ARTH 373 Issues in Contemporary Canadian Art: Conceptual art, Fluxus art, and Performance Art Networks between 1960-1990

• Thursdays, 2:45pm-5:15pm
• EV-1.615
• Instructor: Brayden Burrard

This course surveys the history of Canada’s Conceptual art, Fluxus art, and performance art networks between 1960-1990. The course will be organized chronologically by decades and by region: West Coast, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. Attention will be given to the development of experimental communities, events, and artist-run centres that introduced the Canadian public to a thriving network of local artist initiatives beginning in the 1960s. The material under examination will focus on the narrative of conceptual art, attending to which practices were foregrounded while others ignored, while given presence to Fluxus and performance artists who explored social histories concerning anti-war activism, feminism, the civil rights movement, and gay liberation. Lectures will question how the local was incorporated into international narratives of national Canadian art during the 1970s and 1980s, by emphasizing the role of the artist as a participant in a new system of circulation that emphasized its own publicity.