Question: Brian S. Osborne talks about the “geography of identity.” What does he mean by this and how, in his opinion, does art relate to the “geography of identity” in Canada?

1. Brian S. Osborne talks about the “geography of identity.” What does he mean by this and how, in his opinion, does art relate to the “geography of identity” in Canada?

2. Most authors who write about Impressionist artists focus on the rendering of light in their paintings. Marnin Young, however, focuses on space in relation to Maurice Cullen’s work and more largely within Impressionism as an international art movement. How is Cullen’s work, and more largely Impressionism, rooted in “two distinct ways of conceptualizing space” and in larger geo-political understandings of space? More specifically, what were the two ways of conceptualizing space and what was the larger geo-political context within which Impressionism, as an international movement, developed?

3. According to John O’Brian, the Group of Seven and their supporters all considered that landscape painting was central to Canadian art and identity. Why landscape painting? What did it mean to them? What other concepts was it linked to? And what did their notion of landscape painting tend to erase or render invisible?

4. In her essay, Esther Trépanier argues that artists in Montreal in the 1920s and 1930s saw themselves as part of an international art movement: modern art. In this, they were in opposition to the Group of Seven, who saw themselves as producing a national art movement. How was “modernity” expressed by Montreal artists through their paintings, both stylistically and in the subjects that they painted?

5. François-Marc Gagnon, in the section “Style and technique,” argues that Borduas was influenced by art in France at the time. What was the European art movement that inspired not only Borduas and the other Automatists, but also other abstract artists in Canada of that period? How did this European movement influence how the Automatists thought about art? How did it influence the way that Borduas in particular approached painting?

6. Johanne Sloane discusses Joyce Wieland’s exhibition, True Patriot Love/Veritable Amour Patriotique, which opened at the National Gallery in 1971, in relation to Pop Art and Canadian nationalism. According to Sloane, what signifiers of “Canadianess” (images and objects) did Wieland use in her work and how did she “feminize” them?