Joyce Wieland Art

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) was one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists of the 20th century. Emerging on the Toronto art scene in the early 1960s, throughout her career Wieland would explore the role of women, the body, nationalism, and intimacy using a variety of mediums. During much of the 1970s, Wieland was consumed by the creation (and recovery) of making her single feature film "The Far Shore". Her all-encompassing approach included writing the script, directing, co-producing, and trying to finance the project, a task that she notoriously despised. The film was loosely inspired by the life and death of the Canadian painter, Tom Thompson...

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) was one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists of the 20th century. Emerging on the Toronto art scene at the beginning of the 1960s, over t...

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) is one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists. She achieved a level of commercial and critical success in her lifetime that was exceptional...

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) is one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists. She achieved a level of commercial and critical success in her lifetime that was exceptional for a woman during an era in a male-dominated field. Notably, she was the first female artist to have a solo exhibition at the National Gallery (Ottawa) in 1971 and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) in 1987. Although Wieland was an artist who was always drawing, she launched her career as a painter. Always experimenting, her art practice expanded to incorporate a range of media and materials, from textile works to film. In New York City, she was best known as an experimental filmmaker. In the mid 1960s Wieland began to embrace more representational and narrative elements in her work. Inspired by comic books, and her background in film as an animator, Wieland embraced figuration albeit clearly influenced by Pop Art. One of the reoccurring motifs in Wieland's oeuvre is playing with and subverting icons of femininity. In this work Wieland presents icons inspired by the French Queen Marie-Antoinette: a jewelry or hat box, a hairbrush, a medallion. The artist seems to be willing to give a make-over to the Queen. In the "nice medallion painting...

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) was one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists of the 20th century. Emerging on the Toronto art scene at the beginning of the 1960s, over t...

Joyce Wieland (1931-1998) was one of the most accomplished and versatile Canadian artists of the 20th century. Emerging on the Toronto art scene at the beginning of the 1960s, over the course of her career Wieland explored the role of women, the body, nationalism, and intimacy using a variety of mediums. As well as drawing and painting, the artist utilized untraditional materials such as quilts and lipstick. Traditionally seen as feminine and craft-like, Wieland renegotiated the ‘low art’ or inherently misogynistic labels of these materials, engaging with feminist dialogue in subject matter and medium. Wieland was also committed to the figure, sketching and drawing quirky characters, even when the avant-garde was dedicated to abstraction. After a lengthy and often frustrating sejour in New York City, Wieland returned to Toronto. Her marriage to fellow Canadian artist, Michael Snow, had dissolved. During the 1970's Wieland was consumed by creating a feature-length film entitled "The Far Shore" about Tom...