The Tourist

The logic of tourism is not unlike the logic of art. Both tourists and art lovers are drawn to what is disappearing—be it an old building or a way of life. For both, it is the object made precious by rarity that has the greatest aesthetic value.

By this standard, Venice is the prettiest place on the planet, and the most painted, as canvases by Giacomo Guardi and Maxwell Bates attest in this exhibition. A city in decline for over five hundred years, it disappeared first from the world of imperial power, then business, then art, and now, finally, from sight as it sinks beneath the waves.

Saskatchewan is not far behind, with an abundance of grain elevators and homesteads fading into oblivion. Ernest Luthi and Robert Hurley understood this well, as did German visitor, Gerd Winner, in his modernist tribute to this prairie sentinel.

This exhibition considers tourists as artists and artists as tourists. The photographs, prints and paintings offer a holiday side trip into the aesthetic enterprise, where the tourist’s romantic attachments are met with the artist’s self-awareness of our love of loss.

Curated by Timothy Long, Head Curator

A permanent collection exhibition organized by the MaKenzie Art Gallery with the support of the Canadian Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the City of  Regina Arts Advisory Committee.