Last week I reviewed five relatively minor Canadian arts and culture magazines. While they all had distinctive merit, they could learn a few lessons from the venerable Canadian Art. This full colour glossy magazine has been publishing at least four times a year since 1984, with some financial difficulties but consistent artistic success.

This latest issue, Spring 2000, has a wonderful article by Robin Laurence on Winnipeg's Wanda Koop. The article ostensibly focuses on Koop's latest diversion into video installation art, but serves as a thorough career retrospective on this treasured Canadian artist. There's also an interview with Liz Magor, an essay by Gary Michael Dault on recent abstract painting, and a feature by Sarah Milroy on Group of Seven artist Frederick Varley's little-known life and career in Vancouver.

The entire magazine, as usual, is a visual feast -- recent and important art, available in handy take-home, read-on-the-subway format. But my favourite article was a collection of thoughts on corporate art purchasing, which apparently is becoming more important to artists and dealers in this era of diminishing public sector support. Most of the corporate buyers are from big law firms in Toronto. One of the tasteful lawyers wonders aloud why companies that make their living in the arts -- like ad agencies, design firms and high-tech firms -- aren't as active as law firms in supporting the arts.

Shameless Self Promotion
While we're talking magazines, Ontarians keep your eyes peeled for yoursource -- the latest lifestyle, home and garden mag. This publication (its third year in distribution) started its life as a small book containing designer discounts, design and garden tips. It's expanded to a full-size glossy mag, ready to duke it out with any lifestyle rag on the market. The publisher, Kevin Fitzsimons, has created a magazine one key industry insider claims "will change the graphic look of Canadian home and garden magazines." Where the self-promotion comes is that yours truly wrote a couple of the articles ... It's scheduled to hit the stores early this week. A Vancouver/Calgary edition is slated for the fall.

Link:
yoursource

Beckett Film Project
As you can probably tell, I have a deep fondness for Samuel Beckett and was delighted to read about the Beckett Film Project, currently underway in studios in Dublin and London. Nineteen of the Irish playwright's works are being produced by Michael Colgan, a fierce Beckett-o-maniac who feels that today's audiences are ready for Sam's vision. "In the 1960s, people would come out of the theater asking who Godot was. Today, no one cares who Godot was. In the 1960's, Beckett was treated reverentially. Today, people are overcoming the idea that he is bleak and inaccessible. What we now see more is the humor in his plays." Two Canadians have been invited to the party. Atom Egoyan's dropped everything to film Krapp's Last Tape with John Hurt and Patricia Rozema's buried herself in Happy Days.

Drop me a line.