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 OC (born October 11, 1960) is a Canadian artist from Vancouver, British Columbia. He is known for his exciting work in film, photography, and theatre.
Since the late 1980s, Stan Douglas has created art that explores how technology helps us make images. He also looks at how these images shape our shared memories. His art often uses historical and cultural references, but it's also easy for many people to understand.
His work has been shown all over the world. This includes major art events like Documenta (in 1992, 1997, and 2002) and the Venice Biennale (in 1990, 2001, 2005, and 2019). Stan Douglas was even chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2021.
Art collector Friedrich Christian Flick once said that Douglas's art helps us understand our society. He mentioned that many different things inspire Douglas, like famous writers, music, and even old movies.
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About Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas was born in 1960 in Vancouver, Canada. He still lives and works there today. He studied art at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. His first solo art show was in 1981, and since then, his work has been shown widely.
He has been part of many important group exhibitions. These include the 1995 Carnegie International and the 1995 Whitney Biennial. In 2007, he won the first Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award. This award gives $25,000 for amazing work in Canadian visual arts. In 2008, he received the Bell Award in Video Art.
Douglas's art has been shown in a special exhibit called "Stan Douglas: Mise en scène." This show traveled around Europe from 2013 to 2015. He also taught art at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Art Center College of Design.
Art Themes and Ideas
Stan Douglas's art often looks at how mass media (like TV and movies) works. He also explores how it affects society. Since the late 1980s, his work has been inspired by the writer Samuel Beckett.
Modern Ideas in Art
Douglas is interested in modernism, which is a way of thinking about art and society. He also looks at modernity, which is how cities in North America changed after World War II.
He often uses older types of media, like old film styles. Art expert Hal Foster says Douglas likes "failed utopias and obsolete technologies." This means he takes old ideas and technologies that didn't quite work out. Then, he uses them to create something new. Douglas wants us to rethink these past moments. He asks why good ideas didn't succeed and what valuable lessons we can learn from them today.
Exploring Society and Identity
Stan Douglas's art sometimes touches on the topic of race. For example, his short video I'm Not Gary (1991) shows a white man mistaking a black man for someone else. This video explores how racism can make people feel invisible.
However, many of Douglas's works focus more on social class than race. He grew up in a mostly white middle-class area of Vancouver. For him, race was more about being unseen than about fighting for civil rights.
Music and Culture
Even if race isn't always the main topic, Douglas often explores his identity as a Black-Canadian through music. He uses musical styles linked to African-American culture, like blues and jazz.
Douglas points out how people sometimes think of black music as "primitive" while European music is seen as "high culture." He shows how jazz challenges this idea. Jazz is both "race music" and a highly respected art form, especially in Europe.
His early work, Deux Devises (1983), shows this idea. It pairs lyrics from a 19th-century European song with Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues." Douglas mouths Johnson's words out of sync with the music. This pairing highlights how people often judge European music as more serious than the raw, emotional sounds of the blues.
Jazz and Politics
Douglas's use of jazz also looks at how people felt about African-American music. His video Hors-champs (1992) explores free jazz in the 1960s. This type of jazz was connected to black consciousness and politics. It's one of his few works that directly talks about race.
The video features four American musicians who lived in France in the 1960s. They play Albert Ayler's "Spirits Rejoice." Free jazz was very popular in Europe. It was even used by the French Communist Party during protests in May 1968.
Hors-champs is shown on two screens. One side shows the "broadcast" version, like what people would see on TV. The other side shows the raw footage, the parts that were edited out. This lets viewers see both the finished performance and how it was made. It also shows the difference between everyday television and the bold, new programs of that time.
Douglas's work Luanda-Kinshasa is over six hours long. Its title refers to the African roots of jazz. This piece shows a fictional recording session in a famous New York studio from the 1970s. A band of professional musicians, including artists from Senegal, India, and America, improvise together. The focus is entirely on the music they create.
Film and Cinema Art
Stan Douglas is often linked to the Vancouver School of photoconceptualism. This is because he started his career in Vancouver in the 1980s and uses cameras in his art. He uses video and film, not just photography. He is also very interested in the history of cinema. These interests make him unique from other artists like Jeff Wall.
Douglas has remade famous films, like Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Orson Welles's Journey into Fear (1943). He explores how movies are made and what their limits are. His works refer to the original films but also change them. He often uses loops and editing to make the originals feel new and strange.
For example, Subject to a Film: Marnie recreates a robbery scene from Hitchcock's film. It makes you feel like you're stuck in a recurring nightmare. The character is trapped in a film loop, unable to escape.
Inconsolable Memories (2005) is based on a 1968 Cuban film. Douglas updated it to include events from 1980. His art piece includes a film loop and photos of modern Havana, Cuba. This creates a feeling of repetition, which is common in Douglas's work. It explores the idea of the Cuban revolution's promise and its changes over time. It also connects to Cold War events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Inspired by Samuel Beckett
Douglas has always been interested in the work of writer Samuel Beckett. In 1988, he organized an exhibition called Samuel Beckett: Teleplays. In 1991, Douglas made Monodramas, short videos for TV. These 30- to 60-second videos were shown nightly in British Columbia in 1992. They looked like TV commercials, and viewers even called the station to ask what was being sold!
His first TV project, Television Spots (1987–88), showed short, everyday scenes with open endings. When they aired during commercial breaks, people were confused. An early video, Mime (1983), showed a close-up of Douglas's mouth. He made shapes with his mouth that matched the sounds of a song, but out of sync. Later, he realized Beckett had a similar work called Not I.
Douglas's work Panoramic Rotunda (1985) was inspired by a line from Beckett's writing. The way Douglas repeats scenes in Win, Place or Show also reminds us of Beckett. Beckett often used repetition to show how reality can feel the "same" over and over again. The endless loop of two characters saying the same words from different angles is like the characters in Beckett's play Waiting for Godot.
Key Artworks
Early Works (1983–1991)
Stan Douglas's early works from the 1980s often focus on older technologies and their look. He often explores the idea of "lost time." His installation Overture (1986) uses old film footage from a train journey through the Rocky Mountains (1899–1901). The sound is a writer reading parts of a famous book about lost time.
In Onomatopoeia (1985–1986), a screen hangs over an old player piano. The piano plays music by Beethoven. Images of an empty textile factory are shown above the piano. The piano rolls, which control the music, are like the punch cards used in the factory to create fabric patterns. This creates a link between the music and the images. The images and music are sometimes out of sync, which keeps the audience feeling a bit anxious.
Douglas's Monodramas are ten short videos from 1991. They were made to be shown on commercial television. These short stories, set in plain suburban areas, copy TV editing styles. They often show everyday situations with a small twist at the end. In "I'm Not Gary," a white man calls out to a black man, "Gary?" The black man replies, "I'm not Gary." This video explores how some people might see all black men as interchangeable.
Art Installations
Many of Douglas's installations use time in interesting ways. He often slows down time or creates a sense of stillness. His 1995 installation Der Sandmann is based on an old story and a famous essay by Sigmund Freud. The film is split down the middle, and the two sides are slightly out of sync. This creates a "time gap," which breaks the feeling of everything being perfectly together.
Douglas's 1998 installation Win, Place or Show is filmed like a gritty 1960s TV drama. It's set in 1950s Vancouver, in an area that was being rebuilt. The art piece explores the idea of urban renewal, where old buildings are torn down for new apartment blocks. Two men talk in a dorm room on a rainy day. Their conversation gets heated when they discuss horse races. The 6-minute film loop repeats from different angles on a split screen. A computer edits the scenes in real time, creating endless new versions of the story.
His 2014 interactive installation, Circa 1948, was made with the National Film Board of Canada. It lets you explore a digital world. Douglas also created a play called Helen Lawrence, which shares characters and stories with Circa 1948.
Venice Biennale Participation
The National Gallery of Canada chose Stan Douglas to represent Canada at the 2021 Venice Biennale. This is a very important international art exhibition. Douglas has shown his work at the Venice Biennale before. In 2019, he showed Doppelgänger, a video installation with two screens. It tells the story of an astronaut who returns home to find everything is the opposite of what she knew. The two screens show coexisting experiences and realities. The jury chose Douglas because his work is very relevant to important discussions happening in the art world today.
Awards and Recognition
- 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
Where to See His Art
Stan Douglas's art is part of many important public collections around the world. You can find his work in places like:
- Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Tate Gallery, London
- Vancouver Art Gallery
Images for kids
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Stan Douglas, Christine Ross and Okwui Enwezor at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
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Video still of Win, Place or Show (1998) which explores the modernist idea of urban renewal
