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I'm Not Myself at AllWomen, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada |
eBook Available
Is there an alternative to paradigms of identity in women’s art history?
Notions of identity have long structured women’s art. Dynamics of race, class, and gender have shaped the production of artworks and oriented their subsequent reassessments. Arguably, this is especially true of art by women, and of the socially engaged criticism that addresses it. If identity has been a problem in women’s art, however, is more identity the solution?
In this study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art in Canada, Kristina Huneault offers a meditation on the strictures of identity and an exploration of forces that unsettle and realign the self. Looking closely at individual artists and works, Huneault combines formal analysis with archival research and philosophical inquiry, building nuanced readings of objects that range from the canonical to the largely unknown. Whether in miniature portraits or genre paintings, botanical drawings or baskets, women artists reckoned with constraints that limited understandings of themselves and others. They also forged creative alternatives. At times identity features in women’s artistic work as a failed project; at other times it marks a boundary beyond which they were able to expand, explore, and exult.
Bringing together settler and indigenous forms of cultural expression and foregrounding the importance of colonialism within the development of art in Canada, I’m Not Myself at All observes and reactivates historical art by women and prompts readers to consider what a less restrictive conceptualization of selfhood might bring to current patterns of cultural analysis.
In this study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art in Canada, Kristina Huneault offers a meditation on the strictures of identity and an exploration of forces that unsettle and realign the self. Looking closely at individual artists and works, Huneault combines formal analysis with archival research and philosophical inquiry, building nuanced readings of objects that range from the canonical to the largely unknown. Whether in miniature portraits or genre paintings, botanical drawings or baskets, women artists reckoned with constraints that limited understandings of themselves and others. They also forged creative alternatives. At times identity features in women’s artistic work as a failed project; at other times it marks a boundary beyond which they were able to expand, explore, and exult.
Bringing together settler and indigenous forms of cultural expression and foregrounding the importance of colonialism within the development of art in Canada, I’m Not Myself at All observes and reactivates historical art by women and prompts readers to consider what a less restrictive conceptualization of selfhood might bring to current patterns of cultural analysis.
Details
Part of the McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History Series (number 25 in series)
400 Pages, 7 x 9.75
145 illustrations, full colour throughout
ISBN 9780773553194
July 2018
Formats: Cloth, eBook
“I’m Not Myself at All offers fascinating discussions of the work of many previously unknown or overlooked artists, while making a significant contribution to the interpretation of better-known artists such as Emily Carr, Helen McNicoll, and Frances Anne Hopkins. Huneault brings together the fruits of a wide range of newly accessible international research with a rigorous theoretical inquiry into the limits and possibilities of interpretation.” Gerta Moray, University of Guelph
“I’m Not Myself at All lightly and deftly employs the insights of feminist thinking to realize a fresh and complex account of women in various Canadian art histories, an account that dispenses with the preoccupations of national styles and avant-garde gambits in favour of exploring the ways in which women’s lives unfolded in their engagements with paper, canvas, and cedar.” Lara Perry, University of Brighton
“A heady, scholarly tour-de-force that recasts our understanding of the work of female artists by considering the extent to which they themselves are both absent and present in the products of their creative labours.” National Gallery of Canada Magazine
“ … a beautifully crafted object, with 147 high-quality color plates and details that do much to support Huneault’s close reading. I’m Not Myself at All”: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada promises to reinvigorate discussions about feminist art history in Canada for a new generation of students.” Women’s Art Journal
"I'm Not Myself at All: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada is a well-written and thoughtful investigation of how ways of being in the world are reflected through the process of making and looking at art. The book ends by calling for "expansive and generous interpretive acts." If one wonders what this means, it is precisely the type of looking and thinking that Huneault models throughout." University of Toronto Quarterly
“I’m Not Myself at All lightly and deftly employs the insights of feminist thinking to realize a fresh and complex account of women in various Canadian art histories, an account that dispenses with the preoccupations of national styles and avant-garde gambits in favour of exploring the ways in which women’s lives unfolded in their engagements with paper, canvas, and cedar.” Lara Perry, University of Brighton
“A heady, scholarly tour-de-force that recasts our understanding of the work of female artists by considering the extent to which they themselves are both absent and present in the products of their creative labours.” National Gallery of Canada Magazine
“ … a beautifully crafted object, with 147 high-quality color plates and details that do much to support Huneault’s close reading. I’m Not Myself at All”: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada promises to reinvigorate discussions about feminist art history in Canada for a new generation of students.” Women’s Art Journal
"I'm Not Myself at All: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada is a well-written and thoughtful investigation of how ways of being in the world are reflected through the process of making and looking at art. The book ends by calling for "expansive and generous interpretive acts." If one wonders what this means, it is precisely the type of looking and thinking that Huneault models throughout." University of Toronto Quarterly
Kristina Huneault is a professor of art history at Concordia University, a founder of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, and co-editor, with Janice Anderson, of Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970.
Acknowledgments / xi
Introduction / 3
Part One · Identities
1 Absence: Henrietta Hamilton, Demasduit, and the Settler-Colonial Encounter / 25
2 Displacements: Self and Home in the Art of Frances Anne Hopkins / 65
3 Gaps: Lived Experience and Cultural Narrative in Helen McNicoll’s Impressionist Canvases / 103
Part Two · Forces
4 Diversity: Identity, Difference, and the Botanical Encounter / 149
5 Inclination: Maternity, Reverie, and the Art of Being-With / 207
6 Listening: Nature and Personhood for Emily Carr and Sewinchelwet (Sophie Frank) / 245
Coda / 294
Illustrations / 299
Notes / 309
Bibliography / 343
Index / 369
Introduction / 3
Part One · Identities
1 Absence: Henrietta Hamilton, Demasduit, and the Settler-Colonial Encounter / 25
2 Displacements: Self and Home in the Art of Frances Anne Hopkins / 65
3 Gaps: Lived Experience and Cultural Narrative in Helen McNicoll’s Impressionist Canvases / 103
Part Two · Forces
4 Diversity: Identity, Difference, and the Botanical Encounter / 149
5 Inclination: Maternity, Reverie, and the Art of Being-With / 207
6 Listening: Nature and Personhood for Emily Carr and Sewinchelwet (Sophie Frank) / 245
Coda / 294
Illustrations / 299
Notes / 309
Bibliography / 343
Index / 369
