From Realism to Abstraction

The Art of J. B. Taylor

By Adriana Davies
Series: Art in Profile: Canadian Art and Architecture
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Paperback : 9781552387092, 186 pages, February 2014
Ebook (PDF) : 9781552387436, 186 pages, February 2014
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781552387481, 186 pages, February 2014
Ebook (Kindle) : 9781552387498, 186 pages, February 2014

Table of contents

 

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

2. A Biographical Sketch

3. Mountain Pictures: The Sublime Period (1947 to 1961)
About the Landscape Tradition

Formative Influences on Taylor

The Sublime Mountains

4. Mountain Pictures: The Abstract Period (1962 to 1970)
Evolution of His Later Style and Vision

Mountain Abstractions

5. Non–Mountain Pictures
Landscapes

The Italian Pictures

The Portraits

6. Significance and Contribution

7. Conclusion

J.B. Taylor Select Bibliography
J.B. Taylor Chronology
J.B. Taylor, 1917–1970: Selected Exhibitions
Notes
Index

Description

J. B. (Jack) Taylor (1917-1970) was an important figure in the history of Banff and western Canada’s artistic community. Inspired by the locale, Taylor spent his career striving to depict the idea of the mountain, moving over time from traditional representations of nature to an intuitive perception of the essential elements of landscape - rock, water, and sky. Always, he sought to capture his ideas through the development of a new visual language. He applied this new vernacular to a range of studies encompassing portraiture through to other landscapes.
Filled with images of his work and photographs of his life as an artist and teacher in western Canada, this book is the first to focus completely on J.B. Taylor, his importance to the western Canadian and Banff artistic communities, and his role in the transition from traditional, eastern, North American and European landscape ideals and technique to a more abstract representation and the formation of a new aesthetic of the wilderness based on the mountains of the West.

Awards

  • Short-listed, BPAA Alberta Book Publishing Award for Trade Non-fiction 2015
  • Short-listed, ARLIS Melva J. Dwyer Award 2015