Art in Montreal

Québec 75 /Arts, Cinéma, Vidéo , organized by the l’Institut d’art contemporain de Montréal and curated by Normand Thériault, has come to be identified with the period and the relationship between the art and their cultural identity. It transformed the definition of Québec art from one that rested on language and its association with the francophone nation, to one defined by territory and residence. More importantly, it solidified Contemporary Art as one defined by institutionality and milieu. It can be seen an “inaugurating a new vision of Contemporary Art in Québec.” [Véronique Rodriguez, “Québec 75 /Arts, Cinéma, Vidéo: pour un nouvelle vision de l’art contemporain au Québec” in Ed. Francine Couture, Exposer l’art contemporain du Québec: discours d’intention et d’accompagnement (Montréal: Centre de diffusion 3D, 2003), 17]

  Earlier in the century, the perpetually troubled MACM attempted to create a triennale Québécoise, which only managed to survive for two iterations (2008/2011). These were among the most ambitious attempts of the city’s art institutions to portray themselves as part of the international art world, to normalize itself in the festival model on the model of the Whitney Biennial. This also tied it even further into the tourist industry, which it was hardly distant from anyway. The first triennale set attendance records. René Blouin told La Presse that the latest crop of Contemporary Artists was decidedly different from the earlier ones: “‘For a long time there was a certain conceptual aridity in Québec art,’ he says, ‘but we’re really over that. The objects are well-made. There is a relationship to the body, to pleasure. Young artists are more erudite. It’s transdisciplinary. It’s a more generous planet that we are approaching. It speaks to us even if we are not specialists.” [Mario Cl

While catalogues like the two discussed here are not intended to be rigorous historical examinations or even polemics, they are useful as instances of institutional self-justification, which in both cases is fairly ambiguous. The institutions are largely placed in the background with the theatre of Contemporary Art happening before them or, it is intimated, behind closed doors somewhere. Published by the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec with texts by Eve-Lyne Beaudry (conservatrice en art contemporain, MNBAQ) and Marie Fraser (professeure, département d'histoire de l'art, UQAM), Art contemporain du Québec: guide de collection (2016) contains a general essay which states the basic historiographic perspective of the institution and which is followed by nearly sixty two page profiles of specific artists (including duos and groups).

Before making a series of generalizing statements about these three exhibitions, it is incumbent on me to provide you with their statements of rationalization, each of which avoids any justification for their mode of display, at best vaguely waving it off as “ experimentation”: