WRITER – CULTURAL CRITIC – ACTIVIST
"JW: In New York there was a strong male Establishment and once you got in the door it was like joining the biggest bank in the world. You were bankable; you were the item. I recognized how easy it would have been to go along with the aesthetic and even remember a woman asking me, "Why don't you paint like them and then maybe you would get a gallery?" But where would I have been as a woman?"
Susan Crean interviewed Canadian artist Joyce Wieland for Canadian Art.
In This Magazine, January 1984.
"In 1978 Ottawa artist Jane Martin was the first to brave the opprobrium of the art world by tallying up figures on the number of Canadian Council grants awarded to women in the visual arts, comparing that to the number of women present on the juries. What was truly startling about Martin's findings was the underrepresentation of women."
Susan Crean's "The Thirty Percent Solution: Sexism in Fine Art," was reprinted in Canadian Women's Issues: Volume I: Strong Voices. By Ruth Roach Pierson, Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Paula Bourne, Philinda Masters. Lorimer: (Jan. 1 1993).
Book Review of Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds., New York: Harper & Row. 1982
They are the gatekeepers of Official Culture and responsible for devising an aesthetic which legitimizes the values of the modern artistocracy—the mandarins, tycoons and idle rich who hold the purse, strings and govern the policies which control the arts. Excellence, it turns out, is in the eye of the beholder and from experience we know that it is rarely either female or Canadian.
Read Susan Crean's review "Body Blow to Art History" online from the Broadside archive.
In Sociologie et sociétés, Critique sociale et création culturelle, Volume 11, Number 1, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, avril 1979.
Article abstract:
Despite the pessimism which emerges from her survey of Canadian culture, the author sees clear signs of a renewal and a burst of creativity among Canadian artists and intellectuals who contribute in this way to the strengthening of Canadian society and culture in the face of the dangers of Americanization. "Canadian nationalists who look favourably on the strengthening of Quebec nationalism hope that these national movements will evolve to the mutual advantage of both societies."
Résumé:
Malgré le pessimisme qui se dégage de son tour d'horizon de la culture canadienne, l'auteur voit des signes certains d'un renouveau et d'un sursaut de créativité chez les artistes et les intellectuels canadiens qui contribuent ainsi à l'affermissement d'un projet canadien de société et de culture, face aux dangers de l'américanisation. « Les nationalistes canadiens qui observent d'un bon œil le renforcement du nationalisme québécois espèrent que ces mouvements nationaux évolueront à l'avantage mutuel des deux sociétés. »
You can read "D’une colonie à l’autre (from Colony to Colony)" online here.