Wednesday, 30 November 2016

Wilderness as Commodity – 30th November, 2016


Why does this calendar represent the Canadian wilderness? I think this is an important question to ask myself. After all, if I am exploring this calendar through a class where Canadian wilderness is a big theme, I should have an answer. I have mostly researched and thought about my calendar as two separate things – the painting (or its reproduction) and the product. It is important to explore the marriage of the two and how that relates to themes of wilderness. I draw connections to both through Tina Loo’s essay as it deals with ideas of commodifying Wilderness. Loo expresses this same idea in her discussion of the creation of parks and reserves to indulge in the desire to create better environments for sport. In the calendar, Wilderness is packaged first by the artists into paintings, and then once again by the printing company as a form of date-tracking and display. Buyers are intrigued by the images – how they are representative of wilderness and the Canadian psyche. We see the enjoyment of these such paintings as a sign of high class. The bundling together of the paintings with the calendar is a way to get a two-for-one functional form of displaying art.

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