Or Gallery and Talonbooks launch the second edition of Vancouver Anthology

Not only is today the first day of spring (check out Eric Carle’s interpretation of the Google home page, by the way), but tonight is the pre-launch of the second edition of the landmark volume Vancouver Anthology, originally published in 1991 and edited by Stan Douglas.

Released in tandem with the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad – a program of cultural events to coincide with and augment the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games – and the artist-run Or Gallery’s 25th anniversary, the new edition of the book features “a larger format, new hardcover design and a new afterword by Stan Douglas.” The Or will also feature an exhibition of works by international artists that deal with the politics of landscape representation.

The timing of the launch of the second edition couldn’t be better. Not only is it next to impossible to find a copy of the original volume (last time I checked they were going for $100 a copy on Amazon), but the launch of the first printing in 1990 established a program for art publication releases in Vancouver that is still being followed today: a series of public lectures by local artists and writers, followed by a discussion or Q & A session that leads to the printing of final versions of the papers inspired by these discussions. It’s a formula that Vancouver Art & Economies followed (explicitly modeled on the Vancouver Anthology process and mandate) and, more recently, which Fillip and Artspeak used for the series Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism.

Artist Kristina Lee Podesva (left) and art historian and critic John O’Brian (right)

speak at Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism in Vancouver
Photo Blaine Campbell, courtesy canadianart.ca

Perhaps most important is the fact that, despite being nearly two decades old now, most of the questions and tensions the articles in Vancouver Anthology address have still not been resolved, in Vancouver and abroad. Robert Linsley’s “Painting and the Social History of British Columbia,” Scott Watson’s “Discovering the Defeatured Landscape” and Marcia Crosby’s “Construction of the Imaginary Indian” have each become standard and required reading in classes about contemporary Canadian art production and still raise important questions, functioning as a metaphorical yardstick against which we can measure developments in contemporary visual culture.

A view out the window of photographer Christos Dikeakos’ studio
announces his upcoming exhibition at Catriona Jeffries Gallery,
but also shows evidence of Vancouver’s rapidly changing urban landscape.

And, as the city prepares to host the Olympic Games and many people begin to question what political and social impact the event will have on Vancouver, it seems crucial to reevaluate the critical potential of contemporary art production and writing in this way.