In a 1968 summary on the Montréal art scene by Yves Robillard, he suggested that the avant-garde may no longer exist: “In our century of communications, the isolated artist is a myth to be overcome, the refuge of a certain old-fashioned conception of humanism, one that makes the artist the salvation against technology.” [Yves Robillard, “Les beaux-arts” in Le Canada français d’aujourd’hui , ed. Léopold Lamontagne (University of Toronto Press; University of Laval Press, 1970), 97.] For half a century, he would make variations of this argument, finally given its most thorough formulation in the book, Vous êtes tous des créateurs, ou, Le mythe de l’art (1998). For Robillard, the theme park model of creativity that he believed would displace art was valuable as a kind of lab, a means to stimulate participation. Individualism is what we have in abundance and which proliferates. [135] Contrasting the peasant/tribal song as a happy game against the morose world of post-industrialism, he ca
A critical revue of contemporary art in the city.