 works in all media, including sculpture, painting, video art, installation, drawing and photography. From the feminist art movement of the 1970s to present-day Inuit art, the richness of the national Canadian and Indigenous contemporary art collections is on full display.
Art of the Spirit by
Rich colours and arresting designs capture the mood of celebration and joy that characterizes this photographic record of contemporary religious works of art. Chosen for their excellence in design and stitchery, these works represent the achievements of artists who have created art, in fabric, for places of worship. This book celebrates this important artistic expression, a significant part of our heritage. Pieces are selected from communities across Canada: from a small parish on a Micmac reserve in Nova Scotia to a large urban synagogue in Vancouver; from the igloo-shaped cathedral in Iqaluit to a suburban church nestled beside a wildlife march in southwestern Ontario.
Automatic Cities by
The "architectural imaginary" describes architecture in its broadest sense: images of cities drawn from collective experience and imagination. Hailing from 11 countries, each of the 14 artists who have contributed to Automatic Cities engage the psychological and sociopolitical aspects of architecture through their work, mapping the influence of the architectural imaginary on contemporary visual art.
Baja to Vancouver by
Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art is the first major survey of recent art from the western edge of the United States, Canada, and Baja California, Mexico. Focusing on works that engage with the social landscapes of this transnational corridor, this publication presents compelling and surprising images of a distinctive cultural terrain--one that is arguably the most vital region of contemporary art production in North America today.
Beyond Wilderness by
The great purpose of landscape art is to make us at home in our own country was the nationalist maxim motivating the Group of Seven's artistic project. The empty landscape paintings of the Group played a significant role in the nationalization of nature in Canada, particularly in the development of ideas about northernness, wilderness, and identity. left off. Beyond Wilderness explains why landscape art in Canada had to be reinvented, and what forms the reinvention took.
Brink of Reality by
In Brink of Reality, Peter Steven examines the convergence of video-art and social-issue documentary, from the 1940s to the present. No other book has explored contemporary Canadian documentary so thoroughly, or provided as broad a view of the state of the art in the 1990s.
Censoring Art by
Art is continuously subjected to insidious forms of censorship. This may be by the Church to guard against moral degeneration, by the State to promote a specific political agenda or by the art market, to elevate one artist above another. Now, and in the last century, artwork that touches on ethnic, religious, sexual, national or institutional sensitivities is liable to be destroyed or hidden away, ignored or side-lined. Drawing from new research into historical and contemporary case-studies, Censoring Art: Silencing the Artwork provides diverse ways of understanding the purpose and mechanisms of art censorship across distinct geopolitical and cultural contexts from Iran, Japan, and Uzbekistan to Britain, Ireland, Canada, Macedonia, Soviet Russia, and Cyprus. Its contributions uncover the impact of this silent control of the production and exhibition of art and consider how censorship has affected art practice and public perceptions of artworks.
Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture by
Taking citizenship as a political position, cultural process, and intertwining of both, this edited volume examines the role of visual art and visual culture as sites for the construction and contestation of both state-sanctioned and cultural citizenships from the late 1970s to today. Contributors to this book examine an assortment of visual media--painting, sculpture, photography, performance, the built environment, new media, and social practice--within diverse and international communities, such as the U.S., South Africa, Turkey, and New Zealand.
Crafted: Objects in Flux by
Contemporary craft presents a profusion of paradoxes. It bridges ancient traditions and state-of-the-art technologies, cutting edge concepts and enduring tenets about skilled making, and in so doing blurs the lines between art, craft, and design. Zilber investigates the role of new tools and materials; the connection between craft and performance; and the power of craft to interact with architecture. The book includes works with a wide range of materials and practices, including 3-D printed ceramics, molten glass called pyrography, and a piano deconstructed to form jewelry.
Desire Change by
In the resistance to the violence of gender-based oppression, vibrant - but often ignored - worlds have emerged, full of nuance, humour, and beauty. Correcting an absence of writing about contemporary feminist work by Canadian artists, Desire Change considers the resurgence of feminist art, thought, and practice in the past decade by examining artworks that respond to themes of diversity and desire.
Feminism and Art History Now by
To what extent have developments in global politics, artworld institutions, and local cultures reshaped the critical directions of feminist art historians? The significant new research gathered here engages with the rich inheritance of feminist historiography since around 1970, and considers how to maintain the forcefulness of its critique while addressing contemporary political struggles. Taking on subjects that reflect the museological, global and materialist trajectories of twenty-first-century art historical scholarship, the chapters address the themes of Invisibility, Temporality, Spatiality and Storytelling. They present new research on a diversity of topics that span political movements in Italy, urban gentrification in New York, community art projects in Scotland and Canada's contemporary indigenous culture.
Form Follows Fiction by
How do artists in Toronto visualize their sense of place? Are there particular 'made-in-Toronto' ways of thinking about the city? Presenting a thematic clustering of works by 86 artists, the book is premised on the tendency of artists in the city to favour performative and allegorical procedures to articulate their sense of place. Four gestures--mapping, modelling, performing and congregating-- serve as guideposts to a diverse array of artistic practices. The book is a constellation of symbolic forms, or memes, that repeatedly appear in the work of artists of different generations; it presents a panorama of the blueprints that artists have drafted over many decades to give form to life in one of North America's largest cities.
I Was Raised on the Internet by
Coinciding with a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, this anthology of essays and reflections casts a discursive and critical light on the work of artists engaging with the internet and digital technologies today. Structured in three parts, I Was Raised on the Internet features critical essays, provocations, and manifestos, as well as images of new commissions for the accompanying exhibition. The book functions independently of the exhibition as a contribution to the knowledge of art and technology studies.
Oh, Canada by
The most comprehensive survey of Canadian contemporary art yet published: a new kind of travel guide with art as the main attraction. The fact that Canada has a vibrant contemporary art scene is no secret to Canadians, but in other parts of the world, including the United States, this is not as recognized as it deserves to be. Oh, Canada is an unprecedented, near-encyclopedic guide to Canadian contemporary art, and to Canada itself.
Photography in Canada 1960-2000 by
This fifth and final volume in the series dedicated to the National Gallery of Canada's immense photography collection documents the emergence of the medium as a recognized artistic discipline in Canada. The creation and growth of this unique collection reflects the enormous development in the practice, collection and display of photography over the latter half of the 20th century. Prior to this time, government institutions, commercial establishments and the legal, medical and journalism professions prized it for its documentary value. As a result, photographs rarely entered the collections of major institutions. This changed in the 1960s when art became more vigorous and dynamic.
Public Art in Canada by
The rigorous essays and original works of art collected in this volume present a compelling demonstration of the strategies, aesthetic and otherwise, used by artists to elicit intellectual, sensual, or emotional responses that can only be obtained through artistic practices in public places.
Remix by
Celebrating the diversity of institutions in the United States, Latin America, and Canada, Remix aims to change the discourse about museums from the inside out, proposing a new, "panarchic"--nonhierarchical and adaptive--vision for museum practice. Selma Holo and Mari-Tere Álvarez offer an unconventional approach, one premised on breaching conventional systems of communication and challenging the dialogues that drive the field. Featuring more than forty authors in and around the museum world, Remix frames a series of vital case studies demonstrating how specific museums, large and small, have profoundly advanced or creatively redefined their goals to meet their ever-changing worlds.
Scissors, Paper, Stone by
Langford explores the nature of memory and art. She challenges the conventional emphasis on the camera as a tool of perception by arguing that photographic works are products of the mind - picturing memory is, first and foremost, the expression of a mental process. Langford organizes the book around the conceit of the child's game scissors, paper, stone, to ground her discussion of the tensions between remembering and forgetting, the intersection of memory and imagination, and the relationship between memory and history. She explores the great variety of photographic art produced by Canadian artists as expressions of memory.
Sensory Arts and Design by
Artists, designers and researchers are increasingly seeking new ways to understand and explore the creative and practical significance of the senses. A compelling exploration of both theory and practice, Sensory Arts and Design brings together a wide variety of examples from contemporary art and design which share a sensory dimension in their development or user experience. Divided into three parts, the book examines the design applications of new technology with sensing capacities; the role of the senses in creating new imaginative environments; and the significance of the senses within different cultural practices. The book covers a highly diverse range of issues - from the urban environment, architecture and soundscapes to gustatory art, multisensory perception in painting, music and drawing, and the relationship between vision and smell.
Splat Boom Pow! by
Splat--ouch--Boom--ouch--Pow That hurts. Presenting work by 35 nationally and internationally recognized contemporary artists who have incorporated the imagery, technique, or style of the comics in their work, Splat Boom Pow makes evident the shift from traditional literary narratives to a visual language of myth as seen in comic strips over the last 40 years. Taking an in-depth look at the current phenomenon of cartoon-referencing work, its connection to the pop art movement of the 1960s, and the social and cultural factors that have shaped our understanding of the comics as a form of popular communication.
Substance over Spectacle by
A presentation of the best and brightest architectural work in Canada over the ten years between 1995 and 2005. Includes the work of 25 architects from different areas of the country, each represented by an installation of their own design and construction. In addition to photographs of the finished projects, Substance Over Spectacle also features images of models and architectural drawings, together with analytical and critical texts demonstrating the architectural ideas embedded in the work.
This Is Not a Hoax by
This Is Not a Hoax shows how the work of some contemporary artists and writers intentionally disrupts the curatorial and authorial practices of the country's most respected cultural institutions: art galleries, museums, and book publishers. This first-ever study of contemporary Canadian hoaxes in visual art and literature asks why we trust authority in artistic works and how that trust is manifest. This book claims that hoaxes, far from being merely lies meant to deceive or wound, may exert a positive influence. Through their insistent disobedience, they assist viewers and readers in re-examining unquestioned institutional trust, habituated cultural hierarchies, and the deeply inscribed racism and sexism of Canada's settler-colonial history.
The Vancouver Carts by
Artist Kelly Wood began photographing the city of Vancouver's "cart culture" in 2004-2005, documenting the urban phenomena of repurposed shopping carts used by Vancouver's homeless population and enterprising "binners" (street workers involved in underground economies such as collecting recyclables). Rooted in the context of the Vancouver art world, The Vancouver Carts series also highlights the physical and social proximity of the art world to the places and people in the city that are affected by gentrification, while simultaneously placing the labour of the artist in comparison with that of workers of this underground refuse economy.
