66 CANADIAN A RT • SPRING 2016 canadianart.ca 67
THE MAGIC CIRCLE: ON THE BEATLES,
POP ART, ART-ROCK AND RECORDS, Jan Tumlir,
Onomatopee, 233 pp, $23.00.
The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is
widely seen as the archetypal art-rock concept album,
but rarely has a more thorough case been made for its
fundamental place in the wider context of radical social,
political and cultural change. Smithson, Burroughs,
McLuhan and Manson are among the spiralling cast of
players in critic Jan Tumlir’s re-sounding of that legacy
and how the LP format itself is a lasting conceptual
cipher, cued to unravel at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute.MICHAEL SNOW – SEQUENCES – A
HISTORY OF HIS ART, edited by Gloria
Moure, Ediciones Polígrafa, 376 pp, $93.00.
This monograph, organized into 17 sec-
tions, illustrates Michael Snow’s explora-
tions of perception, sound, time and
movement. Beautiful images are paired
with Snow’s anecdotes and recollections,
providing an intimate look into his pro-
cess. In an extensive essay, film theorist
Bruce Jenkins commends the book’s editor
for seeking “congruencies in the seemingly
disparate,” while looking at the senior
Canadian artist’s mastery of diverse disci-
plines as one of his major achievements.HIPPIE MODERNISM: THE STRUGGLE
FOR UTOPIA, edited by Andrew Blauvelt,
Walker Art Center, 448 pp, $55.00.
“It’s difficult to identify another period of
history that has exerted more influence
on contemporary culture and politics,”
says curator Andrew Blauvelt of the years
between 1964 and 1974. Indeed, if you
check your horoscope, recycle, use shar-
ing economies like Uber and Airbnb or
think Black Lives Matter, you’re echoing
the ethos of the counterculture. Essays,
images and interviews are generous in
depth and scope, looking beyond Califor-
nia to anti-design and radical architecture
worldwide, and considering cultural out-
put previously disparaged as lifestyle mer-
chandise on the same plane as high art.MASS EFFECT: ART AND THE INTERNET
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY,
edited by Lauren Cornell and Ed Halter,
MIT Press, 528 pp, $44.95.
How deeply 21st century to already have
a more than 500-page anthology—titled
Mass Effect no less—on the impact of the
digital on contemporary art, one appear-
ing comprehensive and canonical but
also bewilderingly long and thus daunt-
ing to fully read. Indeed, unless you’re an
academic, curator or critic, the collection
seems more a time capsule, its impor-
tance to be assessed later, but with all
necessary components in place—in this
case pieces by Claire Bishop, Gene
McHugh, Seth Price and many more.It is when the touring
ceases...and when the
record is rethought from the
ground up as a primary
document, that the art-rock
equation takes shape. The
aim, as Lennon puts it, is
to “wake up the avant-garde.”— Jan Tumlir in The Magic CircleReadings_sp16_10TS.indd 67 02/05/16 6:34 PM