Joyce Wieland (June 30, 1930 – June 27, 1998) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

maker and

mixed media In visual art, mixed media describes artwork in which more than one medium or material has been employed. Assemblages, collages, and sculpture are three common examples of art using different media. Materials used to create mixed media art incl ...

artist. Wieland found success as a

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

when she began her career in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

in the 1950s. In 1962, Wieland moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and expanded her career as an artist by including new materials and mixed media work. During that time, she also rose to prominence as an experimental filmmaker and soon, institutions such as the

Museum of Modern Art in New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

were showing her films. In 1971, Wieland's ''True Patriot Love'' exhibition was the first solo exhibition by a living Canadian female artist at the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

. In 1982, Wieland received the honour of an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the ...

and in 1987, she was awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation's Visual Arts Award. She was also a member of the

Royal Canadian Academy of Arts The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) is a Canadian arts-related organization that was founded in 1880. History 1880 to 1890 The title of Royal Canadian Academy of Arts was received from Queen Victoria on 16 July 1880. The Governor General ...

Biography

Early life and education

Wieland was born on June 30, 1930 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to British immigrant parents. She was the daughter of Sydney Arthur Wieland and Rosetta Amelia Watson. Wieland's father died from heart disease in 1937, and her mother followed soon after, leaving three children in financially difficult circumstances. Joyce Wieland's aptitude for art was first expressed during her youth, when she made many drawings and

comic books A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

. As a teenager, she attended

Central Technical School Central Technical School (CTS or Central Tech) is a Canadian composite high school in Toronto, Ontario. The school is run by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB); before 1998, it was run by the Toronto Board of Education (TBE). Central Tech ...

, where she studied

commercial art Commercial art is the art of creative services, referring to art created for commercial purposes, primarily advertising. Commercial art uses a variety of platforms (magazines, websites, apps, television, etc.) for viewers with the intent of promo ...

and

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...

. Wieland first enrolled in dress design and hoped it would help her land a job since she thought art would not be financially rewarding. However, at Central Tech, she met

Doris McCarthy Doris McCarthy, LL. D. (July 7, 1910 – November 25, 2010) was a Canadian artist known for her abstracted landscapes. Life and career Born in Calgary, Alberta, McCarthy attended the Ontario College of Art from 1926 to 1930, where she was award ...

who taught at the school. McCarthy's artistic identity inspired Wieland to pursue her own.Sloan, Johanne.
Joyce Wieland: Life & Work
'' Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2014. She saw potential in Wieland and convinced her to transfer into the art department.

Career

After graduating in 1948, Wieland held various jobs as a graphic designer. Wieland's first job was with E.S. & A. Robinson in design packaging, followed by work as a designer at Planned Sales. While working for these agencies, Wieland interacted with many artists and fellow alumni from Central Tech and the

Ontario College of Art Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD, is a public art university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus is spread throughout several buildings and facilities within do ...

. During this time, she also kept focusing on her art but wasn't confident in showing off her work yet. In the early 1950s, Wieland's interest in

art film An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

s grew and she started attending the Toronto Film Society screenings where she was introduced to the works of filmmakers such as

Maya Deren Maya Deren (born Eleonora Derenkowska, uk, Елеоно́ра Деренко́вська, links=no;

, who later influenced her own films. In 1953, Wieland joined Graphic Associates, an

animation studio An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals ...

where she learned techniques she would later apply in her own films. She had her first solo exhibition in 1960 at the Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, making her the only woman that the prestigious gallery represented and earning her greater recognition for her work. She moved to New York in 1962 and throughout the decade produced most of her experimental films. One of these films is ''Rat Life and Diet in North America'' (1968), which presents animals as its main characters. The film is a metaphor for revolution and escape, where cats are the oppressors and the gerbils are the oppressed. The gerbils represent political prisoners in the United States who make their way to freedom in Canada. ''Rat Life and Diet in North America'' is an example of how Wieland's concern with political issues, nationalism, symbols, and myths was represented aesthetically through her works. Wieland's self-identification as a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

in an era of second wave of feminism also manifested itself through aesthetic means and played an important part in her career as an artist. However, her visual-art practice's popularity remained confined within Canada. Wieland returned to Toronto in 1971. She said she could not make art anymore in America due to its ideological orientation. Her 1976 film, ''

The Far Shore ''The Far Shore'' is a Canadian drama film, directed by Joyce Wieland and released in 1976."Far Shore beautiful but flat". ''The Globe and Mail'', September 25, 1976. Wieland's first commercial narrative feature film after years of making experim ...

'', had had "devastating appraisals and dismal box office receipts". Following this, her next project—a dramatization of

Margaret Laurence Jean Margaret Laurence (née Wemyss; July 18, 1926 – January 5, 1987) was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, and is one of the major figures in Canadian literature. She was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-pr ...

's iconic 1974 novel ''

The Diviners ''The Diviners'' is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and is considered one of the classics of Canadian literature. The novel won the Governor General's Award for English-la ...

'' — did not get off the ground. In 1987 a

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

of her work at the

Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Beve ...

presented a critical overview of both her visual art practice and her experimental films.

Work

Joyce Wieland was a central figure in Canadian art during the 1960s and 1970s. Though, she began her career as a painter, her work came to explore a wide range of materials and media, including film. The 1960s were a productive time for Wieland, as she responded to the contemporary artistic trends of Pop art and

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

. Joanne Sloane maintains in ''Joyce Wieland: Life & Work'' that her encounters with these influences "were always original and idiosyncratic." Sloane identifies the several consistent bodies of Wieland's work that emerged throughout the 1960s as: "quasi-abstract paintings that reveal messages, signs, or erotic drawings; collages and sculptural assemblages; filmic paintings; disaster paintings; plastic film-assemblages; quilts and other fabric-based objects; and language-based works." Her art was often infused with humour, even as it engaged with issues of war, gender, ecology, and nationalism. Internationally, Wieland is best known as an experimental feminist filmmaker. Her works introduced physical manipulation of the filmstrip that inscribed an explicitly female craft tradition into her films while also playing with the facticity of photographed images. Wieland's output was small but received considerable attention in comparison to other female avant-garde filmmakers of her time. In the 1980s, Wieland focused again on painting, though her representation of the natural environment became less identifiably Canadian and her themes simply ones of ''nature, love and life''.

Personal life

In 1956, Wieland married filmmaker

Michael Snow Michael Snow (born December 10, 1928) is a Canadian artist working in a range of media including film, installation, sculpture, photography, and music. His best-known films are ''Wavelength'' (1967) and '' La Région Centrale'' (1971), with the f ...

, whom she had met through her job at the animation studio. They remained married for over twenty years until their divorce in 1976. In 1962, Wieland and Snow moved to New York where they lived until 1971. After she moved back to Toronto in 1971, Wieland maintained a studio practice there until her death on June 27, 1998 from

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

, aged 67. Barren Ground Caribou, Spadina TTC

Filmography

Films about Joyce Wieland

* '' Artist on Fire'' (Canada, 1987), directed by

Kay Armatage Kay Armatage (born 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, former programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival and Professor emerita at the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute and Women & Gender Studies Institute. Though she attained ...

Visual art

* ''Untitled (Young Couple)'' (c.1959) (National Gallery of Canada) * ''The Lovers No.23'' (1961) (National Gallery of Canada) * ''Red Fall'' (1962) (National Gallery of Canada) * ''Boat (Homage to D.W. Griffith)'' (1963) (Private Collection) * ''Boat Tragedy'' (1964) (Art Gallery of Ontario) ** This piece includes a multi-framed painting of a sinking sailboat. Variations on this work include sinking boats, ocean liners, and plane crashes. * ''The Camera's Eyes'' (1966) (Art Gallery of Hamilton) * ''Man Has Reached Out and Touched the Tranquil Moon'' (1970) (National Gallery of Canada) * ''Barren Ground Caribou'' (1978) (Spadina Subway Station TTC) * ''The Birth of Perception'' (1981) (National Gallery of Canada)

Influences on other work

In 2014, the focus of artist Mark Clintberg's Fogo Island residency was a quilted response to Wieland's work ''Reason Over Passion.'' The original work, made in both English and French, was inspired by the motto of the then-Prime Minister

Pierre Elliot Trudeau Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau ( , ; October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000), also referred to by his initials PET, was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and ...

. The quilt was infamously torn apart by his wife,

Margaret Trudeau Margaret Joan Trudeau ( Sinclair, formerly Kemper; born September 10, 1948) is a Canadian activist. She married Pierre Trudeau, the 15th prime minister of Canada, in 1971; three years after he became prime minister. They divorced in 1984, du ...

, in a fit of rage at his cold logic during an argument. In her autobiography ''Beyond Reason'' (1979), Trudeau narrates that encounter: Clintberg's response, sewn in collaboration with the Wind and Waves Artisans' Guild, turns Wieland's work on its head, formally and literally as each piece of the quilt is stitched "wrong"-side up exposing its soft-coloured underbelly. Moreover in the figurative sense, his re-imagining renewed the need for passion instead of reason that Margaret pleaded in her rage. Unlike Wieland's quilts, which hung on the wall, Clintberg's quilts are placed on a random bed each night at the Fogo Island Inn.

Awards

* *

Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award The Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award is a monetary award given since 1971 by the Canada Council for the Arts to Canadian artists judged to be outstanding in their mid-careers. Since 2005, the award is given to one recipient in each of the followi ...

(1972)

References

External links

Installation views of Joyce Wieland’s “True Patriot Love” exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, July 2 to August 8, 1971, Canadian Art online

Joyce Wieland
at th
Canadian Women Film Directors Database

Joyce Wieland fonds
at th
Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections

York University Libraries York University Libraries (YUL) is the library system of York University in Toronto, Ontario. The four main libraries and one archives contain more than 2,500,000 volumes. History The first York library opened in 1961 at Glendon College and ...

, Toronto, Ontario
Joyce Wieland fonds
at the

, Ottawa, Ontario {{DEFAULTSORT:Wieland, Joyce 1930 births 1998 deaths 20th-century Canadian painters 20th-century Canadian women artists Artists from Toronto Canadian cinematographers Canadian experimental filmmakers Canadian mixed media artists Canadian women cinematographers Canadian conceptual artists Women conceptual artists Canadian women film directors Canadian women painters Neurological disease deaths in Ontario Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Film directors from Toronto Members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Officers of the Order of Canada Women experimental filmmakers Canadian feminists Deaths from dementia in Canada Canadian expatriates in the United States