THE BUILDING
The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) is a visual masterpiece, redesigned by Los Angeles' Randall Stout Architects, Inc and spans three floors, totaling 85,000-sq.-ft. The former building, The Edmonton Art Gallery, was originally designed by Don Bittorf, an architect, in 1969 (building.ca). This old building, was highly problematic as it leaked, had humidity issues, and so forth. This caused Edmonton to be unable to obtain shows and collections, no other art galleries would loan us artworks because it was actually unsafe for the art.
The building is located in Edmonton’s Winston Churchill Square. Gallery occupies a corner spot in the square, meaning it needs to assert itself in order to be noticed. The gallery is truly a building to be of interest in 360 degrees of visual analysis. Randall Stout, the architect, was very conscious of siting the building and playing off of its structure, as well has harmonizing the structure with the surroundings. Although the Law Courts building is no longer as it was prior to the construction of the new AGA. The Law Courts are shaped like an upside-down pyramid, contrasting with the “cloud” like gallery.
The gallery contrasts with City Hall, but shares the fact that they both reflect the light and change their appearance in the light. The gallery is inspired by the grid of the city, and the city’s unique northern setting. One of the main features of the AGA is the Borealis, “a winding 190-metre steel ribbon that references the forms of the North Saskatchewan River and Aurora Borealis (building.ca). The Borealis extends through the interior and around the exterior of the building, making it a visual phenomena that is eye-catching whether you are at the gallery, or just out in Winston Churchill Square. The Borealis connects Edmontonians with their downtown core, and sculpts the interior space of the gallery through its own sculpture.
The building itself is made out of three main materials, patinaed zinc, high performance glazing, and stainless steel. The building itself is quite the spectacle, and once again, to relate it back to our city, let me explain the choice of materials. The three main materials are meant to reflect the pattern on long summer days, and short winter days, while also reflecting Edmonton’s dramatic highs and lows in weather, and letting the building “to transform in response to its natural surroundings” (youraga.com). The design of the building allows for transformation of its appearance depending on whether it is being observed during day or night, straying from the previously conventional design of the former gallery. This is achieved through use of the three main building materials, which could not be done through the use of static building materials which would not allow for “this type of ephemeral connection between the building and the site” (stoutarc.com).
The way in which the gallery is set up, with three floors accessible from either elevator or a large, sweeping grand staircase that curves up and down the inside of the gallery, alongside the various amenities and features, such as the Gallery Great Hall, Zinc restaurant, Shop AGA, outdoor sculpture terrace, etc. all serve to lead the observer through the gallery, directing one’s attention without one realizing they are being told to look.
To look at the gallery from the outside, the separate gallery spaces look like “simple stacked rectangular boxes”, existing in relation to the mass of the building, “juxstap(osed) with the undulating surfaces of the public spaces” (stoutarc.com). The building can be seen as using its sheer size and mass, alongside the organic and curvilinear aspects to excite the observer, and to create a “unique way-finding experience for visitors” (stoutarc.com).
So far the AGA has had 65,000 visits, far more than the 30,000 the previous gallery used to average every year (www.youraga.com). Needless to say, there are more flaneurs out there, so the momentum has yet to cease.
THE MURDER OF THE CROWS
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s “A Murder of Crows” is an exhibit in which the subject is in a room containing nearly 100 speakers and is bombarded with audio stimulation. Together with a variety of music and sound, the voice of a woman takes the subject through three vividly detailed dreams that address themes of war, conflict, violence, and loss.1 The presence of Cardiff and Miller’s exhibit at the Alberta Art Gallery is significant to the city of Edmonton because not only does Edmonton harbour one of the largest army bases in Canada, a large proportion of the people serving overseas in military conflicts are based in Edmonton; so, the themes of “A Murder of Crows” have a local basis for being at the Alberta Art Gallery.
The object of “A Murder of Crows” is for individuals to have their own unique experiences of the audio sequence. The idea that each individual has a unique experience of the audio track means that interpellation is at work in “A Murder of Crows.” Interpellation is when images and media texts lure us into fixating on them (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). Sitting in on the exhibit “A Murder of Crows” forces the person to be interpellated by the audio stimuli. With interpellation, though, for “A Murder of Crows” to mean something personally, the exhibit should appeal to the conventions of the group the person belongs to. Because Edmontonians belong to a city with a strong military contingent, Cardiff and Miller’s exhibit interpellates Edmontonians effectively.
To reiterate, interpellation is meaningful when an exhibit appeals to the conventions of a person associated with the appropriate group. Appealing to a person’s conventions means that the discourse of the institution, the discourse of the exhibit itself, aligns with the person’s conventions. Foucault used the term “discourse” as a means for getting people to talk and to gain knowledge about certain things at a time in history (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). “A Murder of Crows” has a kind of discourse that Foucault talked about, in that, the exhibit promotes discussion between individuals with regards to the current historical period. Living in a city with a number of military representatives overseas stimulates conversation about the themes of war, violence, and conflict. Foucault added that one effect that discourse has on people is limiting and defining what to discuss. “A Murder of Crows” limits the subjects of conversation to the themes of the project, that is, the objective is for the individual to attend to appeals of war and conflict and to form individual impressions about those themes. Given that there is a particular discourse guiding the sequence along, the people who get the most out of “A Murder of Crows” are those whose group memberships and biases agree with those of the creators. Edmontonians certainly fall into that category.
The approach that Cardiff and Miller take with “A Murder of Crows” is psychoanalytic in nature. The surrounding effect of the stereo set-up compels the person to dig deep into the unconscious, and form an impression contributed by the person’s conscious and unconscious forces. The psychoanalytic concept of the gaze plays a role in how the subject forms the impressions of the sequence. Borne out of psychoanalytic film theory, the gaze is understood as a network that includes the individual, the institutional context, and the media text, and those three forces interact to shape our unique impressions (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). In “A Murder of Crows,” is featured at an art gallery located near a large army base which has many representatives around the world; the media text is about the horrors of war and conflict; thus, the Edmontonian subject, or spectator, as is commonly used in association with the gaze, is embedded in a network that evokes one’s genuine, deeply rooted impressions of a locally meaningful exhibit.
THE DEGAS EXHIBIT
There is an exhibit at the Alberta Art Gallery that features a large collection of works by 19th C. French artist Edgar Degas called “Figures in Motion.” The exhibit showcases many of the sculptures he made over the course of his life, plus a few paintings. Degas’ main inspiration for creating the works he did was form, grace, and movement of natural beings, as he spent much of his time observing and doing research about the manner in which humans and animals move and the various poses humans and animals make. Even though the works of art that Degas produced were simplistic, his works were significant in his time because they challenged the overarching philosophies of art that prevailed. For example, women, as objects of paintings, typically appeared nude or wore robes; however, Degas’ sculpture “Schoolgirl” depicts a female fully dressed in styles associated with Degas’ society.2
One important rule that Degas lived by in his profession was simply to depict natural beings as they appear, move, and pose in nature, his point of view on realism. Realism refers to a collection of rules governing the accurate, universal representation of nature or the real at a particular time in history (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009). There are times when realism challenges overarching principles of realism operating in a society. In Degas’ case, the prevailing view on realism up until Degas’ time was to portray natural bodies in a mystical fashion. In contrary, Degas tended to depicts objects as rather ordinary. For example, one of Degas’ most acclaimed sculptures, called “The Tub” depicts the Roman goddess Venus in a bathtub. A conventional work of art about Venus, in Degas’ time, would emphasize an other-worldliness to the figure – stress Venus’ divinity; Degas, on the other hand, purposely de-emphasized her other-worldliness, and gave Venus a kind of humanness. That is, Venus looked like an ordinary Parisian girl.
Considering works like “The Tub,” Degas’ idea of realism – what is natural, and really real – was that human beings and other animals, particularly horses, were anatomically and kinesthetically the same, and beautifully so. The poses and positions natural bodies appear in have a universal grace, and Degas was keen on capturing those natural positions in his art. Degas also noticed the universality with which natural beings move about their worlds. Being particularly fond of horses, and the grace with which horses move, Degas often used horses as examples of the beauty of natural movement. According to Degas, the most accurately realistic phenomenon in nature was the universality of pose and movement. For Degas, pose and movement were the most optimal examples of objects as they appear in nature.
Degas’ body of work is meaningful for Edmontonians from a realism point of view because of the critical approach they use in determining what accurately represents reality. Recall that conceptions of realism exist in history; the people of Edmonton live at a point in history in which people work and live amongst a multitude of advertisements and political messages. In spite of the images that Edmontonians see every day, people necessarily make judgments about what exhibits reality. For example, Edmontonians take a rule-based approach to determining which advertisements represent objects as they appear in nature, and which ones are too mystical to take seriously. Edmontonians take a similar rule-guided approach to deciding on political allegiances. Citizens weigh all the political parties’ stances and, guided by individual conceptions of realism, side with the party that most closely resembles the individual’s conceptions of reality.
THE KARSH EXHIBIT
The Art Gallery of Alberta currently boasts its largest exhibit as “Karsh: Image Maker”. Yousuf Karsh was a photographer who became world famous for taking portraits, most notably a portrait of Winston Churchill in December of 1941. He believed we all have an essential self, which could be discovered through our fleeting expressions exposing our true selves for an instant before a skilled photographic interpreter.
Karsh’s most famous portrait “The Roaring Lion” is the most reproduced portrait in history (famouspictures.org) and comes with an almost equally as famous story; Winston Churchill was visiting Canada to give a speech to parliament and right after the speech he was surprised by Karsh awaiting to take his picture. Churchill was already agitated from the speech and became further angered when surprised with the photograph request. Chewing on a trademark cigar, Churchill posed and scowled at Karsh who patiently waited until politely leaning forward and removing the cigar from the Prime Ministers mouth, intensifying the scowl just in time for the picture to be taken.
This portrait was featured on the cover of TIME magazine because it captured Churchill’s essence perfectly: defiant and unrelenting. Some even believe it helped spur the British troops to victory in WWII which makes sense because Karsh considered his portraits to be beacons of hope to alleviate anxieties of a troubled world.
Yousuf Karsh was the master of using lighting to take his carefully constructed portraits. “Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can. The revelation, if it comes at all will come in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world. In that fleeting interval of opportunity the photographer must act or lose his prize” – Yousuf Karsh (biographybase.com).
Portrait photography shapes our understanding of power, fame and the construction of self. This is part of the reason why the Karsh exhibit is so interesting. The feature of the exhibit however isn’t a piece by Karsh at all, but rather a fragment of a piece by Arnaud Maggs called “48 Views” (canadacouncil.ca).
The piece by Arnaud Maggs contains other Canadian notables as well as Yousuf Karsh, but the exhibit in the Art Gallery of Alberta contains only the pictures of Karsh (in a slightly different composition than is shown above). It is comprised of 48 black and white pictures; 24 straight on and 24 profiles to the left, all taken in succession. The idea conveyed is that all 48 images are the same but not quite identical to one another, showing only the subtle differences through the passage of time.
The theoretical aspect of this piece is that all of these pictures appear the same but not the same at the same time. Even though they are not identical they are still recognizable as the same. That theoretical aspect is alive in Edmontonian culture today thus making this exhibit in the Art Gallery of Alberta an accurate representation of Edmontonian values. Edmontonian values are prevalent first and foremost in our city slogan: “The City of Champions” coined after our dominant sporting success in the 80’s creates a feeling of collectivity, as if we’re all on the same team working towards a unified goal. Edmontonians also have a strong set of multi-cultural values which is displayed through the many festivals hosted here in the summer (Folk Festival, the Fringe, and Taste of Edmonton to name a few), this also promotes the idea that we’re all different but we’re also all very much alike.
Aside from the main feature of the exhibit there are a multitude of other portraits by Karsh; and even though art galleries stereotypically cater to high culture and a specific habitus that is consistent with a higher social class, Karsh does such a phenomenal job constructing his pictures to bring out a specific connotative meaning that the average person can understand and appreciate. Karsh designs his pictures to have obvious intended punctum’s to invoke specific emotions. This type of artwork can be enjoyed by all types of people, and that is how Karsh intended it. That sort of accommodation is a large part of Edmontonian values as well. We try to make people feel welcome by hosting a bevy of culture rich festivals and allowing people to be a part of our strong identity. Karsh allows the every-person to enjoy his exquisitely high level of art by carefully creating pictures with powerful affects in a very specific style. The Art gallery of Alberta also has an interactive portion that allows you to step into the shoes of Karsh. Karsh felt that if not done correctly a portrait can portray an incorrect or unintended image of a person.
As we can see, portraits of the same person can result in two completely different pictures depending on its composition, so Karsh was completely correct in that belief. Edmontonians are the same way and it is part of our values to portray ourselves as a proud, strong and accepting culture and this Karsh exhibit is an excellent representation of that, not to mention it allows all Edmontonians the opportunity to enjoy it.
Reference List for the Building
Author unknown. 2010. "Art Gallery of Alberta"
http://www.stoutarc.com/Projects/InProgress/EAG.htm
Author unknown. 2010. "The Art Gallery of Alberta Building"
http://www.youraga.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/AGA_Building.pdf
Author unknown. 2010. "Art Gallery of Alberta opens"
http://www.building.ca/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000364622&type=Print%20Archives
Footnotes for Degas and Murder of the Crows Exhibits
1 This is the context offered for the “Murder of Crows” exhibit provided by the Art
Gallery of Alberta
2 The details about Edgar Degas’ work provided by the Art Gallery of Alberta
References for Degas and Murder of the Crows Exhibits
“Edgar Degas: Figures in Motion.” Art Gallery of Alberta. 2 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, AB, Canada T5J 2C1. 3 April 2010.
Reference list for Karsh Exhibit
Author unknown. 2006. “Arnaud Maggs”
http://www.canadacouncil.ca/aboutus/artistsstories/visualarts/an127876889334034580.htm?colour=dblue
Author unknown. 2004. “Yousuf Karsh Biography”
http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Karsh_Yousuf.html
Cartwright, Lisa, and Marita Sturken. 2009. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: New York.
Reid, Mark, ed. 2009. 100 Photos That Changed Canada. Toronto: Ontario: Canada.
Karsh, Yousuf. 1997. “The Man: Biography”
http://www.karsh.org/#/the_man/biography/
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