Stan Douglas facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Stan Douglas
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Stan Douglas, Christine Ross and Okwui Enwezor at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
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| Born | October 11, 1960 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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| Nationality | Canadian |
| Known for | Installation artist, photographer |
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Notable work
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Win, Place or Show, 1998 |
| Movement | Vancouver School |
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Stan Douglas (born October 11, 1960) is a famous Canadian artist from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is known for creating art using film, photography, and even live theater.
Since the 1980s, Douglas has explored how technology changes the way we see things. He is interested in how photos and films can shape our memories of the past. His artwork often looks at specific moments in history but tells stories that people all over the world can understand.
Douglas is a very respected artist and has shown his work at major international art shows. These include Documenta in Germany and the Venice Biennale in Italy, where he represented Canada in 2022.
Contents
Early Life and Career
Stan Douglas was born in Vancouver in 1960 and still lives there today. He studied art at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. After his first art show in 1981, his career took off.
He has received many awards for his work. In 2007, he won the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award, a major prize for Canadian artists. He also won the Bell Award in Video Art in 2008. Douglas has also worked as a professor, teaching art at universities in Berlin, Germany, and California.
Themes in His Art
Douglas's art often explores big ideas about society, history, and technology. He uses different themes to make people think about the world around them.
Modern Ideas and Cities
Douglas is interested in modernism, which is a way of thinking about new ideas in art, architecture, and society. He looks at how modern ideas have changed cities in North America, especially after World War II.
For example, some of his art shows how old neighborhoods were torn down to build new, modern apartment buildings. He questions whether these changes were always for the best.
Jazz and Blues Music
Music, especially jazz and blues, is a very important part of Douglas's work. These styles of music were created by African-American communities. Douglas uses them to explore ideas about culture and history.
He looks at how some people in the past viewed blues as "simple" music, while classical European music was seen as "high culture." Douglas challenges this idea and shows the power and complexity of all kinds of music.
Hors-champs
One of his most famous works is a video installation called Hors-champs (which means "off-screen" in French). It was first shown in 1992. The video features four American musicians playing free jazz, a style of music that was connected to the fight for Black rights in the 1960s.
The video is projected on both sides of a screen. One side shows the performance as it would have appeared on TV. The other side shows all the footage that was cut out. This makes the viewer think about what we see in the media and what is hidden from us.
Movies and Storytelling
Douglas is a big fan of movies and is often linked with the Vancouver School of art, which includes artists who use photography and video. He often remakes scenes from famous films to explore them in a new way.
He has reworked movies by famous directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. He doesn't just copy the scenes. Instead, he changes them, often using video loops that repeat over and over. This makes the familiar scenes feel strange and new.
Inconsolable Memories
In 2005, Douglas created Inconsolable Memories. This work was inspired by a 1968 Cuban film called Memories of Underdevelopment. Douglas's version updates the story to a later time in Cuban history.
The artwork includes a 16mm film projection and a series of photos of modern-day Havana, Cuba. The film is on a loop, creating a sense of repeating history. The work makes people think about the promises of the Cuban Revolution and how memory and history are connected.
Inspired by Samuel Beckett
Douglas has also been greatly inspired by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Beckett was known for his plays and TV shows that were often strange and mysterious.
In 1991, Douglas created a series of very short videos called Monodramas. These 30 to 60-second videos were shown on TV during commercial breaks. The videos showed everyday situations with a strange twist at the end. People who saw them were confused and even called the TV station to ask what was being sold. Douglas was using television in a new way to make people think, just like Beckett did.
Famous Artworks
Over his long career, Stan Douglas has created many memorable artworks that challenge how we see the world.
Early Works
In the 1980s, Douglas was interested in old technology and how it becomes outdated. His 1986 installation Overture uses old film footage of a train traveling through the Rocky Mountains from around 1900. The soundtrack is a reading from a famous book about memory, In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. The work connects the beginning of film with new ways of thinking about time and memory.
Video Installations
Many of Douglas's most famous works are large video installations.
Win, Place or Show
This 1998 installation is set in Vancouver in the 1950s. It takes place in a shared room where two workers are spending a rainy day off. They start arguing about horse races.
The story is a short 6-minute loop, but it's shown on a split screen. A computer edits the scenes live, so every time the loop repeats, you see it from different camera angles. This creates a nearly endless number of versions of the same conversation.
Circa 1948
In 2014, Douglas created an interactive project called Circa 1948. It was made with the National Film Board of Canada. This work lets users explore two neighborhoods in post-war Vancouver on their computers or phones. Douglas also created a stage play, Helen Lawrence, that uses the same characters and story.
Awards
- 2007: Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award
- 2008: Bell Award in Video Art
- 2012: Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography, New York
- 2013: Scotiabank Photography Award
- 2016: Hasselblad Award
- 2019: Audain Prize for the Visual Arts
- 2024: Officer of the Order of Canada
Public collections
Art by Stan Douglas can be found in major museums around the world, including:
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Israel Museum, Jerusalem
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
- Tate Gallery, London
- Vancouver Art Gallery
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
