Modern Art as Metaphor

This year’s BMO Project Room exhibition features Kent Monkman’s “Casualties of Modernity”, a comical and clever work that invites visitors to enter a hospital wing whose patients—Romanticism, Cubism and Conceptualism—are suffering from the numerous conditions plaguing Modern and Contemporary art. The project debuts in Toronto just months after his “Welcome to the Studio” show at the McCord Museum which explored Monkman’s interest in the relationship between between photography and painting—a theme central to the work of 19th-century Montréal artist William Notman.

Check out the ACI’s free ebook on William Notman to find out why Monkman is fascinated by the work of Canada’s first celebrity photographer.

Read the ACI’s My Canada, My Art History article, featuring Joe Mimran, founder of Joe Fresh, on Monkman’s inspirational painting The Trapper’s Bride here.