Resonance by Tony Tascona (review)

humanities 549 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 This new edition is a valuable addition to the several collections on Laurence B including those edited by Greta Coger, Kristjana Gunnars, Colin Nicholson, Christian Riegel, and Christl Verduyn B that have celebrated Laurence=s oeuvre in the fifteen years since her death in 1987. (NORA FOSTER TOVEL) S Tony Tascona. Resonance Winnipeg Art Gallery. 112. $40.00 In May 2001 the Winnipeg Art Gallery opened an important retrospective exhibition of the art of Tony Tascona. The gallery is to be congratulated on both the success of the exhibit and the very fine accompanying exhibition catalogue. Resonance is a fine book which is an account of both Tascona=s life and art. Illustrations of works created by the artist between 1951 and 2000 are included, a great many in colour. Thoughtful essays by cultural critic Robert Enright, curator James Patten, and Patricia E. Bovey, director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, reflect the respect and affection accorded Tascona in the very vital cultural community of Winnipeg. All the texts quote extensively from the artist=s own words, and the book is enriched by photographs of the artist himself: we see the evolution from the darkly handsome athletic youth (Tascona was a professional athlete for a time), to the dignity of a man still creative and active at the age of seventy-six. The focus of the beautifully designed volume is, of course, the art portrayed . Tascona has been primarily an abstract artist. Born and educated in Winnipeg, his great interest in form and composition matured during a 1962B64 sojourn in Montreal under the useful influence of one of Canada=s strongest schools of abstraction, with artists Guido Molinari and Serge Tousignant playing a formative role. So began a decades-long involvement with geometric abstraction, enlivened by an innovative, even daring use of industrial materials in paintings and sculpture. Architects especially responded to the formal beauty and elegant finish of Tascona=s paintings and sculpture. Public commissions followed: among others, stunning suspended chains of discs of resin called Mobile Device in the Freshwater Institute at the University of Manitoba and, in 1991, Northern Lights, for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, Winnipeg. As in most writings about Tascona, commentary on his art is coupled with warm tributes to him in his role as a generous leader of the community. The title of the exhibition >Resonance= seems to have been chosen by Winnipeg Art Gallery director Patricia Bovey, and the word is the theme of her essay. She suggests that the artist has experienced his artistic inspiration as a kind of response to his life experience, his materials, music and its patterns, and to the prairie landscape (a theme enlarged upon by Robert Enright in his essay). She finishes by suggesting that his work >resonates= 550 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 with >many people of all ages.= (ANN CAMERON) Ruth Panofsky, editor. Adele Wiseman: Essays on Her Works Guernica. 172. $10.00 In assembling this volume of essays on Adele Wiseman=s work, Ruth Panofsky was guided by one fundamental objective: breadth. In drawing together essays that analyse not only Wiseman=s two novels, The Sacrifice and Crackpot, but also her short fiction, her memoir devoted to her mother=s artistry, Old Woman at Play, her poetry, and her essays, Panofsky hoped to reflect the diversity of Wiseman=s oeuvre. By having those analytical essays represent a wide variety of critical approaches, Panofsky also hoped to see Wiseman=s breadth echoed in that of her critics. For the most part, Adele Wiseman: Essays on Her Works succeeds admirably in this objective. The task is not an easy one. There is a vital critical discussion of Wiseman in print, but much of it concentrates on the two novels and does not, as a whole, embody a wide variety of theoretical perspectives. However, Crackpot in particular, Wiseman=s dense, challenging and irreverent 1974 novel, has tended to inspire a good deal of energetic critical debate, particularly from a variety of feminist perspectives. Some of that debate emerges in the present...