25 Years of Canadian Art: The History Behind the Headlines
Canadian Art, fall 1988 cover, featuring Attila Richard Lukacs
When I was hired as the second editor of Canadian Art in 1988, I felt like a kid in a candy shop—a sentiment the fourth and current editor, Richard Rhodes, echoed when I ran into him just after he took over the reins in 1996.
I’d spent the previous decade working as a magazine editor, but this particular publication was different. I couldn’t believe I would be paid to think and learn about Canadian art and, as a pornographic sideline, lust after a drawing here, a photograph there, a massive painting that I yearned to bond with but had to admit wouldn’t fit through my living-room door.
To me, it wasn’t just a job; it was an invitation to be a part of what I’d loved since I was a teenager: the visual arts. In the '60s, I lived in a minuscule English village where you had to walk half a mile to catch a bus that would take 25 minutes to transport you to the nearest town. Then it was 45 minutes by train to London. But at least once a month, I’d make my laborious way to the city and immerse myself in the Tate (no Tate Modern yet), private galleries and whatever big-box shows were on offer.
My invitation to participate in Canada’s art world came from Michael de Pencier, chairman of Key Publishers, which at that time put out a number of successful consumer magazines including Canadian Business and Toronto Life, as well as the important book-world tabloid Quill & Quire.
It was Michael who spearheaded the launch of Canadian Art 25 years ago. In 1983, Canada lost its two national visual-arts magazines. artmagazine (edited by the late Pat Fleisher) folded. And Daniel Cooper, a lawyer on the board of artscanada (edited by Anne Brodzky), called Michael to let him know that the magazine, which had been around for about 40 years (as artscanada since 1967), had just been denied a grant by the Canada Council and had such a big deficit that it could no longer function. Cooper offered him artscanada’s subscription list, gratis, if Michael wanted to take up the challenge of starting a new visual-arts magazine.
He did. He felt strongly that Canada would be culturally poorer without such a publication. Fired up with his usual—and usually infectious—enthusiasm, he went to the board of Key Publishers with a proposal: the launch of Canadian Art. The board turned him down flat. Clearly, the economics of putting out a magazine about Canada’s visual arts was a no-brainer: it couldn’t survive.
The first issue of Canadian Art was published in fall 1984, with a cover featuring Wanda Koop
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