Art, Music & Pop Culture

Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers, and Freaks

Emily Pohl-Weary, unabashedly addicted to tough-babe fantasies, has put together a collection of vaguely related essays and stories about female action heroes on television and in the movies. The result is a wide and undisciplined ... Read More »

April 8, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

The Defiant Imagination: Why Culture Matters

By Max Wyman

“An impassioned plea to keep culture at the heart of the Canadian experiment”: this line, written across the cover of the new book from longtime B.C. arts writer and critic Max Wyman, is both essential ... Read More »

April 8, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Dragon Boats: A Celebration

By Pat Barker

Dragon boat racing originated in China in the third century BC, and is only now being considered as a demonstration sport at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games. This cross-cultural phenomenon is explored in Dragon Boats: ... Read More »

April 2, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Native Visions: Evolution in Northwest Coast Art

By Steven C. Brown, with photos Paul Macapia

Northwest Coast art, the product of many generations, began as a two-dimensional style with minimal incised separations and carved-out areas. Yet, amazing objects were produced over 1,000 years ago, ranging from potlatch grease dishes, headdresses, ... Read More »

March 31, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Modern Furniture in Canada 1920 to 1970

By Virginia Wright

University of Toronto assistant professor Virginia Wright’s Modern Furniture in Canada 1920 to 1970, University of Toronto Press, May) is, on all visual counts, gorgeous – especially today when ultramod is the grunge style of ... Read More »

March 31, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

The Lives of Shadows

A dozen years ago, when Barbara Hodgson and Nick Bantock were brainstorming on the name for their West Coast book design company, they wanted something that would reflect their passion for travel and ideals of ... Read More »

March 24, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

How Architecture Speaks, and Fashions Our Lives

By Harry Mayerovitch

I was at Price Chopper the other day, picking up food for the week. The usual Wednesday evening routine. Walking home, I stopped dead in my tracks and dropped the bags I was carrying. There ... Read More »

March 17, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Peter Mettler: Making the Invisible Visible

By Salome Pitschen and Annette Schönholzer, eds.

On the occasion of a Peter Mettler (Picture of Light) retrospective in Lucerne, Switzerland, what started out as “a small accompaniment” to the program quickly turned into a “scrapbook of sorts” with film notables including ... Read More »

March 17, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

I Heard the Drums

By Allen Sapp

Allen Sapp’s paintings of Cree life in the Saskatchewan prairies during the 1930s and 40s are all about lyrical nostalgia, but the self-taught artist is so unabashed in his remembrance of the way things were, ... Read More »

March 10, 2004 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture

Voices of Fire: Art, Rage, Power and the State

By Bruce Barber, Serge Guilbaut, John O’Brian, eds.

Not many have forgotten the controversy that surrounded Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire when the National Gallery of Canada announced in 1990 that it had purchased the work for a cool $1.79-million. For eight months ... Read More »