One of Canada's most influential artists is slated to give a free public address Saturday, June 11 at 1:30 p.m. at North Battleford City Hall.
Terry Fenton's talk, hosted by the Chapel Gallery, will take place in the artists' studios on the second floor.
A reception at the Chapel Gallery held in honour of his exhibition starts later that day at 7 p.m. There he will speak about his painting. His book, About Pictures, will be on sale at both locations.
Fenton has had a long and influential career in the visual arts. It's no exaggeration to state he actually shaped Western Canadian art history. For close to two decades (1972-88) he directed The Edmonton Art Gallery (now the Art Gallery of Alberta). Until 1993 he was the Director of the Leighton Foundation in Calgary and from 1993-97 he was director of the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. He is a curator, has written many essays, monographs and books on art and, he is an artist in his own right (don't miss his exhibition at the Chapel Gallery, on until June 20).
It was probably his tenure as director of the Edmonton Art Gallery that had the deepest and most lasting influence on that city's artistic life. After several controversial forays into conceptual art in the late 1960s, the Edmonton Art Gallery appointed Fenton, who hired New York curator Karen Wilkin, both of whom were champions of the New York School. They quickly embarked on a bold and astute acquisition program for the gallery that resulted in one of the most important collections of hard-edge abstract painting in the country. Fenton's modernist aesthetic followed one of the most important art critics of the 20th century - Clement Greenberg - and it is probably true that Greenberg made more trips to Edmonton for talks and studio visits than anywhere else on Earth outside of New York.
Not the usual office-bound director, Fenton did studio visits, wrote reviews for the gallery newsletter, promoted his artists, established close connections with professors in the fine arts department at the University of Alberta and successfully nurtured and sponsored an aesthetic discourse that had long been supplanted by so-called post-modern modes including: pop, minimalism, conceptualism, earth-art and other Dada-inspired, de-materialized and socially engaged art forms.
It might be said optimistically, that although each generation of avant-garde or innovative artists reacts to its predecessor by breaking rules and deliberately getting it wrong, the lessons of the 'father' are never really abandoned - rather they are integrated as one of the accumulating layers of aesthetic knowledge. However too often, insurmountable chasms are constructed by artists (who tend towards bombast and hyperbole) so that exchange, humility and generosity are traded for polemics, ideology and silence.
It is a testament to Fenton that the art community in Edmonton and many artists here in Saskatchewan continue to grapple with the artistic issues he helped engrain almost four decades ago. For anyone following the many art scenes across the country and the disproportionate contribution Western Canadian artists have made to abstract art, Fenton stands as a mover and a shaker.
