Summary: | The plethora of Utopian ideas that circulated in North America
and Europe in the 1960's and 1970's emerged in the work of
Vancouver artist Tom Burrows. Utopianisms formed objectives for
much of the social and political activism throughout the period,
compelling Burrows to incorporate them into his artistic
practice. Chapter One, The Utopian Moment, describes the most powerful
Utopian ideas circulating in Vancouver at the time, their uneasy
alignments and overt contradictions. Although contradictory, they
were still instructive; and many artists responded with socially
and politically charged art. In Chapter Two, The Utopian in Art,
I contextualize Burrows' work with that of other artists whose
ambitions were similar. Chapters Three and Four demonstrate Burrows' conflicted
position by presenting two views of his work on the Maplewood
Mudflats. In Chapter Three, The Mudflats as Utopian Ladscape,
characterize this work as "useless" and romantic, as part of the
'aesthetic dimension' defined by Frankfurt School critical
theory. Chapter Four, The Most Beautiful Sculpture, foregrounds
the activist aspect of Burrows' work on the flats. This dialectic
of beauty and utility informs Burrows' work throughout the
period, from the participatory Sand Pile installation to the
aestheticism of the sculpture comprising the Temptations of Mao
Tse-Tung exhibition and the anti-aestheticism of the Squat
Doc[ument]. The Squat Doc was a Utopian view of squatted and
self-help housing at several sites in Europe, Africa and Asia. It
is the subject of Chapter Five, The Everyday Utopia of Squatting.
Burrows' conflicting and shifting positions were not limited
to his own practice, but representative of artistic practices at
the time. I want to demonstrate that Burrows' was among the most
committed to fundamental change in art and society in this
period. === Arts, Faculty of === Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of === Graduate
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