Böcker av Michael Parke-Taylor

The first comprehensive look at a leading figure in Canadian modernism and the many facets of his artistic creativity. Bertram Brooker (1888-1955), an associate of the Group of Seven, was a multi-disciplinary artist who was deeply engaged with the visual, literary and performing arts in Canada during the dynamic inter-war period. This was a time of dramatic change in Canadian cultural life, and Brooker was one of the artistic community's most gifted first responders. In 1927 he burst onto the Toronto art scene at the Arts and Letters Club with his painting exhibition "World and Spirit," considered to be the first show of abstract paintings in Canada. An advertising executive by day, he was inspired by music and mystical experience throughout his polymathic creative career. Brooker combined elements of abstraction and figuration as a painter, illustrator and graphic designer - the focus of this publication - and reflected myriad strains of contemporary thought in his efforts as a novelist, poet, short-story and essay writer, screenwriter, playwright, actor, musician, and as one of the most influential art critics of his day. Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! is the fully illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and curated by noted Canadian art scholar Michael Parke-Taylor, placing Brooker's career as a visual artist in the context of his wider creativity at last. It includes 150 of his paintings and drawings, a detailed chronology of his career, and new critical reflections on his trailblazing contribution to Canadian cultural life.

Artist and educator Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (1890-1956) was the only member of the Group of Seven based in Western Canada. Some Magnetic Force is the first collection to gather the surviving writings by the Winnipeg artist. Spanning from 1930 to 1954, the texts gathered here begin during the mature period of his artistic development at age forty and conclude with personal reflections late in life on the nature of art and his career.Michael Parke-Taylor has uncovered and chronologically organized FitzGerald's letters, diary, lectures, and reports to show how FitzGerald understood the development of his practice, communicated the philosophy of art to his art students, confronted challenges in his career, as well as revealing his spiritual aspirations, views about the natural world, and his private desires. These writings also elucidate the material and reputational realities of artistic production in places beyond the period's dominant Canadian art centres of Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.With an introduction and notes that contextualize FitzGerald's biography and social circles, and including illustrations of his work, Some Magnetic Force provides remarkable insights into the influences, interests, and innovations of the Group of Seven's prairie artist.