Sights of Resistance

Few books on Canadian art provide an in-depth look at more than one art form from a variety of practical critical perspectives. Sights of Resistance : Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture offers both breadth and depth in an innovative but accessible introduction to Canadian visual culture. Robert Belton has an impossibly ambitious goal -- to create a single-volume introduction to both visual culture and critical practice that neither creates a list of Canadian art's "greatest hits" nor promotes one way of knowing over another. Belton deliberately includes in his overview both old favourites and many unfamiliar works of art, architecture, crafts, painting, photography, sculpture, and so on, placing as much emphasis on the study of a Native blanket as on the study of a legislative building. He demonstrates how all aspects of Canadian visual art interrelate to form a cultural heritage that is as rich as it is varied. To this end, he endeavours to leave no tradition, time period, or geographical area unmentioned in the numerous case studies he inserts into a broader theoretical framework. The broader theoretical framework is supported by the substantial glossary on CD-ROM that both explains the case studies and provides opportunities for developing radically different perspectives -- and in this way the artwork becomes a site/sight of "resistance."