Engendering an Avant-Garde

Leah Modigliani is Associate Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University

‘This scrutiny of the shibboleths supporting “Vancouver photo-conceptualism”, more commonly reiterated than scrutinised, is telling. Modigliani opens up the possibility of new thinking rather than closing it down. For this reason, and because of her confident command of materials and sources, the book will reach the international audience avid for writing about the Vancouver School, its protagonists, photo-conceptualism, conceptual art of the late ’60s, feminist deconstruction, regionalism v. internationalism and more.’Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, The University of British Columbia‘This is a deeply researched and carefully argued account of how avant-garde formations have continued to marginalize women’s artistic production even during periods of feminist agitation, though any one of the chapters could be a stand-alone reading at the graduate level.’Dr. Christine Conley, RACAR 44 (2019)'Engendering an Avant-Garde insightfully expands upon earlier critical photo-historical anthologies […] and offers compelling evidence of the need to broaden the scope of the critical treatment of Vancouver art history.'Prefix Photo Magazine

• Introduction1 Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979) and The Destroyed Room (1978): colonizing the space of gendered discourse 2 Emily Carr and the legacy of Commonwealth modernism3 Myth and the ‘home culture concept’4 Establishing the theory and practice of a defeatured landscape5 1970s and the gendered spaces of the counter tradition6 Feminist theoretical and visual challenges to modernist representationConclusionIndex