In the previous installment of this sketchy exploration of the political economy of Canada’s artworld, I dealt mostly with the specifics of Québec, notably with the corruption that some polemically suggested was central to how its art system functions. Here, I take a boarder view. In the background, more implied than argued here, is that Contemporary Art is a genre, at least if this term is understood in the way it has been employed by film theorists like Rick Altman and Steve Neale, to designate a heterogeneous matrix with consistent furniture, strategies of hybridization, and a clear pattern of industrial production that has to a substantial degree determined its formal qualities. As Altman has claimed, genres are best understood as “contraptions capable of performing multiple tasks” that allow for the general summing up of formula, structure, and expectation, providing a “conduit” for the flow of desires. [Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 14-15] T
A critical revue of contemporary art in the city.