Art

ART 447 there are eight pages devoted to the response of politicians, the press, and the public - a series of summaries of editorials and letters to the editor and nine to the response of teachers and administrators. Finally, under the somewhat misleading title of 'Implementation,' three pages on the fact that reaction to the Report revealed that in Ontario there were persons who held both traditional and progressive views of the aims and objectives of education. How useful is all this? In the first place, is a lengthy summary of the Report needed? Surely anyone who is sufficiently interested in Ontario education to find his way to Fleming's book will either have read the Report or will nOW want to read it- and it is readily available in all libraries and most schools. In the second place is there much value to the inclusion of the views of the three or four persons who happened to have published essays on the subject in short order - how representative are their views? In the third place, how useful is it to report the editorial views of some newspapers or the views of some readers of these papers? It would be a different matter if somehow the editorial views of all Ontario newspapers could have been collected and categorized - or would it? The important thing, however, is not that Fleming's monumental study contains many pages that could have been eliminated or condensed. Not many people examine all the rooms in even the most famous buildings, and even scholars do not examine every object in the rooms they come a far distance to examine. Ontario's Educative Society is a monumental study and nO one seriously interested in Ontario or Canadian education at any level can afford not to be familiar with the riches it contains. (ROBIN S. HARRIS) ART The year produced only four 'art' books in Canada, it would seem, and two of those are such lightweight productions as scarcely to be worth noticing. At quite the other end of the scale, however, is Russell Harper's Paul Kane's Frontier, a weighty and workmanlike volume published for the Amon Carter Museum in Forth Worth, Texas, and our own National Gallery (University of Toronto Press, 350, $27.50). Not only does the book contain a new version of Kane's Wanderings of an Artist, prepared with the aid of two manuscripts in the Stark Foundation collection, but also a valuable biographical sketch of the artist, and 448 LETI'ERS IN CANADA a catawgue raisonne compiled with all the thoroughness for which Russell Harper is deservedly celebrated. The great Kane holdings of the Royal Ontario Museum are well enough known by now, but it is pleasant to see them again in this compendious volume. Far less familiar, even to students of Canadian art history, is the mass of works accumulated in the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation at Orange, Texas. Those unable to see the exhibition which included these works in Ottawa or Fort Worth will be grateful for the occasion which prompted the publication of the book. Kane's oil paintings are usually valued more as historical documents than as works of art in their own right. A corrective to this view of Kane as an artist is contained in the Stark Foundation's unmatched collection of delicate landscapes in watercolour, as well as in such minor masterpieces as the ROM'S Spokane River. This beautifully-produced book, excellent value for the money, is an outstanding contribution to North American art history, and does immense credit to all concerned with its genesis and production. Slightly cheaper, at $22.50, is Heritage by Scott Symons with John de Visser's photographs (McClelland & Stewart, unpaged). This, too, is well worth its price, though the value resides entirely in the superb colour photographs by de Visser. The sub-title, A Romantic Look at Early Canadian Furniture is partial preparation for the florid manner of the introduction , but it doesn't explain the necessity for the lengthy and involved superficialities about mediaeval philosophy-theology, High Renaissance art, and European history, nor the dogmatiC conclusions about national and regional differences derived from...