Art in Montreal

This is probably the last of my looks at the basic political economy of Contemporary Art in the province. It is a review of Guy Sioui Durand’s L’art comme alternative: Réseaux et Pratiques d’art parallèle au Québec 1976-1996 . A member of the Hurons-Wendat nation, Durand is a sociologist by training and the book is an adaptation of his dissertation. He has a long history working within the milieu he describes as well as museums, as an author for various provincial arts magazines, and as an academic instructor. We have already seen how a leading technocrat for the cultural sector has justified its existence as a form of enchantment, how the sector was critiqued for being essentially corrupt and fostering incompetence by two of its insiders, and how even its apologists recognized that what resulted from the various strategies of artists, artists’ groups, federal, provincial, and municipal governments was primarily the establishment of a system of pastoral care for its ideological bur