Cover and Uncover: Eric Cameron(Art in Profile: Art and Architecture in Canada)

Eric Cameron is a major contemporary Canadian artist. Born in 1935 in Leicester, England, he arrived in Canada in the 1970s and has taught at the University of Guelph, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and at the University of Calgary. Over the years Cameron has also continued to work in his primary medium, painting, but moved from traditional figuration to a highly conceptual practice with both his process paintings and his ""thick"" paintings. He has also expanded into video and has written a great deal about his work. His inspired teaching and unusual art have been recognized with major awards, including the Victor Lynch-Staunton Award (1993), the Gershorn Iskowitz Prize (1994), and the Governor General's Award (2004).Despite Cameron's prominence, much of the writing about him to date, primarily essays in exhibition catalogues, is by the artist himself. Cover and Uncover thus makes a major contribution to the field as it explores in depth Eric Cameron's art and philosophy. The book is composed of four essays, each covering a different aspect of Cameron's art, starting with Peggy Gale's analysis of his writing, then turning to Ann Davis's consideration of his process paintings and his philosophy, moving to Diana Nemiroff's review of his videos, and concluding with Thierry de Duve's observations on his Thick Paintings and his blind rejection of chance. The essays, though written independently, resonate with each other so that the reader comes away with a full picture of a complex artist, his life, his thought, his art production, and how these elements inform each other and have evolved through time. The expert commentary here, richly illustrated with Cameron's works in multiple media, provides a vital and long overdue critical lens through which to view this important artist.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of illustrations To Uncover: An Introduction Ann Davis Eric Cameron: Author! Author! Peggy Gale Aristotle and Material Mysticism: Process Painting and Beyond Ann Davis The "Imperfect" Artist: Eric Cameron's Video Toapes Diana Nemiroff Some Philosophical Implications of Eric Cameron's "Routine Extremism" Thierry de Duve Eric Cameron: Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Ann Davis is Director of The Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary and a prominent art critic, curator, and teacher. She is the author of The Logic of Ecstasy: Canadian Mystical Painting 1920-1940 and numerous articles and essays on twentieth-century Canadian art. Peggy Gale is an independent curator and critic whose texts on contemporary art have become artistic benchmarks. Videotexts, a selection of her essays, was published in 1995, and she was the winner of the 2006 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Diana Nemiroff is Director of the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa and a former senior curator at the National Gallery of Canada. She is also an adjunct professor with the School for Studies in Art and Culture at Carleton University and in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa. She has published extensively on contemporary Canadian and feminist art. Thierry de Duve is a historian, curator, teacher, and theorist of contemporary art. Born in Belgium, he has been a visiting professor at University of Lille III and the Sorbonne, among others, and has authored numerous books, including Kant after Duchamp (1996).

Review :
This text is one of the most sustained critical discussions of Cameronâs work, and each author has provided a well-researched and perceptive analyses of the relationship between his artistic production and philosophical ideas. This is an important contribution to twentieth-century Canadian art history and indispensable reading for anyone interested in the work of Eric Cameron. Kristy A. Holmes, University of Toronto Quarterly