Capital Culture: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

The editors’ objective in this reader on modernist legacies “is to
describe a sense of continual unrest and to leave the reader in a space
that encourages a continual challenging and relaxing of the boundaries
circumscribing how we think about art.” The collection contains more
than 20 essays by well-known artists, academics, and cultural
commentators, arranged under six major headings: “Thoughts to
Begin,” “Aesthetics and Politics in the Age of Global Markets,”
“Marketing Culture and the Policies of Value,” “Culture and the
State,” “Technology, Globalization and Cultural Identity,” and
“Thoughts to Close.”

Individual contributions include Jody Berland’s review of the Massey
Commission report in the context of the work of Harold Innis; Thierry De
Duve’s discussion of Immanuel Kant’s concept of transcendental
aesthetics in relation to culture; Bruce Barber’s challenges to
traditional concepts of work; Nicole Dubreil’s review of the issues
around Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire; Anne Whitelaw’s analysis of
the creation of a “Canadian” aesthetic tradition; Michael
Dorland’s perspective on state interventions in Canadian cultural
activities, Brenda Longfellow’s concerns about the critical traditions
of Canadian feature films; Vera Frankel’s memoir/essay about her own
creative art; and Shelley Hornstein’s discussion of the role of canons
in art and visual culture. Notes and bibliographies are provided for
each essay.

This well-documented and wide-ranging collection is recommended for
scholars and students involved in cultural studies.