Clearly I don’t pay enough attention. Shows come and go, local, national, I barely notice. So it was by chance that I came across this exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. With its poster Dali image, I took it at first as old news, the kind of exhibitions you saw, and expected to see, in the big galleries in the 60s and 70s.
But in fact it happened just last year, 2008. The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man” was a classic survey exhibition in the finest traditions of the historical art musuem: conservation and scholarship.
The accompanying book, too big to be called an exhibition catalogue really, is a sumptuous full-colour re-presentation of the exhibition in the context of scholarly essays that further the exhibition’s curatorial goal, to show how art reflected critically on the ideololgy of white suprematism, resisting the inexhorable drift toward fascism that culminated in the second world war.
The fate of such massive tomes on specific exhibitions is interesting. Many, one imagines, end up gathering dust in basement storerooms. After all, how big is the market for such specialized books? They are not intended to serve the general public. They are scholarly achievements that add to our collective understanding of history and culture; they become instruments for future academic study; they add to the credibility and prestige of the institutions that publish them, the directors who champion them, the curators and writers and editors who produce them. And that should be enough.
So how is The 1930s: The Making of The New Man – the book, doing?
It’s available in the Amazon at cover price.
You can get it cheaper at Buy.com.
But check out what they are asking for it on aLibris.
I saw a copy on eBay for US $140. And you’ll find it for anywhere between US $70 and $105 0n Barnes and Noble used. So I’d say the jury’s still out on the fate of this book, whether it ultimately ends up on the remainder table at BookCity for $20 or available only used via Abebooks for $350+.
I found precious little negative criticism of the exhibition, and no criticism at all, positive or negative, of the book; generally everyone was impressed by the depth and quality of the exhibition. You would think someone might have thought it worth considering, or at least noting, that the exhibition and book were presented in the nation’s capital just as political ideology in Canada has been shifting decidedly to the right, closing just a month before a hastily-called election in which Canadians again were made to wrestle over political direction, but I could not find a single article about any of that.
Definitely a enormous career achievement for outgoing National Gallery director Pierre Théberge, one can’t help wondering whether The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man” was pièce de resistance or coup de grâce?
About the exhibition:
Not so much a review as a description by Nigel Beale.
Another description in Canadian Art.
And another.
