Summation

As this is my final post, I would like to make a list of artists from the second half of the course that I feel were the 'significant' ones.

Philip Guston, who used to be such a good artist.

Mark Tansey's humourous puns on the art world, a chicken staring into a mirror.

Francesco Clemente, one of the Three Cs and the dive into the forbidden: decoration and portraiture! (Oh, my!)

Anselm Kiefer's haunting landscapes. The expressionist and the figurative can be one.

Gerhard Richter's squeegees, painted over photos and post-WWII Germany.

Sigmar Polke -- pluralism defined. One day we'll figure out his Alice trip.

Cindy Sherman and the constructed photograph.

Sherrie Levine's simulacra.

Richard Prince's cowboys and hidden advertisements.

Barbara Kruger doesn't need another hero.

Jeff Wall's charged drama in baroque narratives.

Ken Lum is Candi Sweet: he always makes me laugh, then makes me think.

Gregory Crewdson's surreal suburbia. I dare say that he may be my personal favourite of the photographers.

Sandy Skoglund's neon reverse-theatricality.

Doug & Mike Starn's uncanny valley of tactile photographs.

Andres Serrano: piss Christs, hobos and suicides.

Andreas Gursky and his ability to really capture what these modern spaces are like: consumerist claustrophobia.

Edward Burtynsky's manufactured landscapes.

Robert Gober's move in a Duchampian chess game.

Rachel Whiteread and her personal narratives in plaster: my introduction to the YBAs many years ago.

Phoebe Washburn's unmonumental waves of recycled junk.

Tara Donovan's magical environments of the banal: truly making the ordinary extraordinary.

Brian Jungen's native prototypes of the appropriated: I'll never forget the gasp from the class when his Prince flashed onto the screen.

Damien Ortega's organic modernism.

Ranjani Shettar and the ethereal beauty of her fragile works. Another favourite of the class.

Tony Oursler's uncanny projections.

David Altmejd -- Canadian superstar of posthumanism.

Mary Kelly: the feminist artist.

Jana Sterbak and her infamous dresses.

Mona Hatoum: light and darkness immersing us into what we are woefully ignorant of.

Marc Quinn's truly intimate self-portraits.

Charles Ray's boxes, shelves and mannequins: breaking boundaries with a sardonic wit.

Robert Gober's cottaging legs.

Ron Mueck's hyper-realistic sculptures and the fragility of life.

Maurizio Cattelan, who I'm pretty sure is going to hell.

Damien Hirst's dead shark and pigs, the bane of the Stuckists and my source of eternal giggles.

Patricia Piccinini and her disturbing GM creatures.

Glenn Brown appropriating every portrait you can imagine.

Cecily Brown's pluralism of paint.

Matthew Ritchie's steel drawings, endless textbooks and trying to fit everything he knows into the world.

And finally,

Cai Guo-Qiang's sublime explosions: a magical way to finish.

Fine 319: Boogie Woogie

A short post for today:

Boogie Woogie is an upcoming comedy of manners set in the contemporary London art world, directed by Duncan Ward. I can only imagine what antics will ensue in this all-too-easy target. Starring a huge ensemble, including Gillian Anderson, Alan Cumming, Heather Graham, Christopher Lee, Stellan Skarsgard and Amanda Seyfried.

UPDATE (April 24th, 2010)

The reviews are in... and they are not favourable.

Aaron Hills of the Village Voice: "Director Duncan Ward tries way too hard to nail a way too easy target in his sub-Altman ensemble spoof of the overpriced, overhyped, overly pretentious modern-art scene."

Joe Neumaler of the New York Daily News: "This watery art-world satire is a perfect example of savvy people working together on something with no center of gravity, so nothing pays off."

Ouch.

Fine 319: Carl Andre

Equivalents I-VIII, 1966

I think it's interesting that he wanted to created a communistic aesthetic, but instead had the public revolt against him. Why is this? Perhaps it's the apparent lack of 'skill' involved, as well as the lack of Speciality. Although the goal of many modern artists, including Andre, was a democratization of art and the elevating of the everyday to a position of reconsideration: the world is amazing and beautiful.

But people cannot move beyond the fact that it is 'merely a pile of bricks'. Nevermind the sensitization of gravity (pg 155 of our text), or the existential connotations. Minimal art, unless somehow 'pretty', would never strike a chord with the public. Such a shame.

Fine 319: Beats on Canvas

http://www.beatsoncanvas.com/

Something that I think would have been interesting to explore in class -- but is far too complex to actually include, lest you want to expand the course into an intense full-year one-- is the connection between the various media of 20th and 21st century art. I think to get a full understanding of, say, minimal art you need to also become familiar with minimalist music, literature, architecture, home design, film, et cetera.

Beats on Canvas are a Canadian trio of musicians who seek to create musical compositions that express audibly matching compositions of paint on canvas. They have been nominated for a few Juno awards this year, but I'm interested in checking them out to see just how successful they are. Is there an inherent connection between the music tracks and the paintings, or is their goal to show that attempting to link two separate compositions of different media a naïve hope of intertextuality? It's not like we're watching a sound film, where the images presented and the soundtrack are inherently linked (unless, of course, you choose to turn off the screen, or mute the sound -- but that's not the intention of the work); Beats on Canvas' presentation of their compositions, i.e. a music track that you can play separately on a music player and the matching painting in a booklet in your hands, doesn't have the inherent link that, say, a film does. But I think it's an alluring experiment: is it possible for us to listen to the music and match the paintings to it without being told?

Matthew Barney and the Cremaster Cycle

cremaster |kriˈmastər|

noun

1 (also cremaster muscle) Anatomy the muscle of the spermatic cord, by which the testicle can be partially raised.

2 Entomology the hooklike tip of a butterfly pupa, serving as an anchorage point.

ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from Greek kremastēr, from krema- ‘hang.’

The CREMASTER CYCLE is made up of 5 films:

Cremaster 1 (1995) A Goodyear Blimp musical.

Cremaster 2 (1999) A Gothic western of murder and Houdini.

Cremaster 3 (2002) The building of the Chrysler building.

Cremaster 4 (1994) A race to determine a satyr's gender.

Cremaster 5 (1997) A tragic romantic opera.

Images of chorus girls, bees, magicians, architecture, the British isles, rock music, rams, car races and royalty. Luxurious and bizarre costumes laden with symbolism. Repetition of actors; invented characters co-mingling with historical figures in an anachronistic manner.

Some reactions of mine to the Cremaster Cycle:

The nature of film is that it is a mass-re-produced medium. What is the original copy? (The answer: there is none.)

Only ten DVDs of each cycle exists. One copy of Cremaster 2 sold for over $500,000 at Sotheby's. Can film be treated as a sculpture or painting -- a unique object?

The process of filmmaking is a collaborative one. Barney receives sole authorship for the series. An investigation into auteur theory?

The themes of transformation and metamorphosis ring through: choreographing, puberty, determination of gender, turning bricks and steel into a building, the geologic creation of the British isles, sexual reproduction, puberty, Masonic rites, death.

Synopsis of Cremaster 3 (2002)

CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect (played by Richard Serra), and the Entered Apprentice (played by Barney), who are both working on the building. They are reenacting the Masonic myth of Hiram Abiff, purported architect of Solomon's Temple, who possessed knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The murder and resurrection of Abiff are reenacted during Masonic initiation rites as the culmination of a three-part process through which a candidate progresses from the first degree of Entered Apprenticeship to the third of Master Mason.

After a prologue steeped in Celtic mythology, the narrative begins under the foundation of the partially constructed Chrysler Building. A female corpse digging her way out of a grave is the undead Gary Gilmore, protagonist of Cremaster 2. Carried out of her tomb by five boys, she is

transported to the Chrysler Building's lobby. The pallbearers deposit her in the back seat of a Chrysler Imperial New Yorker. During this scene, the camera cross-cuts to images of the Apprentice troweling cement over carved fuel-tank caps on the rear chassis of five 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperials, each bearing the insignia of a Cremaster episode. Packed with cement, these caps will serve as battering rams in a demolition derby about to begin. The Apprentice then scales one of the building's elevator shafts until reaching a car resting between floors. Using this cabin as a mold, he pours cement to cast the perfect ashlar, a symmetrically hewn stone that symbolizes moral rectitude in Masonic ritual. By circumventing the carving process to create the perfect ashlar, the Apprentice has cheated in his rites of passage and has sabotaged the construction of the building.

The ensuing scene in the Chrysler Building's Cloud Club bar is a slapstick routine between bartender and Apprentice. Almost everything goes wrong; and these humorous mishaps result in the bartender playing his environment like a bagpipe. The various accidents leading up to this are caused by a woman (played by Aimee Mullins) in an adjoining room, who is cutting potatoes with blades on her shoes and stuffing them under the foundation of the bar until it is no longer level - a condition that echoes the corrupted state of the tower. This interlude is interrupted by a scene shift to a racetrack, where the Apprentice is accosted by hitmen who break all his teeth in retribution for his deception. Back in the Cloud Club, he is escorted to a dental office, where he is stripped of his clothes, under which he is wearing the costume of the First Degree Masonic initiate. An apron of flesh obtrudes from his navel, referencing the lambskin aprons worn by Masonic candidates as a symbol for the state of innocence before the Fall.

The Architect confronts his opponent in the dental suite, fitting the compressed remains of the Imperial New Yorker into the Apprentice's mouth like a pair of dentures. At that moment, the Apprentice's intestines prolapse through his rectum. This ceremonious disembowelment symbolically separates him from his lower self. For his hubris he is simultaneously punished and redeemed by the Architect - whose own hubris, however, equally knows no bounds.

Returning to his office, and anxious about the tower's slow progress, the Architect constructs two pillars that allude to the columns, Jachin and Boaz, designed by Abiff for Solomon's Temple. Meanwhile, the Apprentice escapes from the dental lab and climbs to the top of the tower. The Architect uses his columns as a ladder and climbs through an oculus in the ceiling. The next scene describes an apotheosis, the Architect becoming one with his design, as the tower itself is transformed into a maypole.

At this point in the narrative the film pauses for a choric interlude, which rehearses the initiation rites of the Masonic fraternity through allegorical representations of the five-part Cremaster cycle, all in the guise of a game staged in the Guggenheim Museum. Called “The Order,” this competition features a fantastical incarnation of the Apprentice as its sole contestant, who must overcome obstacles on each level of the museum's spiraling rotunda.

In the ensuing scene, which returns to the top of the Chrysler Building, the Architect is murdered by the Apprentice, who is then killed by the tower. Both men have been punished for their hubris and the building will remain unfinished. The film ends with a coda that links it to Cremaster 4. This is the legend of Fionn MacCumhail, which describes the formation of the Isle of Man, where the next installment of the Cremaster cycle will take place.

K FOUNDATION BURN A MILLION QUID

In my humble little opinion, this may be the greatest performance piece ever.

British art duo Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond -- also known as the K Foundation, the KLF, the Timelords, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu -- were at one point one of the world's best selling music acts, selling millions of records and considered pioneers of acid house, ambient house and sample-heavy rave. Notorious pranksters partially inspired by the completely bizarre novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Shea and Wilson (1975; a postmodern romp of sex, drugs, conspiracy theories, numerology and a multitude of other topics), the KLF can best be described as conceptual anarchists who subverted popular culture in a fashion never seen before or since. Their album The White Room was wildly successful and had a number of hit tracks, including "3 a.m. Eternal" which hit #1 in the UK; 1988's "Doctorin' the Tardis" was a novelty single purposely designed to be a vapid hit (which it was); "Justified and Ancient (Stand by the JAMs)", another top-10 single in the UK and the States, was a mix of techno, pop and rap, and featured famed country star Tammy Wynette singing esoteric lyrics about the 'justified ancients of Mu Mu land'.

So what to do with the millions of dollars they made off of blatant pop crap?

When nominated for multiple BRIT awards in 1992, they were invited to perform "3 a.m. Eternal, their airy, melodic trance-pop hit. The stage is lit, the KLF is announced, and Jimmy Cauty, balanced on crutches, shouts "This is television freedom!" before performing the track: with hardcore vegan-death-metal group Extreme Noise Terror. Explosions, growls, heavy guitars. The song goes on, bewildering the audience -- and then the kilted Cauty pulls out a machine gun and shoots blanks into the audience. The song finishes, explosions ring out, and the bands leave the stage while the PA system announces that "The KLF have now left the music business." Later that evening, a dead sheep was dumped at a post-party with a message tied to it "I died for ewe - bon appetit."

In 1994, Cauty and Drummond took 1 million pounds sterling of 50-pound notes in cash to the Scottish island of Jura... and burned it.

And I can't believe that a 45-minute documentary is available to watch online. It's poor quality, but I have been unable to find it elsewhere -- I normally have major qualms against viewing anything on YouTube or other video sites (pixelated images on a small screen with tinny computer speakers is not how we are meant to view most films), but this is an opportunity I can't pass up.

Jimmy Cauty

"Yeah, you wanna make out that everything is fine and it's this 'fantastic art statement' and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's kind of riddled with flaws... the whole thing of burning the money I'm taking anbout: what, the possibility that the whole thing is a load of rubbish and a complete waste of time. Once it comes up, you have to start to... you kind of have to deal with it. Most of the time it's not a big deal and you don't think about it, but when you do start thinking about it you can get into this area where it's pretty, y'know, it's pretty black.

I don't even know what are we're trying to say, innit? It's just that there's another side to it -- it's just really heavy for me and Bill to deal with. Every day you wake up, you go "Oh god, I just burned a million quid." Everybody, nobody thinks it's good, everybody just thinks it's a complete waste of time, y'know, everybody wants to know why you did it, but you can't tell them because you don't know why you did it; it's just not good enough, really?"

Friends of Drummond and Cauty claim that they were never the same again. Why did they do it? They have never said.

And I think it's genius.

Stuckism

Your art is stuck,

you are stuck!

Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!

-Tracey Emin

The Stuckists are a group of anti-conceptual artists set up in 1999. And these people embarrass me.

Here is their original 1999 manifesto (bolds are original):

STUCKISM

Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.

1. Stuckism is the quest for authenticity. By removing the mask of cleverness and admitting where we are, the Stuckist allows him/herself uncensored expression.

2. Painting is the medium of self-discovery. It engages the person fully with a process of action, emotion, thought and vision, revealing all of these with intimate and unforgiving breadth and detail.

3. Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic. It is a meeting of the conscious and unconscious, thought and emotion, spiritual and material, private and public. Modernism is a school of fragmentation — one aspect of art is isolated and exaggerated to detriment of the whole. This is a fundamental distortion of the human experience and perpetrates an egocentric lie.

4. Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.

5. Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.

6. The Stuckist paints pictures because painting pictures is what matters.

7. The Stuckist is not mesmerised by the glittering prizes, but is wholeheartedly engaged in the process of painting. Success to the Stuckist is to get out of bed in the morning and paint.

8. It is the Stuckist’s duty to explore his/her neurosis and innocence through the making of paintings and displaying them in public, thereby enriching society by giving shared form to individual experience and an individual form to shared experience.

9. The Stuckist is not a career artist but rather an amateur (amare, Latin, to love) who takes risks on the canvas rather than hiding behind ready-made objects (e.g. a dead sheep). The amateur, far from being second to the professional, is at the forefront of experimentation, unencumbered by the need to be seen as infallible. Leaps of human endeavour are made by the intrepid individual, because he/she does not have to protect their status. Unlike the professional, the Stuckist is not afraid to fail.

10. Painting is mysterious. It creates worlds within worlds, giving access to the unseen psychological realities that we inhabit. The results are radically different from the materials employed. An existing object (e.g. a dead sheep) blocks access to the inner world and can only remain part of the physical world it inhabits, be it moorland or gallery. Ready-made art is a polemic of materialism.

11. Post Modernism, in its adolescent attempt to ape the clever and witty in modern art, has shown itself to be lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy. What was once a searching and provocative process (as Dadaism) has given way to trite cleverness for commercial exploitation. The Stuckist calls for an art that is alive with all aspects of human experience; dares to communicate its ideas in primeval pigment; and possibly experiences itself as not at all clever!

12. Against the jingoism of Brit Art and the ego-artist. Stuckism is an international non-movement.

13. Stuckism is anti ‘ism’. Stuckism doesn’t become an ‘ism’ because Stuckism is not Stuckism, it is stuck!

14. Brit Art, in being sponsored by Saachis, main stream conservatism and the Labour government, makes a mockery of its claim to be subversive or avant-garde.

15. The ego-artist’s constant striving for public recognition results in a constant fear of failure. The Stuckist risks failure wilfully and mindfully by daring to transmute his/her ideas through the realms of painting. Whereas the ego-artist’s fear of failure inevitably brings about an underlying self-loathing, the failures that the Stuckist encounters engage him/her in a deepening process which leads to the understanding of the futility of all striving. The Stuckist doesn’t strive — which is to avoid who and where you are — the Stuckist engages with the moment.

16. The Stuckist gives up the laborious task of playing games of novelty, shock and gimmick. The Stuckist neither looks backwards nor forwards but is engaged with the study of the human condition. The Stuckists champion process over cleverness, realism over abstraction, content over void, humour over wittiness and painting over smugness.

17. If it is the conceptualist’s wish to always be clever, then it is the Stuckist’s duty to always be wrong.

18. The Stuckist is opposed to the sterility of the white wall gallery system and calls for exhibitions to be held in homes and musty museums, with access to sofas, tables, chairs and cups of tea. The surroundings in which art is experienced (rather than viewed) should not be artificial and vacuous.

19. Crimes of education: instead of promoting the advancement of personal expression through appropriate art processes and thereby enriching society, the art school system has become a slick bureaucracy, whose primary motivation is financial. The Stuckists call for an open policy of admission to all art schools based on the individual’s work regardless of his/her academic record, or so-called lack of it.

We further call for the policy of entrapping rich and untalented students from at home and abroad to be halted forthwith.

We also demand that all college buildings be available for adult education and recreational use of the indigenous population of the respective catchment area. If a school or college is unable to offer benefits to the community it is guesting in, then it has no right to be tolerated.

20. Stuckism embraces all that it denounces. We only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!

Billy Childish

Charles Thomson

4.8.99

The following have been proposed to the Bureau of Inquiry for possible inclusion as Honorary Stuckists:

Katsushika Hokusai

Utagawa Hiroshige

Vincent van Gogh

Edvard Munch

Karl Schmidt-Rotluff

Max Beckman

Kurt Schwitters

First published by The Hangman Bureau of Enquiry

11 Boundary Road, Chatham, Kent ME4 6TS

Where to begin? I think perhaps with two of their most ludicrous lines: #4 #5. Apparently, sculptors aren't artists, and installation art is a misnomer. I understand where they are coming from, however: an era of skyrocketing art prices, questionable talent and the passing off of what is lazy and boring as insightful. But at the same time, I find the Stuckists to be a remarkably conservative group, and one that seems to deny any existential nature to audienceship. By that I mean they have a rather narrow focus in what can be worthy of thought: the best conceptual artists allow you to look at things in a brand new way, appreciating the beauty of things that we often ignore. I'm thinking of Rachel Whiteread, who according to the Stuckists' manifesto, would be a corporate lackey who makes piles of plaster. The Stuckists, who appear to be a populist group, would probably like to ignore the fact that Whiteread's work is often well loved by the public and her humble nature.

But point #16 strikes me as hugely hypocritical. Simply look at some Stuckist works and you'll see that this point does not apply. Many of their works are shrill, reactionary and eye-rollingly sarcastic. And what of their displays at the Turner awards, dressing up like clowns? That isn't a gimmick?

Charles Thomson, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision. 2000.

For an art movement that claims to bring back the soul to art, they are doing a very poor job. And for a group that is claiming to be anti-conceptual art, they are doing a very good job at being just that: conceptual art.

The Hamilton Art Boom

Here are two articles about the contemporary art boom in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. I'm very proud to see that this is happening after so many years of being, well, frankly embarrassed of being a Hamiltonian. I remember when the Globe article was released; 900 CHML, the local radio station, was abuzz. People were talking -- not just art students and the cultural elite, but your average steel worker and nurse. Many Hamiltonians may not understand contemporary art, but I know that the vast majority are proud that we finally have something to boast about after economic downturns, a failing downtown, expanding suburbia and always being the butt of the joke. (We're one of the top ten largest cities in Canada, yet national news will still say "Hamilton, an hour outside of Toronto..." like the listener has no idea where we are.)

Go West, Young Artist

But don't stop on Queen Street. The scene to check out these days is happening in Hamilton

BRUCE FARLEY MOWAT

Special to The Globe and Mail

HAMILTON, ONT. -- On a Friday night, Hamilton's old inner-city neighbourhood of Jamesville is overflowing with art lovers: Over at the Print Studio, a middle-aged woman from Etobicoke is inquiring about its workshops after viewing an exhibit by local printmaker Emily Brown. Down the street at the Blue Angel Gallery, a group of twentysomethings sits in on an improv theatre performance. Across the street, near the corner of Cannon, a crowd of moms, dads and grads gather at the Loose Canon Gallery for a group exhibition of emerging artists in the McMasterUniversity art program. It's a scene that happens every six weeks or so, when the galleries of Jamesville synchronize their opening nights. When the night is over, 250 to 300 people will have passed through the doors of each gallery.

You might expect to see something like this in Toronto or Montreal. The fact that it's happening in Hamilton, though, may qualify as a small miracle. In the once-sleepy Jamesville district -- the area in and around James Street North from Wilson Street to an old railway station -- seven galleries have sprung up over the past two years, with more expected to open soon. Out-of-town artists have begun making inquiries. Some Toronto artists, such as Robert Carley and Andrew McPhail, have already relocated to the SteelCity.

"I think this is a sign that Hamilton may very well be -- finally -- culturally maturing," says David Liss, a Hamilton expatriate and the curator of Toronto's Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. "What's exciting about it is this thing sprung up organically. It didn't start at a boardroom. It has the ring of authenticity."

It's a textbook example of how the arts can revitalize an anemic neighbourhood, but it didn't happen overnight. Most of the SteelCity's current high-profile artistic alumni -- including Mr. Liss and artist Floria Sigismondi -- became known to the public after they left the confines of their hometown. Artists who choose to remain in the area are, understandably, a tenacious lot, forced by necessity to rely on self-built support mechanisms.

Hamilton Artists Inc., as one of the first artist-run co-operatives in Canada, initially opened its doors in the neighbourhood in 1975. In its 30-plus-year history, "The Inc." has moved around to several locations, but always remained in the neighbourhood.

"Artists have traditionally always established themselves in low-rent areas," the co-operative's current program director, Steve Mazza, says by way of explanation. "But we're not trying to compete with anyone, or align ourselves with whatever's currently in vogue."

The growth of the current strip of galleries really began with the May, 2003, opening of the You Me Gallery, which specializes in work by Hamilton area and Japanese-Canadian artists. The gallery is curated by one of the original members of the Inc., Bryce Kanbara.

"I began this gallery project as a way to express my disenchantment with the public art system -- which mostly supports its own infrastructure [of] directors, curators, educators, fundraisers and a small number of select artists," says Mr. Kanbara, who graduated from McMasterUniversity in 1970.

But for most galleries on the strip, Jamesville has become the choice of locale for their new ventures for two main reasons: the cheap real estate and the combined presence of Mr. Kanbara and the Inc. Another factor that has spurred the growth of the parallel-gallery system in Hamilton was the establishment in 2004 of a gallery intern program as part of McMasterUniversity's fine arts program. The program has effectively hooked up the university art community with the downtown scene.

The area's collective energy shows no sign of letting up. Retail outlets, such as Mixed Media, an art supply store run by H Magazine editor Dave Devries-Kuruc, are popping up. The Hamilton Media Arts, an artist-run new media collective, opens its new gallery space, The Factory, next month. And unlike most major centres, this district is solidly anchored: The majority of gallery owners own the buildings they work in -- something unheard of in today's Toronto or Vancouver.

All of this activity looks very familiar and very encouraging to Mr. Liss, who has seen the Parkdale neighbourhood in Toronto begin a similar turnaround.

"In the States, you see this kind of thing happening in places like Pittsburgh or Seattle, because the major centres are getting too expensive for artists. I think the same thing is happening in Hamilton, and I'd like to see the city, for once, nurture it."

Opening soon

Superstition be damned: This Friday the 13th will feature a confluence of openings in Jamesville. The main space of Hamilton Artists Inc. (3 Colbourne St., http://www.hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca) presents Totem, an exhibition by emerging artist Cathy Cahill featuring a selection of her whimsical, towering faux-fur animal totem poles. Ingrid Mayrhofer, a curator at the McMaster Museum of Art, will be showing her work Rapunzel, an installation piece featuring two- and three-dimensional elements. Both exhibitions open at 8 p.m.

Half a block north, the You Me Gallery (330 James St. N., http://www.youmegallery.ca) is kicking off a new year of programming with "Pictures of me when I was younger" or, "Ok, they're lamps", Brian Kelly's rambling suite of illuminated, found-object sculpture. Mr. Kelly forages the world for parts, but lives in Dundas, Ont. The show opens at 7 p.m.

The usual terminus for local art crawls, The Blue Angel Gallery (243 James St. N., http://www.blueangelgallery.ca), is featuring its weekly Friday night combination of visual arts, music, performance, poetry and open stage.

-- Bruce Farley Mowat

Steeltown Revisited

By: Bert Archer

Toronto Life, September, 2008

How do you know when Toronto is too expensive to be hip? When artists move to Hamilton. Our high-priced real estate is fuelling a growing exodus down the QEW. And it’s an entirely different migration from moving to the burbs. Hamilton – with it’s downtown-centred 19th-century layout, industrial heritage and fiery smokestacks – is as urban as it gets. Though it’s uneasily close to Toronto, it is not a satellite; it has an orbit of its own.

Writer Sky Gilbert and his partner, artist and curator Ian Jarvis, moved in 2003. “We couldn’t afford a house in Toronto,” he says, “and we wanted a charming old Victorian in a downtown core.” He found his house, just off the now burgeoning gallery strip of James Street North, for $90,000. “Hamilton does not smell,” he says. “It’s a beautiful ex-steel town. It’s very much like Baltimore or Queens – the little diamond in the rough beside the money-coloured ice palaces of the big city.”

Andrew McPhail, a 47-year old Toronto artist and long-time anchor of the Toronto gallery scene, moved in 2005. “We sold our house in Riverdale and bought a three-bedroom 1894 home here for $150,000, slightly less than a third of our Toronto house’s selling price.” As a result of the windfall, both he and his boyfriend, a former social worker, have retired.

At least one big developer is betting on the Richard Florida revitalization-through-the-creative-class effect. Harry Stinson, the original force behind the Candy Factory, which kick-started Toronto’s loft conversion boom, was all but run out of town after his One-King West project fell apart. He’s in negotiations to buy Hamilton’s Royal Connaught Hotel (which has been vacant for the past four years) and turn it into a condo-shopping complex.

Jim Chambers, founder of what became Gallery TRW and one of the forces behind the birth of West Queen West as a gallery district, has bought and sold three homes since moving six years ago. “I feel like a kid in a candy store, “he says. His latest purchase was a five-bedroom, three-storey detached Georgian Revival home built in 1890, which he picked up in July for less than $100,000. “Quite aside from the price difference,” Chambers says, “when neighbourhoods like Queen West get too expensive, they lose the qualities that made artists want to live there in the first place.”

For Hamilton, rampant gentrification is a way off. The city is still resolutely working class, and the James Street strip full of vacant storefronts, dollar stores and bars caters to what Chambers refers to as Hamilton’s broken people. Since the commute’s a bitch – and will remain so at least until the city gets its own VIA stop, plus expanded GO train service in 2010 – for the moment, Hamilton is for people who want to be Hamiltonians, and a bargain hunter’s paradise.

Links:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Creative-Class-Hamilton