Bill Vazan "XXth Century"

Presented for the first time since 1975. The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec presents one of the masterpieces of Canadian conceptual art, Bill Vazan’s XXth Century, an ambitious series of ten multi-coloured canvases, stamped with the dates of every decade of the twentieth century. The century is displayed in the paintings systematically, from 1 January 1900 to 31 December 1999. Time is conveyed as surface, according to another unit of measure, as a sequence of information that is transformed into subtle colour fields.

This method, which reveals the evolution of the work’s production, connects Vazan with conceptual art. The process of production, rather than the finished object, is at the heart of his concerns. The chromatic variations in each canvas nevertheless make Vazan’s project unique, setting him apart from the rigour and rationalist principles of the champions of pure conceptual art. The different colours, chosen at random, demonstrate the artist’s commitment to recording time. It is precisely this existential relation with process which gives Vazan’s conceptual work its unity. 

BILL VAZAN

Bill Vazan is a pillar of contemporary Canadian art and a leading figure in conceptual art and the practice of land art in Canada. Born in Toronto in 1933, he first studied at Danforth Technical School and then at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto before completing his studies at the École nationale des beaux-arts de Paris. He moved to Montréal in 1957. In the 1960s, Vazan became known for major projects associated with Canadian conceptual art: Canada in Parentheses (1969), in collaboration with the Vancouver artist Ian Wallace; Canada Line (1969-70), which virtually linked eight Canadian cities; and Word Line (1969-71), a global line whose creation involved 25 galleries and museums in 18 countries around the world. After teaching at Concordia University from 1978 to 1982, he served as professor of sculpture at the Université du Québec à Montréal from 1981 to 2010. Bill Vazan’s works can be found in every large public collection in Canada. His conceptual art has been the subject of a major exhibition, Bill Vazan: Walking into the Vanishing Point. His work has also been included in Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, a major group exhibition devoted to the development of conceptual art in Canada. Bill Vazan was the recipient of the Paul-Émile Borduas award in 2010.