Edmund Alleyn: In My Studio I Am Many (English and French Edition) (French and English Edition)

A multidisciplinary artist before the invention of the term, Edmund Alleyn (1931-2004) moved from medium to medium, producing a prodigious body of work. At a time when art was defined by movements and manifestos, Alleyn's creative restlessness led him to break away from Greenbergian principles to explore new ground. In the 1950s, under the influence of Paul-Emile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle, he mastered abstract modernism before taking a more personal path, notably with works influenced by West Coast Aboriginal art. By the 1970s Alleyn's preoccupations had turned to technology and his greatest work of the era is L'Introscaphe, an egg-shaped vessel that provided an immersive cinematographic environment. Unveiled at the Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1970, the work was experienced by hundreds of visitors. After several years in France he returned to Quebec where, inspired by the changes sweeping society, he sought to subvert the art/spectator paradigm with new works on plexiglas. Later in life Alleyn returned to painting, creating powerful works infused with sense of nostalgia and loss. His last creative period was marked by works mingling the abstract and the figurative much like those of his youth, except the once vivid colours have been replaced with somber blacks and whites. This career monograph reveals an artist whose practice truly embodies the transition from modernist to contemporary art. Magnificently illustrated with color plates featuring works in every medium and from every period, the book accompanies the first retrospective exhibition since the artist's death. Scholarship by experts in the fields of art and film is enriched by the experiences of those who knew and worked with the artist. Fully bilingual in English and French.