Prenant appui sur les vingt-neuf expositions du Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2005, Image & Imagination présente les travaux de soixante artistes contemporains en provenance du Canada, de l'Australie, des États-Unis, de la France, de l'Angleterre, d'Haïti et du Japon.
On retrouve, parmi les auteurs, Geoffrey Batchen (City University of New York), Catherine Bédard (Centre culturel canadien, Paris), Fae Brauer (University of New South Wales), Francine Dagenais (Université McGill), Martyn Jolly (Australian National University), Petra Halkes (Université Concordia), Martha Langford (Université Concordia), Kirsty Robertson (Queen's University) et Ian Walker (University of Wales College)
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, CanadaGottfried Helnwein’s American Prayer: A Fable in Pixels and Paint.
Born in 1948 in Vienna, Helnwein’s career spans more than three decades. He lives and works in Los Angeles and has a home base in Ireland as well.His art ranges from the macabre to the sublime. Figures, dead or alive, predominate in large groups and smaller encounters. There are many singular figures and portraits of celebrities and others, as well as self portraits. There are also land- and cityscapes, magazine and CD covers, installations and set designs.One theme returns often: "The Child," which was also the title of Helnwein’s first major museum solo show in in North America (San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, 2004).Photographing and painting children, sometimes adored, more often traumatized or injured, threatened or witnessing violence, the artist appears possessed by the suffering that childhood’s particular vulnerability can engender.
by Petra Halkes
I began to discover a semiotic richness in this painting worthy of what W.J.T. Mitchell hascalled a “metapicture” - a “picture that [is] used to show what a picture is.” Mitchell situatesthe concept of metapicture in “’iconology,’ the study of the general field of images and theirrelation to discourse,” thereby cutting across Greenbergian self-reflexivity into an expandedcontext that includes popular culture as well as contemporary art. In this wider culturalfield, a metapicture does more than reflect on the nature of the picture itself and calls intoquestion “the self-understanding of the observer.”_ I will argue that American Prayer derivesits theoretical relevance partly from its concealed hybridity, from the interplay betweentechnological media and painting. In this work, the substitution of one medium by anotherreinforces the meaning that can be created from the iconographic substitution of the child byPinocchio, and the replacement of the deity by Donald. In the end, Donald’s sideways glanceat us indicates that this picture is really about us, the observers; it questions our own place ina cultural web of illusionism spun from the abiding human desire to overcome death...(excerpt)
Cet ouvrage imposant et original offre un nouveau point de vue sur l'imagerie et l'imaginaire photographiques. Liz Wells, directrice des publications Photography: A Critical Introduction et The Photography ReaderUne captivante exploration de la culture visuelle et de l'imagination. Les textes de fond composent une discussion animée et superbement rédigée au sujet de la vie secrète des images dans l'esprit du spectateur. Carol Payne, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University
Martha Langford est professeur adjoint en histoire de l'art à l'Université Concordia; elle est également l'auteure de Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums et la commissaire générale du Mois de la Photo à Montréal 2005.