Another coursework-motivated post. The task is to find three examples each of Design, Illustration, and Art from my country of origin - Canada. These should be interesting and relevant to me and to Canada. Being not particularly well tuned in to art - especially that which might be considered culturally relevant - nor being in touch necessarily with Canadian culture, I found the task a bit of a challenge. In any event, here follows my attempt.
Design
As it happens the designs I chose are all examples of graphic design. I think this is mostly a reflection of myself, of my own engagement primarily with the visual rather than the physical or interactive, and not indicative of a lack of designed
objects (e.g. products) which one could claim to be relevant to Canada.
CN Rail Logo by Allan Fleming
The CN Rail logo is iconic and represents simple yet effective design at its finest. Taken together the letters are seen to form a track, and so imply the motion of the trains. Viewed in its proper context, often stark white against the dull burgundy or grey-metal of some old boxcar, the logo comes to life. It cuts through the noise of the passing train, stands out against the metal slats and lodges itself deep into the viewer's subconscious. I think the ubiquity of the CN Rail logo is primarily what makes it relevant to Canada. Many times in my youth I would take the family dog for long walks down the old path, the path that led to the train tracks, where often a train would slide along, tugging boxcar after boxcar after it. Every time I would see the CN Rail logo. It probably sits in my mind as a more familiar symbol than even the iconic maple leaf on Canada's flag.
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| CN Rail Logo in context [Source] |
CBC Logo by Burton Kramer
Burton Kramer's CBC logo, originally designed in 1974. The CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - remains in my mind at least, the stewards of mainstream Canadian culture. From the nightly news to coverage of the Olympic Games, the CBC has always been for me the top choice and there one sees the logo, often splashed large over the whole screen between commercial breaks. Of course, the logo of the major national broadcasting corporation was destined to become iconic, and the logo hasn't exactly remained constant over the years. The logo I grew up with, that I am most familiar with, is actually an update and a simplification of Kramer's design, which was used up until 1986 before going through various iterations. I've selected Kramer's original design because all further designs have been derivations of it, while prior to it the logo variously contained a map of Canada and a butterfly. So there has been an implicit admission that Kramer's logo contains an unmistakable identity that is not in need of being replaced. But Kramer's original logo is also the most compelling. The changes to the logo have been done in the name of simplification, first by reducing the number of colours, then by reducing the number of elements, doubtless to assist in readability on television sets, particularly with the logo being used in the lower corner of the screen during news broadcasts, a process that incidentally may start to reverse with the proliferation of large high-definition displays. But these simplifications also somewhat neuter the impact of the original. The modern logo relies on animation to communicate its sense of radiating a signal, while the combination of transitioning colours and lots of elements in the original provides the static image with its own sense of motion. The modern logo is also red on white, which certainly reads as Canadian - perhaps lazily so - while the orange and blue of the original lends an originality among the countless red-and-white Canadian brands. But perhaps the real reason for my selecting Kramer's logo is its decidedly retro appearance for which I can't help but feel some nostalgia for, despite it being before my time. The logo isn't simply broadcasting to us through space, but also through time as well, giving the impression of a delayed broadcast, or perhaps simply a recycled one, which also forms a strong part of my impression growing up of the CBC.
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| Evolution of the CBC logo [Source] |
Canada Post Logo by Paul Arthur & Associates
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| Canada Post Logo by Paul Arthur & Associates [Source] |
Another ubiquitous image that forms part of the graphic design landscape of Canada. Of course ubiquity alone does not make a good or resonant design. The Canada Post logo is notable for what it lacks. It lacks the Maple Leaf - that singular object that serves as almost a stamp of Canadian-ness and serves as the friendly fallback for design - or any overt reference to Canada outside of the name. The image instead focuses entirely on the 'Post' portion of the name. Compare and contrast it to the Royal Mail, which uses an overly ornate and complicated logo of a crown as its logo. One might argue that the logo's needlessly complicated and undeniably ugly design is a fitting complement to the bloated bureaucracy of the system it represents, but I digress. The royalty, or crown status of the mail is the
least important part, since all kinds of industries may be Crown. Further, in context, the logo is not seen alongside competitors against which it needs to signify its national-ness. Canada Post's logo is simple and effective, it communicates what it needs to - the mail - and omits what's irrelevant and obvious - Canadian-ness - whereas Royal Mail's logo says nothing of what it should - the mail - and only about what is irrelevant - the monarchy. The Canada Post logo combines the conventional red and white of Canada with a pleasing blue without evoking any American feelings. In context it is seen across red mail boxes all across the country and forms part of the scarcely contemplated background of everyday Canadian experience.
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| The (terrible) Royal Mail logo [Source] |
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| Canada Post logo in context [Source] |
Like the fantastic FedEx logo, there's inherent motion in the Canada Post logo, signifying mail-in-transit, rather than simply a letter, or a stamp, or any other ideas
associated with the post but not integral to it. For me personally, the Canada Post logo and the red mailboxes have served as familiar grounding elements that found me wherever I lived around Canada. No matter how far east or west you go, there's that assurance that the mail will reach you, and you are never completely cut off.
Illustration
It might be said that illustration exists at a nexus between art and design (at least graphic design), often depicting subjects and deploying techniques from the world of "proper art" but twisting them to a more commercial purpose. As such I find it is often difficult to decide whether something should rightly be considered illustration or not. As with everything, context is important, but for my own purposes I am also labelling works myself as examples of illustration.
Lucy by Janet Werner
Lucy by Janet Werner is perhaps well-understood as "proper art", an example of portraiture, or abstracted portraiture, or abstraction with portraiture. The latter comes closer to how Werner describes her own work. In an interview with Luanne Martineau, Werner reflects on her prior work as "domesticating abstraction" by putting the "impurity" back into it, with figuration being another impurity that got added in [2]. Yet the presence of the uncertain figure in combination with a changing style that transitions from somewhat realistic to a more cartoony, illustrative look that at last threatens instability and the fashion-derived, commercialized aesthetic all bring illustration to mind. The fact that the work could be read as in part a commentary on Western materialism also makes it very relevantly Canadian. Canada of course has no monopoly on such commentary and criticism, but our relation to our southern neighbour puts us in a privileged position: we observe America's triumphs and excesses with interest but also with a certain amount of objectivity that comes from being an outsider. In the same interview with Martineau, Werner speaks about the "problem of process and materialization and how this affects content. It's the reason I have no consistent style. I am always struggling with method, with
how to make the paintings - how realistic or abstract, how defined to make the figures, how swiftly painted or how awkward, how finished or unfinished, what size, proportions, etc." [2], which I found quite resonant.
Lucy appeals to me in its employ and subversion of the imagery of consumerism, the pearl necklace is like a noose, and the face has the least definition, the least certainty (in expression and form) and appears the most pasted-on, the element most out of place. The ground is an abstract
cool grey, and in places it looks like it is threatening to consume the figure.
Flightstop by Michael Snow
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| Flightstop by Michael Snow [Source] |
Flightstop is a permanent sculpture depicting sixty geese in flight in Toronto's Eaton Centre. It is a fixture of the landscape and after awhile you don't even notice it anymore as you go about your shopping routine. Its relevance to Canada I think is undeniable. It depicts Canada Geese in flight, such a typically Canadian sight, and it is viewed and has been viewed by so many Canadians as to be iconic. But it's also an example of illustration, depicting not just a long figure, but an entire scene, including us in its narrative even as we watch. Could one deny that Snow is
illustrating geese in flight? It is also more interesting than it at first appears. As noted by Martha Langford, the work is actually a combination of fibre-glass forms and photographs of a single goose that has been adjusted to different positions [3]. What at first appears to be sculptural detail is in fact photographic detail. I've seen Flightstop a number of times, and it's always one of the few things I like about the Eaton Centre, a brief reprieve from the rampant consumerism.
Rush - Moving Pictures by Hugh Syme
I quite like album art, so of course I have to squeeze in an example of such. But the inclusion also provides some balance I think. When I think of illustration I think of album covers, posters, editorials, and comic strips -
commercial art, and (perhaps more often thought than said)
less-respectable art. So if above I've taken more-respectable art and claimed it as illustration, this is an opportunity to do the opposite.
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| Moving Pictures by Hugh Syme [Source] |
The art for Moving Pictures depicts the Ontario Legislative building in Toronto. The album went on to become a prog-rock staple and a huge success for the band, so much so that the cover has become somewhat iconic. The scene depicts Rush's take on a double entendre, with the pictures being moving in two ways. The back cover shows the scene being filmed, another
moving picture. There's a nice symmetry between the moving men, clothed in red, and the sparse red on black letters forming the band's name at the top (yes there are
five men and four letters, but there is still visual balance, since two of the men combine into a sort of U-shape). The pictures that are supposed to be so emotionally moving are nothing of the sort: the starman logo from the revers cover of Rush's 1976 album 2112, the Dogs Playing Poker painting A Friend in Need, and... something, I'm not familiar with it, but it doesn't exactly seem to be a match for its frame. There's a playful, cynical streak here, something often embraced I feel by Canadian art.
Art
I would have liked to fill this with contemporary or somewhat obscure art and artists that I could point to and champion but my aforementioned lack of familiarity with Canadian art, and the need to justify the relevance of those works to Canada found me reluctantly going to the old standbys. Perhaps I ought not to have been so reluctant, they are standbys for a reason.
Wild Mustard, Brockville by A. Y. Jackson
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| Wild Mustard, Brockville by A. Y. Jackson [Source] |
Alexander Young Jackson was a member of the highly influential Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters who went on to define a visual identity for Canada. Honestly there's not a lot I can say about the impact of the Group of Seven from my own experience. Certainly every Canadian has come into contact with their work, and is aware of its broad importance and significance to Canada, but beyond that I don't know how acutely the average Canadian feels the influence of their work. From my own experience, I never found myself particularly engaged or influenced by the Group of Seven. However, the broad outline of their ambition, to identify and visualize unifying themes for Canada, to provide a visual identity, through the study of landscape, the discovery of the vast Canadian wilderness, is a theme that is seen again and again in Canadian culture. Not that it is unique to Canada, but for a young country without substantial history made of diverse peoples with differing and competing allegiances, the search for common ground tends to always start (and often gets no further) than an appreciation of the land which we share. Writing on the Group of Seven, Charles C. Hill notes that they were not the first to discover the Canadian landscape as something worthy of painting but adds that earlier artists (including Marc-Aurele de Foy Suzor-Cote, Clarence Gagnon and Emily Carr) depicted the histories of human influence on the land while the Group moved "beyond the settled areas...including vast regions believed to be good only for the extraction of natural resources, and to validate those landscapes in the Canadian imagination." [1] This particular piece, an oil painting on board from 1922, depicts a scene from the town where I grew up - Brockville, Ontario.
Mountain Forms by Lawren Harris
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| Mountain Forms by Lawren Harris [Source] |
Lawren Harris was another Group of Seven alum, credited by A.Y. Jackson as the stimulus for the group's formation. During the 1920's Harris painted simplified, almost abstract forms in his landscapes of Canada. This highly stylized, essentially illustrative style, has long stuck in my mind as the 'look' of the Group of Seven, as if such a thing could exist. When asked to recall a Group of Seven painting, I will probably bring to mind a work by Harris (or more likely some amalgamation of his works).
Mountain Forms, from 1926, is notable for a fairly recent development, having sold at auction at the end of 2016 for $9.5 million ($11.12 million including buyer's premium), becoming the most expensive piece of artwork ever to sell at Canadian auction [4]. On the Group, Denise Markonish writes: "An art based deeply in the land creates an inextricable link to nation-building, which is why the Group of Seven have become Canada's most beloved and recognized artists." [2]
Tanoo Q.C.I. by Emily Carr
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| Tanoo Q.C.I. by Emily Carr [Source] |
Writing on Emily Carr, Gerta Moray describes her as "...that rarest of phenomena, a truly famous Canadian artist." [1] Carr's work stands alongside that of the Group of Seven as foundational for Canadian artistic identity. It is perhaps true and lamentable that many Canadians confuse Carr as being herself a member of the Group of Seven, but she and her work predates them (although they did overlap as well), and while the Group of Seven were engaged in depicting the Canadian wild, Carr included what they omitted, what was being omitted, what is still omitted - First Nations people and their culture. Moray notes that Carr was celebrated in her day for what was perceived to be an understanding of the Native world that was being erased [1]. For me
Tanoo Q.C.I. is a particularly striking and beautiful piece: the bold colours, while straying far from a literal depiction of the scene, are far more effective at conveying the emotion than a photograph would be. I don't think that the situation is much improved for First Nations compared to Carr's time. There is certainly a broad recognition and appreciation of First Nations artwork, but this is often a sort of appropriation, while at the same time stories of First Nations reserves without running water, of First Nations women who disappeared and were not investigated by the RCMP continue to come out. I think in some sense the work speaks beyond First Nations issues as well, it's about the loss of the past, the ebbing away of former glory to the inescapable slipstream of history. All around rural Canada one can feel this sense of loss, extending into the recent past, as the very ways of life that displaced the First Nations are themselves displaced.
Closing
I found myself struggling with what it means for a work to be relevant to Canada. Canada's identity is as much about what it is not (read: America) than it is what it is. Being a young nation Canada has long struggled with the question of identity both artistically and culturally. Rather than finding an answer, I think Canada has simply grown to be comfortable with a constant ambiguity and a continual reinvention. As the world has become increasingly cosmopolitan and culturally homogeneous, I think other nations are starting to catch up to Canada as the edges of their traditional definitions begin to blur. When they do catch up, they may find us cheerfully drinking a beer on the lake while listening to the evening loon calls, apologizing for them being so late.
References
[1] Anne Whiteland, Anne, Foss, Brian and Paikowsky, Sandra, Edited by. (2010)
The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Oxford University Press.
[2] Markonish, Denise, Edited by. (2012)
Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North North America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press..
[3] Langford, Martha for The Art Canada Institute (2013)
Flight Stop 1979. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/michael-snow/key-works/flight-stop (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
[4] CBC News (2016)
Lawren Harris painting Mountain Forms sells for record $11.21M at auction. Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/lawren-harris-mountain-forms-auction-1.3864470 (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Image Sources (in order of appearance)
Wikimedia Commons (no date)
Canadian National Railway logo, 1959. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Fleming#/media/File:CN_Railway_logo.svg (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Financial Post (2016)
Toronto markets fall for third day on weak results from rail operators and sliding energy stocks. Available at: http://business.financialpost.com/investing/market-moves/canada-stocks-fall-as-rail-operators-dh-corp-slide-on-results-pulling-toronto-markets-down-for-the-third-day (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Wikimedia Commons (no date)
CBC Logo 1974-1986. Available at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2b/CBC_Logo_1974-1986.svg/1024px-CBC_Logo_1974-1986.svg.png (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Signalnoise Studio (2009)
CBC Logo Evolution. Available at: http://blog.signalnoise.com/2009/07/13/cbc-logo-evolution/ (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Wikipedia (2008)
File:Canada Post logo.svg. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_Post_logo.svg (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Royal Mail Group Ltd. (2016)
Royal Mail Logo Guidelines. Available at: http://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/Royal-Mail-Logo-Guidelines-September-2016.pdf (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
McKeown, Shawne for CITYNEWS.CA. (2016)
File photo of a Canada Post mail box. Available at: http://toronto.citynews.ca/2016/02/25/hamilton-woman-gets-special-delivery-her-lost-wallet/ (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Canadian Art (no date)
Oh, Canada: From Far and Wide. Available at: https://canadianart.ca/online/2012/05/24/ohcanada/ (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
See [3]
Setton, Dave for Indie88 (2016)
5 Iconic Toronto Album Covers. Available at: https://indie88.com/5-iconic-toronto-album-covers/ (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
National Gallery of Canada (no date)
Wild Mustard, Brockville. Available at: https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/wild-mustard-brockville-0 (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Maneker, Marion for Art Market Monitor (2016)
Boom! Heffel's $41M Canadian Art Sale Led By $11.2M Lawren Harris. Available at: http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2016/11/24/boom-heffels-41m-canadian-art-sale-led-by-11-2m-lawren-harris/ (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
Baldissera, Lisa for The Art Canada Institute (2013)
Tanoo, Q.C.I. 1913. Available at: https://www.aci-iac.ca/emily-carr/key-works/tanoo (Accessed: 4 October 2017)
![[Source]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Fleming#/media/File:CN_Railway_logo.svg){kind=link}
![[Source]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2b/CBC_Logo_1974-1986.svg/1024px-CBC_Logo_1974-1986.svg.png){kind=link}
