Artext files series

Series consists of material generated by Kenneth Coutts-Smith and records generated posthumously by his widow, Helen K. Wright, who arranged for the exhibition of several shows of Artexts in galleries across Canada. The series includes correspondence, exhibit posters, exhibit reviews, catalogues, artist’s statement, financial information, mailing lists, lecture notes, photographs, slides, artist’s notes, and several examples of the Artexts themselves. Also included are a series of printing blocks which Coutts-Smith used to produce his Artexts.

The “artext” is a hybrid art form developed by Coutts-Smith in which a specific approach towards the realization of a socio-political dimension in visual culture is attempted through a series of paintings, lithographs, and mono-prints. Image and content is integrated in the depiction of texts drawn both from other writers and from the artist’s own published commentary in the field of politico-cultural sociology of contemporary art. Ironic allusions concerning the nature of our response to traditional art forms are raised in the complex and elaborately beaux arts and “painterly” qualities of execution.