“The great purpose of landscape art is to make us at home in our own country” was the nationalist maxim motivating the Group of Seven’s artistic project. The empty landscape paintings of the Group played a significant role in the nationaliza- tion of nature in Canada, particularly in the devel- opment of ideas about northernness, wilderness, and identity. In Beyond Wilderness contributors pick up where the Group of Seven left off. They demonstrate that since the 1960s a growing body of both art and critical writing has looked “beyond wilderness” to re-imagine landscape in a world of vastly altered political, technological, and environ- mental circumstances. By emphasizing social rela- tionships, changing identity politics, and issues of colonial power and dispossession, contemporary artists have produced landscape art that explores what was absent in the work of their predecessors. Beyond Wilderness expands the public under- standing of Canadian landscape representation, tracing debates about the place of landscape in Canadian art and the national imagination through the twentieth century to the present. Critical writings from both contemporary and historically significant curators, historians, femi- nists, media theorists, and cultural critics and exactingly reproduced artworks by contemporary and historical artists are brought together in productive dialogue. Beyond Wilderness explains why landscape art in Canada had to be rein- vented, and what forms the reinvention took. John O’Brian, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, is an art historian, writer, and curator. His books include Camera Atomica and Ruthless Hedonism. Peter White is an independent curator and writer in Montreal. He has organized many exhibitions of contemporary and historical art, including It Pays to Play: British Columbia in Postcards, 1950s–1980s. 2 4 M Q U P F A L L 2 0 1 7 A R T H I S T O R Y n e w e d i t i o n Beyond Wilderness The Group of Seven, Canadian Identity, and Contemporary Art edited by john o’brian and peter white With a new preface by the authors “A substantive, generation-bridging collection … [that] masterfully configures the foundations of a highly compelling revisionist Canadian art history.” Jennifer Fisher,York University S P E C I F I C AT I O N S Arts Insights October 2017 978-0-7735-5144-2 $54.95A CDN, $54.95A US, £47.00 paper 10 x 8.25 400pp 130 colour illustrations eBook available