Robert Houle
Robert Houle
Robert Houle: Troubling Abstraction
Carol Podedworny, Mark A. Cheetham, Gerald McMaster & W. Jackson Rushing III
Robert Houle has been a visionary artist since the beginning of his career. "Native artists," he wrote in 1982, "are committed to involvement in the polemics of modern art. Meaning derives from living in the twentieth century, where painting ranges from realism to abstraction and sculpture varies from shamanism to assemblage." Employing the traditions of modernist painting, particularly as practiced by Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Houle has tenaciously insisted on reciprocity among the aesthetic and cultural specificities with which he engages. After years of breathtaking solo exhibitions, he returns here to his first stylistic impulse: abstraction. This important publication, with three essays and an artist's statement, documents a unique and vital element of Houle's innovative artistic practice. Mark A. Cheetham is Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. Gerald McMaster is Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. W. Jackson Rushing III is the author of numerous books, notably, Native American Art in the Twentieth Century (Routledge) and Allan Houser: An American Master (Abrams).
McMaster Museum of Art / The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (11/2007)
105 pp 36 ill. (24 col.) 7 x 5 in softcover 978-0-9783585-2-5 $20.00 Can./U.S. (16 euros)
Robert Houle's Palisade
Michael Bell
Houle's visual arts practice applies formalist demands to activist initiatives to review the history of the interactions of the North American Indian and the colonizers. The eight large vertical canvases that make up Palisade represent the eight forts captured by Pontiac's Confederacy in 1763. Through the addition of digital graphic collages and historical documentation, Houle powerfully relates the colonial army's retaliation to these defeats: the systematic introduction of plagues, especially smallpox. Dyck's essay provides an interpretation of the work and its historical context. Robert Houle, a Manitoba native, has exhibited widely, notably at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and The Art Gallery of Ontario.
Carleton University Art Gallery (2001) 42 pages, 12 col. ill., 8x9 in. 077090453X softcover $20.00 (Can./U.S.)
Robert Houle: Sovereignty over Subjectivity
Shirley Madrill, Peggy Gale et al.
The First Nations painter and installation artist investigates cultural issues in Canadian history with passion, humour and honesty. Four essays by Native and non-Native, Canadian and non-Canadian writers elucidate three recent works.
Winnipeg Art Gallery (1999) 56 pp 28x22 cm 16 col. ill. softcover softcover 0889151903 $19.95
Kanata: Robert Houle's Histories
Michael Bell
The book documents a native artist's response to the icon of Canadian History: Benjamin West's The Death of General Wolfe in the National Gallery of Canada.
Carleton University Art Gallery (1993) 27 p., ill. $20.00
Robert Houle: Indians from A to Z
Dr. Jennifer S.H. Brown et al
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (1990) 50 pp 25 col. ill. 24 x 16.5 cm 0889151563 $20.95 (15 euros)
GO BACK / RETOUR
[Carleton University Art Gallery] - [Winnipeg Art Gallery ] - [The Winnipeg Art Gallery]
[McMaster Museum of Art] - [The Robert McLaughlin Gallery]
[Artist]
[Order Form] - [Bon de commande]